Perhaps inevitably, with Torreira out in Uruguay for his national team, we have him talking to the national Uruguayan press and in the early hours of this morning we got some translated snippets of him echoing the words of his agent.

Quite often you find the agent playing the ‘bad guy’ so the player doesn’t have to risk to wrath of the club and fans when it comes to transfer speculation. The club passes agent talk off as exactly that and the player can pretend he hasn’t authorised any such negative comments.

But Torreira’s comments come about a week after his agent has spoken and there’s clearly a desire for him to move on. What isn’t clear is whether Torreira just doesn’t like England, or whether he is using the current situation at Arsenal as a smokescreen. Personally I suspect a little of both, but the fact that it is even a little of the latter, once again tells me that we have the wrong man managing our football team.

Does anybody actually want to play for Arsenal any more?

Torreira clearly doesn’t.

Granit Xhaka probably doesn’t and will most likely go in the January window or at least in the summer.

Bellerin’s got his agent making noises about being in Italy as that appeals to him.

Lacazette and Aubameyang haven’t signed new deals and look like they’re hedging their bets.

Özil wants to be at Arsenal, but you can bet your bottom dollar he wants that to be an Unai Emery-less Arsenal.

This is farcical. We have a manager who the players aren’t completely putting their bodies on the line for (in my opinion), who don’t really understand the instructions that they’re being given from him (that video of him shouting “CALM!” Repeatedly, with Joe Willock looking bemused in the background is a case in point”, plus a bunch of players who are making noises about their future.

I’m going to back Emery and I want him to sort this out starting this weekend. I want him to win the next four games. But I also want him to put square pegs in square holes. Under Wenger I often complained that he’d play players in their wrong positions and it was frustrating at times. But it feels like Emery has taken it up a notch since he took over and specifically this season.

We all talked about last season it not fully being an “Emery” side. Well this side is. And it’s got worse! Despite the fact that we all agree on paper that he’s got a better squad with more balance than last season in terms of positions. The problem is he doesn’t play that balance by putting the right players in those bloody positions!

What a mess. I am just crossing everything that the players can drag us out of this current mire by dropping a few big performances in the next few weeks but, if we’re all honest, how many of us expect that to happen given what’s gone on this season?

It’s time to get behind the team as we have an important game at home to Southampton at the weekend, but unless we see some signs of the green shoots of recovery now, we should be looking at who else is out there. And the capable manager name list is getting bigger. So we need to be very mindful of that as well as some of the big names in football and how they’re potentially going to look for a big summer move. There’s a piece in the Athletic that talks about rumours of Guardiola potentially wanting to move on, of the Bayern job up in the summer, etc. If we are fighting for the top teams for the best managers in the summer then we will lose because the last couple of years have shown us to be a declining force.

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee Arsenal. Before it’s too late.

Catch you guys tomorrow. I promise it’ll be more about Southampton and the match than about bleating on about Emery.

Maybe. 😉