Lens complained before their victory over Arsenal at Wembley on Wednesday evening that their opponents had been disrespectful to them after their encounter in France, refusing to shake hands or exchange shirts after conceding an injury-time equaliser.
Arsenal's players remembered their manners on the pitch this time, most of them only too happy to exchange those grotesque blue shirts which, given the performance, might have brought a derisory chant from their own fans of "Are you Tottenham in disguise?" But after changing, most of the team marched wordlessly past journalists and into the night, making a mockery of the so-called mixed zone in which players and the media are meant to mingle.
Those who did stop for a terse, reluctant word had a message for the manager, Arsene Wenger, which any inhabitant of the North Bank could have imparted with as much eloquence. Arsenal simply do not have enough players of quality in their squad to be serious players in Europe, nor possibly to defend their domestic Double.
Marc Overmars, whose game seemed to degenerate into sulky indifference alongside his substandard team-mates, said: "If you look at the substitutes' benches of other teams they have a lot of international players. We don't. We had three top players missing and we cannot afford that many."
Overmars was a top-price, topquality, proven buy whom one would expect to be a regulation purchase for a club of Arsenal's stature. Instead Wenger has collected players with the indiscrimination of the world's most optimistic oyster fisherman, believing there is a pearl inside the most unpromising shell. Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit have shone from the day they arrived, but there has been hardly a glint from Remi Garde, Christopher Wreh, Gilles Grimandi, Luis Boa Morte, Alberto Mendez or Nelson Vivas. And Fredrik Ljungberg is still unproven.
Then there is Nicolas Anelka: the great enigma who Wenger insists will soon be one of the world's greatest strikers but who, at present, is still wearing almost visible L-plates, a sullen figure who makes Andy Cole's goals-tochances ratio look exemplary and whose movement off the ball is both naive and frustrating.
He has not scored in the Champions' League and has six goals from 16 appearances this season, his total Premiership record standing at 12 goals from 43 appearances.
Martin Keown, who believes that the side Arsenal put out against Lens should still have been good enough to win, said: "The lads who came in did their best. But it is asking a lot for them to go out and perform at another level to the one they are used to. The problem at Arsenal is that the first XI virtually picks itself. We are not able to spread it around the way Chelsea do."
Ah, Chelsea. Now there is a club with so many players competing and arguing for first-team places that Gianluca Vialli would greet a flu epidemic with a sigh of relief. Their 5-0 stroll at Highbury in the Worthington Cup just over a fortnight ago was dismissed by Arsenal as insignificant. It was, in the sense that Arsenal should still qualify for the UEFA Cup through Premiership position, but in exposing a squad with the depth of a thimble it was the most revealing, defining match of their season.
At Wembley in midweek, as in Kiev in the previous match, Arsenal were like a motorist on the motorway hard shoulder, having suffered a blow-out only to discover that the spare tyre is bald.
They desperately need new players not just to put wheels back on their bandwagon but to shake the complacency out of those players who know that their names and numbers could be chiselled in stone on the backs of their shirts.
You would think that a side with only 11 players and a spare centre-half would be less cavalier about their health and conduct, the latter resulting in so many cards and suspensions. Though Keown may have meant nothing by the remark, it was significant that, after pointing out how infrequently Arsenal fielded their strongest team, he added: "For one reason or another."
Dennis Bergkamp seems to have more reasons than most. He has a bad back; he has a dodgy hamstring; he has an ankle injury; he has a calf strain; he is still, poor love, mentally tired from a World Cup that finished over four months ago. Oh, and of course he cannot play in any away match that requires him to climb up the steps of an aircraft.
Arsenal fans might be ready to accept that Bergkamp is not currently fit enough to play in a full Premiership programme but they are finding it hard to believe that he is too fragile to complete a single game; returning at Wimbledon last Saturday after a threegame lay-off through a back injury, he promptly limped off with a damaged calf.
If it were not for the enduring form and spirit of Arsenal's remarkable defence they might already be out of the Premiership title race as well as Europe.
"We still have that strong belief in each other, and the game against Middlesbrough is a big one now. We must put things right," said Keown.
Keown says that there are parallels with last season, when Arsenal lost three out of six league games between mid-October and the end of November. But this time the early signs of an autumnal chill threaten to become a full-blown winter of discontent at Highbury.
