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Everyone's talking about the Leverkusen draw. The fanfare, the analysis, the hot takes about Xabi Alonso's legacy and what's left of it at the Bay Arena. And fair enough, because Leverkusen in the last 16 is the immediate task and it demands respect. But I keep coming back to what's waiting on the other side of it, and I think that's where the real story lives. Because if we do what we are expected to do against a Bundesliga side sitting sixth and five months into a new manager's first season, the quarter-final draws us against either Bodo/Glimt or Sporting CP. For the first time in a very long time, the bracket genuinely rewards us for being the best team in this competition. And we were the best team in this competition. Eight games played, eight games won, 29 goals scored, no defeats. The first team in Champions League history to complete the league phase with a perfect record. When the draw happened in Nyon on Friday morning, the seedings and bracket protections we earned kept Manchester City, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain on the opposite side of the draw. We did not get lucky. We earned the bracket through performance, and the bracket is now ours to take.

Let's deal with the round of 16 honestly before we look further ahead, because it would be disrespectful to sleepwalk into this. Bayer Leverkusen under Xabi Alonso in 2023/24 were extraordinary. Unbeaten in the Bundesliga for the whole season, an Invincibles reference that felt earned rather than hyperbolic. That team had a clarity of identity and a tactical coherence that made them genuinely scary. That team no longer exists in the form we remember. Alonso left for Real Madrid in the summer. Erik ten Hag replaced him and lasted until September. Kasper Hjulmand took over from there and has steered the club to sixth place in the Bundesliga, thirteen points behind leaders Bayern with less than a third of the season remaining. During this Champions League league phase, they played eight games, won four, lost four. One of those losses was a 7-2 at home to PSG. They are not the Leverkusen of 2024.

There is one subplot worth acknowledging: Piero Hincapie is on loan at Arsenal from Leverkusen, and as we confirmed after the draw, UEFA rules allow him to play against his parent club. He will line up for us against the team that owns his registration, which adds an interesting dimension to the tie. We beat them 4-1 the last time we met in the Champions League, back in 2002, and while that historical reference means very little in real terms, it establishes at least that this is not a ground we visit with any great psychological baggage.

Beyond the logistics of the tie, we also carry home advantage into the second leg, a consequence of finishing top of the league phase table. That is not a small thing in knockout football. If the first leg in Leverkusen produces the kind of tight, compressed game that away legs in Germany often do, returning to the Emirates with the tie level and the crowd behind us is an enormous advantage.

If we get through Leverkusen, as we should, we will face either Bodo/Glimt or Sporting CP. Sporting finished seventh in the league phase, while Bodo/Glimt came through the knockout play-offs by eliminating Inter Milan 5-2 on aggregate, a result that has rightly captivated everyone in European football. The Norwegian club are a remarkable story. They beat Manchester City at their Aspmyra Stadium in January, they beat Atletico Madrid away in the league phase, and they dismissed the 2025 Champions League runners-up in both legs of the play-offs. Kjetil Knutsen's side play in a city of 50,000 people, their squad is valued at approximately €60 million by Transfermarkt, and they compete in a league that doesn't even kick off until mid-March. They have pulled off the most improbable run in European football this season and they deserve enormous respect for it.

Sporting have only ever reached the quarter-finals of this competition once in their history, back in 1982/83 when the tournament was still called the European Cup. They are a good team. Rui Borges has built something with genuine character, as their pair of injury-time winners to clinch seventh place demonstrated. Viktor Gyokeres, who now plays for us, spent the last few years terrorising defences for them, so their attack without him is not what it was. Respecting both opponents is not incompatible with acknowledging what the bracket objectively is: the clearest route to a Champions League semi-final Arsenal could have drawn.

Meanwhile, look at what the other half of the draw contains. Manchester City face Real Madrid, a fixture that has now been played in five consecutive Champions League knockout rounds. Chelsea face holders PSG. Liverpool face Galatasaray, and if they win that, a likely quarter-final against PSG or Chelsea. The left side of the draw is a cage match that will eliminate generational clubs before the semi-finals even begin. We are not in that cage.

Because we topped the league phase outright, finishing above even Bayern Munich in second, there is an additional structural advantage that I don't think has been discussed enough. We have home second legs guaranteed through to the semi-finals. In the last 16, we host the second leg against Leverkusen. In the quarter-finals, we host the second leg against whoever comes through from Bodo/Glimt versus Sporting. And if we reach the semi-finals, we host the second leg there too. For a team of our experience in these stages, that is an enormous edge. The Emirates has been a fortress this season. We are five points clear at the top of the Premier League. Our home form carries a psychological and atmospheric weight that neither Bodo/Glimt's 8,300-capacity ground nor Sporting's Jose Alvalade can replicate.

There is also the question of what Man City will look like when we meet them in the Carabao Cup final on March 22, right in the middle of their Champions League knockout run against Real Madrid. Pep Guardiola's side face Real Madrid in the first leg on March 10 or 11, return to league action against West Ham, then play the second leg against Madrid before meeting us at Wembley. A squad navigating back-to-back legs against the most decorated club in European history is not the freshest squad we could face in a cup final. That is not our concern to manage, but it is context worth holding.

I know how quickly these conversations can turn. One bad leg, one injury to a key player, one contentious refereeing decision and the whole framing shifts. I am not guaranteeing anything, because this game has never worked that cleanly and we have had enough painful exits to know better than to treat a favourable bracket as a trophy already won.

But I am saying that if there was ever a season structured to reward us, to genuinely clear the path for an Arsenal side that has earned everything through their own quality, it is this one. We finished the league phase with a perfect record because Mikel Arteta's squad has been relentless in its consistency and ambition. We have the depth now, the mental strength that this squad has demonstrated repeatedly when it has been tested, and a draw that puts a struggling sixth-place Bundesliga side and then either a Norwegian club operating on a €60 million squad budget or a Portuguese side in our way before we'd even reach a semi-final.

Nobody who matters is on our side of the draw until the last four. Nobody who can genuinely threaten us has been handed our quarter-final. The bracket is open in a way that might not come around again for a very long time.

This is the year.