A depressing familiarity

There have been some loud echoes recently, the way in which we lost the Birmingham cup final from a strong second half position, the way in which we have thrown away a chance at winning the league title (again) and the way in which we lost away at Bolton last weekend. The recurrent manner of our league capitulation is extremely depressing and frustrating. Despite these frustrations there is no excuse for some of the abuse and vitriol that has been aimed in the manager's direction of late.

It pains me to say it but time is running out for the manager. He faces a massive decision, does he do nothing, carry on ignoring the obvious and risk losing his job? Or does he admit failure and then address certain glaring failings in our squad in order to turn things around?

I sincerely hope he does the latter and the signs are that he will, my fingers are firmly crossed. Lee Dixon's interesting opinion in the Independent is well worth a read. I just wonder if certain Arsenal players have become too comfortable at the club, there seems to have been too much complacency in our performances time and time again, is Arsene's 'vegetarian parenting' resulting in an unacceptable slackness which is consequently undermining our performances? I wonder.

The vast majority of us can see where things have gone wrong, we have lost our physical power, we do not quite have the raw pace we used to, we lack experience in the squad, we have an excessive amount of small technically proficient midgets, the balance in our elevens and squad has been lost. The problems we have are interwoven and inseparable, the lack of experience goes together with our lack of defensive organisation at times, our inability to grind out results stems from inability to defend leads, our lack of tactical variation stems from our many of the above.

This season has gone, maybe we can salvage a bit of pride over the remaining games, I sincerely hope so. It is now undeniable that significant change is needed to transform us into a side that is capable of lasting the distance. Even with significant change there will be no guarantees of success, but it has to be shown that our failings have been acknowledge and acted upon. Let's get behind the team and give the manager a chance of turning things around.