The first week in November and the Premier League has a sickeningly familiar look about it, at least at the top end. The Big Four are all in place and realistically, the only thing left to play for in that mini league is the top spot itself. Only, this season, Arsenal seem to be the surprise cuckoo in the nest. Those of us who watched their demolition of Porto in the Champions League at the start of the tournament proper would have never dreamed of uttering such a thing. But over the past couple of weeks, allied to the 0-0 bore draw against Fenerbache at the Emirates last night, we’ve seen talk of Arsenal’s fragility grow from a whispering campaign to a full-blown crisis.

This afternoon Cristiano Ronaldo has been waxing lyrical about the need for Manchester United to come away from the Emirates this Saturday with three points to the United title charge and despite United’s comparatively poor record at the Emirates (two league games played, one point earned), after three games without a win for the Gunners, you wouldn’t be wise to bet against it.

Now, a little perspective might help. Arsenal are not a team that ‘do’ crises. Last season, they were a team that had a decent fighting spirit and seemed to be able to take results in style even when their flair players were missing. However, this season, there have been shocking losses against teams that in the past Arsenal would have expected to steamroller at a canter. Hull, in particular, showed Arsenal up to be a team that has yet to earn the trousers that match their mouths. Fulham could perhaps be written off as an early season blip, but the loss to Stoke at the Britannia, coupled with the post-match over-reaction, means that for the first time in a while, Arsenal fans are maybe thinking an era of lovely football and critical respect may be coming to a drawn-out close.

It could be argued that Arsenal are a team in the eye of a transitional period, which is understandable. After the decade of Bergkamp and Henry, of Viera, Ljungberg and Pires, it’s too much to expect a production line of wonderful, influential and match-winning players. But it’s not as if they don’t still possess those players, albeit in different forms. Theo Walcott has obviously been the success story of the season, but despite extended run-outs, he has yet to show the same swashbuckling form as he has for the national team. Cesc Fabregas has struggled for form and fitness, while Emmanuel Adebayor continues to frustrate. Notably, he’s not well-off when it comes to striking support, what with Nikolas Bendtner being so ineffective as a partner.

The sad thing is that Arsenal continue to produce such wonderful football. Spurs may have got the headlines during that attention-grabbing 4-4 wondershow a week ago, but until Arsenal collapsed with a combination of apathy and poor concentration, they ripped Spurs to shreds time and again. Similarly, there have been matches against European opposition where Arsenal looked as comfortable as picking windblown apples off the ground.

So what’s missing this season? Simply, it’s the same thing that has been missing ever since Patrick Viera left, which is fighting spirit. Compared to Viera, William Gallas as a captain is the equivalent of a chicken with breezy shoulders. Under Gallas’ tenure, Arsenal look a vulnerable proposition simply because he lacks to command to tell his team to close a game out. It’s a problem that stems throughout the side – players who look good but are strangely lacking that extra dimension that makes them winners. The problems with Manuel Almunia have been well-documented, but the lack of trust runs from back to front. The defence don’t trust the midfield to put their foot in, the midfield don’t trust the defence to be the last line, and the team don’t trust the front men to put away enough chances. Despite the players being all sweetness and light, Aresnal don’t carry the menace to go with their pretty patterns.

Most worryingly of all is the deterioration in the façade of Arsene Wenger. Don’t get me wrong, throughout his tenure Wenger has been a revelation of fine coaching, great tactics and astute transfer policy-making, but over the past two or three seasons, he has begun to crack imperceptibly. For a man so often proclaimed as professorial and professional, Wenger seems to be ever-tightening those already highly-strung parts of his personality. Compared to Arsenal under Rioch and Houston, when they were the sporting equivalent of xenon, Arsenal wouldn’t trade, but there are shades of the Kevin Keegan about Wenger already, three months into the fray.

Following the Stoke defeat, Wenger tried to shift the focus of attention away from the dropped points by latching on to Van Persie’s dismissal and the physical style of play employed by the Potters. But this only succeeded in making Wenger look like he’s nursing a side of cry-babies. Villa, Chelsea and Liverpool have all come through tough tests against Stoke and received the same treatment (with varying results) but at no stage did they decry the style of play employed. It’s not as if Stoke have been the only side to ever play physically; Wimbledon took a large amount of pride in it, and Bolton and Blackburn continue to make a virtue of big ‘ard lads. Wenger might have been man enough to say Arsenal lack physical presence, but that’s never stopped them in the past. The fact is that Arsenal showed exactly what everyone has been saying – put bluntly, this season, they lack a backbone.

Wenger is one of only a handful of managers in the modern game to shape his squad completely in his own image. By all accounts an elegant player himself in his younger days, Arsenal have taken the game and turned it into an art-form, their passing and attacking football accented on the cerebral. But of course, when Wenger loses his cool, so do the side. They look to the manager to be their inspiration and of course, that can have a negative effect in the wrong circumstances. And rather than try and solve the problem at Arsenal by admitting they need a proven midfield totem, Wenger prefers to pray that Fabregas will be constantly fit to be the yin to Gallas’ yang.

It’s not time to sack Wenger or anything daft like that, but privately Wenger must be hoping other sides slip up this season to enable Champions League football next season, in turn being able to obtain players to make his side a genuine threat again. He has had bad luck (Eduardo, Rosicky) and with Hleb and Flaminin leaving and lobbing grenades from afar, Arsenal have lost a large part of what made them so difficult to kill off last season.

But with teams like Villa hard on their heels, and Manchester City aching to spend big in January, Wenger comes to his most difficult test in a while over the next few weeks. They welcome United and Villa to the Emirates either side of a home tie against Wigan in the League Cup, and have yet to cement a place in the Champions League knockout stages. Bad results in the league games along with a shock result in the Carling Cup would perhaps deal a knockout blow to Arsenal’s fragile self-belief. Other outcomes may prolong or even turn their season on its head. But one thing is certain – it’s the first time in many a season that a top four place is wide open to less familiar teams, and if Wenger wants it, he needs his team to get in amongst it all.

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