Just 13 minutes after coming on as a substitute during Arsenal's 2-1 defeat at Manchester City, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain left the field to be replaced by Mohamed Elneny. His departure was premature, unceremonious.
The winger launched his barely soiled shirt at Arsenal's bench, briefly leading to speculation that he had reacted angrily to a tactical substitution. Subbing a substitute is tantamount to humiliating a player, but such talk was shut down by Arsene Wenger. "He is injured, it's a muscular problem," Wenger said.
Oxlade-Chamberlain, then, was reacting to yet another setback in his Arsenal career. His latest muscle problem was the fifth he has suffered since the beginning of 2015, and he is slipping down Wenger's pecking order, having competed 90 minutes in just one league match all season. This is despite a statistically successful campaign in which he has scored six goals and supplied six assists in all competitions.
He has never quite lived up to the promise of his first season (2011-12), when, after signing from Southampton, he looked readymade as a teenager, a middleweight boxer's build paired with maturity. Wenger trusted him enough to field him in a central midfielder's role in the second leg of a Champions League round-of-16 match with AC Milan, and Oxlade-Chamberlain starred as Arsenal won 3-0, coming within a whisker of overturning the first leg's 4-0 deficit.
Yet with 18 months of his contract to run, there are also questions over his long-term future, even if Wenger last week said: "We want him to stay." Oxlade-Chamberlain is also reportedly keen on remaining at the Emirates but is not alone in appearing to have lost the faith of Wenger.
Four years ago this week, on Dec. 19, 2012, the club released a photo of their manager cheerily towering over five fledglings, each who had signed fresh five-year deals. None of Carl Jenkinson, Aaron Ramsey, Jack Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs or Oxlade-Chamberlain can now be considered as first-choice Arsenal players.
"The plan is to build a team around a strong basis of young players," Wenger said that day but that English core (plus one Welshman) is dropping from view. A glance at his selections this season suggest Wenger's plan is close to abandonment.
Only Theo Walcott, back then in contract negotiations that would not be sorted until January, now makes himself indispensable, with 11 goals in 20 appearances, having started all but one of Arsenal's 17 Premier League matches so far. He was the sole starting Englishman at the Etihad on Sunday, and also the goal scorer.
For Gibbs, the same age as Walcott at 27, the situation looks distinctly less serene. Frequent injury problems prevented him from becoming a long-term replacement to Gael Clichy, who was sold to Man City in the summer of 2011, and since Nacho Monreal was signed in January of 2013, Gibbs has been reduced to a stand-in's role.
Wenger turned down a summer loan bid from West Ham for Gibbs, but his preference for Monreal, despite the Spaniard not completely convincing, suggests the Englishman is around to make up the numbers. The position of Jenkinson, meanwhile, who spent two reasonably productive seasons on loan at West Ham, looks even more perilous.
Earlier this month, Wenger announced that Jenkinson had "no confidence" to explain why Gabriel, a centre-back, and not the 24-year-old was standing in for Hector Bellerin at right-back. For a 3-1 defeat of Bournemouth in November, Jenkinson was left out of the squad altogether in favour of Mathieu Debuchy, previously absent for a calendar year, and when the Frenchman pulled up with an injury, had to watch as Gabriel stepped in again. Three days later, Jenkinson lasted 64 minutes before being substituted as Arsenal exited the EFL Cup to Southampton, losing 2-0.
To complete the five, both Ramsey and Wilshere have had their Arsenal careers ransacked by injury. With Santi Cazorla lost long-term to an Achilles problem, Ramsey's latest hamstring problem denies Wenger perhaps the best attacking midfielder on show at Euro 2016.
Wilshere, having started just one Premier League match last season after an ankle operation, asked to be sent on loan, and despite flirting with a move to Roma, has been rehabilitating himself at Bournemouth, where he is passing milestones that became unreachable at Arsenal.
He has completed 90 minutes in six of their last eight matches. He had last competed 90 minutes for Arsenal in September 2014.
The plan remains for him to return next summer, though whether Wenger still sees him as "the leader of this group," as the manager said four years ago, must be in question. Wilshere may also find those alongside him in that photograph are no longer around to lead.