The Warm-Up: Has Mr Wenger done it again?

Arsenal fans are fond of a particular saying on social media: ‘Mr Wenger has done it again’. An ironic show of deference towards a manager thy have lost faith in, when something good happens which is outside of his control, or something inadvertently advantageous occurs. Alexis Sanchez has turned rubbish at Manchester United? Mr Wenger has done it again. Petr Cech just saved his first penalty in 37 years? Mr Wenger has done it again.

But contained deep inside this meme is a kernel of truth. However bad things get at Arsenal, however far beyond help they can seem, Wenger always manages to pull something out of the bag. For the best part of a decade it was finishing in the top four despite failing to mount a title challenge. For three of the past four seasons it has been winning the FA Cup. And this season, with neither of those two options available to them, it could well be winning the Europa League.

Thanks to a first-half evisceration of CSKA Moscow last night, Arsenal have a 4-1 lead from the first leg of their quarter-final, and it could have been a great deal more than that. Alexandre Lacazette and Aaron Ramsey both scored twice, with the highlight being a quite exquisite and entirely unique goal from Ramsey as he drifted onto a chipped pass from Mesut Ozil, saw Igor Akinfeev coming off his line and lifted the ball over the keeper on the volley with the outside of his boot - with his back to goal.

After losing four on the bounce, including the League Cup final, between the end of February and the start of March, and inviting fury from supporters, it’s now five straight wins in all competitions. There is no salvaging the Premier League situation where Arsenal are 13 points behind fourth-placed Spurs but this spurt of form has taken them past Milan in the last-16 in Europe and now almost certainly into the semi-finals. Arsenal are four games away from their first European trophy since 1994 and the first ever of Wenger’s career.

It’s not fashionable to give Wenger credit but the thrilling display of passing, attacking, intuitive football last night was constructed completely in his image. For all his faults, he has created a permissive creative atmosphere which allows players like Ramsey to try things like his outrageous finish. And despite scoring twice, having a goal disallowed and hitting the post, Ramsey was overshadowed by a quite brilliant, and impudent, performance from Ozil. He won a penalty, got two assists, played some extraordinary passes and fooled CSKA with one amazing dummy.

Not many managers would have indulged Ozil to the extent Wenger does. The German is effectively his manager's philosophy made flesh on the pitch and when it works, it works beautifully. So however bad their domestic season has been – and it has been late-stage Oasis bad – if they can win the Europa League playing football like this, then we might have to concede, without a hint of irony, that yes, Mr Wenger has done it again.

There is one big problem with Wenger’s rescue plan, and that is the fact that Arsenal might not actually win the Europa League. There are some pretty decent teams left in there, most notably Atletico Madrid who, with the manic and defensively rigorous Diego Simeone in charge, look like the perfect team to spoil Arsenal’s fun with a professional performance.

Last night, they took the lead against Sporting after 23 seconds, as Koke profited from a shocking defensive error, and went on to win 2-0 at home to virtually assure themselves of a semi-final place, and a possible clash of cultures with Arsenal.

In the two other quarter-final matches, Lazio came through a vastly entertaining home tie against Salzburg 4-2, and RB Leipzig won their home leg against Marseille 1-0, making for the tightest second leg of any of the European quarter-finals to be played next week.

The fall-out continues from Wednesday night’s pre-match show of intimidation by Liverpool supporters. Yesterday, UEFA hit Liverpool with four charges relating to the behaviour of their fans, two of which directly pertained to the scenes which saw Manchester City’s team coach pelted with missiles on approach to Anfield.

Now Merseyside Police have said they are keen to review any footage passed to them. By Liverpool fans. Of other Liverpool fans potentially doing something illegal. Oooookay. Best of luck with that.

"We know many people were filming the events with camera phones and ask that anyone with any footage of the projectiles being thrown send it to a dedicated email address so that it can be reviewed: team.coach.incident@merseyside.police.uk" said Merseyside Police match commander, superintendent Paul White.

Alex Morgan is taking no prisoners.

“Happy birthday to me. Celebrating one year in the cupboard.” Yes, that’s Hatem Ben Arfa enjoying a cake to celebrate one year since he last played for PSG.

Yesterday was a good day for Arsenal, even before they rattled four past CSKA Moscow, thanks to this great piece of #content: Lacazette and Aubameyang’s penalties against Stoke were almost identical:

Manchester City can win the Premier League if they beat Manchester United on Saturday but at least they aren’t playing one game later and United won’t be forced to give their rivals a guard of honour. That was the unfortunate scenario which greeted Chelsea in 2007 as they had to pay tribute to United, who had just beaten them to the title. Sir Alex Ferguson didn’t put out his full-strength team though, so in the middle of the huddle emerging through two streams of blue was… Chris Eagles, Kieran Lee and Dong Fangzhou.

Wolves can take a big step towards promotion to the Premier League if they can get a win away at second-placed Cardiff City in a game which is shown live on Sky Sports from 7:45pm. Wolves are currently six points ahead of Cardiff, who have a game in hand. If that doesn’t float your boat then the PSG all-stars (minus their biggest star, Neymar) are away at St Etienne. Also a 7:45pm kick-off, that one’s on BT.