We heard from Mikel Arteta yesterday and I guess the first thing to be happy about is that Hincapie and Calafiori are back in training. I suspect that tomorrow will come too soon for them, although you never know with defenders and given that Hincapie has only been out a few weeks, his recency in match fitness might mean he makes his way back into the starting line-up.

I also think that with defenders, they tend to be able to be moved back into action a little quicker than attackers do, probably on account of the fact that there are more times in which they are not stretching those muscle sinuses as much as attackers might. If you think about the whole ‘rest defence’ thing – where teams deliberately set up in phases of play so they can control and rebuild whilst controlling possession – it kind of lends itself to the fact that defenders probably come back quicker than attackers. Big Gabi, for example, was brought on as a sub before Christmas for 20+ minutes, then he was in from the start the next game. That just doesn’t happen with a wide forward like Saka, for example.

Mikel Arteta was asked some questions about Arsenal’s form, about how Pep Guardiola has once again been singing our praises as the best team in the world right now and predictably, Arteta was thankful for the positivity, but equally magnanimous over the team and how we are playing. I think all of us are going out of our way to remind each other, rival fans, the media and pundits that we know that we haven’t won anything yet. Arteta, as the captain steering our Good Ship Arsenal leads that charge and narrative just as much as anyone. I think that’s because he, like we, know that it doesn’t take a lot to find yourself burned. We have seen that for a few seasons now and as a result, we all have our guard up when we get questions like that, or comments about the fact that the league is wrapped up. You only have to see City’s three draws and a defeat as an example of how things can swing, and Mikel Arteta will be acutely aware of this, especially given we’re on back-to-back draws ourselves. Lose tomorrow, or even draw, and it will feel like we might ourselves be in a little bit of a funk too.

And as I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, the nature of this United team being somewhat of an unknown quantity under Carrick, doesn’t help. Arteta admitted that planning for tomorrow has been somewhat altered as a result of the change; he doesn’t know what version Michael Carrick’s United are and one game is not a big enough sample size to be sure.

What I think we can all be sure of, though, is that United won’t come for us tomorrow. They’ll come to counter, they’ll have ways to hurt us for sure, but they will know we have the depth, we have talent, we are top of the league for a reason. We have to show it tomorrow. I said it yesterday, I’ll say it again and I’ll repeat tomorrow:

Don’t play the badge. Play the team.

I think we’ve got enough weapons to hurt them, we’ve got enough bench options, but it’s about us taking our chances. That’s something we didn’t do last Saturday, or the previous week against Liverpool.

That will fall on the attacking players, and Arteta was asked a few questions on Kai and Viktor on it, as you’d expect. He was complimentary on both, but also stressed that the club are taking their time with Kai’s return. I don’t think there was anything groundbreaking in what he said, but I do think it is interesting that when he was asked about Big Vik, he specifically referenced Kai, but that he could also play in a few attacking positions. I do think we are going to see a time this season when both are on the pitch; that may be because we are chasing the game, but the very fact these options now appear to be becoming available to the manager, as we reach the run in and the crunch point in the season, could be massive for us. I really hope it is.

I’ve been thinking about what we need to reach our ambitions between now and the end of the season with our three attackers. I really do think we probably need a minimum of 20 goals between all of them. If we’re assuming that Bukayo, Martinelli, Trossard et al will all also be on the scoresheet, having those three players getting six each at least should be what we hope for. And I think if we do manage that, I do think we will be picking up silverware. Midweek was a great confidence-booster for two out of the three attackers, but we need to now show that form domestically too. Starting tomorrow would go a long way.

And we still have a long way to go. It’s back to the slog that is the Premier League tomorrow, in which we’ll have to show a ruthlessness that hasn’t been there in our last two Premier League teams.

Time to do the business, Arsenal.

Back tomorrow with a match preview. See you then.

Having been pretty clear of most of the Champions League chasing pack all season, we suddenly find ourselves in a position where defeat to Newcastle on our own turf would mean that they leapfrog us in to second spot and would probably pip us to it on the final day. As I’ve mentioned and I’m sure you know too, second, third, fourth or fifth doesn’t really make a lot of different in terms of Champions League qualification these days; there’s no qualifying rounds and all you really get is a few extra million for finishing higher up the league table. But with Arsenal getting to the semi final of the Champions League, any position inside the top five doesn’t really matter because most of the money they get in prize winnings will be more significant for reaching the top four.

So it’s probably really for pride more than anything else that the players are playing this weekend. Our form of late has been patchy to say the least, in fact that’s probably quite generous. We haven’t won a game at home in all competitions since the Real Madrid tie on 8th April and in the Premier League we’re going back to the narrow 2-1 win over Fulham on 1st April to see us pick up all three points. When you couple with that the fact that Newcastle are in good form and will be buoyed with their form and a League Cup trophy making their season come across as very successful indeed, it makes for a somewhat worrisome fixture on Sunday.

That’s made even more concerning when you think that our midfield is going to have to be pretty makeshift for the game. No Merino through suspension, no Jorginho through injury, then news has been emerging since the Liverpool game that Rice might be out with a suspected hamstring injury. It’s not surprising; the guy basically plays every single game and with the injury issues we’ve had this season, the club a) can’t really afford to take too many gambles because knowing our luck we’ll fall on the wrong side of it, and b) because of the volume of injuries and therefore reliance on players to play more regularly, you’re going to put too much strain on certain players.

I certainly think this is something Arteta and his coaching staff are going to have to look at over the summer. This season has been crazy and with the extra games in the Champions League, the League Cup semi final and then getting to the same round of the competition for the Champions League, we have so many players who have not lasted the pace. I don’t know what ‘perfect rotation’ is, but Arsenal and Arteta need to think about upping the volume of rotation for next season I think.

Is that through getting better players in more positions that he trusts and will use? Maybe. There are players who it does feel like they’ve been criminally underused this season though. KT, when he’s played, has more than shown himself to be capable. Zinchenko has just 719 minutes and Jorginho has 1,453 across the whole season. Raheem Sterling we quickly learned was a busted flush in attack and he’s pieced together just over 1,000 minutes across the season. Then you have the likes of injury prone players like Tomiyasu (SIX minutes all season!) and Gabriel Jesus (1,200), which perhaps tells a bit of a story in itself around reliance on certain players that we probably shouldn’t have. Timber has been over played, but I think that is because of the Ben White injury and us finding MLS may have been a superb bit of fortune (and great work by Hale End to produce this kid) of timing, Calafiori getting injured a fair bit has been mitigated somewhat.

So I think for me our squad imbalance that I’ve heard people rightly talk about at times this season, has more to do with an expectation that some injury-prone players will actually play significant minutes. Personally I think you have to look for a Tomiyasu replacement in defence, a Gabriel Jesus replacement in attack and maybe you could argue that the Sterling replacement is Nwaneri. But even that feels like we’re still one or two names short of Arteta being more confident to undertake rotation.

