Arsenal 'lose it' on and off the pitch

Thierry Henry, on his own admission, "lost it'' and Arsenal lost it too, for the sixth time in their last seven away games in the Champions' League. The two events were intimately connected, for had his team snatched an undeserved draw in the last few minutes of Wednesday's game against Panathinaikos, the French striker would presumably not have felt any necessity to confront the Portuguese referee Vitor Melo Pereira in such brazen fashion and at such length.

The sustained abuse, captured graphically by television and press pictures, and only interrupted eventually by Arsenal's manager Arsène Wenger and a Greek policeman, could still result in retrospective punishment – even though initial reports last night suggested, astonishingly, that the referee had made no mention of the incident in his official report.

Henry, who had been incensed by the Greek players' acting ability in the dramatic amphitheatre that was the Apostolos Nikolaidis Stadium said: "I lost it a bit. It was too much. I said to the referee, that if you let people do that, you won't have a game of football any more. I used to dive myself, but since I came to England I realised that's not football.''

Significantly, however, Henry also seemed to realise that Arsenal supporters who have paid thousands of pounds to follow the club on their travels to the continent were less concerned with the opposition's antics than their own team's increasingly feeble performances in successive 1-0 defeats to Bayern Munich, Valencia, Real Mallorca and now Panathinaikos.

While the players lay back in the first class section of their charter flight back to England, fans queuing at Athens airport were expressing the opinion that if Henry and some of his colleagues had shown half as much passion during the game as he did at the final whistle, Arsenal's chances of now reaching the second phase would be rather brighter. "The most upsetting thing was that we didn't play,'' Henry admitted. "In the first half we were just waiting for them to score. That's the only thing that can happen if you just wait – you will concede a goal.''

Wenger, having shaped the tactics, was not prepared to put it that bluntly. But for some time, Arsenal seemed to have approached these games like old fashioned European Cup matches over two legs, in which a 1-0 away defeat is not considered a bad result.

Prospects of going through this time with Panathinaikos, who have won all three games, were not helped by Mallorca's victory away to Schalke, which gives the Spanish side six points with a home game against the demoralised Germans next. Arsenal must clearly win the return against the Greeks in three weeks' time and then defeat Mallorca at Highbury. They will quite probably then need to win the final game away to Schalke, which will not be achieved by a performance as timid as Wednesday night's.

Match statistics giving Arsenal 13 shots to the home team's four, and 10 corners to four made a nonsense of the game, reflecting only the sense of desperation that went into yet another futile late rally. As in Mallorca, Francis Jeffers had two late chances, though on this occasion the first brought a good save and the second would have been ruled out for a push by the mostly anonymous Patrick Vieira.

Whether or not Henry is punished, the Uefa delegate will have noted the announcement requesting Panathinaikos fans not to throw any more missiles at Arsenal supporters. The Apostolos Nikolaidis is such an intimidating venue that the club will not want any future European games moved elsewhere. Greece would seem to have missed a trick in not taking on England there last June.