Andrew Fifield / On The Premiership: Arsene Wenger has long been hailed as a saviour by Arsenal fans but now he will have to prove himself a salvager.

The Gunners' stuttering season lurched dangerously close to disaster on Saturday when they meekly exited the FA Cup at Bolton, but perhaps the most worrying aspect of this latest humbling was that hardly anyone batted an eyelid. It was almost as if Arsenal were expected to lose.

Wenger used to be the picture of serenity on the sidelines but now - flustered by defeat - he is a walking tantrum. Sympathy will be in short supply. Crashing giants make for morbidly compelling spectacles and Arsenal's decline has been sharper than most. Two seasons ago, it was difficult to envisage Wenger's team being beaten in any match. Now, losing has become a dangerous habit. Saturday's reverse at the Reebok Stadium was their eighth away from home this season, although it was the craven manner of the defeat which will have stung most of all.

We have become spoiled by Arsenal's breezy, exuberant football under the Frenchman but the care-free cavaliers which regularly lay waste to opponents at Highbury have been rendered bizarrely impotent once they leave their cosy north London enclave. One of the season's most extraordinary statistics is that Arsenal have scored just seven away Premiership goals all year - two less than Sunderland and 14 less than Manchester United.

Their 1-0 loss at Everton 10 days ago typified the malaise. Once the home side had forged ahead, Arsenal's last remaining dregs of confidence simply drained away, reducing them to the sort of pretty but pointless passing that always characterises their game when their self-belief has been dented.

Saturday's setback was not quite as meek, but it was hardly unexpected given the sweeping changes Wenger made to his team for the trip north. The cynics will observe that Arsenal are hardly in the position to pick and choose their competitions this season. Wenger's side have already been ejected from the League Cup and progress in the Champions League can hardly be assumed with Real Madrid awaiting in the last 16.

But Wenger has a point when he claims that, for Arsenal at least, a top-four Premiership finish matters more than progressing to another FA Cup final. This would be true in most seasons, but Champions League qualification has an added urgency this year because in August the club will finally move to their new home at Ashburton Grove.

The Emirates Stadium has been built at a cost of £300 million and the annual interest payments on Arsenal's newly-accrued debts are around £15 million.

That sort of cash can only be generated from regular, and lengthy, participation in the Champions League, which explains why Wenger's worry-lines are growing deeper with every week that his side fail to close the gap on fourth-placed Tottenham.

It is true that Arsenal are a side in transition, but their timing is lousy. The travails of Leeds United, another club who gambled recklessly on sustained involvement in the Champions League, are still fresh in the memory and while nobody is suggesting that Arsenal are about to plummet into the Championship, the spectre of financial ruin hovers menacingly above the shiny girders of Arsenal's new 60,000-capacity home.

All of which presents Wenger with the biggest challenge he has faced at Arsenal. When he arrived, the Gunners were not even the best club in London, let alone the Premiership. The transformation in their fortunes relied on a very simple formula: keeping the best of the old Arsenal, namely their defence, but lacing that with a clutch of bright young things plucked from obscure corners of the continent. Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Robert Pires were all rescued from relative obscurity and duly became lynchpins of the swashbuckling side which emerged from the 2003/2004 season without a single blemish on their league record.

Wenger is hoping the tactic works again. Arsenal may be walking a financial tightrope but that has not stopped their manager from acting like a crazed shopper in the January sales, with all the new arrivals bearing his hallmark. Vassiriki Diaby and Manuel Adebayor are strong, athletic players in the Vieira mould but it is Theo Walcott who provides a shaft of light in the gloom. The striker has the touch, technique and temperament of a player twice his age and under the tutelage of Wenger he will surely flourish.

The only thing Walcott needs is time but, as luck would have it, that is also the one commodity Wenger lacks. A campaign which promised so much has turned horribly sour and it is extraordinary to think that Arsenal will turn to a 16-year-old in order to save it.

Wenger has never before failed his supporters but he has also never faced such a vast challenge. His reputation, as well as Arsenal's season, is on the line.