On the verge of another Champions League voyage, it is hard to avoid the notion that Arsenal are about to embark on their very own groundhog way through Europe. A familiar pattern has emerged over recent seasons: qualify for the group stage, flirt with topping their quartet, blow a late away game, meet a monster in the last 16 and exit licking some frustrating wounds. And repeat.

A final away fixture at Galatasaray to finish the upcoming group in December already has a slightly ominous look. By now everyone knows the consequences (and the probabilities) too well. Jack Wilshere has already given it some thought. “Over the last few seasons we almost thought we were finishing top and we lost the last game and it has cost us,” he says. “Finishing top of the group is the target at the start. We always said that.”

Arsenal are impatient to break this complicating habit. Establishing themselves as a serious force in the Champions League requires an attack on the group stage that does not drop off towards the end. It is here that the depth of the squad tends to feel the strain, with the Premier League well into the winter slog and the usual injuries mounting up.

A sequence of defeats in the round of 16 at the hands of Bayern Munich (twice), Milan and Barcelona has formed a kind of psychological glass ceiling that Arsenal are eager to crash through.

As they head to Germany to get this season’s Champions League challenge under way with another Borussia Dortmund rendezvous on Tuesday, the mission to finish top of Group D is at the forefront of their minds. In opening up with the thorniest fixture of the lot, Wilshere sees a similarity with his trip to Switzerland with England in the European Championship qualifiers. “The hardest game in the group will be the first one and we can almost put a marker down in that game by saying we’re here to win this group,” he says. “We feel we can win it – but if you can’t win it, you don’t lose it.”

Meeting Jürgen Klopp’s team feels akin to an annual visit. Arsenal and Dortmund know each other well by now. It has not gone unnoticed, though, that Dortmund are missing some of the firepower that has been so crucial in recent seasons. With Robert Lewandowski now playing in Bayern colours, Marco Reus’s ankle damage came at a bad time as Klopp’s team try to emerge from a long period tormented by injuries.

Wilshere senses they may be a weaker proposition this time around. “Lewandowski could have gone to any club in Europe so that talks volumes about his ability and they will miss him but the main one for them will be missing Reus. I’ve watched him over the last few years and he has got better and better and now he is one of the best players, if not the best player, in Germany. So they will miss him. But they have quality players who can come in. It’s going to be a tough game.”

Arsène Wenger has been a long-time admirer of Reus, a player he has attempted to lure to London. The trends being set by the German renaissance have had a strong influence on Wenger over recent seasons.

Since succeeding with his own style in the early stage of his Arsenal career, forming a team around the connections enjoyed by the likes of Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Robert Pires and Dennis Bergkamp, Wenger went on to have his Spanish phase, which manifested itself in the recruitment of small, mobile, technicians. His German phase, with Per Mertesacker, Lukas Podolski and Mesut Özil in their ranks, a new fitness expert who worked for ten years with the German national team, and advances made to try (without success) to buy Reus, Mario Götze and Lars Bender, show how strongly Wenger has been inspired by the German model.

In a bid to remodel Arsenal this season to give them a more dynamic tempo, there seems to be a new phase in progress. In signing Alexis Sánchez and Danny Welbeck, and with Theo Walcott due to return from his long-term absence, Arsenal have the pieces in place to bring more zest and speed into their game. Especially on the counterattack in those away games that have been so costly in the group stage, this sudden change of pace could make a real difference.

Wilshere cannot help himself when it comes to Champions League aspirations. Not only does he want to hurdle past the last 16, he yearns to give Wenger the best possible gift a manager with his long sequence of qualifications in this competition could get.

“He has been in it 17 years and had one final [against Barcelona in 2006] – he came close to winning that, he was unlucky, he had Jens Lehmann sent off – so I think this is the one he really wants. As well as the Premier League, he wants it for us. If he gives the Champions League to us it will also be like a present from us to him if we win the Champions League.”

Winning Group D, and breaking the groundhog way loop, would be a helpful way to start.