The underwhelming rollercoaster that has been Denis Suarez's half season at Arsenal took another dip on Monday.
It wasn't so much that he wasn't in the squad that was remarkable, even though this was a game when Unai Emery had planned to shuffle his pack. No, what was noticeable about Suarez's absence from the squad that made the journey to Vicarage Road was that it went by almost entirely without comment.
football.london understands that a minor groin injury curtailed the Spaniard's involvement over recent matches, though it should be noted that it has not been so severe as to appear on the detailed pre-match team news bulletins that Arsenal provide.
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More often than not it has been tactical reasons rather than fitness issues that have explained Suarez's absence from Emery's plans.
That it was the Arsenal head coach that fought so hard to get Suarez on loan from Barcelona in the first place only makes it all the more remarkable how swiftly the sole January addition has slipped into the background at London Colney.
A total of 95 minutes is all that Suarez has managed in an Arsenal shirt, not a single one of them coming as a starter. With the margins so razor sharp in the Premier League top four race it is hard to envisage how that changes before his loan spell comes to an end. Even Kim Kallstrom got one start.
However it appears that the more Emery sees of Suarez the less he wants to play him. The most minutes he has played for Arsenal in a single game was in his debut, 24 dead-rubber minutes off the bench in a 3-1 defeat against Manchester City.
Since then it has been a precipitous decline in chances to impress. First 16 minutes against BATE Borisov in the first leg of the Europa League round of 32, then 12 in the second. Against Manchester United he was on the pitch for just 10 minutes, making just three passes.
There were bright moments in that mid-season friendly against Al Nasr but then again that was also the case for young striker Tyreece John-Jules and he has hardly become a staple of the first time since.
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Still it is surprising how cutthroat Emery has been with Suarez.
Emery had campaigned vigorously for a player who he insisted, publicly and privately, could solve Arsenal's most significant problem position: winger. However he lacks the pace and ball-carrying ability of an Alex Iwobi or much in the way of goal threat.
A more harsh assessment might be that he is the sort of flighty, elegant but inessential inside forward that has been Arsenal's stock trade for a decade. With Mesut Ozil having improved and Henrikh Mkhitaryan briefly hitting a purple patch earlier this year there has simply been no need for Suarez.
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Similarly his cause has no been aided by Emery coming up with a rather different solution to Arsenal's problems with width. The 3-4-1-2 that looks to be Emery's default plan for the run-in ticks numerous boxes: allowing Ozil, Aaron Ramsey, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette to play in their natural positions, adding another body to a rickety defence and freeing up Sead Kolasinac and Ainsley Maitland-Niles to push on.
It is also a system that has no room for Suarez at all.
As such it seems eminently possible that Suarez will never be seen in an Arsenal starting lineup. Indeed it might not be beyond the realms of possibility that a player Emery declared ready to start last month may not play another minute this season.
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As football.london reported last month, no formal decision has been made on whether to activate the £18million clause in the loan agreement with Barcelona that would make Suarez a permanent signing. In all likelihood there isn't a particular need to formally communicate what has been apparent for a while.
Perhaps Arsenal's doubts were apparent when they spent most of January fighting off Barcelona's attempts to make the option clause into a purchase obligation. It does not say that much about your conviction in Suarez's talent if you are prepared to delay a deal that could have been swiftly completed early in the month so that you aren't bound to keep him after the end of the season.
Ultimately the Arsenal hierarchy have been vindicated in their approach and Suarez's strange sojourn in the Premier League looks certain to end as soon as possible.
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