Arsenal: Why the Gunners Need to Focus on Winning EPL Title Before UCL Title

For Arsenal and its embattled fans, life is unusually sweet right now.

After years of tantalizingly missing out on major trophies and witnessing several lackluster responses from the club, some supporters don't quite know what to do with themselves after the signing of three experienced, quality internationals in one summer.

Despite its reputation as one of the most frustratingly frugal clubs in England, Arsenal have outspent some of their rivals, and the attacking trio of Lukas Podolski, Olivier Giroud and Santi Cazorla has the potential to wreak utter havoc on the rest of the Premier League this season.

Arsene Wenger will have a breadth of tactical options at his disposal that he has arguably not had since the days when silverware arrived in North London with the annual regularity of Christmas.

Unsurprisingly, there is an optimism about this coming season, which starts in just over a week against Sunderland, and a sense that this could very well be the year that a new-look squad breaks the curse that has haunted the club since 2005.

It certainly could happen. This is arguably the deepest squad the club has had in several years, and the intangible confidence that new arrivals bring is an enormous factor in a team's success.

Arsenal fans need not temper their expectations for a promising campaign, but there are four roads to a trophy, and each must be prioritized.

Obviously, the Capital One Cup and the FA Cup provide the easiest routes to redemption, with lower-league fodder likely to be discarded in the early rounds of each competition and somewhat weakened squads fielded by most stronger teams.

The two most prized trophies are the Premier League and Champions League. Each has its own panache, and they are the two that Arsenal will try hardest to win. But only the former should be the number one priority this year, despite the lure of the perhaps flashier European lights.

Within London, the pressure to take home the famous big-eared cup has multiplied, thanks to Chelsea's surprising resurgence last season that saw them become the first team from England's capital to win the prize.

And, of course, there always looms the fact that the Champions League is the one major trophy that Arsene Wenger so badly wants and never has won. The loss to Barcelona in 2006 still sings.

But, if history can teach us a lesson, domestic success must precede European triumph for a team on the rise.

When Sir Alex Ferguson was bringing Manchester United back to the absolute pinnacle of club football over a decade ago, he built his team to win the Premier League, and when the likes of Eric Cantona and Roy Keane had achieved that goal, the minor miracle of 1999 occurred.

United have always been a force in the Champions League since then, and repeated progression to the tournament's latter stages produced another triumph in 2008.

For more evidence of the success of this approach, simply look across town at Stamford Bridge.

Roman Abromavich built Chelsea into a domestic power after he took over the club, and it was they and Manchester United who competed for the Premier League title a mere few years ago.

Only after becoming champions of England multiple times and becoming hardened by the struggle to win in the Prem did they will their way to an improbable victory over Bayern Munich in the thrilling Champions League final a few months ago.

There is another, simpler rationale for focusing on domestic success before reaching for the greatest prize in Europe: It's just easier.

Once you get past the group stage (and oftentimes earlier), nearly every opponent you can expect to face has achieved a great deal of success in their own country and nothing is easy.

The first hurdle that Arsenal faced in the knockout stage last season was AC Milan, defending Serie A champions and, with Robinho, Ibrahimovic, Seedorf and co., one of the favorites to advance to the final.

In contrast, there are but a few teams in England that would truly worry Arsenal on a weekly basis. Sure, slip-ups happen, but playing against teams like Reading and Norwich gives a good team the chance to achieve success.

The chances of the Gunners actually winning the Premier League next season are, of course, slim. Both Manchester giants still dominate the English football landscape, Chelsea should be exponentially better and a significant portion of any club's record can be attributed to luck.

Yet this is a team that is clearly moving in the right direction.

With sensible investment on very good, committed players, Arsenal are beginning to take on the look of a champion; with some of the luck that has abandoned the club in recent years, the goal of hoisting the Premier League trophy is not laughably out of reach.

A shrewd manager like Arsene Wenger should realize this. If the opportunity to make a deep run into the Champions League knockout stages presents itself, it would be foolish not to pursue it due to the singular objective of winning the league.

However, the bulk of the team's considerable resources should be devoted to the more sensible goal. If the new Giroud, Podolski and Cazorla adapt to English football and integrate into the squad well, we could very well be discussing the matter of the Champions League during the club's victory parade.

Like Wenger has told us so many times during the past few years, we just have to wait a little bit longer.

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