By Boris Mellor
December 8 2020

There is no longer any mystery at Arsenal as to what has gone wrong.

Yes Partey is a big miss and Xhaka should be gone. Yes the squad is not that well balanced and we need better players, but nonetheless we should be higher than 15th with a GD of -4. This is not gradual decline and if its not turned around very quickly we will be in the relegation zone rather than just above it..

The Festival of Crossing

The cause is very simple, Arsenal are not scoring enough goals. November's goal of the month only had one Premiership goal in it from (sort of) open play. December has started on a blank.
This is not an accident it flows from Arteta's game plan. He wanted to build team around Auba, ok and fair enough, so why sling in loads of, in the main poor, crosses. And even when they are, rarely, decent Auba could head a bag of manure if it was a foot away.
If we are going to play this kind of football we shouldn't have let Giroud go, or we better get an old fashioned English CF very quickly.

The definition of, some kinds, insanity is to keep on repeating the same actions over again and again in the hope of a different outcome. Its not going to happen, it didnt work for Moyes and it wont work for Arteta
Either Arteta changes the game plan, or miraculously it works on Sunday, if not he has to go.
If Edu et al  cant bring themselves to sack him they will have to go and the club get itself a proper manager. You wouldnt give a three year old a massive electric train set and expect much to happen, and you can't give a club the size of Arsenal to a greenhorn.

It may be that Arteta is the dupe here, that he has been misled here by Edu et al, but I can't believe they have come up with the festival of crossing we have endured since we won the FA cup. Who was responsible for the Thomas Partey affair? The medics? Partey? Arteta? All three? We can wonder on but the buck has to stop somewhere, that somewhere has to be the manager.

The club is a like a rabbit in the headlights, it can't act because its already got rid of two managers in the last few years (not counting caretakers) and Arteta will be the third. Perhaps sacking a third is an index of the incompetence of senior management, they will feel exposed. Lets not hear any old Bow Locks about the Arsenal Way (like sacking Gunnersaurus, thats the Arsenal way now) a club not far from us has sacked more managers in the last few years than I have had hot dinners and still has a room full of trophies.

I really like Arteta, I loved him as a captain, he has moral courage, I loved his FA cup win and celebration, true he's is not a great dancer but who cares. Nonetheless its time for decisive action.