Mikel Arteta’s ‘trust the process’ medications have worn off.

Mikel Arteta’s ‘trust the process’ medications have worn off, and if Arsenal do not finish in the top four, he should be fired, according to Piers Morgan.

Being an Arsenal fan this season has felt a lot like being Leonard Lowe in the movie Awakenings, played by Robert De Niro.

For those who haven’t seen it, it’s about a group of catatonic patients who are brought back to life by a great doctor named Malcolm Sayer (played by Robin Williams), only for his miracle drug of hope to wear off and send them back to their state of catatonia.

Last August, following three consecutive Premier League losses, the most recent of which was a humiliating 5-0 thrashing by Manchester City, I found myself in a similar condition of Zombie-like powerlessness, sitting motionless in a chair, open-mouthed and staring.

After so much unending failure and false-dawn hope had reduced us to a club that couldn’t even qualify for Europe, let alone contend for the league, came this new terrible abyss.

But, to be fair to Mikel Arteta, he kept encouraging us to “trust the process,” and I tried.

In fact, like Leonard in the movie when Dr Sayer’s seemingly miracle-working drugs kicked in, I felt a sudden surge of excitement in my deadened veins during Arsenal’s first match of 2022, on New Year’s Day against Man City, when we were 1-0 up at halftime and outplaying the best team in the country.

We’d made it back!

Then City equalized, and then they won in the 93rd minute, and my face began to jitter uncontrollably like Leonard’s, and then everything went horribly wrong again.

A week later, we were knocked out of the FA Cup by Nottingham Forest (now 8th in the EFL Championship), and ten days after, we were knocked out of the Carabao Cup by a Liverpool side without Salah or Mane.

And on Sunday night, as the final whistle blew at the Emirates after a dreadful performance against bottom-of-the-table Burnley, and the nearly-empty-chaired crowd erupted in boos, and half our team lay flat-lined on the pitch like they’d been shot, I found myself in a similar situation.

I’d reverted to my previous state of catatonia.

The ‘trust the process’ medications used by Arteta had worn off.
It wasn’t simply the fact that we couldn’t beat the league’s weakest team at home that did us down; it was the way we played that was so sad.

Burnley parked the bus, as expected, but despite having human greyhounds like Gabriel Martinelli and Bukayo Saka — two of the team’s many talented but untested players — we never managed to find a way past it.

Our tactics were frightening, our ingenuity non-existent, and there were times when we just stopped sprinting and slid around like tired sloths, tip-tapping the ball from side to side as if terrified.

The circumstances screamed for a true world-class striker to take command and whip Burnley into submission, but Alex Lacazette will never be that striker.

He’s too kind and not good enough at the same time.

No, that’s supposed to be Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who has 92 goals in 162 games for Arsenal, including seven in his first 15 games this season.

That’s a goal-to-game ratio of 57 percent, far better than any of Arsenal’s other forwards since Thierry Henry broke my heart by leaving for Barcelona.

Compare that to Alexis Sanchez’s 48%, Robin van Persie’s 47%, Olivier Giroud’s 42%, and Lacazette’s 36%.

In other words, Aubameyang is one of Arsenal’s top strikers, yet he is currently making £350,000 per week to sit at home.

Arteta has found strange joy in publicly humiliating our greatest, and highest-paid, player, behaving like a particularly arrogant and intransigent disciplinarian headmaster punishing a misbehaving student for reasons that have never been completely explained — but at what cost to the team?

Arsenal will end the month with more red cards than goals, which is a very damning statistic.

And forget about Arteta’s complaints about Covid, injuries, and suspensions – every club has had the same problem throughout this epidemic, and eight of his first-choice XI were on the field on Sunday.

It wasn’t simply the fact that we couldn’t beat the league’s weakest team at home that did us down; it was the way we played that was so sad.

When it comes to his proclivity for brandishing the under-performance punishment sword, the moment has come for it to be used on him.

Despite his tough guy rhetoric and incessant “trust the process” nonsense, Arteta has been a resounding failure at Arsenal.

He’s been in charge for two years and 114 games, with a win percentage of just 53%, which is worse than both Arsene Wenger’s and Unai Emery’s.

Yes, he won the FA Cup in his first season as manager (thanks to two goals by Aubameyang).

But for a team like Arsenal, it’s winning the Premier League and the Champions League that counts, and that’s how true success is measured.

When we went from Highbury to the Emirates, we were promised that level, which is why we pay some of the highest ticket prices in Europe.

We finished eighth in Arteta’s first half-season. We finished ninth again last season, and for the first time in 26 years, we failed to qualify for any European competition.

If we don’t finish in the top four this season, and even that ‘success’ seems like such a little goal for such a major club, he shouldn’t be awarded a raise; he should be fired.

Despite Arteta’s £150 million investment in new players, we are currently in sixth place and have already been eliminated from both domestic competitions.

Surprisingly, it’s been rumoured in recent days that he’s likely to be granted a hefty new contract by grateful owner Stan Kroenke.

What, pray tell, has he done to earn such a lucrative new contract?

“How compassionate is it to give life only to take it away again?” as Dr. Sayer put it.

The cold, hard reality is that whatever Arsenal process we’re supposed to trust isn’t functioning, and whomever is in charge of that process should be held accountable – not rewarded for failure.

Arteta could still turn out to be a terrific manager – I’ve enjoyed watching his team this season more than the prior few years of dreary Wenger teams.

But he’s been in charge of Arsenal for six months longer than his predecessor Emery, and things are already unraveling faster than Leonard Lowe’s prescription.

If we don’t finish in the top four this season, and even that “success” seems like such a little goal for such a major club, he shouldn’t be awarded a raise; he should be fired.