You can look at this defeat in a couple of ways.
But I imagine the majority view will be that Wolves showed themselves incapable in the final third and a lack of investment in recent windows to address such a cripplingly obvious deficiency is bordering criminal.
It’s tough to argue.
Whether you form opinions based purely on what you see or introduce statistical analysis retrospectively, the conclusion will be the same.
The quality and quantity of chances created isn’t good enough and on those rare occasions we do deliver the ball into the right areas, nobody is attacking the penalty area.
Raul is understandably not as keen to put his head in where it hurts these days and Fabio still doesn’t possess the physicality or know-how to offer a viable alternative.
You’ve then got a couple of inside forwards that look great on the eye at times but lack devilment. That’s now zero Premier League goals between Podence and Trincao in a combined 34 appearances.
Technically and tactically, Wolves are a polished side, but the missing ingredients are aggression and desire to force the issue.
Arsenal are a similarly tidy outfit, but even in small bursts you could see they had the ability to create better chances and only Lacazette’s wasteful finishing prevented them from increasing their comfort level.
There was a nastiness to their performance in and out of possession that gave them an edge but could have proved their undoing had Wolves had enough about them to take advantage of Martinelli’s red card.
One crumb of positivity was Chiquinho who does appear to offer something different, whipping crosses in with the kind of zip and penetration that’s been lacking.
He also attacked the back-post from a Raul cut-back to nearly conjure the equaliser, which again, is the type of movement we haven’t seen from others in his position.
But between Dendoncker’s fifty pence head and Fabio inexplicably passing when it was easier to shoot, it was a repeat prescription for failure that won out.
With Bruno hooking his captain to bring on another striker and sending his goalie forward for the second game running, he doesn’t need reminding about the problem.
It’s something we will have to work around between now and May.
