Arsenal parade the FA Cup trophy in 2015

PLUCK up the courage, go on, knock on their door. Please, dear Spurs-supporting neighbour, you should ask, can we borrow your maps and guidebooks of eastern Europe? We’re planning a Thursday night trip there in the autumn. With a bit of luck their tatty documents, dog-eared from overuse, will be available for loan and you’ll know the perfect spot for a pre-match beer in the Tbilisi old town come October.

Yes, Arsenal are going on the budget tour of Europe after landing in the miserable old Europa League, which they’ve dodged for 20 years. The last time they did not qualify for the Champions League: phones had wires, pubs had smokers, I had hair and Alexis Sanchez was kicking cans around as a nine year-old in Tocopilla.

In that historical context, all Gunners fans should be able to suck up the banter of the coming months and let the old rivals have all the fun we know the Champions League brings: the theme tune and a second round knockout. How we will miss it.

Arsenal were short of getting there yet again by just one point. Liverpool are not really better. Like the Gunners they are as erratic as they are brilliant, but their good days came on Arsenal’s bad days when the two teams played each other. They are our brothers in fickle unpredictability, and yet Liverpool were another team celebrating wildly on Sunday, as if an inevitable defeat to Real Madrid or Bayern Munich does not lie ahead next season. Last autumn they were a club talking about winning the Premier League.

When you saw their relief at finishing fourth you may have wondered why Arsene Wenger was so roundly mocked for once suggesting a place in the Champions League was like a trophy. As it happens that was a silly analogy from the Arsenal manager who often comes out with odd logic, despite being cast in his younger-older years as Le Prof, a foot­ball coach treated as if he had cracked an Einstein theory to winning matches.

For you can talk about second place, third place, fourth place, or even 15th, and what’s good for the financial spreadsheets, but that’s not really what being a football supporter is about. You don’t go home happy thinking: Well that’s another season where we didn’t win the league but, boy, you should see the upward ticks in the annual report now we’ve paid off the cost of a new stadium and got in the top four.

No, it’s about the ride. It’s about unforgettable experiences like the six winning days out Wenger has brought Arsenal fans at the FA Cup final. The Gunners can finish anywhere and we should be happy as long as every once in a while you get a Ray Parlour screamer, a penalty shoot-out theft likes ours from Manchester United in the 2005 final or the comeback against Hull.

These are the lived experiences to take on the Wizz Air flight to Bulgaria and Finland next season. I couldn’t tell you what points tally the club had from one season to the next; their goal difference; or how many goals they beat other teams by in meaningless matches at the end of each season. You can convince yourself everything is ok with one stat or another. But the FA Cup final, even with the prospect of a painful hiding from Chelsea ahead, is a special event. Special, whether you are thwacking Aston Villa or being mugged by Michael Owen or Trevor Brooking. You can’t buy these moments with fourth-place finishes.

It’s true that Wenger should call it quits at the end of the season whatever the result on Saturday evening. It’s getting late for him. But it’s easy to lose sight of how most football fans never see their team in this showpiece occasion at all, or have waited a generation to. While Spurs, for example, have waited 26 years to appear in the final match of the season, Arsenal have greedily accepted eight invitations to this grand occasion over the same period.

Win or lose against on Saturday, that’s a privilege we owe to Wenger.