Boss failing to give team direction

A PICTURE of disarray, Arsenal were not even aware of how they should form up from Ederson’s goal-kicks. Utterly clueless, in fact.

Mikel Arteta, or any manager, should not be directing traffic from a dead ball at the other end of the pitch.

But here he stood, on the touchline he once prowled as Pep Guardiola’s assistant manager, berating his players before Ederson had restarted play.

Sead Kolasinac decided to wander into midfield from one, ignoring the unattended Gabriel Jesus and leaving Kieran Tierney to cover when the wing-back was instructed to press higher up the pitch.

Watching that unfold provided a startling example of quite how bad Arsenal are and raised questions as to what had been going on at

London Colney in the days prior.

It was little surprise that Manchester City’s third goal, 10 minutes after that embarrassment, originated from their goalkeeper passing 40 yards into midfield.

Ferran Torres’s closest marker was in the suburb of Gorton and City had the ball in the net seconds after, Jesus being allowed two unopposed touches inside the sixyard box to make sure.

By the time Rodri had guided in a fourth just after half-time, the travelling support who had not already scarpered were dancing in the aisles, ridiculing their own situation. This was pathetic.

Arteta has endured Covid and injury problems, yet there was a sense that this display would not have changed much even with a full complement. Three defeats from three league games, no goals and a distinct lack of hope.

It’s either that Arteta cannot translate his ideas across, that his players don’t want to hear them or that they cannot understand them. Norwich City and Burnley are next. Imagine if those matches go badly?

The analysis videos can thrown in the bin. What can you learn from picking apart the completion of one pass in six minutes between first and second goals?

There was the obligatory Granit Xhaka red card, another for his bulging dereliction of duty catalogue.

Bottle everything you think you know about Arsenal at their abject worst and here it was — a decade to the day since that 8-2 humiliation across the other side of

Manchester.