The shape of things to come by Neil Watson
Arsenal’s second match this week without Sánchez and Ozil from kick off and our attacking threat has been neglible.
Where once we would bemoan the lack of clinical finishing in a sea of countless chances we are now watching a side bereft of any quality in the final third in the two aforementioned players.
Jack brings a lot to our team but in all honesty he can’t be compared to any other player in a similar position in any of the other top 6 teams. Iwobi and Welbeck are even less effective in their positions and defensively Rob Holding and Calum Chambers are poor at best and prone to calamitous errors which paints a grave picture for the future.
The most worrying thing for me has to be the gulf that is evidently growing between ourselves and the genuine title challengers.
It would be no surprise to find ourselves 10 points off the 4th place (Arsene Wenger trophy position) by the end of February which would also put us nearly 20 points off City.
In May we will most likely find our squad without a single star player, a player that can unlock a fixture. We will have an abundance of mediocrity but that is exactly what teams like Everton, Palace, Southampton……The biggest problem is that we have too many of these players. We’ve bought too many nearly men or youngsters that haven’t made the grade or show no sign of ever reaching it.
The question is how many players are needed to transform our current squad of mediocrity into genuine title contenders? One keeper, one centre half, one holding midfield player, one creative attacking midfielder and a striker that can do something different and more regularly effective than Lacazette. The immediate problem is we simply do not have anywhere the allocated finances to buy that regardless of whether it exists. In today’s market we are realistically talking about an investment in one pre season of somewhere in the region of 300 million pounds.
Sadly I am unable to see past Europa league status for us for the foreseeable future at best.
Isn’t it going to be a terrible ending to Wenger’s time at Arsenal, a man who did so much for our club and then undid all his great work…
Neil Watson