The summer has to be a reflection point and a cold, hard, look at what went wrong this season. We’re a good team, well-coached, we have a good base of players, but aside from some of the cursed luck (Saka and Ben White hardly ever get injured, yet have missed a minimum of a third of a season) on injuries that we wouldn’t expect, as well as a few dodgy red cards (not this past weekend, mind), there has been something a little off all season. In the way in which we play in an attacking sense I certainly think Arteta will be looking to try to innovate in the summer. He sacrificed quite a lot for defensive stability over the last couple of season’s, but I think now is the time to rebalance the side’s impetus from defending to a balance of defensive solidity with risk-taking in attack. That’s my hopes for the summer, anyway, so let’s see what happens. Plenty more to be asid about that over time.

For now though I’m going to clock off and I’ll catch you all tomorrow. Be well.

But the challenges we’ve had in front of goal, the fact that we don’t seem to have many personnel solutions waiting in the wings to change things up, as well as the impact of being ostensibly out of the title race, have me not feeling as buoyant as I would have thought I would feel. There’s no ‘checking the watch to see what time the game is on’, there isn’t a ‘make sure I have social media feeds on between meetings today’ vibe. Heck, I haven’t even tried to re-arrange stuff to get me plenty of time to ‘settle in’ to the evening. I’ve got a 5pm meeting that finishes at 5.45pm in London before i head round a mates house to watch the game later.

It feels a little odd, if I’m honest, because this game tonight is going to be one in which our season hangs in the balance on. We are out of all domestic cups and we know we aren’t competing for the league, so this represents the only opportunity for silverware and that in itself makes for tough reading, when you think about our route to get there.

So I’m feeling a little low-key this morning as I write my preview thoughts. Perhaps it’s because of the league title stuff, perhaps it’s because we are traditionally pretty bad in Europe, perhaps it’s Arteta’s record in European knockout or perhaps it’s the fact that we once again look at our forward line and wonder where the goals are coming from?

I’m sure as soon as the team news comes out I’ll have the usual butterflies in the stomach, but right now, it’s all feeling a little muted.

So It’s on Arteta and those players to show me the error of my ways. That has to be with a lively performance, one with zip and movement, that shows that we have PSV’s number. The real pain point for me for the West Ham game was how slow we were; we’ve been like it for a lot of this season actually, which I know has cheesed off a few of my fellow Block Fivers in the ground on match days. The build up from the back was ponderous and many of us have speculated whether this is a deliberate approach to draw the opposition out to you so you can hit them front to back quickly if they are out of shape. That only works if you have the right amount of movement in the final third and so that’s what we need to see this evening.

We need some of the bigger characters in this team to step up. I’m looking specifically at Rice and Odegaard in this instance; Rice for his aggressive running and ground coverage, Odegaard for his final ball which if we can all be honest with ourselves, has been sadly lacking this season. He’s taken to those little chip balls over the top of late that i’ve seen in two or three games and sadly it has really come off. I’m not surprised though; elite football is played with such high-pace that if you are loop a little lob wedge like that over the top of a back line, nine times out of ten I think they are spinning and able to clear the danger. So what we need to see tonight is incision and precision in Odegaard’s distribution. Not Row Zedding his shots would also come in handy too, methinks.

I wrote a few week’s back about Trossard needing to step up and as one of the senior players you have to hope that too for tonight, because without him and Nwaneri providing service, I’m not sure Merino’s role is anything other than redundant in that false nine role. We need to see the Trossard that can beat a man and put a killer ball in like Leicester three weekend’s back, not the one who gets lost in amongst a sea of defenders, as has been the situation on a few too many occasions for my liking this season.

The hope is that we’ll get more space tonight than we usually do in the Premier League. PSV aren’t playing a Champions League knockout game, at home, under the lights, then giving their vociferous home fans a low block with two chances created all night. They will come at us and that will create space. What we need to do is find a way to exploit that space and I’m looking in the direction of that special 17-year-old we’ve got who will line up on the right wing this evening. If Ethan is in space, find him. Because if he can unlock, or draw out defenders to create space for others, then it is incumbent of the likes of an Odegaard, to find him.

PSV come into this game in a sticky patch of form too. They’ve had Ivan Perisic say he’s annoyed with how they played to Go Ahead Eagles at the weekend. They’re not flying in all comps and are in a similar place to us, except without the level of injuries we’ve got. So the hope has to be that we can quieten that home crowd down if we start well. And you have to feel like we need to start well and score first, to be honest, because as soon as we go a goal down at the moment you’re wondering where the goals are coming from. These players need something. They need something to go in off an arse, or an elbow, or a dodgy penalty, because the longer we go without scoring, the more it starts to feel like a ‘thing’ is bubbling under the surface.

Arteta has had the time to work with them for almost a week without a game. He’s had time to try new things out. Will he do that tonight? I’m not so sure. But an extra week of training with players in certain positions will hopefully give us a little more fluidity in our attack. We need it.

A new week also brings new football too, so rather than pour over that result – which I will say a few words about in a bit – I’d rather focus on the fact that us playing tomorrow night is a bit of a touch, really. Shaktar come to visit, Mikel will therefore speak to the press today, so hopefully we can put the bad taste of a defeat behind us.

It wasn’t the best of weekend’s though, given how City scraped a win with a contentious goal, Liverpool also winning, meaning we’ve fallen further behind them as a a title chasing duo and Villa’s win has put them level on points with us. It was a shoddy performance on Saturday, compounded by the penalty and my hope is that we will see consistency about decisions like that one to send Saliba off. I can kind of live with it being a red card, with the benefit for a couple of days to think about it; a shocking kick from Trossard for which I suspect he’ll have been a bit sheepish about on the coach journey home, then a clumsy challenge by Saliba and the game hits a game state that we’re all now becoming very familiar with. Three times in eight games is the sort of rub of the green that could cost titles and, had we have avoided those reds, I’m pretty sure we’d have at least six points instead of two right now as things stand today. Given how recently we saw the importance of every point (last season’s title chase down with City) in this league, being handicapped with a man less isn’t something that we want to making a regular occurrence. And especially when there is so much more of a game to play, which has happened in every one of our reds this season. Rice, Trossard and Saliba were all in the first half, meaning we had to play a lot of football with ten men. Last season Tomiasy was sent off against Palace on 67 minutes, meaning we had just over 25 to hold on to the points. The other sending off was at home to Burnley in which Fabio Vieira went off on 83 minutes, after we were 3-1 up, so a little less of a worry. This season each of those red cards have ultimately cost us points. We had to nip this in the bud somehow.

I did wonder whether I wanted to get drawn in to the debate re: Tosin and Jota from yesterday, because the positions on the pitch were very similar to the Saliba situation and Arne Slot referenced it in his post match press conference. It’s very ironic indeed that this has happened in such proximity to the Saliba outcome and at first I felt a little triggered after saying on social media that the Saliba red doesn’t happen to any other team. It felt like it at the time, but there is a second Chelsea player who looks very close to Tosin and so I can’t for sure say that it is a carbon copy of the decision. I still do feel like we are refereed differently but let’s face it, in the 30 minutes in which we started the game, we didn’t look great at Bournemouth as it was. We had a little more of the chances and a little more of the possession and touches in their box, but we didn’t look very cohesive to me and so I think Arteta will also be looking at how the team reacts after starting off the performance in the way they did.

