Arsenal’s yoyo season continues as Mikel Arteta tries to rebuild an Arsenal side that seems to have lost it’s consistency and confidence. We are currently on a downturn with just one win in our last six competitive matches, and if you look at the next six matches on the calendar coming up it will not be easy to change without a massive injection of belief.
The Gunners squandered the chance to take a lead into the return fixture against Benfica due to the failure of our strikers to put the ball in the net, despite us dominating the game, and it was even worse against Man City, where we only generated one shot on target despite being behind to an early sucker-punch goal in the first two minutes.
The ex-Arsenal star Paul Merson watched that game, and he lamented the lack of belief and felt that Arteta’s side were “out of their depth”, and he really can’t see us having any chance of climbing back up the table until Arteta has finished his “rebuild job”, which he thinks could take “a long, long time”…
Merson told SkySports: “I can’t see Arsenal doing anything between now and the end of the season to get into the top four.
“I played at Arsenal for a good number of years a long time ago and it is just a phenomenal football club. It’s a Rolls Royce of a football club but when you look where they are now, it’s just hard to watch.
“Man City used to be a million miles away and talk about turning things on its head, they are so far ahead of Arsenal. The only thing that can give you hope if you are an Arsenal fan is that you can watch City and think things can turn around.
“I was so disappointed yesterday. It’s so easy for me to sit and say Arsenal should have had a right go at Man City because I know you can end up losing 4-0 or 5-0, and then it looks an awful result. But if you look at Arsenal’s performance, they looked out of their depth and that was really worrying.
“When they got to 75 minutes and were only a goal down, they had to have a right go. But it looked like the players just didn’t have that belief. It seems a long time ago now and it was a long time ago that Arsenal had that. They had that fear factor for teams playing them. I found it a really hard watch.
“It’s probably now time to focus on the Europa League for Arsenal, but they’d do well to win that with the way things are going. There are some really good teams in that competition – some good English teams as well.
“It’s a real massive rebuild job at the Emirates Stadium and I think it’s going to take a long, long time. That’s unless they’ve got some money from somewhere and they have a right go, but we’ve seen Chelsea have a right go and look where they are. We are talking about whether they will get in the top four and that was a lot of money, so there are no guarantees.
“It’s a really hard one to take for Arsenal at the moment.”
I don’t normally listen to Merson, as he always seems to have a negative attitude to the Arsenal, but it is hard to find fault with his comments on this one. In fact, he sounds like a typical Arsenal fan, full of foreboding.
But I think he could be totally right this time around.
What do you think?