Straight-talking Slegers lifted Arsenal to unimaginable high - now club must back her vision

The message was simple: beating Barcelona isn't some epic biblical quest. It's your job. It's what we do

- Jonathan Liew Lisbon

The levels of content are, quite frankly, off the charts. Content-wise, Arsenal have come to Lisbon, eaten and left no crumbs.

Katie McCabe sliding on her belly along the dressing room floor through a pool of champagne. Alex Scott and Jess Glynne in their retro tops. Managing to drop the F-bomb on live teatime television, not once but twice.

McCabe recreating the moment she threw a ball at Chloe Kelly's head during a Women's Super League game, only this time with the Champions League trophy.

And then, in their more reflective moments, thoughts turn to the past. To where they came from. To the journey, those who came, and those who couldn't make it all the way.

Laia Codina wraps herself in the Catalan flag. Leah Williamson and her father share an embrace. Beth Mead thinks about her late mother. Kelly reminisces about her academy days, getting the train from Finsbury Park to Potters Bar with Lotte Wubben-Moy.

Because nobody ever gets themselves to a Champions League final. You are delivered, like stones in a river, by the forces and influences that shaped you.

In retrospect it all makes perfect narrative sense, perhaps even feels preordained. But in truth there is still a certain element of shock to be processed, at how the dominant team in women's football, coming into the final on the back of 18 goals in their four knockout games, were stifled so comprehensively on the biggest stage.

Really only a handful of people saw Arsenal's 1-0 win over Barcelona coming, and pretty much all of them were employees of Arsenal Football Club.