We haven’t been very fluid so far this season at all. The defence has broadly (when 11 on the pitch) coped with the opponents we’ve been up against, but we haven’t exactly clicked repeatedly going forward yet. It all feels a little disjointed and ‘bitty’ at times to me. Southampton was fine at the back other than one moment in which they scored from their only chance. But until that point we’d struggled with our finishing. Leicester we were two up at halftime but it felt like it could have been five or six. The City game you have to view in isolation given the opponent and how we were down to ten men and in the game against the Scum we didn’t really create loads of clear-cut chances. Brighton we created chances before and after the red card but didn’t finish them off, Villa the same until later in the game and I thought Wolves at home looked a little laboured. So I do think that we are going to need to click in to gear soon if we don’t want to be cast adrift in this attempted title race. Some of it is down to the injuries and suspensions, I think, because we seem to have had to rotate in every single match already this season and it feels like we haven’t had a fully fit first team for ages. Timber, White, Tomiyasu, Calafiori, Zinchenko, Merino, Rice, Odegaard, Saka, Jesus, Martinelli – all of these guys have had games where they’ve been missing or suspended, which I suspect has had an impact to building those natural relationships back on the pitch again. But when you’re competing for the sorts of things we’re competing for, you can’t afford slow starts to seasons. I know the opponents have been quite tough so far and we’ve got another little death run already coming up with Liverpool, Newcastle and Chelsea on the horizon, so perhaps those games will naturally be a little tighter and chances are at a little more of a premium, but we need to find a formula of winning these games – and doing it without going down to ten men!

The Shaktar game tomorrow provides an opportunity to get a win on home soil before the Liverpool game against a Champions League opponent who lost their most recent outing in the competition 3-0 to Atalanta. That means we have the chance to get the winning feeling back and I hope Mikel is stressing the importance of that, because Liverpool will be rocking up feeling very confident given their current standing in the league and the fact they managed to dispatch Chelsea yesterday. Say what you like about their fixtures, but momentum in football is massive and there’s no doubt their start to the season has enabled them well; they will be coming to us with a bit of swagger about them, whereas we will still be licking our wounds a bit.

That’s it from me for today I think. Back tomorrow with a match preview. Catch you then.

Obviously I prefer it when it’s at home, but these days with the ability to ‘find ways’ to watch or listen to football anywhere, it’s less of an issue, although I think The Management prefers it less than the old days. Five or six year’s ago if it was a 3pm kick off away from home she’d say we needed to do shopping, or we had to pop out somewhere and instead of getting me saying “Nah, football’s on”, I’d oblige because I knew I just had to have my phone with me and keep an eye on the live text score from the BBC website or something similar. But these days it’s a “staying at home to watch it” jobbie and that’ll be me come 3pm this Saturday.

Until then we have the build up which begins in earnest tomorrow with Arteta’s press conference and all eyes will inevitably move to who is available for the trip to Lancashire. Hopefully we get some good news and some returnees. I’d like it if the club did some of the photographs of training where we get a little indication, but as we all know by now, chance would be a fine thing. The photo’s taken and released each week only ever show either youth players joining in training with the first team, or players that we already know are fine and fit. I guess if you wanted to you could argue that Saka came off and Arteta was asked about him on Sunday, plus we have Rice who a few people I saw on my socials said that he looked like he was limping a bit. So based on the training ground footage those minor question marks appear to be answered, but what we’re all hoping for glimpses of is the likes of Zinchenko, or ESR, to see if/what they are doing. Jorginho took a knock and was on the bench last Sunday, but the fact they were happy to have him on the bench shows that he was probably fine anyway.

And it’s not like Arteta will give us any update on any of the seven first team squad players who were out last weekend anyway. Well, he might give a shout out for Tomiyasu if he was just rested following the Asia Cup to get over his jet lag, but that’s about it really, I suspect.

Mind you, it’s not as if we needed those players for the result against West Ham, eh? Those that took to the field did a fine job indeed and when you bag that many goals in such a short period of time (we had got all six by the 65th minute), fatigue probably doesn’t impact as much. In fact I know it doesn’t; Paul Merson once aside – I think on Sky Sports’ Soccer Saturday – that when you win football matches and are winning well that you don’t feel it as much. Adrenaline is a short, sharp burst in to your body that helps you to quick act and go up a gear, so you can’t do that over a prolonged period of weeks. But I’m sure the mental side of winning helps to force your body to repair itself and be more ready for a game, so I’m sure that’s also what Merse was talking about all those year’s ago.

And after that hammering last week you’d better believe those players have been doing well in training this week I’d imagine. Let’s just hope that continues away at Burnley in just a couple of days time.

As another quick aside, Adrian Clarke’s piece on the official site about how we beat West Ham is a good one. I said on the Same Old Arsenal pod straight after the game that I thought it was interesting that we seemed to have nobody that truly adopted the centre forward, or even ‘false nine’ position when we played against West Ham and Adrian picks out the movement of the forward line in his analysis from the game. I’ve always loved Arsenal teams who are so fluid in attack. The best ones of the Wenger era used to move around a lot and often you’d find Bergkamp drop back along the midfielders, or Henry do the same and Pires/Ljungberg drift in to central attacking spaces. It is the hardest thing for a defender to do, to mark layers who are moving around so much. Do you follow the man you are detailed to stop? Or do you hold your position and have to deal with a different threat of player every couple of minutes? You often hear about substitutes getting on and needing time to get in to the rhythm of a game, but when you’re a player and you know the type of player you are up against, you adapt your game accordingly. If one minute you’re engaged in a physical battle with a big centre forward-archetype, then the next you’ve got a little guy who will wriggle around you as he likes to keep the ball at his feet, it has an impact on the way you approach a game. It means you have to constantly change your body shape of how you are going to deal with the threat in front of you and if you aren’t spot on with your decision making, then it fashions chances with the opponents.

This is why I hope we continue showing this variety between now and the season. It doesn’t mean we have to keep the same team all the time with the same players, but ensuring that we keep the opposition defenders guessing by having constant movement and rotation across the attacking players is important for creating space, I think. In fact the only person who didn’t move around as much as Saka, but he’s such a gem of a player that it doesn’t matter, as evidenced by his two goals and man-of-the-match award given to him by Sky last Sunday.

We’re in a rich vein of form right now and we need it to continue for the foreseeable future given some of the easier games City has, but if we continue to evolve tactically as we have done post-Dubai trip, then we’ll be in a good position to at least fight for this title.

Catch you all tomorrow.

And as we know, there are so many problems. Players are taking extra touches, the confidence appears to have drained from all of them, the wonderkids who bagged goal after goal last season have suddenly started thinking about it too much, with the upshot being mishit shots, taking too many touches, slowing down the play and generally allowing our opponents to take a defensive shape that enables more bodies in front of the ball and more chances to get blocks.

And we have to find a way to fix it. It won’t be in the transfer market. I want attacking options as much as you, but even if we had the money, expecting one player to come in and be a panacea would be naive. We’ve scored 37 goals all season. At this rate we’re trending to hit 70 goals. If we added a 20-goal-a-season striker then the best we could hope for is that they get nine or maybe ten, which might get us up to 80 but even that as a best case scenario would only be 80-odd goals at season-end. City and Liverpool will outscore that, so regardless of the FFP implications and the fact it is highly unlikely the club get a natural born killer in front of goal coming in, the rest of the team need to step up now. There is no other option if we want to be up there.

