Arsenal should forget about offering Arsene Wenger a new deal... the time has come for the board to act 

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For Arsene Wenger this season, the signs were not great on day one. Liverpool at home as the Premier League reconvened back in August and Arsenal were 4-1 down just after the hour.

The game had followed a pretty similar pattern to the one we witnessed in Munich on Wednesday. Arsenal emerged from half-time with the match tied at 1-1 only to concede three quick goals and effectively surrender the game.

On that occasion, there was a fightback. The game ended 4-3 to Liverpool and Wenger's team were spared humiliation at least.

Arsenal's 4-3 defeat by Liverpool at the start of the season should have set alarm bells ringing

Arsene Wenger didn't have an answer that day and it's been a very familiar story ever since

But the anxiety and sense of anger and dissatisfaction were tangible among the home support. When Sadio Mane scored Liverpool's fourth goal in the 63rd minute, there was mutiny in the air and it was aimed at the Arsenal manager.

Only two Arsenal goals calmed the mood as fury gave way to grumpiness but the signs were there all the same.

It was apparent even then that this season was likely to pass the same way as so many others in recent years.

The Frenchman is in one of the most difficult situations he's ever found himself in at Arsenal

The team, managed by him, are stuck in a rut yet again and something surely has to change

And this, fundamentally, is why Wenger and his club now find themselves in such a fix. In football, like most sports, progress is always necessary. 

And if not progress, then at least some indication that progress may be around the corner. If you don't have that then you don't really have anything, not at the top level anyway.

Words like stability and consolidation may be OK if you are Burnley or Swansea. They are not if you are Arsenal. There must be competitiveness and momentum simply because without them you are just another football club.

Arsenal grew used to being anything but just another club under Wenger.

For a decade and more their manager gave them a combination of things they hadn't had before: trophies delivered with style and grace, accompanied by a touch of foreign glamour.

Wenger's Arsenal were tough, too, of course. Yes, Wenger's Arsenal were certainly tough. But regression has followed during the second half of Wenger's long tenure and it has now reached a point where nobody really expects anything other than the kind of supine, submissive display served up in Bavaria this week.

When the big games arrive, there is always a sense that Arsenal may have a performance like that one in their locker.

From the Munich game emerged one remarkable statistic. Arsenal committed one foul in the second half. 

Under the pump for 45 minutes, chased all over the pitch by superior opponents, Wenger's team contributed just one foul. When it came to it, Arsenal couldn't even find the drive or determination to throw a few tackles in.

It's not that Wenger's modern teams don't care or don't try. It's more that they are not built to win — not when it matters. They are not robust and they are not durable and they are certainly not intimidating. There is something fundamentally wrong with their DNA and the responsibility for that is Wenger's.

Dejected Arsenal players react after another difficult night at the office in Europe

At any other major club across Europe, they wouldn't stand for it. They wouldn't stand for the years without a league title, for the years without movement beyond the last 16 of the Champions League. They wouldn't stand for the passivity and the talk of future improvement.

At the really big clubs they would look for evidence of a corner about to be turned and when they couldn't see it they would act.

Sadly, that is what chief executive Ivan Gazidis and the Arsenal board must do this summer. They must act. The contract offer made to Wenger should be revoked. It's time to try something else and that means someone else.

It has come to the point where Ivan Gazidis must act and take his contract offer away