Piers Morgan: Mikel Arteta’s ‘trust the process’ drugs have worn off.. if Arsenal don’t get top four he should be sacked
TO BE an Arsenal fan this season has felt like being Robert De Niro’s character Leonard Lowe in the movie Awakenings.
For those who haven’t seen it, it’s about a group of catatonic patients brought back to functioning life again by a brilliant doctor named Malcolm Sayer (played by Robin Williams) only for his miracle drug of hope to then wear off and send them back to catatonia.
Last August, after three disastrous straight opening Premier League losses, culminating in a humiliating 5-0 thrashing by Manchester City, I found myself in similar state of Zombie-like helplessness – sitting silently in a chair, open-mouthed and staring blankly at the ceiling.
It had been 17 years since the all-conquering Invincibles made football history, and now, after so much endless failure and false-dawn hope had reduced us to a team that couldn’t even qualify for Europe let alone compete for the league, came this new crushing nadir.
But manager Mikel Arteta kept telling us to “trust the process” and, to be fair to him, I’ve tried.
In fact, there was a moment during Arsenal’s opening match of 2022, on New Year’s Day against Man City, again, when we were 1-0 up at half-time and outplaying the best team in the country, that like Leonard in the movie when Dr Sayer’s seemingly miracle-working drugs kicked in, I felt a sudden surge of excitement in my deadened veins
We were BACK!
Then City equalised, and then they scored a 93rd minute winner, and then my face began to twitch like Leonard’s with uncontrollable tics, and then everything went horribly wrong again.
