It was another night to cement the now growing sense that Arsene Wenger’s historic 21-year tenure at Arsenal is entering its final phase. Not for the 3-0 result – Manchester City can sweep aside any club in Europe on their night – or even a performance that actually lacked quality rather than effort, but for how the entire mood around Arsenal has shifted.

For around five years, there have been increasingly furious and vocal pockets of disgruntled fans. But against that there was also always an equally passionate and very sizeable if often quieter group who detested the idea of hounding the club’s most successful manager out of his job.

Yet in losing seven matches in only eight weeks, what we actually now have is a lessening of all the tension and just a resignation from just about every Arsenal fan you meet that change has become inevitable. Boos again rang out on the final whistle on Thursday night but, even allowing for the extreme weather conditions, more striking was the swathes of empty red seats.

Frustration is giving way to apathy and that triumphant afternoon at Wembley last May, when Wenger won his seventh FA Cup, feels more like nine years than nine months ago.