We’ve all seen this problem over recent seasons, we know the faults, the individual players’ weaknesses, the irony of the “mental strength” statements now sounding as much as a cliché as a ”game of two halves” and taken just as seriously. We, or at least many of us, have allowed ourselves to kid ourselves with the excuse that the team is young, is developing, and the results still keep us in the top places and the Champions League every year. All this whilst building and filling one of the best club stadiums in the world.

The time for excuses is over, development of this team is another cliché, we have seen more than enough to know whilst all of the above reasons/excuses are true (delete as to whichever side of the argument you fall) it can never excuse the hapless, passionless, resigned, ‘I couldn’t give a flying f***’ performance shown on Sunday, when were still in with a chance of taking the title race closer to the final day.

If Diaby cannot do it now, he never will. Forget learning, inexperience development or injuries. Attitude, pure and simple is something you have or you do not have. Diaby’s managed to complain - rightly - in the programme about teams going out to kick us, well I saw nothing like that at Wigan yet he showed as much motivation to “play” as I am to see Spurs win the league! Maybe we need players kicking us to give us the attitude required. I’ve singled out Diaby rather than the keeper and there are many others, but Diaby has been a victim in the past and if I now feel like I do with him, it’s even worse with so many of the others who are all named elsewhere in other posts.

The team is not a team, it’s a collection of individuals who can play when they want but do not have the appetite or belief to fight for a sustained 38 game campaign. No amount of injury or development excuses can now hide that. At absolute best you can say this collection can maintain a top four finish simply because what’s below still hasn’t been good enough (fingers crossed with worry for this season as I type this today) but that is likely to finally change next season if the development of the Spuds and City continues, which in all likelihood it will. We ARE going to be overtaken unless something changes and soon.

What is it we have to reconsider other than what is stated above? The question I have asked for the last three seasons was: Is it better to stick with what we have, as who else could have “achieved” what we have to date (and that’s not being sarcastic as plenty of teams would like a decade of ECL and a new stadium with - say it quietly today - good football) or given that we have to replace Wenger some time sooner than later, should we do it now? This season has shown that the experiment has finally failed. Last year, Wenger came out with the “we will win trophies” and got the arse when challenged by disgruntled shareholders over the chances of this when we acquired the likes of Silvestre in a position where we were hardly already strong. (Unfortunately the inflammatory way the question was put allowed him to wheedle out of giving a real answer)

Again this season we heard the promise but then it was tempered with an ‘if we don’t, then I have to reconsider the acquisition policy’. Will he? I doubt it given the track record.

Look to the fag end of his days at Monanco. It’s a repeat image of us today, young players brought in, all technically gifted, caught up in the Wenger cult and moulded into the Wenger way after having broken up an older and more experienced team. In the end they won nothing, and I believe the French referred to him as the nearly man. Based on recent seasons this did not teach Wenger much. Or maybe (as he has more than enough intelligence to see things as they are) he could or would not accept the lessons demonstrated and argued himself into a position where the policy was not wrong, just its parts. In that case, he will likely want to continue with a few sops to the world given that he knows Campbell is not long term for the club nor Gallas, and has another (young) “star” striker from Bordeaux joining on a free in a few months’ time. Plasters, not surgery, in essence.

We need to build now, as the later we leave it the longer and the more painful the suffering will be as we watch not just Chelsea having eclipsed us but the likes of the Spuds and City in forthcoming seasons . We need new medical staff to improve the currently endless long term injury list and to stop playing unfit players due to insufficient back up. We need an Adams or a Keown on the defensive coaching staff who will stand up to the sort of rubbish being shown in that department, we need someone to instil what being a player for the Arsenal means. Someone who has had that passed down to them over a period of time on the pitch by long termers, themselves brought through in the Arsenal way.

We have a dysfunctionality appearing and you see it and its effects across the spectrum of the club in more and more matches as time goes by. The problem of replacing Wenger is itself symptomatic as not only is there is no succession and everyone knows he has to leave at some stage, and sooner now than later if only due to age, but we also risk losing what little backbone to the team we have.

We need to identify a replacement now and if we can’t keep the likes of Fab or RVP as a result then it’s no different to what will happen in one year, two years, whatever, down the line and after yet more trophyless years with similar performances because it’s the culture and attitude that needs to change first. Football is a conservative game with largely conservative people, and too many can live far too long on past achievements. Brian Clough is one of the finest examples as he took Forest from the title and two European Cups, to a team that were “too good to do go down” – yet did - into the second tier under an alcoholic haze which all insiders knew about but protected him. Forest have never returned. I am not suggesting for one nanosecond that Wenger has any addiction we should worry about, just that like the Emperor’s new clothes, very few people will state or challenge out loud and in house what is obvious to everyone else.

I know there will still be many, many people who will strongly disagree with this but how long are you/we prepared to tolerate more of the same given the clear lack of belief, attitude and application being shown yet again this season with the same core of players. The only consistency is the tedious overall results as a consequence of the culture now pervading the club, and change will not come without pain! The question is how much pain and how we can limit it?

Jesus, time to stop, I am beginning to sound like a politico.