The big question on everybody’s lips this morning:

Will Freddie be in charge to oversee a glorious victory over Leeds United in the FA Cup?

Of course I’m being a little flippant, especially given that we can’t beat any team at the moment, let alone one winning every week. So the idea that we’ll steamroll the Yorkshireman feels like a fanciful one.

But you never know. By January we could have a new man in charge, or a team buoyed by Ljungberg’s approach to management, so we could be flying by then.

Or we could be stuttering along like we have all season. Who knows. What I do know is that playing Leeds in the FA Cup had wonderful nostalgic memories of a Thierry Henry kings return that I went absolutely batsh*t mental over in the ground when he opened his body up and curled the ball around the Leeds ‘keeper, to get us through to the next round of the cup. That was a delightful evening. Maybe Freddie can channel the spirit of goodwill on that night?

We talked about the manager situation and how it’s going to unfold last night for the GunnersTown show on LoveSport. And I’m sure it won’t surprise you to know that I have a theory. My theory is that I don’t think we’ll have a new manager until the new year. I’m basing that on the fact that we have Brighton at home followed by West Ham away next Monday and thereafter we get into the Christmas period. I personally don’t see any value in chucking a new manager in at the deep end and when you have Man City, followed by Everton, Bournemouth, Man United and Chelski in quick succession, it doesn’t exactly give the new man an option to have a few winnable games to get the team up and running and in his image, does it?

I certainly wouldn’t be chucking a new man under the bus now and with the Premier League season effectively over for us it doesn’t really make sense to make any incumbents life any more difficult than it already is.

And it is difficult. We have a porous defence as we do right now is hardly the best foundation for a new manager to hang his hat on. We have a back line that is shaky as anything and with Hector Bellerin our we’re shunting Chambers our wide who every team in the Premier League knows you can do damage with providing you have any tricky wide player with pace. I don’t even want to talk about our central defensive options and Kieran Tierney is still adapting. In front of them we have had enough time to see that Guendouzi and Xhaka together can be outdone with simple aggressive running and physicality and so what rubbish defence we already do have is afforded practically zero screening in front of them anyway.

In terms of a composition of a squad we are woefully unbalanced; a lop-sided mess that looks like a rabble of individuals strung together on paper and not in real life. A new man will have to work with what he’s got at first, but very quickly we’ll realise that there are some players who will be out the door sharpish, methinks.

Which I guess one could argue that it counters my own comments about a new manager not being in until January. That’s because a new man may want some new signings as early as then and if he’s only just arrived it would be difficult to just arrive, realise where we need reinforcements, then just be given the cash to spend. Especially when you’re talking KSE. They would rather sit on their hands than arrest a decline. We all know that.

So I think we’re in for a bumpy ride for the next month. Maybe even two months. But what I do agree with is getting the next appointment right. We can’t really afford to have a second f*ck up, because if we do, we really will be staring at mid table mediocrity. It already feels like we’re getting that way now. The person that eventually takes the hot seat needs to be that blend of tactician and motivator; somebody who can also communicate effectively with his players and garner the respect of his charges pretty instantly. We need a man who has a philosophy that we can see and identify with. Emery seemed to give up his philosophy within a couple of months of joining. As fans we want to see a principled man who will set out a way of developing play and if we can identify with that he’ll get time from the Arsenal fans I think.

We just have to hope the football people at the club know what they’re doing.

Catch you all tomorrow.