Under normal circumstances a midweek Champions League knockout game the next evening would bring about levels of anticipation and worry, but with the team doing the epitome of ‘the job’ on PSV last week, tomorrow should really be a procession against a Dutch side who were more open than an OnlyFans veteran’s legs.

So what it means for us is that the jeopardy isn’t really there and although we’ll have Arteta tell us only half of the job is done, I’ll be surprised if he isn’t resting a fair few players tomorrow. There’s certainly space for a Neto, Kiwior, White (coming back to fitness), Tierney, Jorginho, etc in the side and it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Jorginho rock up alongside Arteta when they do the press conference run through at some stage later today.

But we all know that this tie – for all intents and purposes – is done and as a result it kind of feels weird that I’m only half looking forward to it. I’m fortunate enough to be jetting off somewhere sunny on Friday, which means it’ll be my last game at The Emirates until we play Fulham on 1st April, so I keep telling myself to drink it all in as I won’t be at the Chelsea game. But you only have to look at how many spare tickets there are swilling around on the Ticket Exchange at the moment to see that it’s probably going to end up being a bit of a different vibe tomorrow. It’ll be muted, there will be unfamiliar faces to the ones that usually show up on a match day where I stand, which will probably impact the atmosphere. We all wanted – and were delighted with – the pasting we dished out to PSV in the first leg, but the down side of that is that tomorrow night’s game won’t have the same intensity as we would wish on all games that we play at home.

Is this a sign that things are reverting back to the pre-Arteta, pre-COVID days? Remember that 2022/23 season in which even when we went behind, the home fans would be cheering on the team? That was a wonderful experience. We all came together in unity and the feeling and vibes from the home support – derived from the some of the great away support too I feel – and it was as if we were all on the beginning of this exciting journey together. It felt like something had changed; we were always known as a fanbase that sat on our hands, were quiet, clapped politely at home when we were ahead and turned the air a little blue when we were behind or not playing well. But that season Arteta had driven us forward and there was a symbiotic relationship between fans and players that drove us into an unexpected title challenge.

But that seems to have slowly eroded over time. It was probably inevitable; as much as we all like to make jokes about other fan bases being ‘the worst’ or having certain characteristics, the reality is that you can’t just take a random cross-section of society, give them a tribe to support and then expect them to be different. There are Arsenal fans from all different backgrounds, social demographics, etc. That is the same for West Ham, for Liverpool, Everton, etc. Yes, there are variants based on the location of the club and the size of the club (Newcastle as an area is all black and white and naturally they will have slightly different approaches to football given the part of the world they are from compared to London), but ultimately all football fans are very similar. For us, during that season, it was the start of something and if you think about when Man City first got their football lottery winnings, there was that bouncing around of the Poznan and they all seemed to having a great ol’ time. But now that stadium is seen as a tourist destination, a quiet ground, one in which there are often swathes of seats that are empty. They have become accustomed to success and as a result, this is what the outcome is for them.

Perhaps that outcome is falling upon us too. We are a good team, a team competing towards the top, one which hasn’t quite hit the trophy highs just yet, but it close. That has resulted in this move towards being a tourist destination, towards the regular fans having more expectation and, as a result, being more vocal in dissatisfaction than we were two years ago. And it is also having an effect on things like the game tomorrow night, in which it looks like plenty of fans have sold off their ticket, or just not bothered to purchase it for a game which looks like it will eventually become a dead rubber.

How can we change it? Is it even possible? Perhaps it’s just a natural consequence of the way in which football is consumed these days; many people can find streams, can watch from the comfort of home and because it’s a dead rubber (ish) there’s no point spending an evening in the cold. That’s certainly not me – I’ll be there for sure tomorrow evening, hoping that we get a good display, see a few goals for The Arsenal and can look ahead to a Madrid trip in a few weeks time.

Back tomorrow with a bit more of a PSV preview.