An old acquaintance, Vip, caught me after the game. He told me the title of my piece on yesterday’s derby should be ‘Enough is enough’. He was talking about Arsene Wenger. To this observer, the situation now is that the relationship between Arsenal’s manager and a growing number of the club’s fans is like a marriage gone stale. There are still good times, but not many. The magic has gone. And there is an acknowledgement that it will never return. Eyes are cast elsewhere and thoughts of what a fresh love would be like become more frequent. Perhaps this echoes Le Boss’s personal life. For those that know the Joy Division song Love Will Tear Us Apart, the lyrics capture such a situation between two long term partners. One of the lines is, ‘Yet there’s still this appeal that we’ve kept through our lives’. The comfort of familiarity, the uncertainty of the unknown, stops us making the break, stops those such as myself calling for the manager’s head. But the arguments are more frequent now. The mistakes repeated. It is a slow downward spiral of tortuous decline. But in truth, if you gave me a straight choice between having Gus Hiddink and Arsene Wenger as the manager in charge of Arsenal next weekend, I would take the former. Nothing lasts forever.

Johan Djourou, given a run of games, has improved significantly and was winning everything in the air against Everton last Sunday. Given Tottenham’s propensity to play high balls into the area, dropping him for the physically weaker Koscielny seemed a very strange decision. What followed pretty much summarized Arsenal in a nutshell. Both sides of the coin in 90 minutes. An impressive first half had everyone relaxed at the interval. And then the collapse, the Dr Jekyll Gunners came out for the second half. Spurs put Jermaine Defoe on to change their formation and Arsenal failed to adapt. Wenger claims he takes account of the opposition in setting his side up, but there seems little evidence of this, especially when things change during the course of a match. That is why, in terms of winning football games, Jose Mourinho is a far better manager than Arsene Wenger. And that is not down to an unlimited chequebook. He achieved success at Porto without it and won Inter their first European Cup for 45 years where many had failed at that club with similar resources.

The manager believes this is his strongest ever squad in his time at the club. The conclusion has to be that he has become delusional. Either that or he is speaking blatant untruths with the aim of continuing to sell what some would label his vanity project to the masses. Either way, it is totally unacceptable. Arsenal have played seven home Premier League matches so far this season. They have performed convincingly in two of those, and not once in the last five domestic home fixtures. Away form has kept them, theoretically, in contention for the title. On paper, two points behind the leaders looks good, but if Dr Wenger’s experiment was ever going to come good, he will never get a better chance than this season, when the top two are falling over themselves leaking points. And yet still, everyone can see that this group of players lacks the consistency to put a string of results together and go unbeaten for any stretch of time. It is an insult to those that won trophies under this manager to call the current squad better.

As things have gone stale between many fans and Wenger, so it is behind the scenes at London Colney. Pat Rice and Boro Primorac are not going to be imparting anything fresh after over a decade in the job. No-one is challenging them to produce anything but qualification for Champions League football. It is same old same old and the end of each season sees exactly the same. Close, but no cigar. The players are encouraged to play tidy and attractive football, but no-one is being taught how to win matches. It is widely acknowledged that Martin Keown is the reason Arsenal made the Champions League final in 2006. But here was a voice strong enough to challenge the manager and actually coach the defenders to – sometimes – do things that don’t look so pretty, like utilising row Z when the need arises. No points for artistic merit, but progress into a final where poor officiating denied Arsenal a trophy.

Wenger often talks about the mental strength of his players. Google ‘Wenger mental strength’ and check out the range of dates that he has used this phrase. It’s a load of bollocks. What struck me this morning was how often his sides have chucked away winning positions. And this includes the players that won trophies. Think about it. The FA Cup semi-final replay in 1999. The FA Cup final in 2001. Several key matches in the 2002-03 league campaign, a trophy Arsenal should have won by a street. That season ended in an FA Cup final with the players taking the ball to the corner flag against Southampton, cognisant of the fact that too often, leads had been sacrificed. The Champions League was there for the taking in the Unbeatables season, but, 2-1 up in the tie, with 45 minutes to see out against Chelsea, it all fell apart. Even in winning the title at the Lane that season, the Spurs fans had something to cheer about with a late equaliser saving some face. And that is just the trophy-winning players. What did win the pots then was that the squads were actually better and contained enough experienced players to win enough of the big games that mattered to ensure some return for their efforts. There were winners there who had learned how to win things before Arsene got hold of them. The current bunch aren’t that good, the captain knows it and cannot wait to join a team where he will win the medals his talent deserves.

I won’t bother listing the many leads thrown away since Paris 2006 in full, but those that still haunt include Anfield in the Champions League quarter-final 2008, and the 4-4 draw at home to Spurs the following season. Once Arsenal establish a lead, they continue playing the open attacking football, but fail to kill off the game. They got away with it at Everton last weekend, they did not yesterday. Tottenham had few chances, but critically, when presented with the opportunity, they converted them. Sometimes, the reluctance to shoot, such as Chamakh’s when clean through on goal with (from memory, I might be wrong) the score at 2-2, is bewildering. It doesn’t have to be passed every time. Too often the player with the best opportunity to score shirks the responsibility to get an attempt on goal. Mental strength?

I do actually believe that this group of players are capable of winning trophies. They just need to be coached to do it. Individual weaknesses can be worked on and the team play can be addressed. They are technically skilful, but do not have the right mental approach to win football matches week-in, week-out. They are inconsistent, sometimes appearing unmotivated. They exist in a comfort bubble that does not challenge them, a womb created by the manager. No-one gets near his precious babies. That would include a coach that might tell them to do something that makes their game a little less beautiful. Things need shaking up badly at the club if Arsenal are to win trophies again. Home defeats to West Brom, Newcastle and now Spurs are not flukes. They are indicative of a team in need of guidance.

Arsenal are two points off the lead, but please let us not kid ourselves that things are in a good situation. The team lost three at home in 2001-02 but won the title because they were unbeaten away all season. Arsenal still have to play Manchester United twice and Chelsea will ruin Christmas for a good number on December 27th. And the Gunners can’t be relied upon to beat anybody, never mind the top two. United haven’t played well all season but are unbeaten and Chelsea will lift themselves out of this malaise once Drogba fully recovers and Essien returns. The chance was there, but the current regime are not able to exploit opportunities, just throw away promising situations, frustrating the fans.

The culture of complacency at Arsenal when it comes to football matters thrives. It means nothing is going to change soon. The team will get enough points to make the top four and next season’s Champions League. They will be eliminated in the last eight or sixteen in Europe by a team better equipped to win two-legged football ties. It will be déjà-vu. There is no wisdom in these pronouncements. Everyone knows it, including those in charge of hiring and firing the manager. The players will not be sat down in front of a commemorative DVD of yesterday’s game and ordered to watch the second half three times over to analyse their mistakes. Arsene Wenger will spout more delusional bullshit in press conferences. Love will tear us apart, sure enough. However, to finish on another musical reference from the days when I had hair, in our heart of hearts, I think that today, the majority of Gooners will agree, something better change.

(PS – A good number of submissions have already received about yesterday. I will try and get them up gradually over the next three days, but please bear with me. Additionally, a plug for the current issue of The Gooner, which can be bought online here)