• We have now conceded more goals than West Brom, who are bottom
• Only Watford have dropped as many points as Arsenal have this season from winning positions
• Sam Clucas has three career goals – all this season and all against Arsenal
• Swansea haven’t managed to score three goals all season
• Alexandre Lacazette has just 39 touches of the ball – Walcottian

It’s hard to reconcile this Arsenal team with the one that Arsène Wenger coached four odd years ago. The football isn’t beautiful. We used to be beautifully flawed, but now we’re just flawed, rudderless and out of ideas and without anybody on the sideline who can see where the problems are.

Swansea coach Carlos Carvalhal must have been very happy when he saw our team sheet, because it was as predictable as our pedestrian passing. Arsène went for four at the back, Elneny holding in midfield, with Xhaka and Ramsey in front of him. He went for Özil and Iwobi behind Lacazette and his intention was clearly to dominate the midfield with an extra body.

But that just didn’t happen. It didn’t happen because Swansea are not 14 year-old school boys. They are a professional Premier League football team – with a manager who has an idea of a game plan and knows how to play against Arsenal. It isn’t hard with our defence though, is it?

“Lads, it’s Arsenal today, so we need shape, discipline and them to sideways pass it. Then when they eventually lose the ball through a turnover, we need channel running and we need to collectively break as a unit, in which they’ll have no response”

That’s what Forest did. That’s what any team worth their salt when Arsenal visit them should do because we are a pedestrian team in possession with just one man who makes movement going forward. And he’s our main creator.

Mesut Özil would be our if his mind to sign a new deal at Arsenal. He is, quite frankly, better than this creaking old barge that Arsène Wenger is managing. He made movements, runs, looked for teammates, even got an assist with a sumptuous pass to Nacho for yet another goal from the Spaniard. He’s making the right noises, Arsenal clearly think he wants to stay, but if I was him I wouldn’t touch a piece of contract paper until the season is done because honestly, right now, he’s better than what he’s playing in.

Petr Cech has been good this season and every once in a while there’s a rick in him, but that’s because of his age I guess, although we had the same last season away to Chelski, so perhaps this is just him. We need somebody new but that isn’t happening this window.

Shkodran Mustafi is an enigma. And not an entertaining one because for every good game there are two bad ones.

Granit Xhaka. Jesus. What on Earth is he doing in this team? He is woefully out of form, should be dropped, but won’t because Arsène doesn’t punish players for poor performance, he mollycoddles them.

And that is one of the biggest problems we have. The Colney Cresh may not be referenced much these days but it is still there, where players are babied and treated well and never drilled or held accountable for their poor performances or actions. Xhaka has had one too many brain switch off moments this season and Arsène should be rolling the dice and dropping him at the weekend for Ainsley. There’s little risk in the league any more. It’s done. We’re done. Top four is eight points away and with a team that can’t win away from home that is 100% not happening. We’ve lost seven this season. We still have to go to Tottenham and United. We have City at home in a few weeks. We will probably end the season with ten losses. TEN! That’s the form of a team that is a little better than mid table. That’s a quarter of all games played this season being losses. That’s a team who cannot build momentum.

Because they are managed by somebody who is, sadly, out of ideas. There’s no more wiggle room. The planning is out the window. The team dynamic just doesn’t look there. It’s just a collective of players who are asked to turn up at the same place and the same time each week. They don’t play well together.

Yesterday we missed drive. We missed movement. Ramsey looked knackered. Iwobi lost the ball three times in the first 12 minutes. Lacazette looked disinterested. Xhaka did little. Elneny made a couple of decent tackles but we all know how limited he is. Swansea saw what Chelski did to us in that first half and replicated it. Elneny was effectively pushed back into defence and we ended up as a pseudo back three. It was a classic example of Arsène thinking we could dictate what an opponent does but in fact the reverse happened.

Afterwards he pointed to a psychological problem away from home. Well sir, I put it to you that it is YOUR job to motivate the players, install confidence, give them a plan to believe in and turn this around.

I have no faith that Arsène will do that. Not for a second. He is done. Out of ideas and this is not the first time this season (and at times last season) that the players have looked like they’re not playing for him any more. They’re not. They can’t be. Why else do you get situations like Lacazette not offering movement? Like Xhaka not tracking Clucas’ rum into the box for their equaliser?

I don’t think the players intentionally think “let’s be sh*t to get rid of Arsène” but I do think there isn’t a concern that there will be consequences for their actions. Because they all know there won’t be.

