Arsenal could see problems coming before and now failure to act coming back

The sticking plaster of Mikel Merino lasted just seven days before the wound was pouring blood again.

His two well-taken finishes against Leicester only temporarily masked a problem the Arsenal board, Mikel Arteta, his players and supporters could all see hurtling in their direction after Kai Havertz’s season-ending hamstring injury earlier this month.

That is a gaping hole up front; an area which has been shunned in multiple transfer windows, and could now well haunt a third straight title-race heartbreak for the club this season.

Until Bukayo Saka or Gabriel Martinelli return next month, there are going to be a lot more displays like this, and Nottingham Forest’s excellent centre backs Murillo and Nikola Milenkovic are going to be licking their lips at dealing with Merino while launching counter-attacks just as West Ham did.

The defeat on Saturday by a side who, under new boss Graham Potter, were well-organised and astute in following their gameplan, was not solely the fault of Merino.

The statistics say as much: of Arsenal’s 20 shots on target, just two were on target. West Ham managed two on target from a total of five shots.

On the Gunners’ part, that’s woeful. It reflects a poor performance across the team, where Arsenal had plenty of the ball around the goal, but no killer instinct to score.

Nor were there sufficient chances created from a midfield that underwhelmed and struggled to pierce the opposition backline. It’s often Martin Odegaard who provides the creativity but even the Arsenal captain was off the mark, while Declan Rice lasted just 55 minutes and even Ethan Nwaneri was largely anonymous.

But the crux of the matter goes back to the necessity of playing a defensive midfielder as a makeshift striker.

Merino led the line in a decent fashion as he fended deliveries down to team-mates and gave the opposition backline trouble in the air.

But West Ham’s centre backs were fairly comfortable with his lack of threat in behind, and the Leicester brace looked more and more like an anomaly than a breakthrough.

He had a couple of shots, and created two chances, but never really looked like scoring. And nor did any of his team-mates.

Before Havertz’s injury, the Gunners were already very light in attack with the injuries to Saka, Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus, so they can’t say they weren’t warned.

It was Jesus’s ACL injury against Manchester United in the FA Cup third round defeat on January 12 which sent the Arsenal board into overdrive for a forward - but they still could not bring in anyone better than a player who has never played up front in his life.

A number of names were explored, with Aston Villa’s Ollie Watkins the most realistic. But they did not want to break the bank for a player they were not certain was world-class, and could not even find a short-team loan deal just to see them through to the end of the season. Days like Saturday make that decision all the poorer.

And then they went 1-0 down to Jarrod Bowen’s header. Who could Arteta turn to to get them back into a game they could not really afford to lose? Of the nine substitutes at the manager’s disposal, five were full backs.

The two attacking options were Raheem Sterling, who has started just four league matches in a loan spell from Chelsea which is just not working out, and Nathan Butler-Oyedeji, who has never played in the Premier League.

The 22-year-old failed to score in 24 appearances during loan spells at League One Cheltenham and Accrington Stanley, and cannot be expected to dig Arsenal out of the hole they have created.

In terms of the Premier League title race, Saturday, in some ways, felt like deja vu. The Hammers’s 2-0 victory at the Emirates in December last season was much of the same, seeing a hard-working visiting side sit back and watch Arsenal fail to offer anything resembling a penetrating threat.

The home side took 30 shots that day, and that was largely window dressing too – 10 were blocked, 12 were from long range and only eight were on target. Arteta is clearly aware, having reference the shot totals after each of the West Ham defeats.

This loss is a sizeable stumble in their quest to take down Liverpool, who had opened the door to a possible title race with their draws at Everton and Aston Villa.

But because Arsenal are running this race without a striker, it is the failures of January which will linger long on the minds of Arteta and the Arsenal hierarchy.