Friday 20th April 2018: a day that will live long in the memory of Gooners far and wide. Arsene Wenger is leaving Arsenal! Sound the fanfares! Shock, confusion, reflection, maybe even ecstasy; a plethora of muddled emotions and reactions ensued. Tributes poured in from across the footballing globe, more akin of a eulogy or obituary if anything, a fact not lost on the manager himself.

And as the dust settled and the emotional barometer troughed to baseline levels once again, the focus turned firmly on the countdown to the end. Perhaps one last shot at glory to cap this one time beautiful love story that is Arsenal and Arsene. At times, a beautiful love story, synonymous in name as well as vision. In other times, tellingly more and more recently, a tiring, agonising, drawn out divorce. One last chance. One last dance.

Truth be told, virtually everyone stopped caring about domestic issues long before this (semi) final flamenco which came in the shape of Atletico Madrid in the Europa League.

With the prospect of Arsene Wenger signing off with a trophy, an elusive European trophy no less, not to mention the chance of sneaking back into the Champions League through the back door, the scene was set for a fairy tale ending, surely?!

Alas, no! For this is Arsenal Football Club we are talking about. Arsene’s Arsenal.

For years, the decline has been blindingly obvious for all to see. All except Wenger himself that is, still seemingly bemused at the news of him leaving the club, admitting that it was “not really my decision”. The limp exit at the Wanda Metropolitano on Thursday night personified it all and may well have finally tipped Wenger himself over the edge given his despairing demeanour at the painful end of it all.

I saw a team of 11 boys out there with neither the nerve nor the strength to win it for their departing mentor as they had passionately pleaded. An amateur defence riddled with costly errors, a non-existent midfield prone to going missing on the big occasion, and a pathologically weak attack with no clinical killer instinct. I saw a manager and coaching staff too frightened to act, too inept to innovate, but a mere soulless resigned figurehead leading a herd of clueless yes men. Lacking in quality, and more importantly, lacking in nerve, there was a distinct air of inevitability to it all. They could have carried on playing all night and we still would not have scored that all-important equaliser.

One senses that had this been any other “top” club in the English or European game, the story may well have been entirely different. But we are Arsenal. Arsene’s Arsenal. Fairy tale endings are not just not our style. Instead, we master the agony, the suffering, the merciless despair snatched from the jaws of fantasy hope.

This Europa League tie stood for way more than just a farewell party for Wenger. It not only highlighted the tragedy that has been his legacy during the latter part of his reign, but, in many ways may well have determined what the future holds. All sorts of big name managers have been bandied about in the last fortnight, but one must now wonder whether the deadwood infesting the Club at present and the relative mediocrity of a Europa League we have perennially underachieved in will attract an Enrique or an Ancelotti or even an unknown number 2 of a club that has just made it to the final of football’s elite club competition in Liverpool’s Buvac. And that is not to mention the calibre of player we risk attracting, or otherwise, in the coming months!

Friday 4th May 2018: the fanfares have stopped sounding, instead giving way to an all-too-familiar sense of dross punishment dished out to us in the most predictable yet cruellest of fashion.

A one-time legend Arsene Wenger is and has been, and beneath all the emotion and eulogy of the last two weeks, comes the cold, harsh realisation that this is a man who has outstayed his welcome. With it came the coldest, the harshest of farewells. No fairy tales, no last dance, but a meek scuttle for the trap door in the glare of the footballing spotlight.

This has been the most painful of love story endings.