Cech will play on Saturday because there is no competition for him. Mustafi too. Bellerin as well, who was another one who had a poor game but who I thought was just “less sh*t” than so many of the others. Xhaka gets his free pass. Only Iwobi could, and should, be worried about his position because Mkhitaryan should walk into this team in his place. The Nigerian has shown nothing to suggest he’s worthy of keeping a new signing out.

Which then brings me finally – because I’m getting bored of ranting about Arsenal given how many times I’ve done it this season – to Lacazette. He looks lost. He looked uninterested yesterday. He’s on his knees confidence-wise and with Aubameyang coming in I can’t see it getting any better for him. That’s a real shame because I think we have a player in him but he’s been starved of service because he’s played most of the season with an individual in Alexis, or somebody as budget as Iwobi, with only Özil offering anything like the quality he should have expected when he joined Arsenal. Maybe Mkhitaryan can offer some more quality, but if that is for Auba and not Laca, then you have to feel for the Frenchman.

We’re used to Arsène breaking young defenders, but now he’s doing it with forward players? So what does he have left?

It’s time for change. But we’ve got at least four months more of this. Sigh.

For the third time this week we came from behind and whilst it’s a great feeling to ultimately overcome adversity, I wouldn’t mind a bit more of the stress-free stuff we all saw against Bournemouth at home over a month ago.

Perhaps it’s just the way we do things. Perhaps that’s just how we get motivated. Perhaps that’s how this team has to deliver. Perhaps there are a few ‘cajones’ after all. Well, we’ll find out next week away to City, but at least we’ve been given somewhat of a response since that Watford game.

Arsene started pretty much the exact team that we had all expected, which meant total rotation from midweek and in came everybody for the usual weekend fixture. Swansea did what you’d expect and sat men deep with an intention to hit us on the break. I feared that Swansea would do to us what they’ve done on plenty of occasions before but ion truth this isn’t the same sort of side. Those sides have been built on a passing game that wrestled the retention and possession stats from us and suffocated us on our own turf. This one was set up to be compact, hit on the break, take their chances and to be fair to them, when Clucas slotted past Cech on the angle, I wondered if this would be the archetypal Championship Manager simulation skanking that was such a fixture in my teenage years of playing the game.

It was poor from Cech I have to say. The threaded ball in to Clucas was alright, but it looked to me like a Petr `Cech from six or seven years ago would have scampered out and collected that ball. But he came, hesitated, then came again too late and we’re one down.

There wasn’t really much of a reaction in that first half and I have to admit to being rather worried when the halftime whistle went. We’d troubled Fabianski once with a good effort by Alexis, but that was pretty much the sum of our attacking in that first half and the fear was that we’d get more of the same frustration in the second.

But Arsenal came out early for kick off and the Arsenal players had a different look about them from the first touch of the second 45. There was more urgency, there were more ‘gamble’ balls in to zones which had higher risk/reward stakes and we started to see the forward players move more and force Swansea to lose their shape.

You can only really say this when it happens, but it felt like the goal was coming. We were getting closer, Fabianski seemed busier and when Kolasinac found himself with space after a deflected ball across the box, he swept home with remarkable accuracy I thought. A really composed finish from a left back who is fast becoming one of my favourite players.

I thought he was man of the match yesterday and not just because his goal and assist for Ramsey, but also because of his general all-round play. He loves getting forward but he also feels a very stable full back. He’s not the best defensively in the world, just stable, which when you are playing in the formation we’re playing in, it’s good enough. I think it also helps him that he has Monreal behind him. The Spaniard mops up any time the opposition get in behind on our left hand side and given that he’s been a left back for most of his career, it offers some comfort for Kolasinac that he can move forward with less risk to being exposed, i’d say.

We got the win and it was thanks to another goal from Ramsey and i’m starting to believe that if he can avoid injury, we’ll find him with 15 goals in all competitions before the end of the season. He’s already popping up in those spaces and yesterday’s goal was an archetypal Frank Lampard position from which he needs to be more often. A great pick out from Sead too by the way.

I thought the front three were better in the second half and certainly Ozil had more impact on the game, but Alexis was a little off. It’s a shame really because I was hoping to see more of the same stuff we had last weekend but in truth that was never going to happen against a team who just wanted to stick bodies on the edge of the box and be compact. Lacazette also found it tough going and never really had much of a sniff all afternoon. I suspect he’ll find more chances next weekend even, because City won’t sit as deep as Swabsea, so let’s just wait and see what he can produce.

Overall this looks like a routine win and on balance of play and with the benefit of our old friend hindsight you’d say it was, but it had a few elements which made it a little less comfortable than I’d have liked. I still don’t believe we’ll get anything from City next weekend so this result was important for us.

Catch you all in the morrow.

Laters people.