It is Arsenal’s lot in the Champions League to put on a creditable performance at the home of the best team in Europe, having already as good as conceded the tie in the first leg. Hashtag: pointless.

They won here a year ago when it didn’t matter, and on Tuesday night got a very creditable draw, finally scoring an equalising goal three minutes after Bayern Munich had gone ahead to make it 3-0 on aggregate.

It looked decent on paper and the record books will show a rare failure for Munich on home turf, yet those who bore witness will surely agree that this was a largely superficial exercise.

Arsenal started the night two goals adrift overall, and ended it the same way, and while Munich were never completely comfortable, neither were they greatly distressed.

They should have won the match in injury time when Thomas Muller had a penalty well saved by Lukasz Fabianski, capping a fine display.

In other good news, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was very impressive, the defence resilient bar one fatal lapse, and Arsenal did not walk on to a thrashing chasing the game, as some had feared.

Yet those who believed this largely an academic exercise were not wrong. Arsenal never came close to completing what had been tagged Mission Impossible, and there were no pyrotechnics and few heart- stopping stunts to keep the crowd entertained.

The twin highlights were Fabianski’s save and the energy of Oxlade-Chamberlain that trapped centre half Dante into collecting a booking within eight minutes.

Unfortunately, Arsenal never seemed greatly committed to getting him into those same attacking positions in the rest of the match, meaning Dante played out the rest of the game unworried.

He will miss Bayern’s quarter-final first leg, but had he gone from the game here it might have been a different match. Arsenal missed the opportunity to truly test his nerve.

It says much that they only scored once the tie was dead. At 3-0 down on aggregate with 35 minutes remaining at the home of a club who are 20 points clear in the Bundesliga, even the most diehard Arsenal fans would have struggled to conjure much optimism.

Even when Lukas Podolski equalised it appeared little more than window dressing. Arsenal can claim a draw away in Munich; but they cannot claim to have greatly troubled the European champions; and that was supposed to be their mission.

And so, English football has one down with three to go, and Manchester City trailing at Barcelona up next. It doesn’t get any easier, does it?

Still, from Arsene Wenger’s perspective, a degree of pride was restored after heavy defeats at Liverpool and Manchester City this season.

Arsenal did not go down by five or six, chasing the game, and kept Munich at arm’s length until the 55th minute, when a defence that had until then been so alert strangely forgot to put the alarm on.

Arsenal had resisted well until that point, but this was just poor, Franck Ribery allowed to almost meander into Arsenal’s penalty area, before squaring the ball to an equally unmarshalled Bastian Schweinsteiger, who turned it past the helpless Fabianski. A few minutes later, Arsenal were level, and Bayern furious.

Podolski hustled Philipp Lahm, who fell under the force of his push. Referee Svein Oddmar Moen of Norway should have given a foul but instead waved play on, and Podolski cut inside to strike a shot from an angle into the roof of the net.

It was an outstanding finish, even if Munich’s wild protests appeared justified.

The rest of the game, however, played out exactly as expected, with Arsenal never threatening to score a second and make a spectacular finish. Indeed, it was Bayern who should have snatched victory at the last.

Arjen Robben had already made some ugly attempts to win a penalty — including one that should have earned a yellow card were those useless officials behind the goal good for anything beyond obscuring the view — so who knows what was going through Laurent Koscielny’s mind as he made several clumsy attempts to nick the ball off him from behind, while steering Robben away from goal.

A clip to the ankle and a little shove did it eventually, Robben collapsed in a heap and Moen pointed to the spot.

Muller stepped up, hit it straight, Fabianski dived right but somehow kept his feet at the centre of goal and stopped the ball, spinning, on the line. He recovered just in time to scoop away as Muller sought to recover from his error.

It made for a flicker of late drama but the truth is the action was supposed to occur at the opposite end.

Yet Arsenal did not really come close to springing a surprise on the team who now stand five games from being the first to retain the Champions League.

The form of record signing Mesut Ozil, meanwhile, is a growing concern. As good as Oxlade-Chamberlain was, so Ozil was poor.

Compared to his earliest form, there are Skodas left over from the last century that are not deteriorating as fast as the player slated to transform Arsenal’s season.

He enjoyed a brief fillip against Everton in the FA Cup on Saturday but in the matches where Arsenal are looking to him — the key Premier League fixtures and in Europe — he is too often nowhere to be seen.

The official line on Tuesday night was that he came off at half-time with a slight hamstring injury, but it is hard to believe how he could have stretched any of his inner workings enough to pull one.

In the time Ozil was on the pitch, Arsenal mounted only one attack of note, his corner met by Olivier Giroud, but with goalkeeper Manuel Neuer very much equal to the header.

Whether affected by his negative reception in a German shirt last week, or his penalty miss from the first match, it is hard to say, but Ozil moped around like a man who did not want to be out there.

Maybe that is why, after 45 minutes, he wasn’t. Neither were Arsenal, truth be told. Far from a mission, impossible or otherwise, this seemed more like a fixture commitment that needed to be honoured. And little more.

—Daily Mail