Arsenal has arrived in the Netherlands to discover that spring is here. Whether Mikel Arteta and his players are able to move forward to the light, can still be seen.
It was not long since the Champions League represented only one part of a multidimensional season for Arsenal.
Less than two months ago, the Arteta team lived in four competitions. Now, demonstrably, only one remains.
Find a road past PSV Eindhoven – second in the Dutch League – over two legs in the next nine days and Arsenal can still save this season. That would take them in a quarter -final draw against Real Madrid or Atletico Madrid next month.
With not very much else to distract them in view of Liverpool's 13-point lead at the top of the Premier League, Arsenal can again feel opportunities and that would be a shift from where they are now. Because the arsenal of recent days has been an arsenal on the back foot.
A long time ago from the FA Cup, the Carabao Cup-Hoop of Arsenal was pulled by Newcastle last month before gloomy back-to-back versions in the competition against West Ham and Nottingham Forest, a title race in a procession that looks like it will start and end up on Merseyside.
So this feels like a determining week in the Arsenal season. It feels like the options are now a renewed emphasis or a brick wall and all the questions that would go with it.
Until now, Arteta has treated all the handwinging about the various problems of Arsenal with equanity and, at least yesterday, a smile. How long that will continue if they fail to move forward in Europe is a different matter.
Can an arsenal season really be over in the second week of March? It seems unthinkable. This was supposed to be a season of more progress, a year to build on everything they had learned for two years from Chasing Manchester
City in the competition. Instead, a recruitment policy has looked poor and saw a latter list that nobody saw coming, the Gunners left the entering of water.
The challenge for Arteta prior to the first stage, against a team that has suffered their own recent problems, is perhaps as much psychological as everything else.
“I tried to explain how we are going to do it and why we are doing things,” said Arteta when he was asked how he tried to motivate his players.
'We still have gears, even with the players we have. We still have different gears to take the game to a different level. When it comes to this phase, it is about lifting the level and the standards.
“Every individual must be at his best. And when we do that, with the team that we have and the connection we have between us, we are a really strong team. '
For everything Arsenal has recently driven away, Arteta remains an impressive and progressive coach. Whatever happens between now and June, his position may not interrogate.
Before Arsenal was on his way to the blue skies of the Netherlands yesterday, Arteta spoke on the club's training field with owner Josh Kroenke. It is hoped that the messages were supportive.
The margins between success and what is seen as failure at the top of the English game is small and Arsenal is in danger of falling on the wrong side of that gorge after a short enchantment of bad football and a longer period of bad luck. It happens.
Looking ahead, there is not much brightness on the horizon in terms of the fitness of important attacking players. The wide forward Gabriel Martinelli is supposed to be closest to a return.
Arsenal does not have to be too anxious in terms of this draw. Questions asked by the Dutch media at the Philips Stadium of Arteta were largely about the faltering form of PSV that won them only once in their six games in the competition and cup in the past month.
Arsenal should really beat them twice. The Arteta team will certainly feel a chance that the attacking traditions of PSV will almost force them to bring the game to Arsenal over the two legs.
That is something that does not happen often in the Premier League. The last time it did, Arsenal City 5-1 finished with the Emirates.
“We have been much more consistent in Europe, we have been much more fairer,” said Arteta yesterday. 'We have scored many goals. We have given almost nothing. I think we have admitted three goals and have the lowest expected goals in the group stage, which is great.
“So that's a big platform. So we have those resources available to the team, and that is something the team has already done. Now we have to keep doing it. '
The game on Tuesday is not necessarily the largest event that takes place in this part of the Netherlands. March 4 marks the last day of the annual Lampegat carnival that sees the streets of Eindhoven flooded with chic clothing costumes.
Arteta has to hope that his team will present a version of himself that is more recognizable to him. Since that thrashing of City on 2 February, Arsenal has scored in just one of the four consecutive games in all competitions.
It is a problem that Arteta has to solve without its stars from the front if a season of opportunities is not deeply lost in a mud of regret.
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