Square pegs don’t go into round holes. Children learn this at an early age. Some of you reading this will remember playing with the toy – or something similar – in the picture below.

Maybe Arsene Wenger didn’t have such toys as a child. In fact I am sure he didn’t. I can think of no other reason, stupidity apart, for his infatuation with playing players out of position.

Driving back to the West of England on Sunday night after the Portsmouth game, I pondered on when I had last seen so many poor individual performances accompanied by such bizarre positioning. Of course the home performance against Villa was particularly woeful, but I don’t recall seeing too many players playing out of position on that occasion.

What struck me on Sunday afternoon was not so much the lack spark in midfield, the complete lack of drive, the laziness of our strikers, the inability of Diaby and Eboue to play disciplined football for more than a few minutes at a time, nor the absence of any proper wing play, but the bizarre positional strategies employed.

The team started, it seemed to me, with a sensible 4-4-2, with two big strikers, presumably chosen to give Portsmouth’s rugged, if ageing, big centre backs a run for their money. A reasonable ploy, provided of course, you have a couple of strikers prepared to put themselves about and a winger or a full back who can cross the ball. That’s where it went wrong. Bendtner can’t tackle, won’t tackle, doesn’t believe in tackling and certainly finds the idea of hassling the centre backs when in possession beneath him. Adebayor, the same, with brass knobs. And Nasri, bless his tricky little feet, isn’t a winger who hits the byline and whips in crosses from the left – no he cuts inside onto his right. Eboue, nominally on the other side, can only cross once or twice a season, and Sunday was not on his schedule for crossing. For whatever reason Clichy and Sagna were generally reluctant to overlap and cross either.

So with plan A not working, suddenly we switch to plan B. Well thank goodness there was a plan B, even if it was reminiscent of one of Baldrick’s cunning ones. I thought it was brilliant, for its ingenuity and originality, if not for its success. For those who weren’t there and those who were who didn’t spot it, let me enlighten you.

Stage 1: we aren’t winning the midfield battle against the giant Bouba Diop, so rather than tell Diaby to get stuck in more, we move our own man mountain, Nasri, into the centre to confront Diop.

Stage 2: to maintain the balance, and to provide speed and penetration on the left, we move Nicklas “Laudrup” Bendtner onto the wing.

Stage 3: the piece de resistance: Eboue is given the freedom to wander wherever he likes on the pitch, especially into places where the ball is not, and as far as possible from the opposition players when they were in possession.

I had always thought Arsene Wenger was an intelligent man. But midway through the first half on Sunday I concluded, finally and sadly, that he has lost his way. He is bereft of new ideas, and whatever he is asking this group of players to do, they either cannot understand or cannot do it – or probably both.

Then after what seemed an age, Vela came on, we won a free kick, Denilson delivered it well and Gallas got in front of James and we had the three points – albeit not without some panicky defending along the way. Who knows, we may make 4th this year, but if we do it will be in spite of the appalling mess which this squad has been allowed to get into. Others have written about the excessive concentration of power and decision-making in Wenger’s hands and the problems this engenders. They are right – it’s fine when it’s working, but when it’s not, someone needs to take him on one side and make him understand that this team is a) not good enough and b) full of inadequate players who are just not organised properly.

Think about it in business terms, let’s say a restaurant. Would you pay top dollar in a swanky London eatery where the junior waitress was the chef, the head chef the wine waiter, the maitre d’ cut the vegetables and the wine waiter did the lap dancing routine at the end of the evening. You might once, but you would quickly realise that there was something wrong. And you probably wouldn’t go back.

As for the future, well I’m looking forward to Nasri playing right back. You think it won’t happen? Well, one former Arsenal manager had the great Eddie McGoldrick (our then nominal left winger) playing a few games at right back in the mid-90s. Or how about Silvestre as a striker? Some of you may remember the inspired decision in the early 80s to play Chris Whyte up front! History does have a habit of repeating itself. Happy New Year.