“There are some non-negotiables. The demands we put on the team, the commitment, the energy we put in, that dominance” – Mikel Arteta, December 2019.

“We need a team with 100 per cent of people involved in what we do. The most important thing they should have is respect, the second is commitment and the third one is passion. Those three ingredients are non-negotiable” – Mikel Arteta, August 2021.

Since becoming manager of the club, Arteta has spoken a few times about how important commitment to the club is for him. But it is a lack of commitment from both players and the club which could derail our season before it gets into Autumn and ultimately end up costing Arteta his job.

But I have never known an Arsenal squad to be less committed to the club than the one we have, or the club less committed to its players.

The majority of the players at the club either want to leave, have been told they can leave if an offer comes in, or have previously been cast aside.

Starting in goal; it is well known that Bernd Leno will not sign a new contract and wants to end his career in Germany. He still has two years left on that deal.

After being backed by Arteta in the battle for number ones with Emi Martinez, to then refuse to discuss a new deal is really disappointing.

So we end up with a number one who has an eye on leaving in the next 12 months.

Runar Alex Runarsson will go down as one of the clubs worst signings. So out of his depth. Not his fault. He just is not good enough.

The door is open for him to leave, whether on loan or permanent, but there are no takers.

Hector Bellerin’s time at Arsenal has clearly run its course. He needs a new challenge and Arsenal need a new right back.

It is beneficial for both parties that Bellerin leaves this summer and it is clear both he can the club have been looking for suitors. But none have materialised.

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How many times over the years have we tried to sell Calum Chambers?

We have seen him go out on loan to Fulham and Middlesbrough both nearly joining Crystal Palace. We could have made it much clearer over the last 5 years that he is not wanted out the club. Yet there he was, starting the first game of the season.

Rob Holding nearly joined Newcastle last summer.

It was only a last minute u-turn by Arteta that saw him not only stay at the club but also sign a new deal. From being on the verge of exiting one week to wearing the captains armband not too long after. Not the only time it has happened.

As for Saed Kolasinac; most are probably surprised he is still here.

Told he wasn’t wanted last summer; the Bosnian ended up putting his feet up for 6 months before leaving to Schalke on loan.

A summer later and we are in exactly the same position with him. He doesn’t want to be here, we don’t want him here, but no one wants him.

If you think the Rob Holding u-turn was big, the Granit Xhaka one was huge.

Xhaka has abused the fans, thrown the captains arm band on the ground, demanded to leave. And yet on the first day of the season he is still at Arsenal. Wearing the captains armband and signed a new deal.

Now I like Xhaka as a player. I think he gets an unfair press. But how can you be so close to leaving the club, and then be rewarded with a new deal and captaincy? It sums the club up.

Mohamed Elneny is another who went from “no longer required” to “important squad member” in a blink of an eye.

He spent he spent 2019/20 on loan at Besiktas as no one wanted to sign him, having started just 5 Premier League games the campaign before.

Then last season he started 17 Premier League games.

Another who has gone from not wanted to regular player despite still not really being wanted.

Ainsley Maitland-Niles was on the cusp of joining Wolves last summer. A last minute change of mind by Arteta (is indecisiveness a trait of his?) saw him stay. He then started just 5 games.

In January we turned down a bid from Leicester City as we “did not want to sell to a rival” and he ended the season on loan at WBA.

He is still at the club. He still doesn’t want to be here. Arteta still doesn’t want him.

The door is open for Willian to leave.

He has reportedly been told that if he can agree a deal with another club, we will terminate his contract with no liability to either side. Yet no other club has come in for him due to his wages being so high. He has been at the club for a year.

Arse aka re also open to selling youngsters Eddie Nketiah and Reiss Nelson if the right offer comes in.

Both have never really had a chance under Arteta, and when they have played probably showed they are not of the level we require moving forward. Another 2 that are not part of the managers plans, but we have yet to move on.

Nicolas Pepe is another who would be open to leave if the right offer came in.

