AC Milan v Arsenal: Arsene Wenger, one of the great football managers, must break up this side to save himself The first test is an FA Cup tie against resurgent Sunderland. A sense of shock prevails. We were never in the game. We were very poor defensively and offensively and it was shocking to see how we were beaten everywhere," Wenger said. It was our worst performance in Europe by far. The deeper The Invincibles retreat into history the greater the problem for The Inconsistents. Today's Arsenal side are always fighting off comparisons, especially when Thierry Henry returns, woos the crowd, then glides off back to New York with the club he loves in such a mess. The brief Henry comeback show ended in the stadium where the 2003 team beat Inter Milan 5-1 with two from the inventor of va-va voom. So desperate were Arsenal as they trudged off 2-0 down at the interval here that they thrust the cameo man into a central role for a whole 45 minutes as another European adventure imploded, this time at the first knock-out stage. Four years ago the Gunners prevailed over AC Milan in this arena, with goals from Cesc Fabregas (now with Barcelona) and Emmanuel Adebayor (currently on loan at Spurs). Fabregas and Samir Nasri are the latest in a long line of luminaries lost to more pragmatic and free-spending rivals. The dispersal of these talents was shown up again when Dennis Bergkamp cast his expert eye on the scene. In an excellent interview with Alan Smith in these pages yesterday, Bergkamp observed icily: "You need a few strong characters who can get the team going, in training as well as matches. Sometimes you need more of a winning mentality than a passing mentality. We had it with the back four, who had the mentality of thinking, 'OK, this game is ours now."" Bergkamp evoked the midfield of Freddie Ljungberg, Ray Parlour and Robert Pires to paint more honey on the old days. After that reminder of lost glories, Wenger's toilers could have done without a real burst of first-half energy from Milan . Two strips of shagpile were laid down the flanks of the San Siro pitch, thus restricting the ball's movement in wide areas and forcing the play into the middle third, where Robinho, Boateng and Antonio Nocerino ran amok. Wenger's men were no match for the industry and enterprise of the Rossoneri. Even after Boateng's 15th-minute hooked finish, which was redolent of Van Persie or even Marco Van Basten, Arsenal watched the runners go by and failed to squeeze the space around those black and red shirts. Bergkamp's complaints echoed round the stadium. As the goals poured in, the Arsenal fans who had chanted so lustily in the square outside the Duomo fell mute. Disconsolate London looked moodily down from the high altitude of the San Siro's top tier. There will be no more financial lording it over Serie A if all the English clubs are eliminated before the quarter-finals. The traditional Arsenal cycle over the past seven years has been spurts of promise followed by hard landings and battered morale. A classic example was the Carling Cup final defeat to Birmingham which sent the team's confidence into a nosedive. Some frantic late transfer window trading in August seemed to have added experience and backbone but these are no good without top-grade quality. The Bergkamp generation can hardly be expected to stay silent. There is no obligation for them to ignore this damning evidence of Arsenal's mediocrity. Wenger's professorial aura will come under renewed attack as the Sunderland game approaches and supporters direct their indignation against him for failures in the transfer market and his excessive faith in players who keep failing to justify his high opinion of them. This squad can no longer save him so he must save himself by going on without large numbers of them. It will be expensive, but the alternative would be even more costly: the ruination of his work. We saw another step on that path here and it hurt the eye.