Even the flashy silver flags emanated the faint feeling of setting up to fail.
The comedy of errors for the Atletico goal encapsulates the ‘mistake waiting to happen’ mood of the last few season’s defending, and will remain as one of the memories, perhaps symbols, of the latter Wenger years. Not too dissimilar to the defensive fiasco versus Birmingham in the Carling Cup Final in 2011.
At one point in the second half “there’s only one Arsene Wenger,” broke out. But it wasn’t in unison with different parts of the stadium singing different bits at different times.
It was as if all the under-investment, and lack of positive decisions came home to roost, when a bit of quality and character was needed to nail a 10-man team.
It was game of what-ifs. What if Olivier Giroud was in the area for all those crosses? What if Alexis Sanchez was there for the knock downs, and taking players on head-on rather than the passing sideways for the umpteenth time? What if Walcott got to the by-line and cut balls back to on-rushing midfielders, exploiting the fact Atletico only had ten men? What if Wenger had gone with a logical decision to put Cech in goal? Would he have allowed the ball to bounce off him in that Griezmann moment?
The way Atletico played reminded of some of the Arsenal displays under George Graham, and the fact there is no stigma in defence.
Perhaps these two ties will persuade Gazidis and company that they need a manager/coach who first and foremost can organise a defence and then create a balance with the attack, a manager/coach whose team plays as well without the ball as with the ball. Perhaps that would favour an Allegri or Ancelotti over an Enrique.
The balance will be difficult as Arsenal fans, paying for the most expensive tickets in the Premier League, will expect primarily attacking football. But that is a legacy that is left – and an important one for the new person to sort out, along with the potential handicap of no Champions League football and probably playing Thursday-Sunday football in his first season – unless Arsenal get lucky and an Xhaka shot deflects past Oblak along with other such fortunate occurrences next Thursday.