The club record signing has never really reached the heights we had all hoped and reports were last summer the club were looking to recoup some money on him and that if an offer in the region of £40million came in he would be gone.

And then we come to the big two. Alex Lacazette and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

With one year left on his contract, Arsenal would jump at the opportunity to cash in on Lacazette if an offer came in. But like with so many of our players – no offers are coming in for him.

And the Aubameyang new contract is looking like a bad a decision as the Mesut Ozil one.

He looks disinterested, lacks sharpness and focus. He either is not mentally right or at 32 is on the decline. Maybe it is both.

But one year into his 3 year deal, Arsenal are open to selling him and he is open to leaving the club. But like Lacazette, there is not exactly a queue of clubs chasing him.

So Arteta talks about commitment to the cause. But the majority of the squad are either not committed to us or we are not committed to them. And this is shown on the pitch with a lack of hunger and desire.

Arthur Okonkwo, Cedric Soares, Ben White, Gabriel, Pablo Mari, Kieran Tierney, Nuno Taveras, Thomas Partey, Albert Sambi Lokonga, Emile Smith Rowe, Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Florian Balogun are the only first team squad players that have not been linked with moves away in the last 12 months.

That is just 13 players; 3 of whom are new signings and 2 are recently promoted youth team products.

You take those 5 away and we have just 8 players from last season that you could say are still “100% committed to the club”. And you see on the pitch the different levels in performance of those against everyone else.

The worry is when over half the squad is not committed, that is could run like poison through those players who are committed.

This all started with Mesut Ozil, Shkodran Mustsfi, Saed Kolasinac and Sokratis a year or more ago.

They were told they were not needed by the club but we struggled to move them on. They ended up remaining at the club despite no being wanted, not even being registered to play.

Arteta is not blameless in all of this.

He has a tendency to cast players aside very quickly, and an indecisiveness which has led to u-turns on sales.

Being indecisive and alienating staff members is poor management regardless of industry. This usually creates issues within the work force which spreads. And that is where Arsenal are at now.

We have a squad of players who lack commitment to us and we lack commitment to them.

The problem is that due to the financial crisis across European football, we are unable to sell the majority of these players so Arteta is going to have to find a way to work with them, get the best out of them. I am just not sure he has the man management skills to get the squad back on side and giving 100% for the season.

Keenos

Towards the end of last season I came to the realisation that Arsenal had to make the leap and replace Mikel Arteta before the money was blown again. I really wanted Arteta to succeed. I still do want him to succeed as that means Arsenal would be doing well. Pre-season and Friday has me frightened, quite honestly.

With Arteta staying I was convinced we were at least going to see wholesale change to the squad, the system we play on the pitch, and the style of play. I was certain we’d get back to playing with more than one player up front, we’d move the ball quickly with attacking intent, and that numerous players would be bombed out while players we actually need would come in. How wrong can you be?

In many ways it shouldn’t come as a surprise that what we are seeing is the same turgid, boring, slow, negative football which is totally reliant on any attacking threat coming from two kids and a left-back. The failure to move on the dead wood, and thus free up space in the squad, is not necessarily the fault of Arteta and Arsenal. If people don’t want to sign the likes of Kolasinac, Willian, Elneny, Bellerin, Soares, Nketiah etc that makes life difficult – the fact Arsenal have some of these players on stupid wages in the first place is another story. The signing of a centre-back who we all knew wasn’t the kind of defender we needed, and for an utterly ridiculous transfer fee, is most definitely on Arteta, Edu and co. And the style of play and choice of formation is without doubt the fault of Arteta.

The style of play, if you can call it that, is actually the method employed in the latter years of Wenger when we no longer had a lot of top class footballers. The emphasis was placed upon possession football in the hope that Alexis Sanchez, Santi Cazorla or Mesut Ozil might create something out of nothing. Invariably one of them did for a while. Or at least they did it often enough to keep Arsenal vaguely competitive in terms of competing for a qualifying place for the Champions League. Who was one of Wenger’s key midfield players in the dross years but none other than Mikel Arteta. I actually liked Arteta as a player at Arsenal and he was far better than many will now give him credit for. But he clearly was more than content at times with receiving the ball from Mertesacker and giving it straight back to him or to Koscielny. It all sounds vaguely familiar doesn’t it?

