Arsenal saved some of their best football this season for the Champions League semi-finals. And it still wasn’t enough.

Over two legs, Paris Saint-Germain proved too polished, too ruthless, and simply too good. 3-1 aggregate was definitive.

Whilst Mikel Arteta, praised Paris Saint Germain for their performance, he suggested the “best team lost.”

In an uncomfortable interview with CBS, Arteta argued that the man of the match was PSG goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, and the interviewer promptly corrected him: "Today it was Achraf Hakimi."

To which Arteta replied: "Well, I think it was clear who won the game today."

He also implied that the PSG bench had privately acknowledged Arsenal as the “best team over two legs.”

PSG boss and compatriot Luis Enrique wasted no time in setting that record straight:

“I don’t agree at all. I think in the two legs, we scored more goals than them and, in football, that is the most important thing. have to say, Arsenal played a great match and we suffered a lot, but we deserved to get to the final.”

And before the match, Arteta told Sky Sports: "We are going to do it (reach the final)."

It’s all a bit familiar from Arteta, who has defined his Arsenal career by false dawns, broken promises, and misjudged reflections.

To Arsenal’s credit, they began brightly. Declan Rice and Martin Ødegaard were influential early, with the latter denied by a brilliant save.

But once PSG found their rhythm, they took over.

They won every second ball, pressed with purpose, and defended with a discipline Arsenal couldn’t match. By the final whistle, the Gunners looked drained, a team that had given everything, but towards the end only world weary.

And since January, their league form has nosedived. The better team, over both legs and this season as a whole, will play the Champions League final.

So what does this all mean for Arsenal? Progress is undeniable. But the threat now is stagnation, or even, regression.

Arteta’s Arsenal risk becoming the nearly men, the red-and-white rerun of Mauricio Pochettino’s Spurs: lauded for their football, remembered for what they didn’t win.

Arsenal did come closer to the Premier League than Spurs, with their 89 point second-place finish to Manchester City (91) in 2023/24, with Spurs' strongest in 2016/17 (second-place with 86 points, seven behind Chelsea).

There's no place in the cabinet for that, though.

There's a strange parallel with 2019 when Arsenal met Chelsea in the Europa League final, and Liverpool met Spurs in the Champions League final, with Spurs coming into that tie on the back of a torrid run of form in the Premier League, despite defying the odds to book their place in that Madrid showdown.

Arsenal and Spurs both lost those finals.

Spurs can make the Europa League final this evening, and face another English team in Manchester United no less, which would confirm another strange comparison between these two seasons.

The only difference here, Arsenal couldn't get over the line and make the final. Are Spurs destined to break their drought? That would really rub salt in the wounds.

Back in 2020, Arteta said the gap between Arsenal and the Premier League/Champions League elite was “enormous.” Five years on, after hundreds of millions spent, a philosophy instilled, and a squad built in his image, how big is that gap now?

“Next year,” they say. But how many more years can this ‘project’ survive?