And so at the end of another barren season – encapsulated in microcosm by the absence of either guile or guts at Sh*te Hart Lane and the DW Stadium - it’s about time someone dismantled the myth of this current crop of Arsenal players, most of whom aren’t fit to wear the shirt.

It’s a myth that’s been peddled by Arsene Wenger for too bloody long, and perpetuated by the slavish pundits who make a tidy living out of promoting the Sky product that constitutes the Premier League. A myth brutally exposed by Barcelona, supposedly our Spanish contemporaries, in the Champions League debacle, and by Chavski and Manure during the domestic campaign.

As the central tenets of this myth would have it, Arsenal are a young team who play the kind of football that has every neutral dribbling down the front of their replica shirts in awe.

How much longer can Arsene deploy the argument of youth to justify the lack of progress? This mantra is becoming as tedious as David O’Leary’s copious references to his “babies” while he was manager of Leeds United. Admittedly much of the squad may still be younger than the aforementioned blues and reds above us in the table, but they have had ample time to mature collectively. That they haven’t can only be attributed to the simple fact that they are not good enough. And those that show real promise, the likes of Jack Wilshere and possibly Jay Simpson, are sent out on loan to enhance other sides. Bolton Wanderers get Wilshere, we get to keep Theo Walcott. Do you want me to draw a picture?

Wilshere is cut from the Wayne Rooney template – ability, awareness and attitude – while Walcott has… well, he has blistering pace. Which begs the question, why not choose a career in sprinting? The one advantage is that he wouldn’t have a ball at his feet and, consequently, wouldn’t have to wonder how to despatch it at the end of one of those high-octane sprints of his. Let’s face it, Walcott is the distillation of the myth - he looks like a kiddies’ TV presenter and does his best work when he’s not in possession. In another era he might have been turning out for the Spuds.

And then there’s Nicklas Bendtner. Does anyone apart from Bendtner and his dad really take him seriously as a footballer? Jesus, he makes Shola Ameobi look like a world class striker.

What of the fantasy football then? Isn’t most of it played outside the opposition’s box, all those pretty triangular passing movements that usually culminate in a defensive cul-de-sac, or in a high and less than handsome miscue from Bendtner? Manure, on their day, are among the finest exponents of the beautiful game, the difference being they usually punish opponents, while Arsenal settle for merely posing.

Unless there is wholesale change, the myth will persist. That change has to start with the manager. If he is not prepared to admit that he is wrong about this latest Arsenal model, and set about rectifying things by (for starters) signing a new goalkeeper, a left back, a central defensive partner for Vermaelen, a couple of midfielders with a bit of bollocks, and a forward who knows how to score regularly and doesn’t care how the goals come, then he should go now before the legacy he has built becomes tarnished.

Otherwise there’s a very real danger that The Arsenal could return to the dark days of mid-table mediocrity that has largely been the Spuds’ hallmark during the Wenger reign.