Paul Merson says that Mikel Arteta has to return to making Arsenal harder to beat just as he did when he became the manager of Arsenal initially.
The Gunners were tough to break down when Arteta was first named their manager and he was able to win the FA Cup and the Community Shield for them in August.
They have now become softer at the back and that has seen them become easy to beat.
With new signings, Arteta has expectedly made some changes to his tactics, but they haven’t worked so far and Merson says that he simply has to go back to when things were working.
He says that Arteta can forget about impressing and instead get on with the job by bringing back the style of play that help him win trophies.
He can understand that Arteta wants to impress because he is new as a manager in the game and that is probably making him shy away from negative tactics even if they bring results.
‘Of course, confidence isn’t great at Arsenal and that can play a major part. Man United look a different team with confidence, but Arteta needs to go back to what brought Arsenal success – the tactics against Man City in the FA Cup semi-final, the game against Chelsea in the final,’ Merson said on Sky Sports via Mailsport.
‘They need to go back to that way of playing, but he’s in a position now as a young manager new in the game, he feels he needs to keep impressing.
‘He has to go back to being hard to beat, using pace on the counter-attack. At the moment, it feels like Arteta is shying away from using what are seen as negative tactics and is focused more on trying to entertain – it’s no good.
‘Leeds are like the old Arsenal of the past eight or nine years. Arsenal didn’t win anything but everybody loved them because you knew you would watch a good game.
‘Arteta needs to go back to what brought him success at the first time of asking. They beat a very good Man City team at the time and Arteta needs to show the players that video and get back to that.’