There is a temptation, when you are Arsenal and you have finally established yourself among Europe’s elite, to treat every Champions League game as a statement.

Every point matters. Every position matters. Every home game must be won.

But Mikel Arteta should resist that temptation this season.

If Arsenal are serious about finally winning the Champions League, the priority during the league phase should not be finishing inside the top eight.

It should be qualifying – and arriving in the knockout stages with a fresh squad.

PSG have already provided Arteta his blueprint.

Over the last two seasons, PSG have demonstrated something that should fundamentally change how Arsenal approach the competition. In 2024/25, PSG finished 15th in the league phase, winning four, drawing one and losing three. That put them in the play-offs. They went on to win the Champions League.

A year later, PSG finished 11th. Again, they had to navigate the knockout play-offs. Again they won the Champions League. That is not a coincidence worth ignoring.

The new Champions League format gives clubs more room for strategic thinking. The top eight qualify automatically for the last 16, while teams finishing ninth to 24th have to go through a two-legged play-off. Of course, finishing in the top eight is an advantage. Nobody would deliberately choose extra matches. But there is a danger in treating it as essential.

The difference between finishing, say, sixth and 11th could require a handful of additional points. Those points might come at the cost of playing Bukayo Saka, Martin Ødegaard, Declan Rice or Gabriel every three days when the Premier League is entering its winter period. And that is where Arteta needs to think differently.

Arsenal do not need to win the league phase. They need to survive it.

There should be a much greater willingness to rotate.

If Arsenal have already accumulated enough points to make qualification highly likely, why risk a key starter in a dead-rubber Champions League fixture? Why not give valuable minutes to squad players? Why not protect the players who will ultimately be required to beat Europe’s best sides in March, April and May?

The objective should be to maximise the condition of the squad for the knockout rounds – not maximise Arsenal’s position in a league table in November.

PSG’s recent European campaigns are the perfect evidence.

Their 2024/25 league phase looked remarkably ordinary. They finished 15th and appeared to be in genuine danger of elimination. Yet once the knockout phase began, they beat Brest, survived Liverpool, edged Aston Villa and Arsenal, and demolished Inter 5-0 in the final. Then they did it again.

In 2025/26, Paris finished 11th, meaning another play-off was required. They subsequently eliminated Monaco, Chelsea, Liverpool and Bayern Munich before beating Arsenal on penalties in the final.

The lesson isn’t that league-phase results don’t matter. It is that they matter less than what happens afterwards.

UEFA’s own technical analysis of PSG’s 2024/25 triumph highlighted their pressing, energy and fluidity as crucial to their success. Those qualities are much easier to produce when your best players arrive at the business end of the season physically fresh. That should be the Arsenal model.

Take the Premier League seriously. Take every Champions League game seriously. But don’t confuse seriousness with playing the strongest possible XI every time.

Arteta has spent years building a squad capable of competing on multiple fronts. This is the season to trust it.

If Arsenal need eight points from their final three league-phase matches to qualify, take the eight points.

If five will probably be enough, don’t chase seven at all costs.

And if finishing eighth rather than 12th means throwing a tired Saka into another 90 minutes in December, perhaps the trade-off isn’t worth it.

Because the Champions League is not won in the league phase.

It is won when the games become two-legged, the margins become tiny and the pressure becomes enormous.

PSG have shown Arsenal that you can arrive there from outside the top eight.

Now Arteta needs to decide whether Arsenal want to win the league phase — or win the Champions League.

Keenos

There are football matches that feel like a conversation, and then there are football matches that feel like someone has tipped the table over and everyone is scrambling to save the plates.

Arsenal’s 2-1 victory over Chelsea at the Emirates somehow managed to be both.

Chelsea scored after just 77 seconds. Morgan Rogers pounced with a first-time finish and, for a moment, it looked as though Arsenal’s carefully constructed afternoon had been ripped apart before it had even started.

But that was the thing about Sunday afternoon: Chelsea brought the chaos, while Arsenal increasingly looked like the team that understood how to live inside it.

And that difference ultimately decided the game.

Chelsea under Xabi Alonso will be an exciting team to watch. A remidner of Newcastle United in gthe 90s. They are aggressive, unpredictable and clearly still figuring themselves out. There is something unrestrained about them. They attack in waves, they move quickly and they can make a match feel completely unhinged within seconds.

But against Arsenal, chaos has to become something more than chaos.

Arsenal have spent years under Mikel Arteta learning how to control football matches. Not necessarily by dominating every second of possession, but by controlling where the game is played, when it speeds up and when it slows down. And after Chelsea’s early goal, Arsenal did exactly that.

We didn’t panic. We didn’t start forcing passes into spaces that weren’t there. We simply turned the pressure up.

Kai Havertz equalised in the 25th minute, cutting inside and finding the near corner with a finish that felt like the reward for Arsenal’s growing authority.

Emi “FIGJAM” Martinez made an error we have seen countless times, but one which did not get highlighted whilst playing for a small club. He will be under extra scrutiny this season, and whilst he is a “big save” keeper, he often fails doing the smaller things right.

That early Chelsea goal looked less like a statement and more like an interruption following Arsenal’s esqualiser. And that distinction mattered.

Arsenal were not trying to out-chaos Chelsea. We were trying to make chaos irrelevant.

The second goal was the perfect example.

Early in the second half, Havertz’s clever dummy allowed Martin Ødegaard to arrive into space and finish. It was an understated goal in a match full of noise: movement, timing, awareness, execution.

That is Arsenal at their best.

One player makes the run. Another sees it. Someone else creates the space. The ball arrives. Finish.

No panic. No rush. Just understanding.

Chelsea, by comparison, increasingly had to chase the game. Their attacking threat never disappeared – Pedro Neto hit the post, while substitute Estêvão forced David Raya into a late save – but their urgency became increasingly difficult to turn into a coherent comeback.

And that is where this Arsenal side feel different.

We can suffer without losing their shape.

We can concede without losing their heads.

We can be put under pressure without allowing the match to dictate every decision we make.

That is control.

It doesn’t mean Arsenal were flawless. Far from it. Chelsea’s energy caused problems, particularly when the game opened up, and there were moments when the Gunners looked vulnerable. Playing the way they do, Chelsea will take points off the Big 3 this season.

But vulnerability is not the same as chaos.

We knew what we were trying to do. Chelsea are still learning. Arsenal are simply operating at a different stage of development.

We know who we are.

We know how we want matches to feel.

And perhaps most importantly, we know how to change the feeling of a match when it starts going against them.

The final whistle confirmed what the scoreline only partly tells us: Arsenal didn’t simply survive Chelsea’s chaos. We absorbed it, reshaped the game and eventually made Chelsea play on our terms.

For a team defending a Premier League title, that feels significant.

Chelsea brought the chaos.

Arsenal brought the composure.

And on Sunday, control won.

Keenos