Gary Megson was a broken man. Shattered and deflated, the Bolton Wanderers manager emerged from the dressing-room after this match resembling someone who had just discovered that he would be flying to Baghdad from Heathrow’s Terminal 5. It was hard not to feel sorry for him as he tried to come to terms with what had just happened.

In 28 mad minutes his team had imploded, thrown away a two-goal lead against ten men and wasted a golden opportunity to stay in touch with the pack of teams who are climbing away from the relegation zone. Unless something dramatic happens, Bolton are going down, but come what may, Megson’s players will never forget the dark, wet afternoon at the Reebok Stadium when they ran Arsenal ragged for an hour and ended up on the losing side.

“There needs to be a period of reflection about what we have done,” Megson said. “I have never had a turnaround like that in my managerial career.”

If Arsenal had blown Bolton away after the interval by scoring three spectacular goals, Megson might not have been so distraught, but all Arsène Wenger’s team had to do to win for the first time in six league matches was to keep the ball and wait for Bolton to press the self-destruct button.

Down to ten men after Abou Diaby had been sent off for a vicious first-half tackle on Gretar Steinsson and trailing to two goals by Matthew Taylor, Arsenal were down and out until William Gallas ghosted in at the far post to reduce the deficit in the 62nd minute. Then Bolton fell apart, disintegrated, surrendered, rolled over and gave up.

Gary Cahill conceded a penalty by lunging at Alexander Hleb – Robin van Persie made no mistake from the spot – before a comedy of errors in the dying seconds ended with the ball ricocheting off Andy O’Brien and Jloyd Samuel and trickling past Ali Al Habsi, the goalkeeper, into the Bolton net. “They were very physical in the first half, but I believe that our technical ability made the difference,” Wenger said. “We needed the win because when you don’t win for a while, it plays on your mind.”

If drawing four matches and losing to Chelsea had been keeping Wenger up at night, the mind boggles at how Megson must be coping after watching his team lose six of their past seven league matches. Contrary to popular opinion, Bolton are not a bad team and they have plenty of players who deserve to play in the top flight, but on Saturday they could not cope when Wenger sent on Emmanuel Adebayor and Theo Walcott in the second half.

“We are not going to become Real Madrid overnight,” Megson said. “We only have two choices – pack it in or roll our sleeves up and have a right good battle.”

How they rated

Bolton Wanderers (4-1-4-1): A Al Habsi 6 G Steinsson 5 G Cahill 5 A O’Brien 6 J Samuel 5 I Campo 7 E-H Diouf Y 7 G McCann 6 D Guthrie 6 M Taylor 7 K Davies Y 6
Substitutes: N Hunt (for Guthrie, 77min), S Giannakopoulous (for Diouf, 77), G Rasiak (for Hunt, 80).
Not used: I Walker, T Cohen.
Next: Aston Villa (a).

Arsenal (4-4-2): M Almunia 6 K Touré Y 5 W Gallas 6 P Senderos 6 G Clichy 5 A Hleb 7 M Flamini 7 F Fàbregas Y 6 A Diaby R 2 R van Persie 6 N Bendtner 5
Substitutes: T Walcott 7 (for Senderos, 59min), E Adebayor 7 (for Bendtner, 59), J Hoyte (for Van Persie, 90).
Not used: J Lehmann, E Eboué.
Next: Liverpool (h).