Arsenal Vs Atletico Madrid: In the end, this is why it must end

Arsenal squandered another opportunity thanks to their inability to defend and their failure to manage the game. I guess, in the end, that is why it must end.

Arsenal were excellent against Atletico Madrid. That might be the most frustrating element of it all. They had everything they wanted right in their hands, and they only have themselves to blame for throwing it all away.

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Even before Sime Vrsaljko was sent off for a second bookable offence in the ninth minute, the Gunners were in full control of the game, playing their football at a fast pace, slicing their way through the midfield, opening up angles, and creating chances. There wasn’t much more than could have been asked of them, other than perhaps being more clinical in front of goal.

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And yet, fast-forward 80 minutes and after a downward Alexandre Lacazette header that bounced into the top corner past the sprawling hands of Jan Oblak, and the heads of the Arsenal fans were drooping into their hands as Antoine Griezmann left the pair of centre-halves on the floor, David Ospina stranded, and Diego Simeone jumping for joy at the preciousness of an away goal that everyone knew was the key to the game.

It is the predictability and repeatability of these individual moments that is so painful. It is also why Arsene Wenger is at his end. On this occasion, it was the game mismanagement, allied with the shared foolishness of Laurent Koscielny and Nacho Monreal, that scuppered the teams’ progress.

At one goal to the good, all that was needed was an element of recognition of awareness. There were chants ringing around the Emirates of ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’. Sadly, they seemed more like ironic chants. Borne from the days of George Graham and that stifling defence that would never have conceded such a goal or chucked away such a game, this current iteration of the north London outfit could only revert to their norm: a hapless, spineless, naive, innocent, green, utterly dumbfounding mess of a football team.

And the repetition of such reversion to the norm, intermittently littered with an anomaly of success every now and then, is why it is time for Wenger to depart. Many may be sad that he is going. I am sad that he is going. But it is difficult to argue against the logical stance that the time to end has come.

Next: Arsenal Vs Atletico Madrid: 5 things we learned

And at the end of it all, this, his last home game in Europe, was the perfect emblem of the latter Wenger years, the mistakes, the mismanagement, the vulnerabilities and the failures. It’s goodbye Wenger, but that may just be a good thing.