Is Arsene Wenger a malevolent god or just incompetent?

The evidential problem of evil in the theological sense by William L. Rowe is as follows:

In short, if there is a god that has the power to prevent suffering but chooses not to, then that god cannot be entirely good in nature.

Which brings us to Arsene Wenger and David Ospina.

There have been times that Wenger and Arsenal could have improved certain weaknesses - evils, in this analogy - without losing the club's moral identity of managing and playing football the right way.

Usually those times have occurred in the transfer window. But on Tuesday night, one such moment came as Arsene Wenger casually crossed out Petr Cech and pencilled David Ospina into his starting XI to face Olympiacos.

[WENGER'S PROTEST: Wenger stands by blunder-goalie Ospina despite catastrophic mistake]

If the club's main goal is to have success and please its fans, then Wenger and the club hierarchy should have taken those steps: made the key purchases in the transfer window, selected the club's best goalkeeper for perhaps its most important match of the season so far, and so on.

Yet those in power at Arsenal frequently refuse to take steps that seem obvious, then remain indifferent to fans' complaints and frustration.

The conclusion, more or less inescapable, is that despite their protestations to the contrary the men pulling the strings at the Emirates Stadium simply don't care that much about challenging for honours.

Just as it is with the theological problem, the first refuge for those disagreeing with the argument is that there are hidden reasons for the club to behave in the manner that they do. That Wenger knows best. And that since the club keeps renewing the manager's contract regardless of the history of failure, there must be a plan to have the team challenging again in the near future.

In other words, blind faith. But time continues to pass, and tangible evidence that any such plan exists has yet to materialise.

Arsenal were the only team in the five top leagues of Europe in the summer transfer window not to buy an outfield player. Even Barcelona brought in two, despite being banned from playing them until January. There would be no problem with that if Arsenal were Real Madrid, a team with evident weaknesses but enough talent to hide them.

That's not the case, though: Arsenal instead have glaring needs that have existed for many years and an even more glaring insistence on not addressing them. The striker, defensive midfielder and centre-back positions have all been discussed to the point of exhaustion.

The retort from the manager is that the club is actively scouting and considering players but will not spend for the sake of spending; instead, when they find that high quality of player, then they will make their move.

It sounds plausible but it's often contradictory. It supposes that Arsenal only buy the best players available, but take a look at the squad: Olivier Giroud is not a top quality player, nor is Francis Coquelin, Per Mertersacker, Nacho Monreal, Mathieu Debuchy, and especially not the ancient pair of Mathieu Flamini and Mikel Arteta.

It's even more evident when you examine Arsenal's transfer history for the last few years: Danny Welbeck, David Ospina, Calum Chambers, Kim Kallstrom, Yaya Sanogo, Lukas Podolski, Andre Santos, Chu-Young Park, Carl Jenkinson, Joel Campbell, Gervinho, Marouane Chamakh, Sebastien Squillaci, so on and so forth. Once in a while, the club lands an Alexis Sanchez or a Mesut Ozil, and while it is a game of odds, there's no way that the team will challenge with two quality players alone. The list and history is embarrassing. The club buys, but more often than not ends up with average players.

It demands one of two conclusions be drawn, then. Either Arsenal are indifferent about challenging for titles, or they're incompetent.

Consider this question recently posed by a football editor: "Could Arsenal beat Atletico Madrid?"

The simple answer is no. In a one-match or even two-legged situation, the odds would be in the Spanish side's favour. The team is more organised, tougher, arguably more talented, better coached and in general, just a better side. They would be favoured against almost all of the Premier League's top clubs, even Chelsea who seem to have almost the same identity.

The answer is humbling when you consider the history and recent trajectories of both clubs. These are two clubs that have a history of losing their players to bigger teams. Arsenal have lost Cesc Fabregas, Robin Van Persie, Samir Nasri while Atletico have lost Sergio Aguero, Fernando Torres (for his best years), Diego Costa and Falcao. The list is of course longer than that for both teams.

