Arsene Wenger Guilty as Arsenal Implode Again

After Arsenal’s latest collapse at Swansea, the scrutiny on Arsene Wenger’s tactics will surely intensify once again.

Arsenal began the year with such high hopes. The mood was buoyant after their FA Cup win last season and their budget bolstered by a lucrative new sponsorship deal with Puma. The club appeared on be on the cusp of a bright new era.

However, that optimism has now been all but extinguished. A title challenge looks impossible: The Gunners have won just four of their 11 Premier League games. Instead, they’re facing the prospect of another gruelling battle to retain their place in the top four. After the match, Arsenal Wenger admitted to Arsenal.com that Jose Mourinho’s side is disappearing out of sight:

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At the moment Chelsea turns around an average of 100 points per season. If you look at the number of points they have today, if they keep that up nobody will touch them and that’s for sure. It doesn’t look like there’s anybody capable of challenging them at the moment.

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Some will point to Arsenal's injuries and a lack of squad depth. However, there are more fundamental problems in this team. Signing players won’t eradicate the organisational deficiencies that continually blight their performances. They simply don’t know how to defend—and no one at the club seems either inclined or empowered to teach them.

In Arsenal’s previous game, Wenger seemed powerless to help Arsenal protect a three-goal cushion against Anderlecht. After the match, he talked with customary clarity about how Arsenal had thrown the lead away. However, during the game itself, he seemed curiously powerless.

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Unfortunately, it was much the same story at Swansea. Although Arsenal took the lead through yet another Alexis Sanchez goal, there were plenty of warning signs to suggest the Swans were capable of mounting a comeback.

Almost all of those signs came down Arsenal’s right flank, where Swans winger Jefferson Montero terrorised Calum Chambers. Chambers may have played most of his football at full-back, but he remains inexperienced and struggled to cope with the Ecuador international’s pace and trickery.

Despite Montero’s obvious mastery of his marker, Wenger did nothing to help the young defender. When Montero eventually got to the byline and crossed to create the winner for Bafetimbi Gomis, it was entirely predictable.

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Swansea’s equaliser also suggests that Wenger did not learn from the mistakes made by his team in the Champions League. In the fixture against Anderlecht, Arsenal were repeatedly guilty of chasing a fourth goal when they would have been better to keep things tight and hold on to their lead.

Against Swansea, Arsenal only had a one-goal lead. Nevertheless, they continued to move up the pitch in numbers, leaving their defenders isolated. When the Swans broke in the 75th minute, Kieran Gibbs had no choice but to concede the free-kick from which Gylfi Sigurdsson brought the scores level.

The error showcased the team’s remarkable lack of discipline. It’s the latest in a line of catastrophic errors from Wenger’s charges. This Arsenal team seems to lack any sense of game management, and responsibility for that has to lie with the manager.

James McNicholas is Bleacher Report's lead Arsenal correspondent and will be following the club from a London base throughout the 2014/15 season. Follow him on Twitter here.