Arsenal's Champions League trip to Barcelona promises to be a symbolic one that will see Arsene Wenger and his team try to emerge with their reputations intact.
Few, if any, observers believe the Gunners will progress to the next round by inflicting the team's first defeat of Barcelona in 38 games and overturning a 2-0 first-leg deficit. But avoiding humiliation is key, not just for their fragile confidence, but for the future of the club.
"The minimum requirement - or even demand among an increasingly fractured supporter base - is that Arsenal stand united, defiant and proud," says James Olley of the London Evening Standard. "They must play for a manager under mounting pressure. They must prove the bottomless faith he has shown in them thus far is not misplaced. There are only so many times they can let him down before the manager’s judgment is proved irrefutably inaccurate.
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"Barcelona are threatening to make history while Wenger is depicted as the man whose contribution to football’s tapestry is at an end. Arsenal have to show Wenger tonight and for the rest of the season that he is capable of writing a new chapter."
There would be no shame in losing in the Camp Nou, says Sid Lowe in The Guardian. It is "the way that they play on Wednesday night matters, even if the result is not sufficient".
The game is Wenger's 200th in the Champions League, a competition that "that sustains yet torments him at the same time", says Matt Hughes in The Times. Only former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson has taken charge for more.
Yet while Wenger's contemporaries have tasted success in Europe, he seems "doomed to end his career without winning the trophy that Ferguson, [Carlo] Ancelotti and [Jose] Mourinho have lifted seven times between them".
Hughes adds: "Barcelona have played a bigger role than most in continuing this enduring torment. And barring a remarkable turn of events tonight, they will have been responsible for three of Arsenal's past seven exits, as well as beating them in the 2006 final in Paris."
