MARTIN SAMUEL: Arsenal are shooting for the moon and crash-landing on the garden shed… Arteta's players are NOT up to scratch and are a mish-mash of the time they were going …

Paul Merson called Arsenal a mid-table team. He may have over-estimated a little.

Arsenal are certainly not top six material and, right now, sit outside the middle rump of seven. In other years, a total of 13 points after 10 games might place a club a few spots higher, yet in some ways Arsenal are quite lucky.

The bottom three are very weak currently. Arsenal are lower down the table, but further from the relegation fight. 

Arsenal have made their poorest start since 1981-82 and look destined to finish nowhere

In 2014-15, for instance, they would have been 12th — hurrah! — but just four points off relegation. So the league table is not lying. This is a serious slump. As it stands, Arsenal are on course to finish nowhere.

Out of the Champions League places, out of Europe entirely, unless they can win a cup. Arsenal are on aggregate course to accrue 49.4 points, and that would be at best eighth place taken across the last 10 campaigns, in others 12th and, on average, around 10th. 

This is their poorest start to a league campaign since 1981-82 under Terry Neill.

That year, they rallied to finish fifth, but there is scant sign of a similar revival. Arsenal are comfortably the least effective of the Big Six and also need to rein in European contenders such as Leicester, Wolves and Aston Villa — all of whom have won at the Emirates Stadium already this season.

Mikel Arteta has spent so long trying to shore up Arsenal’s weaknesses that he has neglected the one strong point they had. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: a 30-goal per season striker.

Jose Mourinho was derided as a negative coach but he knew what he had at Tottenham. Whatever changes he needed to make to defensive strategy, the imperative was to keep his two best forwards, Harry Kane and Son Heung-min, firing. He has managed to put his mark on the rest of the team without reducing Kane and Son’s impact. 

You can’t help but sympathise with Mikel Arteta for the players he has at his disposal

At Arsenal, the opposite has happened. Arteta may initially have made Arsenal harder to beat, but he has done so at the expense of the creativity that brought Aubameyang to life.

The midfield is dreadfully ponderous, and endless crosses as were struck against Wolves on Sunday, might suit some strikers — but not Aubameyang.

There is also the fear that the player is losing engagement and confidence; that he wanted to leave in the summer for a bigger club such as Real Madrid and when Covid economics put an end to that, Arsenal became his fall-back option.

He stayed and took the money. Cynics suggested the motivation to impress an attractive suitor would no longer be there; and he is doing little to prove them wrong. Great teams are built from the back, yet there is no sign that Arteta is emulating George Graham in his defensive regime.

Anyway, Graham combined that famous back four with an urgent midfield, full of athleticism and wide invention. 

Standards have been allowed to slip and now Arsenal have a mish-mash of players

Forget the Arsene Wenger years, forget the Invincibles. This is about Arteta getting back to basics, and Wenger was a visionary. Graham is the antecedent here. Except there is not a single member of his midfield group who would not only walk into this team, but immediately be its best player.

David Rocastle, Michael Thomas, Paul Davis, Kevin Richardson, Merson, Brian Marwood. Arteta has no one like that. Anders Limpar had been added for the second title win in 1990-91. The same applies.

It is catching up with Arsenal now, the way standards have been allowed to slip. The board hid behind Wenger, rather than admitting the limit on his funds after the stadium had been built, and when that period ended, rivals who were more robust financially had taken Arsenal’s place.

Arsenal’s response was a mish-mash of inherited philosophies channelled through executives who have now left. The team reflects that.

Here’s one from the time we were going to be Borussia Dortmund, here’s some others we can’t get off the books, here’s one we pay £300,000 a week to make us look stupid on Twitter, here’s Edu’s lot. 

Arsenal boss is however not playing to the strengths of star man Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang

So Arteta merits sympathy. He is trying to forge a Champions League team from a group of players who have demonstrated they are not of that calibre; but it is not as if Arsenal are just falling short of the target. They are shooting for the moon, and crash-landing on the shed in their back garden. They are 14th; and next visit the league leaders, who happen also to be their nearest and greatest rivals. And it might be they spring a surprise. It happens in derbies. Manchester United beat Manchester City as inferiors now, just as City won against all expectations on odd occasions when Sir Alex Ferguson was in charge.

This is another moment in time when a composite north London team would probably comprise 11 Tottenham players and, at a similar juncture in 2017, Arsenal won the subsequent game 2-0. The league table told the truth, though, as it always does: sixth by the end, 37 points behind champions Manchester City, 14 off Tottenham. Arsenal may raise their game for the big occasion, but lesser teams sometimes do.

It was thought a win at Old Trafford on November 1 might prove a turning point but, since then, Arsenal have claimed a single point from three…