It amazes me that, after what happened in the semi-final at home to Villarreal last year, the Manager has changed nothing. How can he come out after the game last night and lament the lack of players getting in the box when he’s taken off the only two strikers in the side? He also chose to use that soundbite on the day Arsenal sold a goal scoring midfielder to Newcastle. He sounded to me like he was blaming Balogun and Martinelli for the fact Arsenal didn’t get a result last night. His substitutions were as Wenger-like as the football Arsenal played with two junior players taken off even though they were the only ones likely to be able to actually get on the end of something. As per usual the system never did change. The desire to play a forward pass was exclusive to Smith Rowe, Saka and Tierney. And that’s before we get to the comedy defending and goalkeeping that has become a hallmark of Arsenal over the last 15 years or so.

The club just seems to be drifting now. We have one goalkeeper in the squad, and he’s third rate at the very best. We have players stinking the squad out, not the least of which is our official Captain. Arteta flexed his muscles with Ozil, Guendouzi and Saliba, but seems powerless of show genuine leadership and strip Aubameyang of the armband and boot the lazy sod into touch. If him and Lacazette are “ill” then tell us what’s wrong with them rather than “they say they feel unwell” being the quote. I’m a Granit Xhaka advocate, but making him skipper ahead of Tierney, for example, given what has gone on previously and the fact that we spent all Summer waiting for Roma to sign him can only leave everyone confused. Bellerin and Soares are still here. We’ve signed Ben White, the wrong centre-back from Brighton. Lokonga I hope will be a real prospect but largely looked out of it last night – he gets a free pass from me though, but wouldn’t it be nice if we signed a player for once who could hit the ground running? 

I wasn’t looking forward to Friday night after the awful pre-season where it had become apparent that nothing had changed about our approach to the game. My fears were sadly well founded. We stand a very real chance of taking no more than 3 points from the first 18 and being out of the League Cup. By then Arteta will have been sacked, but we’ll have spent all our money. It will all be too late. Again. The only thing saving Arsenal from a place in the most dangerous of the lower reaches of the Premier League, as things stand this evening, is the fact the league is full of dross even worse than ours.

Next week a half-empty stadium will greet The Arsenal after more than a year where almost nobody has been to a game. How embarrassing is that going to be. It underlines what some of us have always known about the genuine core Arsenal support, but a 60,000 seat monolith with 40,000 people (maximum) inside it for a big London derby will speak volumes about where the club is. The people from Amazon Prime must be pissing themselves silly that they’ve bought access all areas to this shower and it’s us fans who are going to suffer.

Dover Marksman

It was like we had never been away.

I sat at the table, put me beer down and after the plesentaries got straight back into it.

The arguments, the disagreements, no one actually listening to each other. And I love it.

The discussions were about Joe Willock. About whether he should have got another year at ours. Half of those round the table screaming he deserves a shot; the other half saying he has had his chance and is a fringe squad player.

A good point made by myself that he is in a similar position to Ainsley Maitland-Niles 12 months ago and we made a mistake not cashing in on him when Wolves came calling with £25m. It was ignored.

A counter point made that it could be another Emi Martinez, that he could go and become one of the best in the league.

I ignored the point and responded with “if Martinez is one of the best in the league why is he still at Aston Villa”.

We had seen each other on and off over the last 18 months – a get together for the FA Cup final, the Super League protest, a couple of the lads escaped to Portugal back end of last year for a few days. But this was the first time we have been in a pub together ahead of going to a game.

And the train journey from Waterloo to Richmond was no different.

Raised voices, dirty looks from commuters, beers being drunk and spilt. It has been missed.

Regardless of the result Friday. It was just good to be back.

Can’t wait for Chelsea now.

Keenos