Arsenal need lionhearts if we're to compete for trophies again

By Avenell Dave

A few weeks ago, a home visit from Fulham would have been seen as a regulation win to cement our place in the top four and assert our belief that we could challenge for the title.

Notwithstanding our terrible form most Novembers, we're now in a position where anything but a win on Saturday will provoke claims of another crisis and give the media and glory-hunting fairweathers a field day.

We can't let that happen.

What's been most concerning in the past few games has been our lack of creativity, or 'offensive efficiency' as Arsene Wenger would call it.

Add that to some shambolic defending and it doesn’t take long for our confidence to crack.

People talk about the need for leaders, the need for people to show some steely resilience and the fact is, we could do with a couple of never-say-die shouters.

Thomas Vermaelen, for all the plaudits he receives for scoring late goals, doesn’t seem to be a monster in the way an Adams or a Vieira.

I think back to the ‘Battle of Old Trafford’ and the number of Lionhearts on show that day.

Is the absence of them purely down to players seeing Arsenal as a job, as the likes of Na$ri and others clearly do?

We saw the other day, much as it was predictable, avoidable and stupid of Jack Wilshere to get sent off – and only the previous week I wondered if his pulling back from making stupid tackles meant he’d learnt that having Paul Scholes as a tackling role model was probably not ideal – but at least it showed he wanted to battle, he wanted to fight for the shirt and give every last drop of energy for the cause.

There’s an argument that, much as his actions were petulant, he should be made captain just as Tony Adams was at the age of 21, and if TV5 leaves, it would make sense to have our leader a real figurehead, someone who has shown that even through his recovery, he has real fight about him.

His absence on Saturday will be stark, especially with so many other midfielders – Ramsey, Diaby, Rosicky, the Ox – injured or with question marks about their fitness.

I suspect that will mean another game for Francis Coquelin and I have no problems with that. He is ahead of Emmanuel Frimpong in terms of development and it means Mikel Arteta can get forward a bit more, so we shouldn’t be much weaker.

What we need to do is score early, move the ball around and suffocate Fulham to stop them playing.

We need to be disciplined and focused and not take the game lightly because Fulham are not a big club – playing the might of M*nure last weekend hardly seemed to rouse the team, after all.

Just a word on that idiot Piers Morgan. He wants Wenger out, as I know a fair few Addicts do too.

But it makes me laugh when he says we would win trophies if we had Song, RvP, Na$ri and Fabregas. Make no mistake, I’d have RvP and Cesc in my team every day, but while we can all dispute the virtues or not of each and every one of our recent departees, the fact is we had that group for a few years and we still won nothing.

We need a stronger squad of course. But what we’ve lacked for too many years are winners. Players who will die for the shirt. Jack Wilshere may be the only one we have.

Addict XI

Mannone

Sagna Mertesacker Koscielny Vermaelen

Cazorla Arteta Coquelin

Walcott Giroud Podolski

What do you think? Who should start against Fulham on Saturday?