Midway through Tuesday night’s fluent, dominant, pointless 2-0 defeat of Monaco Arsenal’s players might just have been tempted to chuck in the odd helpful stray pass, or to offer some encouraging words during breaks in play. Come on, chaps. Buck up a bit. You’re supposed to be the kind of side that beats teams like us 3-1 at home.

Instead, for Arsenal this was the kind of performance that’s so good it makes you look bad: a 2-0 away win that could have been double that against opponents revealed on the night as game but limited middle-rankers. But who were still good enough to knock Arsenal out of the Champions League before the quarter-final stage once again. So after the same old defeat, welcome to the same old analysis. Yes, it’s deja vu all over again for Arsenal and for those who would pronounce on Arsenal, with large swathes of the footballing commentariat reduced to a version of what many critics see in Arsenal’s manager: here we are again, a nation of keyboard Arsène Wengers seeing only the same shapes, the same flaws, the same outcomes.

Arsène Wenger hurting but Monaco’s Jardim accuses Arsenal of disrespect Read more

Never mind the easy references to groundhog days, the endlessly trumpeted progression of last-16 exits, the talk of mindsets. Never mind that a team who have just produced, two weeks too late, one of the more spirited, technically bold English European performances of recent times will again be dismissed as mentally weak, frivolous, lightweight and all the rest. There are only two questions worth asking here: are there signs of genuine Wenger-led progress in the season and a half of this post-austerity Arsenal? And if so, how close, really, are this team to a genuine change of gear?

With this in mind, and focusing only on the picture in front of us, there are still reasons for optimism that survive even the memory of that dismal first-leg performance. The good parts then: Arsenal may have lost on away goals but in Monaco they produced a performance in Europe up there with Chelsea’s 5-0 win away to Schalke and Manchester City’s stirring but more haphazard 3-2 defeat of Bayern Munich.

Arsenal lost to a team they should have beaten but who were good enough to expose their flaws. But they have pretty much achieved par in the competition: Arsenal are somewhere between the 8th and 16th best team in Europe. In the context of recent Premier League no-shows and meltdowns in Europe, this is far from disastrous.

Plus for all their same-old, same‑old defensive naivety at the Emirates, Arsenal’s exit was still less depressing than that of Chelsea, who were outplayed by a superior team, who never dominated their opponents, and whose tactics and degree of basic athletic mobility looked at times outmoded. Arsenal did at least look like a progressive modern football team in Monaco. They have now won 13 of their last 15 matches. They will probably be in the Champions League next year and are two matches from retaining the FA Cup. Among English clubs only Chelsea would refuse to swap places with them right now.

Plus, chief among the positives is the fact that behind the obvious repetitions – the same pattern of collapse followed by doomed hope – there are signs of something different stirring. For all the horrors of the Emirates three weeks ago, Arsenal are on an upward curve. This time last year they were losing 6-0 to Chelsea and looking a team entirely devoid of spine, guts, heart, legs and muscle against better opponents.

They now have a plan B, no matter how loudly those who think they don’t have a Plan B say they don’t have a Plan B. Arsenal can pass long to Olivier Giroud, or play Danny Welbeck in behind. They can attack with that familiar blitz of diffuse sideways passes. They can win without the ball, as they have when Francis Coquelin has excelled this season. More significantly, Mesut Özil was excellent against Monaco, and excellent in a way he hasn’t always been excellent in the past, leading Arsenal’s attacks in the last 15 minutes and seeking out the ball as others tired.

Still, Arsenal were rightly eliminated after that appalling first‑leg performance, when the intelligent brawn of this excellent defensive Monaco team was simply too much. It is of course possible to blame the Premier League for pretty much anything these days but could it be to blame, in part, for this? Perhaps part of the problem with these repeat disasters at this stage of the Champions League is that Arsenal have just spent four months playing domestic league and cup football. Perhaps, wrongly of course, the culture shock of suddenly facing cannily organised, tactically tight, technically sound opposition is simply too much.

At home against domestic opposition Arsenal can get away with playing nicely, passing nicely, bombing on cheerfully, still winning enough games. The Premier League has allowed them to do this. Whereas a muscular, hard‑pressing Monaco undid Arsenal in pretty much the same way Paris Saint-Germain had undone Chelsea, overrunning them in midfield at vital moments and flooding into space when it appeared. It is here many observers feel the Premier League has fallen behind. Even quite recently English teams could run their opponents off the ball. But Europe has bulked up and closed ranks and mastered the hard-pressing, long-striding template of the best of Bayern Munich and Real Madrid in the last two seasons. Just as Louis van Gaal has been mocked for his occasionally puzzling attempts to build from a cautious, dogged base at Manchester United, so the Premier League says: go forward, attack, entertain us.

For Arsenal the question is whether the obvious areas of improvement – more solidity, quality in midfield, a little less tendency to overcommit in attack – can be sustained. For all the hand-wringing over another last-16 defeat there is reason to believe an excellent team is still lurking in there.

L’Equipe brand Arsenal an ‘eternal loser’ after defeat against Monaco Read more

It is surely a matter of decisive tweaks. Giroud just does not look sharp or mobile enough as the chief cutting edge of a highly creative midfield. A really high-class striker would have scored more than one of the six or so excellent chances created against Monaco, and Arsenal might even have saved themselves. The process in the past two years has been to make one big-money signing a year. A ruthless, mobile centre-forward with some powerful central midfield backup would round out the current team nicely.

Dig beneath the obvious symmetry and there is a case to be made that in the end this wasn’t so much groundhog day for Arsenal as simply a reminder that old flaws still linger in among the strengths, old and new. This final-edition Wenger team have, in all likelihood, two seasons left to run. For all the sense of chances missed this week there are still plenty of signs this team under this manager could yet provide the change of gear the club’s hard-won economic thrust demands.