Two sublime goals from a player still refusing to extend his stay past the summer finally killed off Crystal Palace after they initially pegged back Shkodran Mustafi’s opener.
Moreover, they put a huge smile on the face of a man destined to be at the club forever – adding a world-class gloss to Wenger’s big night.
The match also marked the oldest managerial contest in Premier League history – more than 138 years of wisdom shared between Wenger, 68, and former England manager Roy Hodgson, two years his senior.
With Ray Lewington, 61, a regular conspiratorial figure beside the Crystal Palace manager as Wenger looked on from the adjacent dugout nearby, the three of them looked better suited to plotting their way towards Nora Batty’s affections than three points.
Wenger did not need somebody to bounce ideas off – he clearly seemed not to have bothered listening to himself, even.
In the press conference ahead of the game he had been strident. Would he be using a back four for the foreseeable future. “Yes,” he had said equivocally. He even explained his reasoning.
“For me, we didn’t score goals away from home with a back three, so that’s why I switched,” he had said. “I felt as well that sometimes our game was a bit too lateral.” Not as lateral as his own thinking evidently, as he promptly recalled Calum Chambers as an extra man in defence and watched his players knock the ball ineffectually from wing-to-wing with little real penetration.
The only change to the Palace side, coming into the game on the back of eight games unbeaten, was the return from suspension of Christian Benteke – his more physical threat clearly behind Wenger’s more defensive thinking.
Indeed, it was Palace in the opening exchanges who came the closer to scoring, with Yohan Cabaye inches wide from a low 25-yard drive.
With Jack Wilshere, in his fourth successive Premier League start, pulling a few creative strings from deep and Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez friskily just three days before the transfer window opens, the Palace defence were always going to have their work cut out.
A sharp block from Scott Dann to deny Granit Xhaka kept the clean sheet intact initially, but a few minutes later, when Alexandre Lacazette’s inswinging shot was parried unconvincingly by Julian Speroni, the Palace captain had lost his man Shkodran Mustafi who kept his composure to score.
It even came as something of a surprise to the visiting fans, who promptly struck up a chorus of, “How s*** must you be – we’re winning away,” after traipsing up and down the country and only having previously claimed the spoils on their travels at Burnley and Everton.
Palace continued to make a fist of it, although in fairness to Wenger his apparent second thoughts over formation appeared to be working.
At the other end, Ozil could have put the game out of sight before the break, poking a tame left foot straight at Speroni and then, having burst through the middle of defence, elected to pass instead of shoot with only the Palace goalkeeper to beat.
Palace threatened to make the Gunners pay for that wastefulness just four minutes into the second half. Wilfried Zaha’s pace made the chance on the left, no amount of defenders picked up Andros Townsend and the former Spurs player swept the ball in.
Jeffrey Schlupp hit the side netting moments later but once they regained their composure, Arsenal began to press forward again.
Just after the hour mark, Sanchez underlined his class with an arrowed shot inside the near post that Speroni could only get a glove to.
Then three minutes after that, Wilshere’s vision picked him out again. A perfect pass was brought down on the Chile international’s knee impeccably and rolled inside the foot of the post.
It was beautiful to watch, but while Wenger will no doubt want to push on to the 1,000 mark for Arsenal he still seems incapable of persuading his star players to be part of the journey beyond the summer.
And judging by the soft way Arsenal rather spoiled the night by allowing James Tomkins to head in a set-piece goal in the 90th minute, one cannot help but fear about how they will do on night’s like these without him.