Let me start with the texts I received during and towards the end of the match…
21.02 – Djourou only bit of class in yellow
21.27 – Fantastic response to Saturday. Exactly what I expected. He will whinge about the penalty but you make your own luck. They could fail to qualify… laughable.
21.31 – I firmly agree Wenger must go
21.33 – Kev, you’ll be able to shift the Belgrade game now. Yes! (refers to a pair of tickets I had been asked to find a home for)
21.35 – Does it come any worse? (that one’s from a self-stated glass half full merchant)
21.41 – Wheels coming off Wenger’s wagon fast. Can’t wait for the next episode of defending the unacceptable! Wenger’s best squad ever? It’s about to go pear shaped
21.47 – Maybe we should have played our number 99 (that’s Gunnersaurus for those that are wondering)

And while I am here, how about some emails…
From Neil Tookey - For God’s sake sack him. In 20 years I've never been so ashamed to be a Gunner. It's so humiliating to be mugged off like this. So much profit and the club continue to buy second rate losers while charging us mugs top dollar. What a dreadful end to Wenger’s Arsenal career. In the dictionary next 'hubris' should be Wenger’s face. And the fans and board have indulged him. It's a total disgrace.

From Marc Le Blanc – Subject: From the ridiculous to the truly f***ing ridiculous
Utterly inexcusable. Overpaid, distinctly average and insulting to anyone with a modicum of cerebral matter. Thank God that every new season makes me more apathetic than the last. Indeed, it has actually reached the point where the second goal had me laughing, so shambolic was the defending... Forget the penalty that wasn't given - I lived near Braga a couple of years back - it's a pleasant but tiny town. We should eat Braga for breakfast and s**t them out before lunch.

From Nadim Naaman - Have you noticed that we continue to lose matches in pairs? Since Man Utd and Man City last August, I think with one CL exception and one league exception, we've lost two matches consecutively when we have lost.

Arsenal have often played poorly away from home in this competition. If you can qualify from a group, such displays are quickly forgotten about. However, what the Braga defeat showed is that lessons have not been learned with a view to lapses in disciplined team play and getting caught on the break. Sure, Carlos Vela should have had a penalty, but the non-award of a spot kick was no reason for the visitors to lose focus and start taking risks. A draw was a result that would have guaranteed Arsenal qualification. There was no need to press for a win. It was as if the injustice of the Vela decision made something flip in the minds of the Arsenal players, and you have to put that down to lack of experience at how to get results from tight matches in Europe.

Once Arsenal had gained victory in Belgrade, Arsene Wenger always had the cushion of knowing victory against Partisan in the final group game back in North London should secure qualification to the last 16. That, due to the superior head to head results with Braga and Shakhtar, still holds true.

Arsenal had not performed well in Braga. The sense of urgency that suddenly appeared after the home team’s goal had been absent the entire evening up to that point. Fair enough if the team are content with a draw, I guess, but it would have been nice to see them really go for it for a couple of five minute spells, in terms of purposeful attacking play. We did see a couple of decent balls across the face of goal, but for the most part, this was a cagey game and both sides stuck to the script. Fabregas’ removal, presumably after his hamstring went, is bad news, but hardly unexpected. He’ll be back, but it is difficult to envisage him being 100 per cent fit at any stage of this season.

It was interesting to see three of the back four changed and all of the front three. This was partly a reaction to Saturday, but also an acknowledgment by the manager that, ultimately, the big game for Arsenal is the one at home to Partisan Belgrade, a team with zero points out of 15 so far. But Braga’s win does mean that Arsenal have to merely turn up on December 8th. And with the mental fragility of this team, a home win certainly cannot be taken for granted. It will probably be a tense evening, in spite of Partisan’s abominable record. It is not unknown for eliminated teams to produce shock results on matchday six. Just look at Arsenal’s win at Panathinaikos in 1998 with what would today be considered a Carling Cup strength line-up, the Greek side needing a win to secure progress from the group. It can happen.

I cannot get too excited about last night’s defeat for three reasons. The game should prove an irrelevance if Arsenal do what they should and win in two weeks’ time. The collapse at the end told us nothing new and changes nothing. Maybe it will help to convince a few of the AKB brigade to admit to themselves that Arsene Wenger cannot build a team that can defend unless he buys more proven players. And finally, Arsenal haven’t got much hope of beating the best sides in Europe over two legs. It’s just a matter of how far they get before they are eliminated. They have no chance in this competition, unlike the Premier League where the best teams are falling over themselves to give others the opportunity of sneaking in. The goals were almost comical in the way Marc Le Blanc describes.

The real issue about last night though, is that a team who only needed a draw, and performed like it, suddenly lost the plot when a penalty was not awarded to them. That suggests a lack of brains to me, a lack of composure, a lack of the knowledge of how trophies are won.

The defeat to Spurs hurt more for a number of reasons, not least that every point matters in the Premier League. But the lack of defensive solidity over the two matches when just the merest whiff of pressure was applied will hopefully shock the manager into doing something to rectify what is obviously a fundamental flaw in the team at the moment. If losing Thomas Vermaelen is all it takes for the floodgates to open, then some serious questions need to be asked.

As for the manager’s position, he is sitting pretty for a while yet. The most important thing to the directors is that he gets the team in the Champions League group stages, for financial reasons. Anything further is regarded as a bonus. And that creates a comfort zone feeling in the club that means players do not always exert themselves to the level the fans would like to see. I am not going to make a big thing of Braga’s win, it just confirms a few problems that we knew about already. Problems I don’t see changing anytime soon…