So this next 10 days needs a solution. Is it as simple as rest in the legs and the warm weather facilitating a relaxing and re-invigorating environment that gets these players back to the free-scoring side of last season? I’m not so sure. We started off the season having gone away to the US, having got the players in shape for the new season and then we were stuttering from pretty much game one. So is it really realistic to expect that 10 days away from the UK is going to change everything?

We have to hope so. We have to hope that Arteta and his coaching staff are locked in analysis and debate, that they find some kind of answer that can cure the ailments of the attacking players right now. Do they need some kind of hypnotist to convince them that no, they aren’t chickens, but in fact are very good footballers who can – and WILL finish their chances? It seems to me that what we have been missing is instinct. The instinct to take the shot first time. The instinct to have a pop at the right moment instead of laying it off. On Sunday there were a couple of moments in which Kai Havertz took an extra touch, or a moment in which Odegaard laid the ball off when he probably should have shot, or Saka skewing it over. Right now we want the ball to sit up perfectly, in the right position, with a players body shape in the right place, for them to take the shot. It all has to be too perfect.

But football isn’t perfect. It requires adaptation, split-second reasoning, the ability to make the choices in the right moment and be rewarded for it. When I was a lot younger I remember watching a programme about footballers and how their minds worked. I can’t remember what it was called but Cristinao Ronaldo was on it as a test case. I think he was at United at the time (the first time), so gives you an idea of how long ago it was, and they put a load of those pads that you see in medical science on his body and also his head. They were trying to measure his speed of thought and movement and what their tests showed, along with a number of other tests with other footballers, was that there were similarities in brain patterns between professional footballers compared to the average amateur footballer or you and I. Again, it was many years ago so I can’t remember all of the details, but I just remember the show talking about how the way elite footballers brains are wired means that they have a greater peripheral vision than the average human, as well as the ability to react a lot quicker and make decisions a lot quicker than the average football fan. It is an act of instinct that they have.

But when you sow doubt in to that process, when you add in hesitation to a person who normally just acts on instinct, it impacts their decision making. That is what I think is happening with our players and the outcome is what we’re seeing right now. So the next 10 days are going to be pivotal for Arteta and his players not just to get some training in and rest up, but I think more importantly will be the mental reset. In fact, that mental reset is probably ten times – maybe a hundred times – more important than just getting them on the training pitches in Dubai and getting them to run shooting drills all day long. These players know where the goal is. They know how to slam a ball in from 10 yards when it’s on the training pitch. That’s not the problem; the problem is that when the stadium is full, the expectation is there and there is something on the line (points, cups, etc), they are hesitating and that doubt is creeping in.

I joked about a hypnotist, but maybe there is some kind of psychologist who could get in to some of their brains and help with the rest, a la Ted Lasso? The brain is a muscle like any other and if it has been tweaked for some of them, maybe the way you nurse it back to full fitness is to have somebody from outside of the coaching staff talking to them, getting to the bottom of the issues and then recommending some different course of action. I don’t know. I am no expert. I’m just some 40+ year old bloke who goes to watch his football team, writes about his thoughts on the club he loves every day, hopes for success. I’m just looking for answers because when you look at the performances we have a good team performing well, but there is just one aspect (the most important of all) in which we suddenly seem to have some sort of mental block over. And it also feels like the toughest one to solve. I’m not – nor have ever profess to be – an expert, but I do know that something has to change in the next 10 days. We need something to be unlocked. Otherwise this second half of the season could be a long and uncomfortable one.

Back tomorrow with more rambling. Have a good’un.

My hope is that with a glint in his eye he comes out swinging. My hope is that he says things like he said after we had those three defeats at the beginning of the season before last, where he essentially said “this has been the best response I have ever seen” or words to that effect. He talked about how amazed he was about it and although we were all still a little edgy given we were bottom of the league and had lost out first three matches with the press dropping broken cannon images all over the back pages, inside myself I was a little hopeful that what he was saying was true. I was hopeful that a spark had been lit and we went on to beat Norwich and then embark on a decent run that put us in contention for a top four spot.

That’s kind of what I am hoping for today, because I’ve been metaphorically chewing down my nails with concern about our problems we’ve had in front of goal. I know two games does not a season make, but when you have a worry – just like when you are on top of the world – you can use data to project both positives and negatives to amplify your emotions. I’ve looked at our shots on target levels in the last month, I’ve seen our total shots since the beginning of December in the Premier League, I’ve seen how we’ve dominated games in all but score lines, then used it to pull together a narrative of a bigger problem.

What also doesn’t help is when you see stuff like this from the press:

pic.twitter.com/kfIATNYRqa

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) January 4, 2024

They’ve taken an end of year stat and compared it with the halfway mark in the season, using it as some kind of stick to beat our attackers with. To be fair the numbers don’t lie and if those players have the same first half to the season as they had to the second, I don’t think our defence is going to bail them out by getting us another 40 points minimum, but equally I would be surprised if our attacking players have such a bad second half to the season as they had to the first. I don’t think we’ll get to the same numbers as last season for all of those players; they would need 40+ goals to do that, but I do think and hope they can improve enough in the attacking third to hopefully deliver a good season.

They’ve got 15 goals between them this season and as a team we have 37 in the Premier League. On average that works out at us scoring 70 goals by the season end. Ignoring the points on the board, teams that get around 70 goals generally – based on the last five season’s I’ve looked at – finish between third and fifth. So based on where we are now, you’d say that we do have to change things. But here’s my glass half full outlook today; I think we can all agree that this hasn’t been an amazing final third output in the first half. Most of us believe it can get better. I also think that missing Partey (as I said yesterday) has also impacted us. Let’s not forget Gabby Jesus missed the start of the season and then got injured again so his season has been patchy. Added to this, I think our players are dealing with a new way of teams lining up against them and I think we know our players can perform better than they ave in front of goal, then finally I think Arteta is a smart enough man to work out what we need to do to improve our goal scoring ratio.

So I think that we won’t  – fingers crossed – have as bad an end to the season in front of goal as we’ve had for the first half.

Those four attacking players have 15 goals at the halfway stage. Let’s just say that they will at least get that in the second half of the year. Now, if we were to add an extra three goals to each player as an additional target to hit, that would be 12 goals and we’d be trending at around 82 goals for the season. It would mean each player finishing on:

• Martinelli = seven goals
• Odegaard = 10 goals
• Saka = 14 goals
• Gabriel Jesus = nine goals (I’ve rounded up to make a combined 40 because the averages don’t quite work)

I don’t think those tallies seem too unrealistic to be honest with you. If we perform the same we did and those players up their conversion rates – maybe extra long finishing drills or something (I’m no expert as you guys know! 🙂 – by just a small amount, then we’re hitting 80 goals. And in fact, when you think about the number of attempts we’ve been getting of late, we probably don’t even need to up the conversion rates, because if we keep getting games where we’re having 20 – 30 shots each game, we’ll hit the target more often than not. At the start of the season we had 15 shots against Forest, 14 against Palace, 18 against United, eight against Everton and 12 against the Scum. That’s a total of 67 shots. In our last five Premier League games we’ve had a total of 94 shots. So we’ve taken an extra 27 shots across the same number of matches! If we can keep that up, then those extra three goals for those attacking players would naturally be converting – by law of averages!

