Morning folks. Welcome to Christmas week. It’s the holiday season for me now; a good two week’s off work and I couldn’t be happier about that. It has also given me an opportunity to wake up on the right side of the bed as far as Arsenal are concerned. I mean don’t get me wrong, every time I think of our current situation I get an uncomfortable knot in my stomach, but I’m just trying to not think about it for a few days.

And in a way the fact there is a League Cup game tomorrow gives me the opportunity to worry about it less. That’s because we’re playing serial winners of the competition in Man City and we will almost certainly lose tomorrow, so I’ve kind of made peace with it. But the fact that it’s on and hopefully will give another audition to some other players in the squad, I think that is giving me some kind of weird comfort, almost in the hope that one or two players can show up and show Mikel that he doesn’t have to waste too much more time on any more chancers that are currently nicking a living in the first team. That feels like it could be a bonus. Let’s have the likes of Nelson, Martinelli (maybe from the bench), Emile Smith-Rowe, maybe as Arseblog has said this morning William Saliba, all getting some game time. If they perform against one of the best teams in the country, then surely they can perform away to Brighton next week, right?

To me that sounds eminently sensible. I’ve seen so many people say that chucking in all the kids could be bad for them in the league, but some of those young players have picked up results in Europe and if they played and played well tomorrow evening – regardless of the result – then perhaps it will give Mikel more confidence to change it.

He does need to though. I thought a couple of games ago he’d been given up enough rope to some of these players this season and now their performances have proven they can’t get us out of this current hole, so why don’t we just start bedding in some of these players? Remember when Iwobi first burst on to the scene? I remember a stellar performance away to Barcelona and also at Everton. Why can’t we see that from Smith-Rowe? Starting tomorrow and then maybe on Boxing Day. Let’s have it. We need to see if his body can handle it and I hope that Mikel is looking at this game tomorrow as the opportunity for an audition.

One things for sure; I don’t think any of us will be sad to see the back of someone like Willian from the first team. That first half against Everton was literally like a player taking his money and seeing out his final years without a care in the world. Walking around, making the easy pass so he could stat pad, it was horrible. The signing – one which I wasn’t sure of from the start – has been a disaster and unfortunately you have to look at Edu for this one. Mikel wanted Willian and so sure, he needs to take some blame, but that deal smacks of Raul and Edu and their cosy relationship with Kia ‘one more payday’ Joorabchian. My hope is that the period in time in which the gravy train was open for Kia to feast has now closed its carriages, that it was a short window in time and that we can start to move past that unfortunate period in which Raul played with somebody else’s money in the shape of Arsenal. We will be paying for it for a while because of the likes of Mari, Cedric and Willian and their contracts, but as we approach the January window the hope is that when Kia does show his face at Colney, he’s given short shrift.

The only problem is that Edu, who you have to say is one of the culpable figures, is still around. My desire is that Edu knows his cards are marked if he is welcoming Joorabchian into the club with open arms and that when he aligned himself with Arteta to save the chop earlier this year, he also did it knowing that the cosy relationship with Kia might have to be kicked in to touch. We’ll just have to wait and see on that one.

At least we are being given intel from the likes of Ornstein that Arsenal will be spending this January to get ourselves out of this pickle. I get what people have been saying about not giving money to the currently regime, but we are basically in a position where we need some kind of injection of creativity and we also need to see changes. If we persist with Ceballos, Elneny and Xhaka for much longer then we’ll come to the point of no return in terms of our season, league form and even the threat of relegation. So an Arshavin-style shot in the arm of Arsenal is probably what we need. It won’t solve all the problems, but if it gives us enough just to get a few wins to get us away from the relegation spaces, then so be it. I have already given up on this season. The objective is simply to avoid relegation and get ourselves back into mid-table, waiting until the summer, when we can trim so much of the fat from this team it’ll be like an overnight liposuction procedure.

I’m ok with waiting until the real Big Reset. June 2021. The culling of so many – like those I mentioned yesterday – so we can go again and start the proper rebuild of this great football club.

Catch you all tomorrow.