After tea and cake and Declan Rices. After Ebe Eze and Viktor Gyökeres. Should I, after three straight second places, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? Hmm. Maybe not. With all due apologies to the living descendants of TS Eliot, the love song of Mikel Arteta still doesn’t really scan or rhyme or have a clear endnote as yet, even as the six-year anniversary of his appointment as Arsenal manager approaches.
This is normal enough. It is obviously incorrect to conclude, as many have, that Arsenal’s manager has to win a trophy this season or be remembered not just as a fraud, but as a Lego-haired billion-pound-spend fraud, the worst kind of fraud there is. Sport doesn’t work in simple metre. Uncertainty is key to its fascination.
