There can be no more excuses when Arsenal face Newcastle United

Defeat for Arsenal is unthinkable and so should another draw

Arsenal is now at crunch time, there is a very strong possibility that fifth will be good enough for the Champions League following the ban imposed on Man City and Arsenal simply must take advantage of the opportunity that has now presented itself.

But more than that, it is no longer tenable that Arsenal keeps on dropping points, six wins out of 25 games is not acceptable for a club the size of Arsenal.

Mikel Arteta has had long enough now, he has been in charge nearly two months, there have been seven Premier League games that he has taken charge of and one win from seven is poor, despite the circumstances.

There have been a lot of positives since Arteta took charge but winning games is not one of them.

There have been 13 points left on the table, think about that for a minute, Chelsea is ten points ahead of Arsenal in fourth, the loss of those points has been significant.

That tells me that a decent run of wins strung together would see Arsenal fly up the table and when you look at the players we have, Aubameyang, Lacazette, Pepe, Ozil, Ceballos, Xhaka, Torreira, Leno etc it is just incomprehensible that the team keeps dropping points.

This is not about Arteta, the board or even the players but all of them combined, they all have to be held responsible if the lads do not win today, they all have to answer for the failings.

Arteta has to take responsibility, he is the manager, the players cannot hide behind the manager any more and the board cannot keep getting away with not backing managers.

There cannot be any more excuses for failure.