Paul Merson doesn’t believe Arsenal are getting better despite West Ham win.
Arsenal’s season isn’t getting any better despite the Gunners finally getting a win at the tenth time of asking, according to Paul Merson.
The Gunners have had to change managers but it seems that their problems are deeply rooted, and Merson believes they are suffering from a crisis of confidence.
Arsenal’s board allowed Unai Emery to manage the team for seven games without a win before they axed him, it seems the Spaniard has left the players lacking confidence so much so that they need a series of results to get some of that back.
Merson believes that Arsenal only beat West Ham because the Hammers are also in a crisis and they are not playing at their best at the moment.
Writing in his Sky Sports column Merson said,
“Arsenal’s win at West Ham papered over huge cracks at the club. Don’t let the late turnaround fool you, Arsenal are heading nowhere.
“I’ve never seen a game like it. It comes back to the same old thing – confidence, confidence, confidence. It sums up the situations Arsenal find themselves in at the moment, and West Ham for that matter.
“If you’re not winning football matches your confidence goes, it’s the worst feeling in the world. It doesn’t matter how good you are as a player, when the confidence goes, that’s it.
“When Arsenal turned to Freddie Ljungberg, they wanted him to come in and steady the ship. They would have thought ‘we’re not going anywhere, we’re not going to get relegated and we can save a few quid’.
“But, all of a sudden, a couple of dodgy performances and it’s panic stations. I just don’t know where they go next.”
Whether Merson makes a good point or not is sort of irrelevant, to be honest. If Arsenal went on a 20 game unbeaten run, made the top four and was still in the Europa League and FA cup, Merson would still be negative. That is how I view him these days.
But for a lot of people, he does make sense, they feel he is right in his assessment and they have a lot of time for him. I respect that, we all have pundits who we listen to and who we don’t.
Arsenal’s next game is in the Europa League against Standard Liege and hopefully, it will be another win ahead of the clash with Man City on Sunday.