A brief look at the fates of four well-feted Champions League favourites tells a neat story.
“On a roll” Barcelona lost to Malaga this weekend and is demonstrably weak in defence and even midfield. Real Madrid hasn’t played an entirely convincing 90 minutes in 2015. Bayern Munich was shown up on the counter attack by Wolfsburg three weeks ago in exactly the way that Real showed up the Germans to knock them out of the Champions League last season.
Chelsea seems to have a worrying belief-deficit, whereby it is good enough to beat other good teams, but seems to play for the draw anyway. And Atletico Madrid has had loads of performances as powerful as the ones that propelled it to high levels of glory last season, but it’s been less consistent about pulling them out.
Tuesday programming alert: Watch Manchester City vs FC Barcelona on the four main Sportsnet channels and Juventus vs Borussia Dortmund on Sportsnet World. Coverage starts at 2:30 pm ET. || Sportsnet World NOW || Broadcast schedule
The neat story is that the favourites for the Champions League might be the favourites, but they’re not that good, even by comparison to their recent selves. Where last season at this point—halfway through the opening legs of the Round of 16 games—Real and Bayern had already recorded bold statements of intent away to Arsenal and Schalke, this time around everything has been more muted: Bayern drew 0-0 at Shakhtar Donetsk and Real scored only two, rather than six, away at Schalke. No one, yet, appears to be outstanding.
Now, what that leaves is a gap in the market for potential Champions League winners and serious contenders. So, I’ve looked around and, I have to tell you, I’m seeing Arsenal and Manchester City as gap-fillers for a number of reasons.
First, these two teams exist in the next category down from the Champions League favourites—sitting incrementally above Paris-Saint-Germain and Juventus, but judged, in Arsenal’s case, to lack the star power or tactical integrity of genuine would-be-kings and, in City’s, as missing the European know-how and/or centre-back partner for Vincent Kompany. They’re considered just short, but they’re next in line if the favourites don’t do it.
Yet if they do graduate into serious contenders this season, as I think they might, they won’t just be inheriting the title because they’ve queued quietly behind the genuine favourites. They’ve also recently and rather suddenly accrued a set of decent credentials in their own right.
For Arsenal’s part, finally, the squad is in place. Or at least, it’s not not in place. Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil are the only absolute world stars, but as of last month there are no longer any great holes in the group of players Arsene Wenger has put together. Over January, he acquired a back-up centre-back and found a starting defensive-midfielder in his glove compartment, and, out of nowhere, a rounded squad appeared.
Playing well and consistently winning for the first time this season (Arsenal has eight wins from 10 games in the league), it’s not even controversial to point out that Wenger’s team is suddenly more solid in all areas now than it has been at any point in the last five years at least. If it is to be beaten from here on in, no one’s going to do it easily—and it’s even secured what looks like an easy start against Monaco on Wednesday, playing Ligue Un’s fourth best team.
City, on the other hand, doesn’t have such luck-of-the-draw luxury, given that it plays Barcelona on Tuesday, but it does have a similar sense of gathering momentum around it. City just scored nine goals in their last two matches (away to Stoke City and at home to Newcastle United) and that spark of form has been joined by the return of the talismanic Yaya Toure to the squad, this time also joined by Wilfried Bony.
Wednesday programming alert: Watch Arsenal vs AS Monaco on the four main Sportsnet channels and Bayer Leverkusen vs Atletico Madrid on Sportsnet World. Coverage starts at 2:30 pm ET. || Sportsnet World NOW || Broadcast schedule
Those two players have just won the Africa Cup of Nations with the Ivory Coast, Sergio Aguero has just started scoring again and Barcelona has just revealed that it’s still vulnerable defensively. European success under these newly useful-looking circumstances wouldn’t exactly feel ridiculous, would it?
Of course none of this means that the old weaknesses in either Arsenal or City are necessarily gone for good, and nor does it mean that either side has instantaneously transformed into an unbeatable European force. But against other sides with similar and equivalent flaws, they seem, at this moment, to be as well-placed as almost anyone else to go far in an open competition. At a time of ambivalent form for their European betters, there are just signs that they have collected enough positive points for themselves to join the “Serious Contenders Club.”
And there may yet be even more (slightly warped) good news for the both of them. It’s possible that both City and Arsenal could, very soon, be stranded in the Premier League table, beyond the fourth-place race, but below the Chelsea-led title race. If that happens, they could be free of the burden of requiring league wins and could instead focus entirely on the Champions League. Maybe it could be the thing that makes the difference in their favour?
Or, you know, maybe not. There are a few things that make them worth looking at seriously this time, is all. Gaps have to be filled, after all.
Ethan Dean-Richards is a London-based writer. Follow him on Twitter