What exactly is the problem at Arsenal?

For the first time in Arsenal’s rich history, they have started the season without a win in two matches and zero goals scored. For loyal long-standing fans of the Gunners, whatever is going on right now is in total contrast of whatever reason made them fall in love with the club.

It’s not only about the obvious statistics for the Gunners, other damning stats such as one big chance created in 180 minutes of 2021-22 PL football make it even more worrisome for the North London club. The ease at which Chelsea took them apart time and again didn’t show that of a team that had spent £129 million already in this summer.

In this window, the club have brought in a left back, a center back, a goalkeeper, a central midfielder, and an attacking midfielder. However, there is still a general feeling that the team’s quality hasn’t improved.

While many can rightly make excuses that nine first team players have been missing in action already this season, it still doesn’t warrant a club with Arsenal’s quality to look helpless at this stage of this season. The Arsenal hierarchy seem to believe strongly in Project Arteta, a project they feel would result in stability and long term success. However, there are no signs of improvement, rather the team has regressed from when it won the FA Cup.

While there is nothing wrong with trusting a young manager, there is everything wrong with not being ruthless at a club as big as the Gunners. A rookie manager combined with a rookie Technical Director don’t particularly ooze good planning. The lack of experience in decision-making at this level has been evident between this duo. The club improved defensively in the 2020/21 season but had well-documented issues going forward. However, duo of Edu and Arteta have decided to spend £50 million on signing a center back before addressing the issues in the attacking areas.

Mikel Arteta has lost 20 games in 60 as Arsenal manager. An average of one loss in 3 games, a ratio not befitting of a team that wants to return to Europe. Perhaps, the biggest issue with Mikel Arteta is the arrogance that oozes from his decisions. The lack of pragmatism in the fundamentals of how he approaches football matches reeks of a manager not ready to learn from his mistakes. While there must be a clearly stated objective, when one way isn’t working to achieve the objective then another method should be deployed.

For the first time in a while, Arsenal fans will feel like the club owners have backed the manager. Now it is time to ask big questions from the manager. A club of Arsenal’s stature cannot afford to be used to such a level of mediocrity for too long, hence it becomes the norm. As at the time of writing, Arsenal winning football matches have become the exception while losing has become the expected result going into a game. Big clubs and empire fall and it often starts with the lack of having a system that works, which Arsenal do not evidently have right now.

But then I ask again, what exactly is the problem at Arsenal?