Arteta since he took the job has always been defence minded manager focussed on not making a mistake rather then having an attacking philosophy. His recruitment is often focussed there and he neglects trying to find ways to set the team up to make us a more attacking threat.
Our points tallies have ended up fairly consistent with the exception of the 50 point half season which was clearly an anomaly not driven by anything directly from him but with our attacking players pretty much nailing their level to at its highest potential for around half a season.. Even when we won the FA Cup we need the Semi and Final elite set of individual performances from Aubameyang which wasn't really anything to do with Arteta's attacking set-up just a good player executing at the top of his game. That seems to be the consistent for Arteta and his forwards basically they need to execute at 100% for them to get it working in our set-up and if they don't hit that level we don't have anything to offer.
I have seen the can't call the title race over comments which mathematically is fine but it is not unreasonable to say from the 20 games we have seen with defeats to Villa, Newcastle, Fulham & West Ham and a draw with Fulham that this isn't a team that is going to be winning the title. We could go on an 18 match win streak but that is not a likely outcome based on our historical norms and the current weak attack. We are more likely in my view to drop similar points in that second phase of the season and potentially fall further behind.
For me if we fall adrift of the top, and basically if you start falling to 7-10 points I don't think you are really in the race, then we should be asking questions about where are we going with Arteta given the time he has had and the resources he has spent.
