Arsène Wenger has told his players that they must prove they belong at Arsenal amid a lengthy dressing-room inquest following Thursday’s 3-0 defeat by Manchester City.

It was Arsenal’s joint heaviest home Premier League loss at The Emirates and it is understood that Wenger told the group that their futures were collectively on the line and that they must unite following a sequence of seven defeats in eight weeks.

Arsenal supporters had earlier sung “you’re not fit to wear the shirt” at the players and Wenger then also said that they must all “show you have the level to be at Arsenal football club”.

Wenger is understood to include himself in that assessment but he will be surprised after coming under fire last night from Peter Hill-Wood, the club’s former chairman who was in place when the Frenchman arrived in 1996. “I think that there probably ought to be a change of management,” Hill-Wood, who stood down as chairman in 2013 for health reasons, told The Daily Star.

“He has done fabulously well, it is just he has overstayed his welcome. I find it very sad because he was the great love of many and then it (overstaying his welcome) has destroyed it all.”