Arsenal have had a rollercoaster season to say the least, with plenty of joy interspersed with some absolutely dire moments.
One of those dire moments came on Saturday as Arsenal were knocked out of the FA Cup at the fourth-round stage.
Mikel Arteta rested some of his more in-form players, but the XI he went with wasn’t exactly terrible – on paper, anyway.
Mohamed Elneny had proven himself over the summer, Eddie Nketiah is a Hale End gem, and of course you have the big-money duo of Nicolas Pepe and Willian.
But all of the above played really as a toothless Arsenal side struggled to conjure up any meaningful attacking opportunities, which proved their downfall in the end.
Admittedly, you could make a case for Elneny, whose second wind at Arsenal seems to have come to an end but there weren’t too many expectations for him in the first place.
Nketiah, he’s still young and he’s got a lot of potential, maybe go down the ESR route of a Championship loan between now and the summer?
And even Pepe, yes he’s not lived up to his billing just yet, but he’s still fairly young, and he did do really well at Lille, so his signing made sense.
But Willian? Now that’s one acquisition that’s pretty much got no mitigating factor.
A 32-year-old, with no resale value, on a £220,000-a-week contract, on a three-year deal – even if he was playing brilliantly this term, you’d still wonder whether he could keep it up in the following two seasons.
But he’s not played brilliantly – he’s been awful, and in the Southampton game he was not only invisible, but an actual burden on the team, which was effectively unable to do anything down the middle.
The alarm bells should’ve really started ringing when Chelsea fans warned us about how he’d be amazing in his first game and then fall by the wayside – exactly what’s happened.
And the FA Cup fourth-round exit exposed just how big a mistake Edu and Arteta have made in signing Willian.
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