Arteta’s misfiring Gunners look shot

ARSENE WENGER was probably at home in midweek, stroking his pearl-white cat in front of a gigantic wall-length TV screen.

That’s how I imagine he gets his football fix, anyway.

Sat bolt upright, studiously taking in every move, noting every player’s ability and athleticism – and probably storing up for himself a few mental notes about how he could have moaned about the referee had he been stood in Gunners’ boss Mikel Arteta’s shoes.

Oh to be a fly on the wall at Casa Wenger when Phil Foden joyously smashed home Manchester City’s third at the Etihad – it would have been the money shot of Project Restart.

The anguish as two decades’ work crumbled before his very eyes. Twenty years in which Arsenal were built conscientiously and painstakingly. Reduced to rubble.

Second-best from start to finish. It’s not many times any journalist has written those words about Arsenal since the mid-1990s.

How much of a shambles can be seen from the bizarre idea to fly to Manchester from Stansted Airport barely three hours before kick-off.

This was a chartered flight – and it wasn’t as if Arteta’s squad had to go through passport control and dawdle through duty free – but it was still cutting it fine ahead of a televised match with a global audience.

A storm was swirling around

PLENTY has been written about Paul Pogba, and sometimes you wonder whether it is all worth it.

Then he comes onto the pitch in north London on Friday night, plays a quite magnificent 40-yard pass on the half-volley, straight onto Marcus Rashford’s boot, and you realise that the answer to the question

is ‘Yes!’

Manchester, too. So what’s wrong with a coach? Three-and-a-half hours on half-full motorways? These precious munchkins don’t have to stop at Corley services, either.

These five-star palaces on wheels are kitted out with toilets, ovens – the lot. If that’s a snapshot of what’s going wrong, then on the pitch it’s carnage, made even worse by what happened on the south coast yesterday.

Arsenal may not want to measure themselves against the likes of Brighton – it’s the Manchester Citys of this world they used to set their stall by – but that’s how far down they have fallen.

Where is the brute force, passion and ability of the ’98 double-winners? Where is the guile of Wenger’s later

Arsenal XIS? The Santi Cazorlas, the Aaron Ramseys. Yes, even the Jack Wilsheres. And as for the Invincibles...

Frank Lampard wasted no time booting David Luiz out of Stamford Bridge. He might have questioned himself when the Brazilian pitched up at the Emirates.

But I bet he wasn’t, having watched that walking disaster unfold in Manchester. The glass of red would have gone down well as he viewed that particular bullet being dodged.

Mesut Ozil was likened to ‘a dead frog’ during the last World Cup. That’s a description which could be wheeled out pretty much every time the midfielder dons a pair of boots.

Adjectives such as ‘languid’ are used describe him – mainly because there aren’t any succinct ways of writing ‘total waste of space’.

With time ticking down on his career, Pierre-emerick Aubameyang will be out of the exit door in less time than it takes to learn how to spell his name correctly. There are a few decent players but, the front two apart, are there any who would force their way into any of the top four sides?

It hasn’t taken long for the cracks not just to appear but to widen to such an extent that an early finish to the campaign would have come as a blessed relief had the Premier League just called the whole thing off.

Arteta (with Wenger, left) should be grateful the Gunners have enough points in the bank for their survival not to be an issue. No Champions League money, an over-paid and overhyped first-team squad and responsibilities being shirked all over the pitch.

If the Spaniard manages to make sense of this mess then he, never mind Wenger, will deserve having his statue erected outside the stadium.

Seems to get a weekly mention in this column. He deserves it too.

Another for whom praise is piling up. And rightfully so.

Live top-flight matches are back on the BBC this week.

WHO’S NOT

The man in charge of our NHS and could not even get a name-check right. Daniel Rashford? Really?