Under floodlights at Anfield, on the evening of Tuesday April 21, 2009, Arsenal's record signing Andrey Arshavin scored all four goals in a stupendous performance against Liverpool.
By the summer of 2013, Arshavin's north London odyssey was over. At its end, his return to Russia felt like a forlorn formality—the slow death of a dream finally come to pass.
To define the legacy of Arshavin's Arsenal career remains as enigmatic a proposition as the man himself. Some would have him as a genius the club failed to exploit, others as a mentally frail player whose distractions cost him the career his talent was capable of.