Some days I find words easy to come by when I write my blog. I just have stuff that pops into my head and away we go. Today is NOT one of those days.

I was hanging yesterday and so I wasn’t sure whether the feelings were exacerbated after the defeat to Brighton on Saturday, but with an additional 24 hours having passed I’m still pretty miffed. I’m miffed because…well…Brighton are pretty sh*t and showed it at the weekend, but a lot is being made of those familiar Arsenal failings. You know, the boring ones we’ve heard for the last 10 – 15 years of a ‘soft underbelly’ and stuff like that. Then you get dickheads like Maupay saying that we should show some ‘humility’. That’s up there with the Troy Deeney ‘cajones’ stuff and it shouldn’t wind me up as much as it does, but the fact that a sh*t forward who has just come off the back of a win against us and no time soon for us to get any revenge until next season just winds me up even more.

I wonder how Mikel is feeling this morning though. I bet he must be pretty cheesed off too. I mean he’s been delivered absolutely no luck with injuries, but to have a squad like this assembled by a football exec who seem to know very little about what they’re doing in terms of a long term strategy, must be pretty tough to take, especially as with every defeat like Saturday’s the odd nagging doubt starts to creep in for many people.

The reality is now quite clear that even a top five finish is beyond us. And the fact that we’re now two points away from CRYSTAL-EFFING-PALACE is making this season even more of a banter sh*t-show of a season for us. Seriously folks, we need to be looking at this as a bunch of friendlies because with the options we have in midfield it even feels like there’s no way we’re getting close to the Europa League spots at this rate. There’s just no creativity in the team. Saka aside this midfield of Guendouzi and Ceballos with Willock as another option looks so far short of being able to compete it is making me dread having to watch every single one of the future fixtures that are coming up. Genuinely folks, I almost don’t want to have to watch the game on Thursday because Southampton are a much better side than Brighton and with the players we currently have available, with the likes of Guendouzi and Ceballos the only midfielders I think we can slot in there right now, I am wondering how the heck the team is going to get anything other than a bit of a tonking. Think about it – hard runners just transitioning from a turnover in the Southampton half, slicing through Guendouzi and Ceballos like a knife through butter, to leave an already terrible defence under pressure? It could happen time and time again and at the weekend we saw a rubbish Brighton side do it to us. A Brighton side who hadn’t won in six. A Brighton side who have been struggling for goals all season. Yet we came to town and were the gift that gave.

Don’t ask me why but I just decided to have a look at the league table. Liverpool are 43 points clear of us.

43.

You could take away half of their points this season, half of their matches, and they’d still have more points than we have accumulated. It is nothing short of a disgrace and poor old MIkel Arteta has walked into this dumpster fire thinking that this team and these players can be coached the way back up the table.

Nope. Not happening. I’m afraid we will need to be sweeping quite a few into the bin. It needs to happen this summer. Genuinely, just offload the likes of Sokratis, Mustafi, Luiz, for free. Send Ceballos back to Madrid. See whatever you can get for Guendouzi, Kolasinac, Lacazette, then sadly, also see if you can get cash from Aubameyang. We basically need to raise as much cash as possible from any saleable assets because this all needs to be ripped up and restarted with some structure. Because what we’ve got at the moment is a squad so unbalanced it looks like me after I’ve supped my way through one of my five litre beer kegs I have at home.

There are plenty of young players we can be giving a go now and those that impress can have another go next season having had valuable first team minutes under their belts. Those that don’t we can move on for whatever money we can take. Let’s have more minutes for Tierney, Saka, Nelson, Martinelli, Pepe. Let’s see if Zech Medley is any good. Let’s Give Rob Holding a run of games – if he doesn’t impress then it’s another player we need to make a harsh decision on. The guy is 24 years old and we need to see if he is actually going to be good enough.

Let’s see more of Maitland-Niles and let’s try it in a central position. He can’t be as bad as Ceballos was against Brighton. Give Eddie a run of games as a central striker if we must and if we know we have a buyer for Aubameyang. There is little point playing Auba if we’re going to persist with him out wide left anyway.

We need to just forget all of our favourites, we need to forget about who is on the pitch and who is more senior, we need to just give some of these young players a go because right now we’re looking at having to rely on them a lot next season given the lack of cash that will be swirling around the Premier League.