But consider that in the 2007-2008, Atletico finished in fourth place in La Liga, qualifying for the Champions League for the first time since the 1996-97 season. That's a season after Arsenal lost the Champions league final to Barcelona. Atletico at the start of that season had reached an agreement with the city of Madrid to sell the land where their stadium was located, and to move to the city-owned Olympic Stadium.

Arsenal would go to build their own stadium and spent the next few years paying off the debt that came with it. A reported debt of £399 million. Atletico, even with the Olympic stadium, had a debt of €514 million as reported in June 2011.

The Arsenal debt was often touted as the reason why the club couldn't compete with the bigger teams and the hope was that once it was paid off or was more manageable, the team would return to the upper echelons. That hasn't happened. Arsenal now finish in the same positions, sometimes lower, than the team full of forgettable players during that transitional phase. The Champions League exits are at the same stages of the competition, and the team still cowers against the likes of Chelsea and Manchester United. The names are different but the identity has been the same.

Atletico are a different story. They recorded consecutive fourth place finishes in La Liga, but then had spells under first Quique Flores and then Gregorio Manzano that produced two Europa League finals (one of which ended in a trophy) but disappointing league placings outside the top five.

Then they hired Diego Simeone, and that's where the fun started. They won the Europa League, Copa del Rey (beating Real Madrid in the final) and then humiliated Chelsea in the Super Cup with Falcao scoring a hat-trick. The very next season they broke the duopoly by winning La Liga and would play in their first Champions League final since 1974.

Today, they are one of the strongest sides in Europe, not just Spain. Just a few years ago, reaching the round of 32 in the UEFA cup was considered an unprecedented success for them.

During all that time, Arsenal stayed the same. The consistency is often praised but with the resources at the club's disposal compared to Atletico, it's more suitable to call it what it is: Arsenal have been stagnant.

The question is this, then: if Arsenal are able to do better, and have the capacity to do so, and take dramatic action, who is to blame for them not doing so?

The needle, if we're discarding unknowns, lands on the manager. Wenger has been at Arsenal so long that it's hard to see where he stops and the club begins. His identity is one with the club and the fans; even those who disagree with him and his tactics are afraid of the prospect of a life without him at the helm.

But if the manager is the problem, if the club's current level is all he can maintain - and the evidence strongly suggests it - then something must be done about him. To let him continue as he has been, refusing to act because of fear of the unknown alternative, is pure cowardice.

To stay in a comfort zone, to continuously finish below your potential because of the fear of change, or for fear of potential failure not admirable stability. It is shameful.

Failure is a part of life and sport; the prospect of it exists in any effort to better oneself. To walk away from it is to give up.

That is not to say that a change of manager is necessarily the answer. There might really be shadows at work at the club, preventing the manager from doing his best, but even in that case the case of cowardice remains somewhere within the club. Either the manager is not good enough any more or the club itself just doesn't care about success, beyond qualifying for the Champions League and winning the occasional FA Cup.

It doesn't look good either way. Some will say that Atletico were lucky in being able to replace their departing stars with players of quality: losing Torres and replacing him with Aguero. Losing Aguero and replacing him with Falcao, losing Falcao and replacing him with Costa.

But a track record like that implies not luck, it implies a great scouting network, outstanding coaching and canny team-building - with scouting being the starting point. Arsenal's scouting network might be bigger than Atletico's, but it's clearly far less effective.

So that doesn't leave Arsenal much wiggle room. It's often touted that the club under-achieves, and with just a few more pieces, could finally make everything click and begin their journey back to the top. But since the last league title and the Champions League final defeat, this has been Arsenal. This cyclical fourth and third place finishes and knockout round exits in the Champions League is what Arsenal is. The passing of the years and the promised lowering of the debt did nothing to change that.

The club has the power and resources to change all of this. To not become better when you have the power to do so is unthinkable, so long as you still have ambition. And if you lack that ambition, it's indefensible to continue pretending to the supporters of the club that you do.