I can still hear his words now - “Don’t overcomplicate it you stupid boy”. Mr Leaper was his name, my old metalwork teacher. He was talking about my O-Level project, a useless piece of equipment that I’d made and got a D for - but turn the clock forward 25 years and he could just as easily have been describing Arsenal. How I’d love to see the charming white-haired old chap standing on the touchline, shouting “Don’t overcomplicate it you stupid boy” as Arsenal try (and fail) to walk the ball into the net for the umpteenth time.

I’ve tried to make a joke out of it but it’s really starting to wind me up as I can think of no other team in world football who, so often totally dominate a game but by trying to emulate the Harlem Globetrotters, can end up losing 1-0. Some of the football played is truly breathtaking but 9 times out of 10 there’s no end product, the ball just seems to travel backwards and forwards across the 18 yard line from wing to wing, until someone tries to thread a 12inch football through a 6inch gap without success.

How many times in the last couple of years have we seen Arsenal contribute to their own downfall? Too bloody many – Man City away, PSV away, Everton / Newcastle / Portsmouth / CSKA Moscow at home. So many times I’ve watched Arsenal toying with an opponent like a cat toys with a mouse but by a blend of complacency and over complication, we come away with nothing.

I know I sound like an ungrateful git having a whinge just for the sake of it but unfortunately the statistics make pretty grim reading for Arsenal fans. Arsenal, Man Utd & Chelski have all played 15 games this season against teams in the bottom half of the table. From those 15 games the Mancs have won 14 and taken a whopping 42 points – Arsenal have won only 8 and have taken just 27 points, 15 less than the league leaders. This is black and white evidence that we are just not killing off the teams that potential champions have to beat.

The statistics also show that Arsenal are way behind the Mancs, Chelski and Liverpool in relation to goal attempts – so far this season Liverpool have had nearly 100 more shots on goal than us in Premier League matches. And rather more tellingly, whilst we are ahead of all but the top 3 on goal attempts our conversion rate (shots to goals) is worse than Reading, Fat Sam’s northern thugs and about level with Everton & Newcastle.

There are a million and one “pundits” spouting forth on the various football shows (what IS the point of Jamie Redknapp????) and even though most of them are inconsistent and try too hard to be controversial, they all sum Arsenal up in the same way - “beautiful football but all too often it doesn’t work”.

I remember a film in the early 90’s “White Men Can’t Jump” about the rivalry between 2 amateur basketball players. In it Woody Harrelson taunts Wesley Snipes that he is more concerned with looking good than winning and that Snipes’s style constitutes unnecessary showboating. Sounds uncannily like he was referring to Arsenal doesn’t it? Another great quote from White Men Can’t Jump is "Sometimes when you win, you really lose, and sometimes when you lose, you really win”.

On one level Arsenal at the moment win every time they take the field as, come what may, they try to entertain the fans who pay top dollar for the privilege and even cynical old pundits like Hansen & Lawrenson eulogise about our team. On the other hand, we lose when we win because so many times Arsenal should really take teams apart but they seem to want to conserve energy and so many times they allow teams back into games that should have been well and truly over.

So what’s the answer? I’ve tried to understand the problem and to be fair to Arsenal, many teams now set out simply to stop us playing. This is a back handed compliment as Arsenal have become victims of their own success but it’s going to keep on happening so Arsenal to find a way to deal with it. Against PSV like so many times before, Arsenal were technically superior, fitter and probably all 7 players on Arsenal’s bench would have been in PSV’s starting eleven. But after dominating the first hour without scoring, we handed PSV a lifeline and how many times have we done that??

There seems to be a belief, almost an arrogance amongst some players that we deserve to win every time just because our football is more fluid. Don’t get me wrong, I love watching the current Arsenal team but we can’t continue to make the same mistake over and over again as it is costing so many points and so many cup upsets.

The classic case was surely the 2006 Carling Cup semi final 2nd leg at home to Wigan. Arsenal had outplayed Wigan from start to finish and had just gone 2 – 0 up with a few minutes to play. Rather than kill the game dead, the risky passes grew and grew, accompanied by the idiotic chants of olé from a few numpties in the crowd. Everyone seemed to forget that Wigan had won the 1st leg 1 – 0 and we were still very vulnerable – right on cue Wigan’s Jason Roberts outmuscled Campbell & Senderos to score a no nonsense goal, put us out and undo all of our good work.

I feel a bit hypocritical writing this article, especially having paid £50 to sit through one of the most tedious matches in Arsenal’s history when boring boring Blackburn did away with 4 – 4 – 2 and played a 9 – 0 – 1 formation, thereby guaranteeing a 0 – 0 draw in the FA Cup. Their awful football was at the opposite end of the scale to Arsenal – we tried to win and entertain, they tried not to lose!! Cesc Fabregas summed it up nicely at the end when he confronted Mark Hughes, enquired if Hughes once played for Barcelona and shook his head slowly before saying “Well that wasn’t Barcelona football”. The potty mouthed Hughes showed his true colours by hurling 4 letter abuse at Cesc but despite all that I’ve said here about no end product, I’d have Arsenal any day over thuggish teams like Blackburn and Bolton.

I just hope that I’m eating my words come May 2007 because, having come so close to winning the European Cup last year, it would be a tragedy if the most talented group of players I’ve ever seen didn’t win the grand prize. What we really need is a compromise between the two playing styles where occasionally, just occasionally we sacrifice the Harlem Globetrotter routines for a scruffy win – something like an Arseburn Rovers.