Maybe I’m just using data to make myself feel better, but even if I am, then to be fair it is working. Because I’ve laid out the fact we’re creating chances and having shots, I’ve laid out a fairly low-key additional target to better our season from a goal scoring perspective, then we just need the defence to hold firm as it has at the start of the season. And at the halfway stage this season we’d conceded 18 goals. Double that and you’ve got 36 conceded for the season. If we hit 80 goals and concede 36 then it’s a goal difference of 44. It’s still not quite good enough to win a title if one team goes on a brilliant run and finishes in the high 80s for points, but most teams winning the title on the mid 80s in points in recent years (I had a look at every team hitting 86 points or fewer to win the league)  have been an average of around +46 on goal difference. Most pundits seem to feel the league is open enough to end on that, so if it does then attacking wise it isn’t a mountain to climb.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m using a lot of “If’s” and “but’s” here, but in my head I’m just trying to make the mountain that I talked myself into the fact we were climbing on New Year’s Eve, is not as big as perhaps I first thought.

What do you think?

Catch you all tomorrow.

So here we are again. We’ve danced this dance before. We’ve seen these types of quotes for the best part of 15 years now in one guise or another. Remember back in the day when Johan Djourou used to come out after a bad defeat and use words like this, as well as ‘we must learn from it’. And yet we never do. We never did. So this morning as I woke up and wondered what was in my head to drop on to my virtual page, I had the vision of this kind of nonsense comment from a squad player to be up on the site and that familiar feeling of DeJa Vu.

This Everton result has hit me hard, I won’t lie to you, because normally I’ve gotten over defeats by now. It was the manner of the defeat, the overall performance, the familiar images that are now circulating the internet about how we don’t create chances, about how shocking we are on the final third, it’s all just left a bad taste in my mouth and that is lingering. And then you start to look ahead and it feels a little bit like it could turn in to last season around this time. Remember when it felt like we’d never win a football match again? Yeah, that’s what it feels like. Why? Well, for me it it purely because of what we are doing – or lack there of – in the attacking part of the pitch. No team is getting anywhere unless they are functioning in the attacking part of the pitch. Most teams that get relegated get done because they can’t get goals and they don’t have that Premier League standard striker who will get them out of a whole.

Now, I’m not going to drop into the pit of despair and go all hyperbolic on you by suggesting that we could get relegated, because of course that would be obscene. We are seventh, four points off West Ham in fourth and if we win the next four games then all will look very different. But with the way we are playing and with our inability to break teams down – especially away from home – a 100% record in the league between now and when we play Man City on 1st January feels like the biggest uphill mountain a team has ever faced.

If you look at it on paper and if you take the Arsenal side who looked like they were starting to click pre-international break, then maybe you have that hope. But we have seen all of the familiar failings of this side in the last few weeks. Nine goals shipped in four games. So much for that fantastic-looking rock of a defence, eh? That doesn’t feel like a defence that is going to shut out Southampton, West Ham, Leeds, Norwich and Wolves before the Champions come to town. But those teams in themselves, when you look at it, are all games we should be looking at and thinking we could go on a run. But as it stands I’m looking at Southampton and thinking “tough game, probably a draw”. Then to West Ham and that feels like the form they are in will see them teach us a bit of a lesson. Then you look at Norwich and whilst they aren’t great, they’re at home and we are terrible away, so maybe a draw? Then Wolves away and that has hardly been the happiest of hunting grounds. Imagine if we pick up just three points from three draws in the next five games. It’s not inconceivable, but what is inconceivable is that Mikel won’t have the trigger pulled on him if that happens. And if the worst does happen and we do drop a host of points over this Christmas period, then he really should be given the axe.

I don’t like talking like this by the way. I want nothing more than to see him succeed. He was an Arsenal captain, I feel like I have seen times where we look like we’re controlling games and look good. I have felt at times like this team is on the verge of unlocking its potential. But every time that happens we get stupid setbacks like the last week and it feels like we’ve taken a stick of dynamite to the foundations of a good football team and blown it all away.

What also worries me is that Arteta is doing the weird things again like he did a year ago. He’s making weird tactical decisions and his subs are feeling bizarre. He tried to explain away the Nketiah inclusion and the Pepe omission, but didn’t really sound too convincing and I’m still baffled as to why a penalty box striker is told to play left wing. It feels like he’s trying to be too clever and that is what happened at times last season. I want to like Arteta so much but every time he seems to get things right he goes and does Galaxy Brain stuff that makes me become frustrated with him.

But I’ll try not to end on a low here because that’s never too much fun to read or even to write. If…and it is a big IF…we can win on Saturday and follow that up by a win against West Ham – both home games – then we will be looking a little better in terms of the league position and also potentially form. We would then go in to an away game against Leeds with a bit of momentum and perhaps there can be a run that could be built. The dire performances of the last two matches are not unrecoverable, but this team needs to respond in a big, big way, and that has to be on Saturday from 3pm onwards.

Catch you all tomorrow.

My hope is that they are all stewing on it like we all are, because if we are all stewing then you can bet yourself any money you like that they will be. When I was reading about the build up to the game at the weekend I read a lot of articles from pundits talking about how Liverpool will be stung by the Brighton and West Ham dropped points and that Arsenal would pay the price for it. If you look purely on the score line it certainly feels that way, but we’ve been handed far worse batterings as a team with the same score line. But I hope that the Arsenal players use the same methodology Liverpool did on Newcastle this weekend, because there needs to be a reaction and we have to see an angry Arsenal performance.

Are we capable of it though? A battering of an opponent, is what I mean. I say that because what a lot of people are doing right now is looking at our attacking threat and I don’t think there can be any doubt that we have seen a reduction in it over the last 18 months or so. Perhaps even longer than that. We just don’t create the chances and we don’t score enough goals and that is the biggest concern right now. Against Watford we missed some decent chances, had Aubameyang have one of those stinker games he puts in every once in a while, but it didn’t feel like a game in which we won’t see again. This weekend we play a Newcastle side that has conceded the joint most goal with Norwich, but all most of us I think are looking for is victory to get us back on the horse. Winning games is all that matters and this team got in to a nice little habit of it and hey, if we win every game 1-0 between now and Christmas you won’t hear me complaining too much. But I am a fan who likes our margins for error to be a little wider than it feels like we have right now. In order to do that, we need to be creating more chances and scoring more goals.

Simple, I know, but crucial nonetheless. Aubameyang and Lacazette as a partnership has felt good and maybe it needs to be wheeled out again against the Geordies, but if I was in Arteta’s shoes i’d be looking at a little bit of a shuffle this week. Particularly with some of those stats we’ve seen doing the rounds about the number of big chances we don’t create, goals we’re not really scoring in abundance, etc. I’d be thinking about players like Odegaard and Pepe and this week I’d be saying to them “there’s an opening for you here lads. The form of previous weeks have made it difficult, but now I’m giving you a shot”. To me the fact we’re at home, the fact the opposition is weaker, the fact that some players have perhaps not been as great in the previous game, is a chance to really build some competition in the squad and the best way to do that is to give rotation a bit of a consideration. Tierney, Maitland-Niles, Odegaard, Pepe – all players who could feasibly come in and give the manager as well as other players in those positions, something to think about.

