Obviously you need a great degree of intelligence and training to become either a professor or a surgeon, and our society will certainly always need them both, but, when it really matters, the practical skills of a surgeon are always going to be more useful in a crisis than all of the droning lectures and clever philosophical arguments that even the most gifted professor can muster. The time for the excuses and the doublethink lectures of the professor must surely now be drawn to some kind of conclusion as the desperate need for a surgeon to deal with Arsenal’s current situation is reaching a critical level.

Make no mistake about it, fellow Gooners, Arsenal are in desperate need of major surgery as, sadly, they have been diagnosed with a terminal case of diabolical defending and simply aren't scoring enough goals to afford to carry on leaking goals in the current fashion that is all the rage in the house of Wenger.

Some of you will be reading this and nodding in agreement, while a few others will be thinking "But Joe, we're not that bad of a team, we're in the Champions League again and we've got a lovely new stadium. If only it wasn't for all the dodgy refereeing and that curse of bad luck with injuries, we would have won a trophy by now." If that sounds like you then please, do me a favour and shut that little internal dialogue in your head up for just a minute and, I beg you, please, please, pretty please, get back to reality.

Arsenal might have had bad luck with referees’ decisions and injury problems recently but it didn't stop us winning trophies in the past, so I fail to see how a rational person can continue to use those same excuses with a straight face. Yes, we all know that Manchester United seem to get a lot of contentious decisions that go in their favour, and it could be argued that there is a case to be made for an independent investigation into the matter. However, please allow me to repeat myself and reiterate that even IF there is a grand conspiracy against all things Arsenal, how on earth did we manage to win things in the past? Is the conspiracy a new phenomenon? Or is it much more likely that Arsenal just aren't changing or fixing the things that are well within their power to change? You can hide behind excuses forever if you want to, but I can promise you that it will never get you anywhere and all of Wenger's excuses won't buy us a trophy any time soon.

If Arsenal don't finally face up to all of their well-publicised problems over the summer, they will be seriously risking their much-coveted Champions League place, and that's a fact! Teams such as Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City are not going to stand still and wait for us, are they? No, they certainly are not. It seems much more likely to me that they are going to spend, spend, spend again meaning that we are going to have either to break with the current "project youth" transfer policy or find some amazing players from Africa and South America that no one else has ever heard of. It's just a fact that, over the course of a full season, the Premier League table doesn't lie and, at the end of the season, you finish where you deserve to. This season, it looks like we will be the fourth best team in the league.

Since we are all friends here and are sharing facts, here are some more facts for your consideration that even Rafa Benitez would be proud of, and they clearly give an indication of just how far Arsenal have fallen behind Manchester United and Chelsea. Manchester United have conceded 109 goals in the Premier league since the beginning of the 2007/08 season, Chelsea have conceded 114 while Arsenal have conceded a massive 150 goals. Over a four-season period, Arsenal have conceded a full season’s worth of goals (41) more than Manchester United and that, for me, is the main reason why Arsenal have not won any silverware lately. The fact that Arsenal are somewhat prone to leaking goals at the back would not be so detrimental to our chances of glory if we could score more goals. However, we are sadly being left behind a bit in that department too: during the same time period (from the beginning of the 2007/08 season until now) Manchester United have scored 308 goals, Chelsea 305 and Arsenal have managed just 295.

I realise that it sounds very simplistic but the facts are that Arsenal either have to concede less goals or score more goals - or some combination of the two. It's really as simple as that.

In order to achieve these aims Wenger must remove the cancerous deadwood players that are infecting our squad and are obviously not good enough. Then he must transplant some experienced talent into the key areas of the team in order to see the vital signs of number of goals scored increasing, and our number of goals conceded decreasing, this time next year. In my opinion, the improvement of those statistics will be the only true measure of progress, and all the possession, territorial advantage and pretty passing patterns in the universe will not convince me otherwise.

Wenger always says that he is going to fix our problems but, like a cowboy builder, he always seems to find a reason or excuse why nothing ever gets repaired. He often cites referee incompetence, injuries and bad luck as the reasons for his failure but we now should be starting to wonder just how long we can be expected to listen to all this bollocks while he fails to correct obvious deficiencies in our squad and fails to change the things that he has the power to change.

Fool me once, Wenger, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I don't know about any of you but I'm ashamed to say that I've been fooled on more occasions than I care to mention by Wenger's excuses, and have always been willing to give him more time. Maybe we should have listened to former Liverpool captain and MOTD pundit Alan Hansen when he was amazingly critical of Arsenal after their F.A. cup triumph back in 2005. Say what you like about Hansen, but I generally respect his opinions, and his words in the Telegraph back in 2005 seem to indicate that even after winning their last major trophy Arsenal were clearly in need of a bit of cosmetic surgery at the very least.

He wrote; "During Saturday's FA Cup final, I remember thinking: ‘If Manchester United win this, then this could be the end for Arsenal.’ They play to a one-dimensional pattern - a very beautiful pattern admittedly - and United had shown every Premiership manager watching how to deal with it. “Lucky” would not begin to describe the result and, because Arsène Wenger is a very intelligent and thoughtful man, he will know changes have to be made. Even great sides can have an off-day but this went deeper. United demonstrated how easy it is to play against a team who have settled on a formula and lack the capacity to change it. People might say that, without Thierry Henry, Arsenal were short of attacking firepower, but on that evidence I would have to say that even if Henry had played in Cardiff it would have made little difference.

This is D-Day for Arsenal. I am not saying Wenger should be scouring Europe for a 6ft 4in centre forward but they will have to change their approach. On Saturday they had a free-kick on the right-hand side of the Manchester United box. The situation cried out for a cross to be whipped in. Instead they played it short and back. In the commentary box at the Millennium Stadium I was stunned - I simply couldn't believe what I had seen. The sheer lack of ideas was almost embarrassing. A Wayne Rooney could transform Arsenal and give them a totally different dimension; when he gets into the box, he fights and scraps and makes things happen, but for Rio Ferdinand and Mikael Silvestre, at the centre of the United defence, Saturday afternoon was cigar time.

Because the centre of midfield was so congested, Arsenal's only real option was to get out wide, but, when they did, the tactic proved absolutely futile because there was never anyone in the box to support them. Ashley Cole kept getting to the byline and finding there was nobody to cross to. The only way Arsenal will be able to mount a serious challenge to Chelsea is if they bring in three or four high-quality players over the summer. Next season they will overcome teams that do not have the pace of Cristiano Ronaldo on the wings or the strength of Rooney in the box. However, some will simply put two lines of four across the middle of the pitch against one of the finest attacking sides the English game has seen and challenge Arsenal to break them down and some will succeed. And, when Arsenal come up against the big clubs, the same problems that you saw in Cardiff will simply resurface.

Money for players is tight at Highbury but Wenger has the ability to overhaul Arsenal in the transfer market and his balance sheet over the past five years is better than Manchester United's or Liverpool's, let alone Chelsea's. But he will realise that, even though the FA Cup has been won, his team have to change the way they perform, not just the personnel."

Dr. Hansen diagnosed the early warning signs of Arsenal's ongoing health problems way back then, but our Professor was unable or unwilling to wield the much-needed scalpel and step in like any real surgeon would.

This summer will finally show us once and for all if Wenger really has both the skill and stomach required to finally operate on his poorly squad.