Can you make a footballer? That is, can you take a likely looking youth in his early teens, immerse him with the best coaches and fitness instructors, and make him eat and drink football until he is 17 or 18 and turn out a finished article of a modern super player?

The answer? Probably not. Why? Because of the missing ingredient; a footballing brain.

How many highly athletic and motivated players with pace and good ball control do we see? They are in every team, none more than the Arsenal. Looking around the Premiership it is almost like there is a production line of them. However, we are being fed the same players, who can challenge, play tippy-tappy passes all day, block tackles, reform and generally buzz around in a blur of colour and commitment.

Sounds familiar? Yes, the Arsenal this season, with a few notable exceptions. It rather reminds me of a boxer against a fighter. For all the aggression of the latter a killer pass can neutralize all the aggression and transform a game in a second or two. Now I am not going to hark back five to ten years when we had world class players with footballing brains in spades: Bergkamp, Henry, Pires, Viera, Petit, Lungberg et al, and the absolute magic of those days would be almost impossible to recreate.

But for all the intricate passing of today’s team, looking closely there are often two touches, one to control and one to pass on to a colleague. At high speed, intricate passing movements are obviously designed to wrong foot defenders and set up one of our strikers for a clear chance on goal. The two touches just give defenders time to recover and reform and we are unable to find a way through. Some players instinctively know where the pass is going and the so called ‘holy trinity’ of Fabregas, Van Persie and Arshavin at the beginning of the season was both good on the eye and effective. Some of our players cannot keep up with it and slow the tempo due to their uncertainty and the movement breaks down. RVP has been a big miss for us this season.

It does appear that most teams including Chelsea and Man U have decided the best way to play us is an eight man defence, snapping at us until the movement breaks down. This goes for Villa and Liverpool too. But in my opinion, when RVP and Kieran Gibbs are fully fit we are only an Adams, Dixon and Parlour away from a trophy winning team. The goalkeeping position is a separate issue. I do not like to criticize ‘Le Boss’ but he did Shay away from a Given opportunity.

Bearing in mind the precarious financial position of some clubs and the trend for winding up orders to be issued, Arsene’s oft repeated warning that Arsenal’s way of business is the only way in these stringent days should be wholly supported. Look at Man U and Liverpool. Who would want to be in their shoes? We know that Chelsea and Man City are in a false position and could fail overnight depending on the whims of their owners. Let’s give our club all our support, it could just happen.

A complaint about our shirts; Do the club get involved in the choice or is it the marketing people? The current blue away strip is simply crass. At Stoke recently, I was in a low seat and now and again I lost sight of our players near the touchline, they simply melted into the crowd or ever changing advertising boards. Don’t even talk about the alternative white strip. Didn’t Herbert Chapman change our main strip into red with white sleeves when a groundsman with a red short sleeved pullover over a white shirt stood out so prominently? And shouldn’t our main second choice be based on yellow, i.e. a combination of yellow and blue sleeves? They obviously don’t know the link with the past when munitions workers had a yellow skin tinge and were called the ‘Woolwich Canaries’ and Joe Mercer’s team in the 1950 Cup Final v Liverpool, shocking everybody with their yellow shirts.

Let’s have our proper colours back, white sleeves with proper blood red, (BS04E53) not a fancy shade now looking more like Charlton Athletic!!

This is written just before the away game at Stoke which I will attend (Apologies for the delayed posting, but we’ve been swamped with more topical pieces since this arrived - Ed). I have never felt more apprehensive prior to a game, yet there is a nagging confidence which just won’t go away!!