Typical Arsenal always too little, too late

Arsenal gave Arsene Wenger a proper send off as the Gunners romped to a 5-0 win over Burnley in their final home game at the Emirates. As much as the match was about  the Gunners bidding farewell to their French mentor you can't overlook the events over recent seasons, and in this season in particular, which have led to the end of Wenger's tenure as Arsenal manager.

Arsenal have lost 12 matches, the highest number under Wenger, this season and those losses include the six consecutive defeats suffered away from the Emirates. Not to mention how poorly they faired against the teams higher up the table only winning one out of the 10 most crucial games this season.

The win against Burnley provides proof of the one characteristic that has let Arsenal down on so many occassions in the past and that's the inability to win matches when the pressure is on and even more importantly, when it counts.

Arsenal were eliminated from the Europa League by Atletico Madrid last Thursday after they fumbled their way through the first leg playing against ten men. 

In the second leg clearly the writing was on the wall and they couldn't find away past a stubborn Atletico.

But conveniently Arsenal, as their always likely to do, put on a superb performance to down a team with a similar philosophy of being hard to beat just three days later goes to speak volumes of how Arsenal haven't regularly been big match team especially this season.

It says much about the current attitude at Arsenal that they usually only ever seem to turn it on when their in low stakes matches or when the chance to win trophy was dead and buried.

Couple that with the low expectations of just playing to  qualify for Champions League football each season in the past when it was easier to win the league title then compared to now where Arsenal even on their best day could not be able wrestle anything away from their rivals. So it was inevitable that Arsenal would miss the mark one day.

With that the man who will be next up to take the Arsenal hot seat will have to deal with much more than buying the right players, but will also have to deal with changing the club's approach and attitude towards defining would be considered success.