The Athletic journalist David Ornstein says he thinks the Arsenal board will give manager Mikel Arteta a lot more time to turn the situation around at the Emirates.

After losing to Everton yesterday evening, the Gunners are now just four points off the bottom three with a third of the season having already been played, but Ornstein cites “deeper” lying problems at the club that won’t be solved simply by sacking the man in charge:

“I think they are going to stick with Mikel Arteta and give him a lot longer. Now we know in football you believe in someone until you don’t. We saw that with Unai Emery because Arsenal were behind him until they sacked him. But I do think that Mikel Arteta is going to get a lot longer than this. I dom’t think Arsenal want to be chopping and changing managers. There is no guarantee that a new manager will come in and solve this problem.”

“Many of the problems are deeper, they’re underlying and they are cultural. To do with the standards and the behaviour and things that have set in over years going back to the Arsene Wenger reign, the Unai Emery reign and now the Mikel Arteta reign. We are not excusing Mikel Arteta here but these are deep-rooted issues.”

As Ornstein points out, though, Arsenal’s board were fully behind Unai Emery before they decided to part ways with the Spaniard last season. Results need to turnaround quickly if Arteta is to save his job.

With fixtures versus Manchester City and Chelsea coming up, it will be tough to get any points from those two matches but, if Arteta does manage to get results against those two teams, it would certainly restore some confidence in his ability to take the club forward.