Arsenal can’t keep doing nothing about their failures

Arsenal happened. Again.

As ever with Arsenal’s forays into public humiliation, there was a little bit of bad luck involved. With the score at 1-1 and Laurent Koscielny on the pitch, they looked almost competent. Bayern Munich were dominating possession but David Ospina hadn’t had too much to do. And then, with a tweak and a grimace, Koscielny departed, and Arsenal lost 5-1, going full Arsenal.

They always do. Injuries pile up, heaping responsibilities onto the weaker parts of an inadequately constructed squad. The team swaggers its way up the table and into the Champions League knockouts, then meekly nosebleeds its way down and out. The defense freezes, the midfield dissolves, and the attack all stand around staring at one another with murderous faces. In an uncertain world, Arsenal gonna Arsenal.

Indeed, such is their predictability that we barely need to describe anything that actually happens anymore. Here at the tail-end of the Late Wengerian era, the club’s name is all we need. “Arsenal.” Arsenal. Say it, shout it, mutter it under your breath. Whole tragicomedies lie in those syllables ...

Arjen Robben scores.

Fan 1: Arsenal ...

Alexis Sanchez misses his penalty, then scores the rebound.

Both: Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal!

Time passes. Laurent Koscielny limps off injured.

Fan 1: ... Arsenal?

Robert Lewandowski scores.

Fan 2: Arsenal ...

Thiago Alcantara scores, then scores again.

Fan 1: Arsenal!

Thomas Muller comes on, scores. The game ends.

Fan 2: Arsenal?

Fan 1: Arsenal.

Big football clubs, particularly when they’re not winning the trophies they crave, tend to be restless things. That doesn’t necessarily mean managerial sackings or huge clearouts of players, but there is usually some sense that answers are being sought, that things are being tried. Sometimes they won’t work, of course, but that’s just how it goes.

We can be fairly sure that Arsene Wenger and his staff are doing all they can behind the scenes, because that’s their job and nobody slacks off around Steve Bould. To qualify every season for the Champions League may not actually be a trophy, but it’s certainly difficult, even with a massive stadium and a considerable playing budget. Winning a couple of FA Cups isn’t bad going, either.

But the ease with which Arsenal are kept from the big prizes by their theoretical equals (er, and Leicester), and the manner in which the same problems recur again and again, strongly suggest that the club has stagnated in some fundamental sense. Speaking after the game, Wenger noted that Arsenal “lost our organization,” and “looked mentally jaded and vulnerable.” He could have been talking about any of their Champions League exits in the last 10 years

There is a compelling moral case that Arsene Wenger, out of respect for past glories and general achievements, should be allowed to do whatever he wants with Arsenal, for as long as he wants. There is also a pretty decent case for believing, with a nod towards Old Trafford, that the departure of a long-serving manager will be a messy business. Particularly one as embedded in all aspects of the club as Wenger, a manager of many hats.

But there is also something uniquely aggravating about a stagnant football club. It seems to almost defeat the point. Perhaps this is why the Arsenal fan base seems so fractious, to curious and amused outsiders. A football team being terrible is one thing, and most grownups are able to cope with that. So, too, a football team trying to become better, and failing.

But a football team being good but not quite great, over and over, and seeming to accept that? You can see how that might wear at the soul. After all, in the absence of the restless search for glory, what else is there? Just Arsenal, being Arsenal, again.