The longer term issue will be those forward line positions though. I am holding out hope that something will ‘click’ going forward but perhaps I am just being naive. I’m also a little bit worried about what else sits behind Aubameyang and Lacazette. Balogun is too raw and I think we all saw that at the start of the season. We know that we need to address the issue and I think in my mind I just assumed that it would be something that we will be able to ‘get by with’ until the summer. But the more and more I start to think about it, the more I wonder if we need some kind of injection in January. I don’t think it will happen but that doesn’t mean I/we shouldn’t want it. I think if you give Auba the service then he will get you between 15 – 20 goals in the league. But if Pepe isn’t playing and Lacazette is dropping deeper in to this hybrid role he’s been playing, then we need to see more from the other players. Partey and Sambi don’t do that and it is unfair to expect the kids like Saka and ESR to do it every game, so I do think we have some problems on the horizon that Mikel needs to fix fast. If we drop points against United, Everton, Southampton, Newcastle, etc, because we haven’t been able to outscore an opponent if the defence is having a tough day, then I suspect the clamour for a striker will grow louder amongst us fans.

I do think we need to get the monkey off our back of not being able to win whilst coming from behind. We tend to get the first goal and don’t get me wrong I’d much rather we always did that, but we need to know that these players have the mental fortitude to turn a game around. That hasn’t been tested yet and that will also be a test of our attacking prowess too.

There is still much work to do at The Arsenal.

Until tomorrow.

The optimistic part of my brain – a rapidly dwindling corner these days when it comes to The Arsenal, which I put mainly down to becoming a grumpy old man – says it is my subconscious telling me that the glorious final years of Highbury will soon return and I will get to be a part of it. I was never fortunate enough to have access to regular match tickets as I only got my season ticket and then silver membership for the wife when we moved to the new stadium, so I always feel like I only got to semi enjoy the glory early years under Arsene, so the idea that we could have a title winning side and I actually be there for most of the games in that season is something that really plays on my mind.

I was there for the game that we won the league in 1991 and beat Man United, but it was my only game of the season that I went to, as my dad isn’t really a football fan so I could only go when his mate Roy had a spare ticket. Back in those days it was impossible for a nine-year-old to just rock up and grab a ticket. My parents wouldn’t have dreamed for a second allowing me to get on a train from Hertfordshire to Highbury including a tube journey as well. Then, when I was hold enough to get tickets in the early 2000s and go myself, I only ever got those games that went to the red members in the early days of the red membership existing. So most games I never stood a chance getting and always had to rely on Roy.

I know this is all memory lane preamble, but with lots of tactical analysis and gnashing of teeth going on about the Crystal Palace result still, I’m a little more sanguine after over two days, where the frustration has subsided a bit and I no-longer feel like a coiled up spring. So I thought i’d take a wander in to the annals of my own mind and drop it on to the virtual page for you this morning. Apologies if it’s a little boring.

Fasting forward to today and I sit here tap-tap-tapping away at my keyboard thinking about what Mikel Arteta might say in his press conference today ahead of tomorrow night’s game. I’ve always found his press conferences interesting and sometimes when I listen to what he has to say I think “yes, he knows what is needed, he’ll get there”. He’s good in a press conference, that’s for sure, but that isn’t even 1% of what is required as an Arsenal manager. 99% of it is on the pitch and that is where the actions are not speaking louder than the words. Like I said I am more sanguine about the result on Monday and I can see that we were by and large the better side that gifted Palace two goals. If we statistically repeat those numbers and cut out the stupid errors then we might stand a chance in beating Villa. But I feel like that phrase “cut out the silly errors” has been hard-wired in to our DNA for the best part of a decade now. We seem to gift goals to opponents all too often, yet in reverse we rarely have ours gifted to us. On Monday night it was a good save from the ‘keeper Guita and then a good reaction from Auba to put it in, then it was another decent stop whilst under pressure and then Lacazette was in the right place at the right time. Neither goal was due to brain farting on the Palace front. Yet both of ours were.

Against the Scum Son was left in acres in our box. We know that Mari wasn’t tight enough to Lukaku for Chelski’s first goal, James had the whole of the left hand side of the pitch for the second. For our goals against Burnley it was a fine finish from Odegaard and in the Norwich game Pepe delivered a decent bit of skill but Krul still made a couple of saves and the ball bounced kindly for Aubameyang. Perhaps I’m just viewing this through the biased lens of an Arsenal fan, but it feels like we have to work a lot harder for the goals that we score, compared to the ones we concede. Which is super frustrating. Cutting out silly mistakes is something I’ve heard too many Arsenal managers talk about for too many years. But perhaps that’s what all managers of mid table teams say each week? The only difference is that I don’t watch other teams and their managers as much perhaps?

What’s the solution though? Is it better coaching to cut out the errors? Maybe, but I don’t know how you can coach out stupidity on the football pitch. You can cut out things like dwelling on the ball too much, or backing off your defender like White did on Monday, but perhaps the easier option for a coach is to ensure that you get the sharp end of your team firing well. If you do that and your team scores lots of goals then you at least mitigate the problem of brain fart moments in games.

“Oh no, somebody kicked the ball against his own face and it went in our own net. Balls. Never mind, we’re still 3-1 up with ten minutes to play”

That’s where Arteta isn’t leaving himself enough ‘wiggle room’ with this team and that, I think, is why the frustration is there right now. The lack of goals is costing us for obvious reasons, but it’s also leaving no margin for error and unless the manager finds a way to eradicate every stupid thing we do – impossible for ANY team I think – then we will not get beyond a mid table finish this season. We’re eight games in to the season now. The first three can be chalked down as a write off, so he’s effectively had five played. In that we’ve had three clean sheets, one great performance and two dodgy ones that have led to draws. But the calibre of opponent is such that we should be looking at them as wins and the very fact we aren’t is why Thierry has said he can’t see Arsenal finishing in European spots right now.

Find that solution for scoring more goals Mikel, and find it fast, because the mistakes will keep happening and if we aren’t scoring enough goals, then the poor results will also continue. And that will cost you your job, my friend.

Back tomorrow with a match preview.

But oh well. If I look at some kind of weird up side, by getting up two and a half hours earlier than normal on a Saturday, maybe my body will feel like today’s 12.30pm kick off against Burnley is actually a Saturday 3pm kick off. That’s the only positive spin I can think of for now.

As for the game itself, well, I’m not sure how I feel about it. Earlier in the week I was pretty confident. Burnley don’t score many goals, we have been better as a defensive unit this season than most season, plus they played on Wednesday whereas we had a week off. They have a couple of injury considerations, whilst we have a relatively good bill of health, ESR aside. So at the beginning of the week I felt like it was set up nicely for us to continue our momentum. And after I watched them get dismantled by The Scum, I wondered a) how that would affect confidence, and b) whether they would be that poor against us.

