Mikel Arteta should have heeded a lesson from Fabian Hurzeler and seized the moment | Jonathan Wilson

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Not just in football but generally in life you need to have the courage to take the decisions you want to.”

Hürzeler had spent most of his press conference trying to deflect or at least share out the praise.

Attack early in the second half, and PSG might have had time to score again; the late assault, though, played on ingrained anxieties.



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Go back to the 80s or 90s and most of the discourse around English football centres on motivation and psychological tricks.

In part, that’s probably because that’s just how things are; resets never finish in the perfect spot.

In part it’s probably down to the data revolution: the production of statistics that would never even have been considered a decade or so ago can create the fallacy that the game is entirely explicable by numbers.

And in part it’s probably a result of the profound influence of Pep Guardiola, a tactical genius whose mastery of shape and position is so great that he has never much had to concern himself with geeing players up or instilling confidence.

But, for most, football is not just about the deployment of resources and the best-laid plans.

It may have been a freakishly brilliant goal, but Arsenal created the environment in which that could occur; give a high-class team a lot of the ball and there is always the risk one of them does something exceptional.

For lesser sides that may still be the way of playing most likely to bring a desirable result, but potential title winners probably need the capacity to read the mood and know when to gamble.