Could Arsenal win the Champions League 

Henry Waddon asks the question Arsenal supporters have been pondering after the 3-0 win over Dinamo Zagreb 

It feels incredibly good to live through an undramatic, untroublesome, un-nail-biting football match, doesn’t it?

Wednesday night saw Arsenal trot to a convincing victory against Dinamo Zagreb, in a game which went largely to script, and largely to design. If we could’ve picked a scoreline ahead of time, three-nil would’ve been a pretty good one, I’d say.

If we could’ve chosen three players to score a much-needed, open-play Champions League goal, we might well have picked Declan Rice, Kai Havertz and Martin Odegaard.

And if we could’ve picked a general state of intensity and difficulty at which to play this game, it probably would’ve somewhat resembled the second-gear cruising that we were treated to under the lights.

Now, in a season that hasn’t satiated many domestic appetites, and at a stage in a project at which we all want to see this team bring silverware to the Carpet, one question we simply have to be asking ourselves is… are Arsenal Football Club capable of winning the Champions League?

The answer, like all things, is dependent upon a host of factors going our way (in a season in which the majority of factors seem incredibly reluctant to do so).

The most salient question, of course, is ‘who is better than us?’

The objective answer from the (still slightly confusing) league stage of the competition is ‘Liverpool and Barcelona’, but if you look at our head-to-head record against Arne Slot’s side in recent years, in addition to a brief perusal of Barcelona’s current standing in La Liga, you may well feel confident in taking these two clubs on.

What we cannot ignore (and indeed would be ignorant to downplay) is the European pedigree of these two sides.

Throw in, for good measure, the track records of Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and the like, and suddenly the task feels more impossible.

These sides are distinct from ours in a key, undeniable way… they know how to win in Europe.

Amidst our brilliant 2023-24 campaign, our two Quarter-Final ties against Bayern reflected that we may still lack a certain chest-puffing savoir-faire in these big, season-defining moments.

A chest-puffing savoir-faire that these other behemoths inexplicably possess.

To this end, I think a reasonable and valid critique of Arterta’s reign at Arsenal is that our record in knockout football is below the incredibly high standard we set for ourselves, and the last month has more-than-reinforced this ideal in domestic competitions.

Indeed, even our season-high penalties win over Porto last season could be retrospectively seen as an uglier, tougher, messier performance than it needed to be.

So, do we have what it takes to win these massive fixtures this time round?

The glass-eyed, detestable idealog in me thinks… well, why not?

Is there a single team in this competition that we’re terrified, or utterly deflated, at the prospect of facing? I honestly don’t think so.

Moreover, this season might accidentally be perfectly designed to suit a knock-out stage European performance surge.

We may well find that we have a fuller, fitter squad than at any other point in the season, with our dependable, ceiling-raising star players available, and a much deeper sense of clarity of how good we are, what we’re capable of, and what this season may hold for us.

The rest remains to be seen. But if the league stage of the European Cup has been anything

to go by, exciting, project-defining moments may just lay ahead of us between now and May 31.

Go well, Gunners.