But we all know that is impossible, right? We all know Burnley will somehow find a level of energy and drive that wasn’t there against that detestable lot from up the Seven Susters Road. It’s what always happens. So I am fully expecting to see no sign of fatigue for the lunchtime kick off, no evidence of players in the fabled ‘red zone’, no letting up despite their lack of goals this season. I am expecting a Burnley side that morphs into Ajax 95 and causes us real trouble.

Even if that isn’t the case today, we all know we are in for a physical and tough afternoon. I think the first season they were in the Premier League we comfortably won 3-0, but that feels like the only time we’ve had games against them which haven’t been decided by the odd goal margin. So regardless of the side that Arteta and Dyche put out, I am expecting a close encounter today. But for Arsenal the emphasis has to be on attacking intent. Burnley have 19 goals in 27, worse only than Sheffield United on 16 goals and that means they average 0.7 goals a game. Their top scorer Chris Wood has four goals in 21 appearances (plus one as a sub). They look to get the ball back to front as quickly and directly as possible and rely on getting the ball out wide and good delivery. At the Emirates they scored through an own from Aubameyang, which was only their second attempt on target. And we were down to ten men due to Xhaka’s stupidity.

Everything feels like – assuming Arsenal get it right in the final third – we should be looking at three points today.

But this is Arsenal and things are never that easy. For one thing we have struggled to click in the final third for big chunks in the season and when there has been an opportunity to give an opponent an edge through our own stupidity, we have delivered on that promise a fair few times already this season. We have shot ourselves in the foot so many times already that it really wouldn’t surprise me if that happened today. Arsenal beating Arsenal is very ‘on brand’ for us right now.

So is early goals conceded, unfortunately, which is why I think the first 15 minutes and probably the first half is where we will need to be at our best to avoid a bloody nose, because that’s where it could all go wrong. Fatigue for Premier League athletes of any team won’t manifest itself in the first 30 minutes and so Burnley will be looking at that, coupled with the fact we’ve conceded early in something like like four of our last five league games, as their chance to beat us. They will think that if they can get a goal early they will be able to sit in a low block and frustrate us for the afternoon. And I suspect that if they do get that early goal they will do just that. We struggle to break down low block teams. Just think about what happened at Villa a few weeks ago. I don’t think Villa are any great shakes, but they got their goal and sat back, allowing us to have the ball and hit on the counter. Burnley won’t look to hit us on the counter if they score early, but they will sit in tight and deep and I fear a frustrating game if that happens.

So if anything we should be approaching this game with caution for the opening exchanges. Keep the ball. Dominate possession. Let them chase it. Then in the second half, when Burnley players begin to tire, we should look for spaces opening up. That HAS to be the gameplan today and I certainly hope that is how it plays out.

In terms of team selection I suspect Arteta will go strong today. He will want the momentum and whilst I’ve heard a few people talking about rotation and protecting players ahead of the Olympiakos game on Thursday, that match is a full six days from now. Arteta can afford to play his strongest side and still have them fresh enough for Thursday. So I’d be looking at Leno in goal, Bellerin at right back, Luiz and Gabriel as the centre halves with Tierney as the roaming left back. In front of them I hope we can see Xhaka ans Partey and in front of those two let’s have a three of Saka on the right, Odegaard in the middle and Pepe wide right. I wonder whether Arteta tries to continue the Willian hype train by playing him, but I’d rather see Pepe unleashed. Then you have Auba up top to complete the line up. I also hope Auba has an extra fuel for his belly today after his header own-goal cost us anything against Burnley at home. I also hope that Xhaka is well aware that Burnley might target him so I am hopeful that he is cool and calm enough in the middle of the park.

Like I said at the top of this blog, my confidence has slowly eroded as the week as gone on and we’ve edged closer to kick off, but if I see enough in the first 15-30 minutes from Arsenal, it will soon return.

Let’s hope for three points.

Catch you peeps tomorrow. Or straight after kick off if you fancy joining us on the post match GunnersTown pubcast.

But is Arsene Wenger negligent? Has he left us woefully short? I think not. There are areas of the park that we could have done with fine-tuning, but the need was not essential, we were not a patient bleeding out. By not signing a defensive midfielder or a world-class attacker, we’re not going to slowly die a thousand deaths in the Premier League, slowly disappearing down the league until we’re fighting off relegation, are we?

We’ve got a slight worry if Le Coq breaks down for a prolonged period of time as that will leave us with just Arteta, but providing he can stay fit, then we can still compete. As for the attacking options, we have different players, with different styles, each of whom can bring something different. Theo not working up top against a team? Giroud can be a target man up top with the players feeding from his flicks and knocks on, or Welbeck can be a hybrid of both if we need it. Or if we want to try Alexis in that position, we can do that two. For the wide roles we can feature Alexis, Welbeck, Theo, the Ox, or even at a push Ramsey, Wilshere or Ozil if we really need to. So we have players of the requisite quality, we just need to find our rhythm and get on with this season.

Sure, with the money we all spend, with the wages the club have and with the players we have, many will tell you that we would never be in the position whereby we’ll be a mid-table team and we are just standing still, but I say that sort of phrase is exactly the point. ‘With the players we have’ – exactly! We have good players already! We have options up front. Welbeck has admitted that he’s taken a while to adjust and after the international break he will be back. Giroud has been a bit hit and miss, but only for two games out of four. At Crystal Palace he looked good and when he came on against Newcastle he made an impact. I know they are not ‘big clubs’ and those two games can’t be classed as ‘big games’, but to be honest I don’t care. I don’t care because we’ve already seen every team bar one drop points and I think that will continue to happen given the nature and the competition in this league. So if Giroud gets another 15 – 20 goals, that’s exactly what we need. If Welbeck gets 10, if Theo bags 10, if Alexis gets 25, that gives us 65 goals in our attack. If we have more goals from midfield – which is what Arsene has said he wants to see more of – then we’re laughing.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not 100% happy. I’m not 100% convinced that not signing an outfield player this summer was the best move for a team looking at succeeding in the league. But I’m also not contemplating some sort of suicide bid this morning. Life’s too short and I’m getting too old for that stress. Plus, I prefer to save the stress for when we play Stoke in two weeks time. Heaven forbid what will happen if we beat Stoke and Chelski the week after. People will probably admit themselves in to rehab because they can’t take the ‘up and down’ nature of being a football fan. I won’t. I’ll just be happy that we’re winning football games.

The time for analysing the ‘why’s and ‘wherefore’s will not be now. It will be after we’ve had a proper chance to evaluate the season. Not signing anybody was not ideal, but what if signing somebody yesterday would prohibit another stab at Benzema or another player in January or next summer? Would you rather we signed Charlie Austin now and nobody better ion January or the summer? I know what i’d prefer. Last season we snapped up Welbeck on deadline day and everybody seemed quite happy with that signing. Yet now we have people forgetting that he even exists. What’s the point in signing players if we discard them a year later? What are we, Totteringham or Liverpool? Because that’s what would have happened. We’d have signed Austin, been happy for a week, then when he didn’t quite turn out to be the player we are hoping for, we’d have been salivating for another centre forward in January or June.

Let’s all remember that the season we went unbeaten we signed just a ‘keeper and an unknown left back. You never know what is going to transpire over the next few months, so chill, if you’re not already chilled.

