Joe Fitzpatrick 
You may justify Arsenal lagging behind Chelsea and Manchester City in the Premiership title race due to the seemingly unlimited transfer and wage budgets subsidised by the free spending billionaire owners of the petrodollar clubs but, at the time of writing Arsenal sit four points adrift of West Ham United and two off Southampton in the Premier League table. The Gunners have an inferior goal difference to both of the aforementioned teams having conceded 21 goals to West Ham’s 19 and Southampton’s 13 respectively. This simply isn’t anywhere near good enough for a club of Arsenal’s stature and clearly demonstrates that the size of your owner’s wallet is not the only factor that dictates your club’s place in the Premiership pecking order within the modern game.
Injuries may well have hampered Arsenal’s season so far but this is why you need to ensure adequate cover for every position in your playing squad by utilising the summer transfer window effectively and we would do well to consider the fact that West Ham have been without Andy Carroll for large parts of this season and Jay Rodriguez is still yet to feature for Southampton this season.
So my fellow Gooners, we must ask ourselves why on earth Arsenal F.C. are struggling to keep up with teams who are operating on far inferior budgets and who have not qualified for the Champions League once since its inception? The only logical answer to that question is that Arsenal currently has a manager who is not able to get the most out of the resources made available to him by his board of directors/majority shareholder.
Arsene Wenger was allowed to spend £42 million on Mesut Ozil, £16 million on Danny Welbeck and £32 million on Alexis Sanchez respectively; so the days of the Frenchman being able to plead poverty are well and truly behind him now and the real reasons for his consistent failure to mount a sustained title challenge are finally being discussed openly in the mainstream media for all to see. As much as I despised Gary Neville as a player, I cannot deny that the man knows his football and I for one agreed with him when he said after the latest shambolic performance at Anfield "Arsenal were tactically all over the place on Sunday and in the big matches, teams slice through their midfield like a knife through butter. They have too many technical players who don't have bite. For as much as Liverpool outplayed them yesterday, Arsenal were terrible in midfield from a competitive point of view, and from stopping the opposition playing." Neville singled out the performance of Arsenal midfielder Mathieu Flamini in Sunday's game at Anfield, with the Sky Sports pundit arguing the Frenchman concentrated more on his team-mates' performance than his own duties on the pitch. But the former England defender was more concerned with the nature of the 'big' games he has witnessed in recent months in the Premier League. "Flamini throughout the game was a commentator, pointing and shouting at everybody," Neville added."He looks to do every other person's job for them but the one job he's there to do, stopping the ball getting played into midfield, he failed to do regularly. I don't think he's got the quality to look after everybody else's job and look after his own as well. Flamini neither screens nor presses. Top midfield players screen well and press well. No one appears to be listening to Flamini. I don't see anybody reacting to what he's saying. I left Anfield on Sunday immensely disappointed, as I have with many of the big games this season, because there isn't the intensity or the willingness to stop the opposition playing. I feel like we're being brainwashed into thinking teams have got to be either technical or horrible to play against. The best teams in the world are horrible to play against. You're not going to win the league or Champions League just by having technical players; you have to have a team of balance."
You can’t really argue with his comments and it made me think about the comments of another one of “Fergie’s Fledglings” (Paul Scholes) made back in March of this year, He said: “It was a typical week for Arsenal. For one reason or another players just seem to go missing. The Artetas, the Cazorlas, Rosickys, and Özil as well, although I know he’s not played for a bit, it seems like they go on the pitch with no discipline. It’s almost as if they say: ‘you four, five midfielders, go out there do what you want. Try and score a goal, a few little nice one-twos, a bit of tippy-tappy football. Don’t bother running back. I don’t know if that’s what the manager does, it just seems that way. They just seem to be midfield players with no discipline. There are no leaders, there’s no Patrick Vieira, there’s no (Tony) Adams, there’s no Martin Keown. Sometimes, as a midfield player, when you’re up against it you have to say: ‘look, just come in here, sit beside me for five or 10 minutes and just try to stop the flow of attack’. These, they go 2-0 down, they just carry on what they are doing: ‘We’ll have a little walk upfield, lose the ball, play a nice little one-two and not even bother sprinting back’ – and you wonder why they are in the position they are in. I know they are third or fourth in the league but they are a million miles away in my eyes. When we played Arsenal it was really tough. You play Arsenal now, you think just get stuck in and you’ve won the game.”
So there we have two former England internationals, who have won Champions League and Premier League medals far too often for our liking saying exactly what many hardcore Arsenal fans who know their football have been saying for years. Where is the shape, discipline, desire and determination? Why are Arsenal constantly repeating the same mistakes over and over again?
Why do Arsenal no longer have tough men in their squad like Tony Adams, Patrick Vieira, Martin Keown, Emmanuel Petit or Sol Campbell?
I think the T.V. pundits are being diplomatic in their criticism of Arsenal and Arsene Wenger because Wenger has managed to achieve an almost saintly halo of protection around him due to his length of service and past achievements but we the fans should be strong enough to discuss his obvious flaws as a coach even if it does get us a smack in the face from one of his brainwashed acolytes. There is nothing more painful than the truth for some people and if you are a Wenger apologist then I suggest you take a deep breath now.
Arsenal actually needed two centre halves in the summer transfer window because Per Mertesacker is a has-been and should be the third choice centre half at the very best. He constantly lets us down in the big matches against decent opposition and he has about as much pace as a two legged donkey. He has the turning circle of an articulated lorry and is basically just not athletic or tough enough. We also needed a fourth choice centre half because I don’t think Arsenal should be playing full backs in central defence. What must George Graham be thinking of all this I wonder?
Flamini and Arteta are also has-beens and should be back up to someone like Sami Khedira because their legs have gone and they don’t win enough tackles in the middle of the park. You can’t win titles without ball winners and box to box midfielders but it seems that Arsene Wenger is determined to be the first man to do it.
Arsene Wenger inexplicably plays inexperienced kids like Joel Campbell, Gedion Zelalem and Yaya Sanogo instead of seasoned professionals like Lukas Podolski and Tomas Rosicky. He then wonders why the team can’t work things out for themselves on the pitch when things are going wrong! Both of these players have been criminally underused this season and they can’t be expected to play at their natural level without at least a good 30 minutes of competitive football every 2-3 weeks.
Arsenal can’t attack or defend set pieces simply because they don’t practice them enough. Zonal marking is a joke because space has never once scored a goal and when your £32million Chilean genius can’t beat the first defender with his delivery from the flag, questions should be raised about the training methods, in my opinion.
The overall lack of discipline and organisation is there for all to see and when Southampton and West Ham are more organised and effective than we are you have to wonder if Jürgen Klopp or Pep Guardiola are available in the summer. Surely they couldn’t do any worse?
Arsenal fans deserve more than we are currently getting for our money and we certainly don’t deserve to be watching a team that has so much attacking promise in the form of Sanchez, Giroud, Podolski, Walcott, Cazorla, Ramsey, Ozil and Welbeck and yet so little overall defensive discipline that it makes us want to punch each other in the face rather than watch the horror show unfold before our eyes.
