Everyone loves a comeback in football. Some teams, such as the Manchester United of old, were kings of the comeback, and Arsene Wenger has experienced a few in his time with Arsenal.
From the FA Cup final, to multiple North London derbies to the fourth round of the Capital One Cup, Wenger has done it all, so without further ado, here are Arsene Wenger’s greatest comebacks.
Heroics in Greece (Olympiakos 0-3 Arsenal, 2015)
We’ll start with the Gunner’s most recent comeback. After a terrible start to the their Champions League campaign, Arsenal found themselves in a very big hole. The Gunners did manage to pull off an incredible 2-0 win at home against Bayern Munich, but their chances of progressing to the next round were still slim.
And after a 5-1 thrashing at the Allianz Arena, Arsene Wenger's side looked to be out of the competition in the group stage for the first time in 16 years. Their only way out was if the Gunners managed to beat Dinamo Zagreb at home, and Olympiakos away by a margin of two goals. A 3-0 win at home against the Croatian champions meant that Arsenal’s fate was in their own hands going into the last game.
Many thought the Gunners were set for a Greek tragedy, due to how the situation was too perfect for Arsenal to screw up, and some Arsenal fans were already gossiping about who should Wenger play in the Europa League, kids or experience.
But the Greek Gods were looking down on Arsenal, and Olivier Giroud, a striker who has been slated in the past for not appearing in the big games, bagged a hat-trick in a 3-0 win that saw Wenger continue Arsenal’s run of progressing to the last 16 in consecutive years.
League Cup magic (Reading 5-7 Arsenal, 2012)
Where do I even start with this game? At half-time, Arsenal were down 4-1 to newly promoted Premier League side Reading in the fourth round of the Capital One Cup. Arsenal fans were leaving the ground at the 38 minute mark when Noel Hunt made it 4-0 to the hosts, but Theo Walcott added a late consolation goal with the last kick of the half.
Just when the game could not get any stranger, madness ensued in the second half. Olivier Giroud headed in a second for Arsenal 62 minutes in, and Laurent Koscielny added a third goal one minute from time. The Reading fans thought they had done it, and managed to hold off Arsenal, but the visitors had other plans and in the fifth minute of stoppage time, Walcott scored his second of the match to send the game into extra time with seconds to go.
How do you top a half like that? With extra-time being even more dramatic. Marouane Chamakh fired Arsenal ahead for the first time in the match two minutes before half time in extra time, but in the 116th minute of the match Pavel Pogrebnyak levelled for the Royals to make it 5-5.
Did the drama stop here? Absolutely not. In the last minute of extra time Walcott fired in his hat-trick from close range, and to add the cherry on top, Chamakh added a seventh goal moments after the restart to see Arsenal complete an audacious comeback with a crazy 5-7 score line after being 4-0 down in the first half.
Seeing off the enemy (Arsenal 5-2 Tottenham, 2012)
Ah, the North London Derby. It’s one of those special rivalries in English football. Every encounter between these two fierce rivals is littered it with heart-stopping action, controversy, and of course, amazing comebacks.
Both sides have completed astonishing comebacks against each other over the past, such as the topsy-turvy encounter at White Hart Lane in 2004 that saw Arsenal win 4-5, or Tottenham’s incredible fight back in 2011 to draw 3-3 with their rivals which all but ended the Gunners' title hopes that season.
But out of all the comebacks in this famous derby, I decide on Arsenal’s amazing comeback against their hated rivals at the Emirates in February 2012. Spurs were 10 points clear of the Gunners and sitting in comfortably in third place with 12 games left to play, and after the visitors went 0-2 up after 36 minutes with goals from Louis Saha and former Arsenal striker Emmanuel Adebayor, Arsenal fans were fearing that their worst nightmare could come true, that Tottenham would actually finishing above them.
The Gunners looked dead and buried already, but a rare goal from Bacary Sagna and a curling beauty from the captain, Robin Van Persie, saw Arsenal level the game up just before half-time. Confidence was high with the hosts, and they took full advantage of this as Tomas Rosicky gave Arsenal the lead four minutes into the second half.
To add salt to the wounds for the stunned Tottenham side, Walcott bagged a brace in the span of three minutes to see the Gunners claim the three points. Arsenal went on to finish above Tottenham in third place, whilst Spurs finished fourth. However with Chelsea winning the Champions League that season, Spurs were forced to give up their Champions League spot to the Blues, the Tottenham’s wait for Champions League football again carries on.
The end of the drought (Arsenal 3-2 Hull City, 2014)
It was the day all Arsenal fans were waiting for. After nine long years without a single trophy, and after coming close many times to getting their hands on some silverware, the Gunners finally did it in the form of the FA Cup, but winning it was no easy task at all.
Their opponent was Premier League side Hull City, and after beating the Tigers 3-0 away at the KC Stadium a few weeks before the crucial final, Arsenal were set for an easy win, as you would guess, Arsenal did an Arsenal and the Gunners made a mess of what should had been an easy win.
10 minutes into the final at Wembley Stadium, Hull were 2-0 up through James Chester and Curtis Davis, and Kieran Gibbs had to make a goal line clearance to stop Alex Bruce from making it three moments after the second goal. A brilliant Santi Cazorla free-kick in the 17th minute brought Arsenal back into the game, and the Gunners dominated from there.
Koscielny equalised for the North London side late into the second half, and it looked like there could only be one winner now. Shot after shot the Gunners took as the Hull side grew more tired and worn out as the game dragged on, yet the third goal didn’t come, so the game was taken into extra-time.
Giroud hit the bar early into extra-time, but Arsenal still couldn’t beat the Hull keeper Allan McGregor. But finally in the 109th minute, Giroud laid the ball off to Aaron Ramsey on the edge of the penalty box, and Arsenal’s player of the season smashed the ball past McGregor to see Arsenal end their nine year trophy drought in the most incredible of circumstances.