We have the bodies. We just need to get the momentum of winning games. And we will win games. We’ve done it before and we’ll do it again. And we’ll all be focused on the patient once more because it turns out he wasn’t bleeding at all. He just needs a bit of love and attention. We can help with that as fans. By getting behind the guys we have and hoping that we can have a proper go at the league.

If you’re down today, get your chin up, and remember who you are, what you are and who you represent. The Arsenal

This time last year we were all still enjoying the post-FA Cup glow, which had put a bit of a sheen on what was otherwise a season that appeared to disintegrate after such a fantastic start. If you will recall, it was widely accepted that defensively we’d performed well (big game mauling’s aside), but our forward line just, well, ran out of a bit of puff. Giroud needed some support, Podolski was becoming more and more inefficient and less and less trusted by the manager and we ended up seeing more of Yaya Sanogo than we’d have wanted, given his inexperience.

When the dust settled there was a World Cup to look forward to, but it was painfully obviously that we needed something addressed in our attacking part of the pitch. The over-reliance on Theo for pace was evident and with him out for the first part of the season Arsene had to act.

Boy, did he act, signing both Alexis and Welbeck for our forward line for a combined fee of around £51million (although Arsenal never disclose this so it is open to interpretation). It’s true that the Welbeck signing was born out of desperation given that Giroud broke his leg, but nevertheless it was still done by the manager. And now that we reflect on the 109 goals scored by Arsenal – ten more than in 2013/14 – we have to say that Arsene acted and acted well.

Ten additional goals seems a decent improvement if you ask me, but it is not just the statistics that I think shows the improvement in the team. We have options now. We are no longer reliant on one player for anything. Walcott, Welbeck and Alexis have pace. Giroud and Welbeck can lead the line. The Ox – who I’m including in the forwards assessment because he played more games wide right than in centre midfield this season – and Alexis can beat a man through their close ball control and dribbling. We have interchangeable players. Of course, some are better than others and one in particular has made a marked difference to the team, but overall you can say that we are stronger and can cope with the rigours of an inevitable injury crisis which seems to engulf the team each season.

But individually we’ve seen some great stuff too. Let’s start with the main man, Alexis Sanchez, who has been the Energizer Bunny for this team this season. What was fantastic about him is that he’s not only extremely talented, but he works so hard too, which immediately endeared him to the Arsenal fans. We love him. He has an explosive power that no other player in the team can match and whilst his ball retention isn’t always great, he is that player that can do something out of the blue. I’m thinking in particular the Moneychester City goal, the goal against Liverpool and the cup final goals. All examples of how he has wonderful end product. But unlike Poldi, who was all end product, Alexis does everything the German didn’t do, exemplified by the fact he must have picked up half a dozen man-of-the-match performances in the league this season alone. I’m thinking of the Burnley game at home in particular, or the Southampton game at home where we huffed and puffed but it was he that dragged us over the line to collect three points.

I don’t want to compare Podolski to Alexis, but given that Poldi was our wide left man before Alexis, it’s an easy one to make, so although we were all sad to see Lukas the personality go, Alexis the footballer is a magnificent upgrade. And that’s what we want from this Arsenal squad now. If you’re like me, then you like most of the players in the squad and would be happy to go in to next season with them all still playing for Arsenal. But if an upgrade comes along – like Alexis – who will enable us to take Arsenal to the next level, then we should be doing it straight away. Look at me, I sound like a proper Wenger convert, don’t I?

so Alexis get’s the praises for his debut season, his goals, his impact on the team and his ability to take us to the next level, but it is not just he who has contributed to this seasons success. Olivier Giroud has spent half of it injured, yet has still amassed 19 goals and before his barren spell was ended by the FA Cup final goal, he was on a rich vein of form at just the right time to see us secure third spot. That’s the difference in this team. Alexis hit a purple patch either side of Christmas and carried us through games. When the goals dried up for him, Giroud chipped in with goals in consecutive games from March onwards. Last season, when the goals dried up for him and if Rambo didn’t score, it felt like we didn’t have that extra player with Theo injured, to take us over the line and challenge for the league. My favourite Giroud goals are his trademark; the run to the near post and flick. Against Middlesbrough and in the cup final can be the perfect examples. There is plenty of talk about his replacement this summer, but I am not seeing a glut of strikers who will contribute as much as he does (and are available, I hasten to add!), so although there is a desire for a Giroud upgrade, I’d be surprised given all he has provided to us this season. He is a focal point. He is a player who will bring others in to play and unless Arsene finds Giroud mkII in terms of hold up play and overall team contribution, I can’t see him making an addition in that area of the field.

I think we’ll also get to see more of the best of Welbeck next season too. The one area of his game where everybody is focusing on is his lack of goals, but he has shown that he has it in him – just think about the hat-trick against Galatasaray as a prime example. He has also played parts of this team as a wide attacker and, whilst that wouldn’t be his preference as he’ll readily admit, his work rate to the team when flanked by Alexis on the other side gives us a dimension that we haven’t had before. He’s more powerful than Theo and contributes more to the overall team play, which is why I think we’ll see him – with a year of playing in the team and getting to know how his teammates tick – up his game next season. A special mention has to of course go to the Old Trafford goal, in which a footballer finally made a statement to the world that guess what? You can score against your old team and be happy about it.

The two remaining forward men are ones who haven’t had the greatest of seasons, but only because of disruption caused by injury. Theo has missed two thirds of the season as a result of his cruciate injury picked up last season, then a variety of niggly injuries that kept him out of the team. Arsene seemed reluctant to bring him in more readily but as any of us can testify to, when you’ve got a team winning back-to-back games for what was almost a club record, you don’t change it. But as we drew closer towards the final we saw that Theo has a place in the squad. A natural finisher and a man who set us on the way to the cup final, his hat-trick against West Brom was perfectly timed and the conversations on his new deal will be interesting ones this summer. I’d like him to stay. I think he gives us something different. But the club are holding the better hand than Theo this time around and if he tries to play silly buggers with them, they’ll offload I suspect. Arsene has said he won’t go this summer, but if we get in to mid-August without a resolution, I suspect there might be one or two teams that try their luck with a cheeky bid or two.

The second of the injury-hit players was the Ox. It’s a shame because the same happened to him at the beginning of last season on the first game against Villa, but he’s found himself in and out of the team because of his injuries. He made 23 appearances this season, which isn’t a bad return, but given his potential to nail that wide-right position because of his trickery and guile, he’d possibly have been hoping for more. He’s now had two seasons in a row in which he’s found himself injured for prolonged periods of time and I just hope that next season isn’t one in which he starts to be recognised as an injury-prone player like Jack. With a full season free of injury under his belt, I’d love to see just how good he could be.

The forward line is full of options. I haven’t even mentioned the talented Serge Gnabry, who will surely ant to get some game time next season – if not at Arsenal then on loan – and if I’m honest it is the one area of the field that I don’t think can be strengthened much, not unless we’re spunking close to £50million on one player and I’m not sure Arsene will do that this summer. But I’m ok with that. I think there are other areas of the pitch that need addressing in terms of building the squad depth, so if we go into this new season in August with Theo nailed down for another three to four years, I’d se that as a decent enough bit of business for the summer.

What do you think?