Arsenal Team Talk/Gossip/Rumours 25/26

Not beating pool at home started the rot. It broke their confidence and we've had some awful results since.

This one really is a collapse.

As much as I despise knee jerk reactions, last night painted a very clear picture to me. We're gutless, lost way too many physical battles against the weakest opponents we can expect to face in a league game which is simply unacceptable. Last night brought home something a friend said to me a couple of weeks ago, that myself & my son must be having a ball watching Arsenal this year given the potential quadruple, it then hit me that I haven't really enjoyed watching us at all, bar the odd game we've been awful to watch & rarely when clearly the better team put games to bed early, we just don't have that killer instinct that serial winners need, and don't play the attractive attacking football we did a couple of years ago either that gave us 2 great seasons of football to watch albeit without a trophy to show for it. At this stage we've swapped the great football for risk averse slow methodical cr*p and are still as far from winning silverware as we were then.

I'll be honest, I cant see Arteta winning any more silverware at the club, we just don't have the mentality to be winners IMO.

City are & will be mentally be to strong for us and will comfortably win the league cup final, and even if we get to the last 8 in europe we're due to play city there again too, same result there IMO. They'll 100% win the league now, I just don't see where the change in attitude comes from within now to change the inevitable.

It was there to be won & I cant see us having a better chance for a while given the start City & Liverpool had, but the reality is draws against weaker teams have killed any momentum, Forest, Brentford, Wolves, all appalling performances, Liverpool & united at home the same. Other than the wins over the promoted clubs we've been muck for a good while now and Arteta doesn't appear to have an answer to that slump in performance. Even our defensive solidity has waned considerably now and that was our biggest asset until Christmas.

Last night was not a knee jerk, it was a simple realisation for me that we are not the team I thought/hoped we were. I had great hopes for this season & genuinely believed the drought would end, sadly the dream ended last night, I've never seen my son so despondent after a game and has already said he doesn't want to sit through any more games this year as its not fun anymore. That sums it up for me, if i cant enjoy sitting with my son watching The Arsenal what's the point anymore, I can take not winning stuff (have had more of that in the last 48 years supporting the club than I care to remember) but to promise so much & deliver so little in such a gutless way is a hard hard watch.

On the outside people will say we're still in 4 competitions etc, but who genuinely believes we have the wherewithal to make a real go of the remainder of the season? UNless theres a serious shift in mentality we're done.

Good observation, post game the body language had 'beaten docket' written all over it. If the team themselves don't believe they can still do it then we really are just waiting to be overtaken.

I'm so angry at myself this morning, I promised I wasn't going to let last night bother me too much but the more I think of it the angrier I get at myself for allowing myself to get sucked in to caring too much.

I genuinely cant remember the last time I felt this low after a game (especially one we didn't even lose!!)