Having got to the start of this season already feeling seriously under whelmed about our transfer activity, allow me to cast your minds back to the first leg of our Champions League qualifier in Arnhem against Twente.
I know that it was our first genuinely competitive match, that we didn't have our strongest team available and that we were short of competitive match fitness but nevertheless I felt even then, despite the fact we won that night in the end, that it was a match that had disturbingly ominous overtones for a season which was always going to be an up and down one.
Make no mistake, we only beat Twente that night because of their shortcomings at both ends of the pitch rather than in spite of them and what has happened since then has only gone on to confirm what I was feeling then. We went to Fulham, hardly tried a leg and got beat. And of course although we responded by dishing out beatings to Newcastle, Blackburn and Bolton and the kids literally hit Sheffield United for six, I still had this feeling that it was going to take a while before I was genuinely convinced in my own mind about the merits of our squad.
And after what happened last Saturday at the Grove it shouldn't be very hard for anyone to see why I have felt that way. Because if you are talking in terms of commitment, application, determination and a lack of professionalism then Arsenal's performance was one of, if not THE worst I have seen in the last 20 years.
We saw at Fulham signs of the same lack of purpose but this was even worse. In my opinion, we looked like a team that thought we could win the game with one tied behind our backs, a team that just had to turn out and the bare minimum to secure a result.
Of course our opponents, still basking in the glow of being a Premier League and knowing they had absolutely nothing to lose, came to The Grove with ideas of their own and pulled off the sort of sensational result that will struggle for an equal in the Premier League this term.
You know, it really comes to something when Oliver Holt of the Daily Mirror writes something about Arsenal and I agree with pretty much every word he has written. I have detested the little bastard for years. But he was absolutely spot-on in terms of what he wrote on Monday morning.
We are not short of young talent, we have that almost coming out of ears and everybody knows it. But the fact is, we do lack leaders, we do lack experience and we do lack players that are truly battle hardened, bloody- minded and prepared to do whatever it takes to win football matches consistently week in and week out.
This time last year, when everyone was going on about Spurs doing this and doing that, I felt that I could look any man in the eye and say we would at least finish in the top four. For the first time, certainly since Arsene Wenger has been at our club, I honestly don't think I could do that now, certainly with any conviction.
The fact is I think the current squad, talented as it is, is far too brittle mentally. When you have a squad that are brittle mentally (primarily because most of them are young and still making their way in the game) a flaky attitude can set in and when that happens then the kind of result we got on Saturday occurs.
I can imagine some Arsenal fans right now reading this and thinking I'm some glory hunter who should go and watch the Phoney Russian Franchise or ManUre. Well, lets get one thing straight right here and now. The hatred (and I mean hatred) I have for United and the sheer contempt I have for the PRF prevents me from even entertaining that sort of notion never mind actually doing it, whether a fellow Gooner would say that to me in jest or otherwise.
I just think it's a struggle to see what our agenda really is at Arsenal these days. I'm not saying that we are totally shot to pieces all of sudden. Sure, I still believe we will win more games than we lose and therefore have more good days than bad. But if the agenda at Arsenal really involves winning major things this season then as a team and as a squad we need to buck our ideas up mentally. And so does our manager.
Now, over the past four years, when Arsene decided to sell the likes of Vieira, Henry and Cashley, I backed him. When he chose to let Pires and Campbell go I backed him. Even this summer when Hleb, Flamini, Gilberto and Lehmann left, I backed by him. Losing those four in the summer in particular didn't put my nose out of joint at all. In fact, I was far more interested in who was coming in.
But of course, all of you know what happened on that score and I think that now this practice of stripping the squad year in and year out of our more experienced assets and replacing them (with exception of an injury prone has been in the case of Silvestre) largely with youngsters has gone one step too far.
Whether you agree with Arsene's policy or not, I'm sure that there are millions of Gooners who have asked themselves whether he did the deals he did in the summer through choice or because financially his hands were tied. Personally I suspect it was down to a mixture of both.
However, as I said earlier I feel that I have yet to be convinced about the merits of the current squad and I feel that Arsene has left himself open to even more fierce criticism and ridicule (if the press and the media have their way). He is already starting to sound, dare I say, increasingly like a Spud when he goes around saying his current team are capable of doing this and that with precious little (in recent times) to back his claims up.
Believe me, it has takes a lot for someone that doesn't normally do pessimism as a rule to say the things I have. But, having been an Arsenal fan for an awful long time, I am a little bit long in the tooth to engage in bouts of wild, misplaced optimism either.
At this moment in time I seriously feel that this Arsenal squad has something to prove in a way that Arsenal squads in the recent past didn't necessarily have to. And in my opinion, Arsene himself also has something to prove in a way that he didn't have to once upon a time. And as a result, I feel we will be in a position where we are literally only as good as our last game for the foreseeable future.
Now it's time to look forward to our game at the Stadium of Light on Saturday where we will be entertained by Sunderland.
The halo of Roy Keane has slipped a little recently. He publicly rebuked his own fans when they dared to voice their displeasure at what they were seeing from their team when the Black Cats played Northampton in the Carling Cup last week.
The Black Cats of course scraped through on penalties in the end but in a summer when expectation rose on the back of what I personally thought were some solid signings, it's easy to understand why the kind of struggle Sunderland had that night didn't go down too well with the faithful.
Having lost to Villa last Saturday, the natives go into this game even more restless as Sunderland have now amassed one win from their last five outings. The only plus point was that new boy Djibril Cisse got himself on the score sheet. It's good to see this boy back in the Premier League. He went through some really rough times in his past spell over here with Liverpool and I think he is a guy with some unfinished business over here. I hope things work out for him this time round I really do - after this Saturday of course.
Needless to say, Cisse, in the absence of Kenwyne Jones is going to be perhaps the biggest threat to us though it would be a little strange if the ex-Spuds Malbranque, Chimbonda and, fitness permitting, Tainio were not up for the game.
Unfortunately the man I feel we really will need to watch is El-Hadji Diouf. Love him or hate him (and like most people, I fall into the latter category) the boy has a habit of turning it on when he plays against us and it wouldn't surprise me if Keane makes damn sure he is revved up for this game.
In the week, Arsenal got a sound win over Porto. Walcott continued to show signs that he is shaping into a real consistent and though the Portuguese had virtually thrown the towel in by the time the second half kicked off, it was also nice of van Persie and particularly Adebayor to turn up. As much as I am a fan of Ade, he was bloody shocking against Hull (which is really saying something of course given the well chronicled performance of the rest of the team).
After the Porto game, Arsene talked out "getting half the response" he wanted from his players. It would be nice to see the players give him a belated anniversary present by going to the Stadium of Light and gaining some real closure over the Hull debacle.