Arsenal: How has this proud club come to this mess?

Arsenal are a club with a rich and vibrant history, yet here we see them in a constant state of turmoil. How have we come to this mess?

You just can’t seem to keep Arsenal out of the headlines for all the wrong reasons and yesterday was no exception. 18 months ago we were supposed to see the start of a brand new era which was going to put us back on top. Instead we are arguably in a bigger mess than we were in the latter years of Arsene Wenger.

The atmosphere in the stadium is once again toxic and instead of looking up we look to be going in a never-ending downward spiral. How have we ended up like this?

Where to even start with the Crystal Palace game? It all started so brightly as well. Whatever your opinion of Granit Xhaka is and whether or not you feel the boos were justified, the reaction from Granit Xhaka was atrocious. This is our club captain who’s goading his own fans and telling them to f**k off.

That was bad enough, but to rip the armband off and throw it and then storm down the tunnel like a bratty child is something you would see in Sunday league football not in top-level football. I get this has been a long time coming with Xhaka never being a fan favourite and recently him and his wife being abused on social media. I certainly don’t condone the abuse on social media but Xhaka has got to be the bigger man and not stoop to their level. He’s a professional footballer and a captain so he has to lead by example. He didn’t do that and instead what we saw was exactly the reason why Granit Xhaka should never have been made captain in the first place.

Unai Emery now has a massive situation on his hands on whether or not to strip Xhaka of the captaincy. Ultimately it’s a no win situation for him. If he strips Xhaka of the captaincy, he is likely to face more dressing room unrest and this is on top of the rumoured unrest already, with unconfirmed reports saying that Emery has already lost some of the dressing room due to his tactics.

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If Emery doesn’t strip of Xhaka of the captaincy and instead stands by his man he faces losing the respect and the wrath of the Arsenal fans, the majority of whom have been begging for the board to sack him over the last few weeks.

It’s just a horrible situation and one I had hoped we wouldn’t have to face so soon after Wenger had left. We knew there would be issues but certainly not to this scale. I certainly don’t see any way back for Granit Xhaka or, more importantly, Unai Emery. A lot of this has been of Emery’s own making, he should never have given Xhaka the captaincy in the first place, although the final decision was made by a team vote because Emery didn’t have the confidence to make him captain himself. It shows Emery’s lack of management ethic which is also evident when you see the performances on the pitch.

Once again we threw away a two goal lead. I mentioned earlier it all started so brightly when we went 2-0 up. I’m starting to see the same thing when we go a couple of goals up against the opposition, we seem to drop our intensity and just go into our shells and start playing negative football and teams are starting to expose this.

What’s wrong with going for a 3rd, 4th or even 5th goal? We obviously aren’t going to do it every week but any team will tell you in modern football that a 2-0 lead is no guarantee of victory and Arsenal should know this themselves. Coupled with increasingly poor performances, erratic tactics and rambling interviews you can certainly see why the fans want him out. His interview after the Palace match was again no exception. He claimed that we had improved because we had lost this fixture last season. That may be so but this is a fixture we should be winning with no excuses if we want to compete. It’s a poor excuse and a poor mentality and something I certainly don’t want at the club.

Apparently the board have come out today and said they will continue to back Unai Emery for now, but after witnessing what’s been going on at the club the last few weeks, I can’t understand how they could reach that decision.

I’m not a fan of knee-jerk reactions but Emery has been given his chance and he shows no sign of changing. We are now falling behind the top four and with tricky games upcoming there is every chance that gap could get bigger. The math is simple to sack Unai Emery. It would cost around £6m. If we fail to qualify for the Champions League it will cost us £45m, so if the board are going to back him and results don’t improve then you would expect him to be out of a job by Christmas at the latest.

We used to be a club who we were known for our values. Now we seem to a constant meme, and a media circus. I will ask again—how did it get to this mess?