It is often said that confidence is arguably the most important ingredient for a striker.

And it is well known that Nicklas Bendtner has it in spades.

The problem is he has never come near to delivering on the grandeur he witnesses in his own mind.

The fact that he has found himself sitting on the Arsenal bench this season is more a matter of circumstance rather than his manager Arsene Wenger being excited about giving another chance.

The Gunners have been trying to cut their losses for a couple of summers now, yet potential suitors have not been willing to take the Dane on a permanent basis. Perhaps that is the most telling fact. Most of his recent loan spells have been disappointments, especially his time at Juventus last season.

Bendtner has been trending on Twitter since last night's Capital One Cup defeat to Chelsea.

He's not trending in a good way either with fans slamming his performance and attitude, as well as taking jabs at his abundant self-belief.

There is no dressing it up. Bendtner had a poor game, although he was not the only Arsenal player to struggle against Jose Mourinho's counter-attacking machine last night.

But looking at the numbers might be the fairest assessment of his contribution in the red shirt last night.

During his 67 minutes on the Emirates pitch, he had the joint-second lowest pass completion rate of any of the 22 players that started last night.

He also struggled to get involved in the play, having less touches than any of last night's starters.

That is far from impressive and for a striker he only had one shot in the entire match. Then again, he was not the only player culpable in that regard as Arsenal returned to their habit of trying to walk the ball into the net.

Arsenal did not exactly play to some of his strengths either. While Bendtner won more balls in the air than any of Chelsea's players, the fact that the Gunners only put in two accurate crosses mean a potential asset was not tested (then again the Blues actually had fewer accurate crosses).

Does he deserve to be singled out? His very public confidence has certainly not helped as it is used as a stick to beat him with. One would imagine that Marouane Chamakh would get slightly less stick for putting in a similarly poor performance to last night.

What is certain though, is the fact that there will be no clamour to renew his contract when it expires this summer.