Arsenal travel to Milan with their season on the brink and for this they largely have only themselves to blame. And it is not hard to see where they first ran into difficulties.

You can trace a lot back to that Saturday night at Old Trafford against Manchester United in the FA Cup. To me, they appeared lacklustre and gave the impression that they did not want to be there.

It was exactly the kind of performance that Arsenal simply could not afford to give because when you are going for the title and the Champions League, momentum is everything. And since returning from Old Trafford, Arsenal have run rapidly out of momentum; they have dropped points against Birmingham and Aston Villa and produced a poor result against AC Milan at home.

It will be hard for Arsenal to get that impetus back. If you are a great side, you have to show greatness in everything you do. If you are a club fighting on a number of fronts, like Liverpool in 1984 or Manchester United in 1999, you want the games to come thick and fast; you do not want prolonged periods of rest.

In all my years at Liverpool, I never heard anyone tell us that we were tired for the simple reason that if you tell a footballer he is tired, he will be. When Arsenal's season imploded this time last year, Arsene Wenger blamed FA Cup replays and said he would not take the competition as seriously again -- and that attitude may have transmitted itself to his team at Old Trafford, with disastrous consequences.

Alex Ferguson will tell you that one of the contributing factors to Manchester United winning the treble was that the games came so quickly his players did not have time to consider the enormity of what they were about to achieve.

For a football team to fight and win on several fronts is an incredible, enjoyable journey and the players will not want to be rested -- they will want to be in the thick of everything. And if you are beaten, you pick yourself up and start again, which is something Arsenal are not good at.

When Wenger says that mid-table, middle-of-the-road sides go out with an express plan to kick Arsenal and physically intimidate them, he is merely stating the obvious tactics used against any top team.

They were the sort of tactics the great Liverpool sides of the 1970s and 1980s had to put up with and they are the sort of tactics Manchester United have dealt with for 15 years. When I was at Liverpool, teams came at us with the intensity of a cup final.

If you are a manager facing Arsenal, Chelsea or Manchester United, your instructions to your players will be the same; get men behind the ball, disrupt their rhythm and put your foot in.

Although Arsenal, this season, have shown themselves to be more able to stand up to a robust, physical game than they have been in the past, they are still not as capable of withstanding it as Chelsea or Manchester United. It is folly to think that teams will try to take on Arsenal with pure football because there will only ever be one winner.

Impression

Last week at Birmingham, they were desperately unfortunate to lose Eduardo but the scenes we saw at the end of the match would have left a lasting impression, not just on Arsenal's own players, but on everybody else. If you were an Aston Villa player who had to go to the Emirates the next week, you would be encouraged and if you were a Manchester United player, you would definitely be encouraged.

The way the Arsenal captain, William Gallas, responded after the final whistle at Birmingham were the actions of a player admitting defeat.

Sitting down on the pitch in tears of despair is something you do after the last game of the season when you have lost the title.

When that whistle went at St Andrews, Arsenal were six points clear of United, who still had to play at Newcastle. Where was the leadership, where was the defiance?

Under the circumstances, you might think that the San Siro is the last place Arsenal need to be tomorrow, facing the European champions. Yet it may be the best place of all.

Great teams are those that have the ability to fight back in adversity, and in their manager, their players and their wonderful style of football Arsenal have all the ingredients of greatness. The San Siro would be a fabulous stage on which to prove it. (© Daily Telegraph, London)

- Alan Hansen