#2 Arsenal
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It would have been unthinkable to imagine Arsenal in this plight when they lost unluckily to Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League final. 11 years later, manager Arsene Wenger finds himself with a team that has repeatedly failed to mount sustained title challenges, the FA Cup glories of 2014 and 2015 desperately masking a period of underachievement.
In the 2013-14 and 2015-16 season, Arsenal seemed on the cusp of winning the title in the first half of the season, blowing teams away with beautiful football to go with results. Yet, come May, nothing more than a sense of relief seems to pervade throughout Emirates, that too at the meagre achievement of yet another season in the top four.
A confident stroll into the market with £90m+ outlay during the summer of 2016 generated a lot of hype – but it is safe to say any final remaining traces of it have died down in the aftermath of the 5-1 CL humiliation at the hand of Bayern.
The only sense in which Arsenal has been doing justice to its potential is in business terms. Stan Kroenke might beg to differ, but the decision to offer Arsene another contract at the end of the season represents a lack of ambition and vision.
It is difficult to remember the last time Arsenal finished a season with all its fans happy. With the time and stability that has been granted to Wenger (and of late, the money), he is fast running out of excuses for underachieving in England as well as Europe.
A squad featuring a very strong spine in Cech, Koscielny, Bellerin, Cazorla, Ozil and Sanchez must simply do much better – at the very least, they should do better than conceding the title by 10 points to Leicester City.
