Seems Willian spotted a nice cushy, highly paid retirement gig. Aubameyang too maybe. Doubt Torreira, Guendouzi, Özil, Ramsey... would be doing any worse than this lot. Time to start holding Arteta to the same standards as Wenger and Emery.

He's officially been bad this game

So Arteta is a novice manager but a great tactician.

And so he was when he arrived. He seems to be suffering the decline that we see in many players that we bring it. It’s like there’s a malaise over the club.

If we stay up I'll start next season, you've got to give him more time than any other manager, otherwise what was the point of giving him the chance? Literally his first job and his first full season.

8 attempts on target this half, but zero on target.

Fortunately there are a few really weak times in the league so I doubt we are in any danger of relegation.

If we have a set of players who are clearly not good enough so have to go, but also have very little transfer value due to poor performances and high wages then you are stuck selling for low price and trying to replace them with hardly any transfer budget. So what you're asking for is a miracle!

It is Christmas after all

Looks that way. Either that or a sugar daddy.

Like one of the richest men in the world type thing?

The pressure is probably going to build on Arteta quite quickly. Unless a miracle happens by the end of this game we’ll probably be out of contention for a European place, even the Europa League let alone the Champions League, unless we win a cup. It’s not even bloody December yet. That’s not just disappointing. It’s a poor reflection on players, coaches, managers and the owner.

We're one of them.

Yep, Fulham, West Brom, Sheff Utd, Burnley all look poor. But at the moment we're in that next group - we're with Palace, brighton, west ham, newcastle......teams like Wolves, Leeds, Villa, Everton, Leicester, Southampton all ahead of us now

Dreadful. Losing at half time but not a single shot on target in the second half.

Our crossing is terrible. Can’t just be down to ability; there must be a massive confidence factor here.

Can Arteta do anything about it?

That’s the kind of thing.

We;re absolutely desperate for a rich owner who is just going to pump money in to the squad. I really can't see a way out of where we are with the amount of players we need to turn over in this squad.
I posted a list of players who would likely leave in the next 2 years and we really don't have much money to replace them.

Maybe Arteta isn't as good as we think he is. He has created a team that can't score.

Your 100% right. It’s every facet of the club. The stewardship that let this club reach a point where there’s such little talent in midfield needs to be held accountable. 14th place

Yep. The quality of the recent performances has not held out the promise that it will get better. If we get hammered next week the pressure will mount hugely.

How many 'big' clubs give a novice manager a write off season to learn on the job? The levels of ineptitude on view at the minute don't exactly hint at a great manager in the making. Of course some will cite Solksjaer being given time, but have Man Utd ever looked this hopeless since he took over?

If you went man for man wolves and Arsenal’s teams where do we actually stand from the teams that played today? We’re saying this every week and it never looks that pretty for us.

Confidence comes from predictability, Arteta literally hasn't done this before, so he has none to give to the team. If confidence is already high that's one thing.

It's not like Lampard at Chelsea who had a stronger squad to start with and then spent the most money in the world in the summer.

Apart from the general malaise, Lacazette's form disappearing 12 months ago and Pépé being a £72M waste of money has put a huge dent in any progress we might have made and burns everyone's fingers involved so we don't spend that big or take a risk for quite a while. At some point you need to hit rock bottom and rise from the ashes. I still say we stick with Arteta and keep trying to rebuild the club once Özil the the rest's wages are off the books end of the season.

Ole has also had over £200m to spend and really without Fernandes they kind of have looked this bad

Well you answered your own question. Pep Guardiola at Barca? Listen if it works it's genius if it doesn't it was stupid, it's a results business but it clearly isn't as simple as that. Ferguson being a couple of losses away from the sack and the rest is history etc.

I think Arteta will be given another season and if there isn't dramatic improvement then I think the club will part ways then. And I'm still happy to see him given that time.

At half time I was going to go and watch some paint dry but I was worried the sudden surge in excitement would not be good for the old ticker.

I have always held some concerns over Arteta but the FA cup win and some decent results against some of the big boys kind of glossed over them. It is clear that this season he has been unable to get any sort of tune out of the players at his disposal, bar perhaps the Man U game when United were actually pretty abysmal.

Arteta put a fair amount of trust in a group of senior players to steady the ship and see us through this transition, he was wrong to do so and/or those players have let him down.

Other than a new manager bump does anyone else get really that much more from this group? Of course the best may eeek out some more points but do they make Xhaka track runners, or gain pace, or any number of other problems we have?

The importance of CL football and the financial implications of not being there are so important that very few big clubs can afford to give a manager anything more than a season in which to get things moving in the right direction. We are not yet moving in the right direction.

Don't think Guardiola led Barca to their worst ever La Liga start in his first season. In fact, he won a treble.

There’s not a single creative midfield player at the club.

Changing the manager won’t alter this. Nor will micro dissecting the performances of Leno and Aubameyang either.

As I’ve said many times this is years in the making. You can’t let all those players leave without replacing them and we didn’t. Our squad is worse than it was 3 years ago. Every part of the club is malfunctioning.

By all means sack Arteta but I assure you nothing changes

That's the million dollar question. Is Arteta the real deal or is it just hype after his spell with City.

I really have no idea and he's been here a season. What I will say is that I really can't believe our players are as bad as the performance levels suggest.

Yes there is, he's just not being played.

I don’t think we can pick him if we didn’t name him in the premier league squad

No but they put a novice in charge and it paid off so it looks like genius. It was the same gamble we've taken. Honestly give him one season it's ridiculous.

When wenger went we seemed to have a strategy to invest in expensive and experienced players to try to get us straight back in the champions league. It was totally wrong, we needed to accept that the squad was fundamentally unbalanced and flawed and start a 5 year plan. That plan should have been to totally strip the wage bill, get rid of underperforming players and invest in younger players with potential.
Now is the time to do that. The new 5 year plan has to start from now. We need to plan for not being in the champions league for the next 5 years and adjust wages and transfers accordingly

That's not what you said.

With some of the players I absolutely can believe they are as bad as they are playing. We have some players who have always let us down and who would struggle to start for a top 10 team. We definitely have players who are playing below their level, the question is is this the managers role to get them playing to the level they can or should the player take responsibility for his poor form?

Does he help? Really? Look at Özil’s goals and assist stats over the last year or so before he was cut out of the picture. All it shows was a guy who was nowhere near the level he previously was and also added nothing to the defensive side of the game.

Totally agree, at the moment it looks like halfway house of young players but also hedging our bets getting players who frankly are a bit passed it at this level and journeymen to mitigate their mistakes. Bold it isn't.