If this Arsenal team actually played well for a whole game, how good could they be? It feels as if Arsenal fans don't know the real ability of their team at the moment because they seem incapable of performing for a full 90 minutes. If that happened, doubts about making the top four would be significantly reduced, and the club's reluctance to strengthen the squad in the January transfer window would be more defendable. As it is, Arsenal's wildly varied performances within matches are costing them important ground in the race for the top four.

- Mangan: Half an effort

When trying to explain the shambolic showing in the first half in the 2-1 loss to Chelsea Sunday, Arsene Wenger said: “We had a physical problem to get going today.” Given that Chelsea also played midweek - and had an extra game in January because of the Capital One Cup semifinal - that excuse shouldn’t have existed for Arsenal. If the manager wanted the team to be fresher physically, there should be better quality players to rotate in the squad who he feels can be trusted in big games.

Wenger also pointed to other issues. “There’s a psychological ingredient in there for sure,” and “The team has to believe more in the quality we have.” I’m not a psychological expert, but I’d suggest that these problems need to be addressed pretty quickly. I do think that there is a good team within this Arsenal squad waiting to come out, but it seems that some sort of mental block could be holding them back.

Whenever talking about the FA Cup or the Capital One Cup, the Arsenal players regularly refer to wanting to win a trophy and to end the wait. It clearly weighs heavy on their mind, and until that is cleared, I’m not sure Arsenal will get back onto a continued run of success. Should they ever get into a position to win that much-coveted trophy, will they suffer psychologically as they regularly seem to do in big matches? The only recent final, the Carling Cup against Birmingham in 2011, certainly suggests so.

Had the non-performance in the first half against Chelsea been an isolated incident where there was a more trivial reason behind it, then there would be few worries that Arsenal could pick themselves back up and confidently win the next league match with West Ham Wednesday. However it was just the latest in the string of performances where Arsenal seemed to lack the mentality to give everything and impose themselves on the match. Norwich City, Manchester United, Aston Villa, Bradford City and Southampton are just a few examples.

The second-half performance from Arsenal Sunday was overall pretty impressive, despite the lack of options from the bench restricting any possible tactical changes. ‘Spirit’ and ‘mental strength’ are usual buzzwords for Wenger’s descriptions of his team in a post-match interview, and on the evidence of the second-half showing at Stamford Bridge, there clearly is some of those attributes within the squad.

It just baffles me how they can never draw on those reserves of ‘spirit’ and ‘mental strength’ earlier in matches, and before the comeback hill is too high to climb.

While there is some quality missing from the team, Wenger needs to sign some players with a big enough character to help galvanise the squad and bring the spirit and mental strength out of them earlier in matches. In the first half Sunday, the only one seemingly attempting to do that was Jack Wilshere.

This can arguably all stem back to Wenger breaking up the Invincibles too early and losing the characters that were in that team to help later squads. However that mistake has been made, and gradually over the years Arsenal teams never matched the mentality that epitomised the 2004 team.

Time is running out for Wenger in the transfer market, and while I appreciate finding players with both quality and the right mentality isn’t a simple task, it doesn’t seem as if it will take much of it to improve some areas of the squad. If he doesn’t invest, at the bare minimum, he needs to find a way of making the current team believe in themselves more, otherwise erratic performances will only continue.

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