Arsene Wenger slammed the “unbelievable” penalty decision that he feels lost Arsenal the game against Watford.

Yet, in reality, that is all part and parcel of the Premier League, and Arsenal have only themselves to blame for the way they threw away three points.

It’s undeniable that the penalty swung things in Watford’s favour. For much of the game, the hosts were desperately lacking in quality in the final third and hadn’t done a great deal to trouble Arsenal’s defence. The penalty gave them a way back into the game they wouldn’t have found otherwise.

That incident, though, occurred in the 72nd minute. Arsenal still had 18 minutes of the game to play, which was ample enough time to respond to this latest adversity. A good, healthy team reaches deep and pushes to turn things around. At the very least, they don’t go on to lose the game, and instead band together to ensure they come away with something.

When Arsenal failed to respond and allowed Watford to score a winner, there should have been no surprise. Defeats of this nature have grown familiar over the last decade. Accidents happen, but an accident that occurs again and again is not an accident anymore, and there is scant evidence that Arsenal have done their due diligence to prevent them occurring regularly.

It’s hard not to scoff when you read about Wenger admitting his team were shocked in the dressing room after the defeat. Even the players must have felt the deja vu as they reflected on yet another defeat where they didn’t apply themselves properly. They’ve played enough in the Premier League to know that, by this point, bad refereeing decisions are a given, and that anything short of their best can and will be punished. They’ve tasted defeat often enough to know exactly how and why they lose games.

The manager and the players seem to want to be victims of forces outside of their control, but constantly externalising the problem isn’t constructive. It’s not the bad penalty decision that cost Arsenal the game, but their inability to convert the chances they made beforehand which should have seen them lead by two or three goals. Even if you accept that it wasn’t our day in front of goal, there’s no excuse for the complete lack of game plan when the scores were levelled.

These are things that Arsenal can and should be doing their utmost to control.

That they’re not makes defeats of this nature so easy to predict. The players may have been shocked with how the game turned out, but I can guarantee that not a single Arsenal fan was.

This has become our new normal, and Arsenal need to wake up and acknowledge that it’s their’s, too.