Arsene Wenger surrendered his dignity but his team fight on.
He lost the plot, his head, his moral superiority but his team found their appetite for battle.
He will be in deep, hot water but his team’s title ambitions are still afloat.
He pushed the fourth official but his team pulled one out of the fire.
He tried to smile it away but Wenger’s behaviour was indecent, incandescent and inexcusable and the irony - not lost on Sean Dyche - is the one and only obvious officiating error gifted Arsenal an unlikely victory.
The touchline lay-off might do him good. Maybe he can watch Alexis Sanchez and learn how to keep cool.
With his dogs, Atom and Humber, making a guest appearance on an Emirates banner, Sanchez was once again Wenger’s pedigree chum.
Amidst the confusion, sound and fury, there was only one way Sanchez was ever going to convert the 98th minute penalty - with a quiet, featherlight, textbook Panenka.
From a strictly legal stance, it was rough justice for Burnley. Laurent Koscielny - whose late winner at Turf Moor earlier this season was handled - had inched offside before being caught by Ben Mee’s high-kicking foot.
Even the offence itself was strictly debatable but this was no undeserved triumph.
As even Sean Dyche conceded, even when they were numerically disadvantaged for half an hour, Arsenal still attacked, still committed men forward, still dripped attacking ambition.
They know no other way and, for that, should always be saluted.
Wenger’s teams are fun even when he’s not.
His latest bout of Cleese-like behaviour was probably born out of Granit Xhaka’s latest dismissal, his second of the season - both courtesy of Jon Moss - and his ninth in less than three years.
When it comes to controlling his aggression, Xhaka can’t.
It was a slightly harsh decision.
If anything, he appeared to be decelerating and grounding his boots when he made contact with Steven Defour.
But he had been spoiling for a bit of a ruck with Defour previously and, not for the first time, Wenger reiterated his displeasure at his indiscipline.
“He has to control his game and not punish the team with a lack of control in his tackling,” said a becalmed Wenger post-match.
Ahead of Xhaka’s familiar walk of shame, Arsenal were not strolling but were in control courtesy of Shkodran Mustafi’s first goal for the club, a header from a Mesut Ozil corner early in the second half.
Before the madness of the extra minutes, Ozil had been the peaceful, tranquil orchestrator of a decent Arsenal performance.
Whatever your take on his labour rate, his contract hiatus, his selfie stick, his dress sense, whatever, there can be no dissent when it comes to eulogising Ozil’s passing.
There is affection in every cushioned lay-off, every threaded defence-splitter, every chipped teaser. He strokes them like Sanchez strokes Atom and Humber.
The eventual replacement of Ozil betrayed late Wenger negativity and that backfired early in added time when Francis Coquelin felled Ashley Barnes with the clumsiness of a cold substitute.
Andre Gray despatched, Wenger departed and with him, it seemed, any lingering flight of fancy that his team might challenge for this season’s ultimate honour.
Yet Sanchez swung over a 98th minute cross, the offside Koscielny took Mee’s boot in the boat race and Arsenal’s ship sails on.
It was hard not to feel for Burnley and Dyche, deprived of a point in their two Arsenal encounters by slipshod, late governance.
This, though, was the sort of break Arsenal need if they are to maintain a challenge.
Wenger? He will be getting a break of a different sort. He probably needs it.