For a club with fourteen FA Cups and fourteen league titles, Arsenal's European record is strikingly thin: a single continental trophy, the Cup Winners' Cup, won in 1993/94. It remains, more than three decades on, the club's only major European honour - a fact that sits oddly alongside the domestic dominance of several different eras.
The 1993/94 run itself was built on something closer to defensive discipline than attacking flair. Arsenal, managed by George Graham, ground their way through the competition on a run of tight, low-scoring results, and beat Parma in the final in Copenhagen through a single goal from Alan Smith. It wasn't a swashbuckling continental campaign in the mould later associated with Wenger's more expansive sides - it was a team built to defend a lead and rarely concede one, doing exactly that on the biggest occasion available to it.
That contrast is part of what makes the trophy stand out in hindsight. Several of Arsenal's most celebrated domestic sides, including Wenger's Invincibles, never managed to add a European trophy to the collection despite years of Champions League football and, in 2006, a run all the way to the final itself. The 1993/94 Cup Winners' Cup win happened under a manager and a team set-up remembered more for defensive solidity than for the flowing football the club would later become known for.
It leaves Arsenal in an unusual position among England's most successful clubs: dominant domestically across multiple distinct eras, but with a European record that has never quite matched it. The 1994 trophy is proof the club can do it. Three decades without a repeat is proof of how difficult continental competition has been for even Arsenal's best domestic sides to translate into silverware.