The crisis at Arsenal points to something much deeper

There's an example some modern coaches use to show a team has run out of ideas: it is when they start swinging in crosses, repeatedly, to no effect. Arsenal tried that 46 times against Inter on Wednesday. It isn't quite the 81 that David Moyes'

- MIGUEL DELANEY

Manchester United attempted in the case study example against Fulham in February 2014, but it’s clearly a problem.

Three defeats in six isn’t even the team’s worst run in the last year, but the issue is that it feels like there is something deeper going on. The jubilant excitement about Mikel Arteta’s time, stretching back to the summer of 2022, has abruptly transformed into anxiety, manifesting in an impotent frustration on the pitch. It just isn’t happening for Arsenal right now. It’s all so forced. Headlines about issues like the surprise departure of sporting director Edu then become even more consequential, fostering a sense that everything is going wrong.

That doesn’t necessarily make tomorrow’s trip to Chelsea a must-win, given the number of variables this season. Nevertheless, it does feel like the squad need to win, at least to prevent this getting worse. Arsenal need the release.

The greater frustration is that this would normally be the sort of bad run that every good team occasionally goes through, even Manchester City. The specific problem for Arteta is that it has been compounded by a number of other issues at once, to turn it into something else.

Other clubs might insist that Arsenal’s injury crisis is overstated, but it’s true they have lost key individuals. A team can weather that over a few games, as Arsenal did with that 1-0 win at Tottenham Hotspur and 2-2 draw at Manchester City a month ago. Any longer, however, and you start to see why those players were so important in the first place.