Arsenal: Is Mikel Arteta magic wearing off already?

Arsenal succumbed to another draw after holding a lead, and I have to ask the tough question—is the Mikel Arteta magic already wearing off?

You all know me by now. I’m the optimist. I predict an Arsenal win every single match. (I also don’t bet on sports.) But having watched Sheffield United, I couldn’t help but be irked by the question that I didn’t want to ask this short way into Mikel Arteta‘s tenure—what has changed?

Now, to be fair, a lot has changed. We should absolutely be optimistic moving forward that we are on the right path, with the right man in charge. But I’m talking about in terms of this season in particular. What has changed?

There was quick little burst of optimism from the veteran slackers. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang learned to defend. Mesut Ozil learned to fight. David Luiz learned to make smart, simple decisions and that was all well and good.

But against Sheffield, and it’s been the lurking shadow of doom for a couple matches now, we saw more of the same things we’ve seen before.

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Mesut Ozil gave up fighting five minutes in. His passing was off, his presence was dulled. After three matches of being consistent and reliable, he has now had two just like his old self. That ratio is evening out really quickly.

Alexandre Lacazette, meanwhile, still hasn’t found the Arteta bump. He’s gone eight scoreless matches now, and it’s not looking good either. We can deal with no goals when he is contributing elsewhere, but he really hasn’t been. He just hasn’t been good.

Luiz is still awesome. Which is great. But all in all, there were a lot of the same old things from the same old people. And it makes me wonder if that little bump from Arteta was insignificant for this season after all. Insignificant in the sense that, these still aren’t the right veterans to lead us into the next era.

Obviously we can’t judge Aubameyang, other than his choice of attire, since he was suspended. But Ozil and Lacazette did very little to lift this team up. Even when the going was good in the second half they were casual bystanders. I liked what I saw from Eddie Nketiah for all of ten minutes more than what I saw from Lacazette all match.

This is good though. This is stuff we needed to know. If we have to get rid of people, we need to know who.