Arsène Wenger has shown he can be tactically flexible and Arsenal have stopped being hammered by the elite but the goals have dried up and too many points are being dropped against weaker sides. It seems the real problem is mental

Last season it was August, the season before that it was March, the season before that it was January and the season before that it was March and April and bit of May. This season it’s now. Every year Arsenal have a spell in which they undo the good work that has made them look potential title challengers. That was perhaps the most striking aspect of the defeats by Manchester United and Swansea: that this lack of edge, this failure to seize an opportunity, felt so familiar.

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In terms of equivalent results (that is, comparing Arsenal’s result, say, at home against Swansea with last season’s result at home against Swansea, and substituting the three promoted clubs for the three relegated sides), Arsenal are actually a point better off than last season. Which is perhaps what makes this quite so infuriating for their fans, the sense of weary familiarity about this trudge to third or fourth, the Premier League trophy gleaming always just out of reach.

Yet this season is different. It’s not quite the same old story, partly because of the unprecedented (certainly in Premier League terms and for perhaps a decade before that) unpredictability of the league and partly because this time Arsenal are failing in a different way.

They may be accruing an utterly average number of points per game: 1.82 after Wednesday’s defeat by Swansea (it would have been 1.93 with a win) against a mean over the past 10 years of 1.92, but they are scoring far fewer goals.

After 28 games of the season, Arsenal are averaging 1.57 goals per game. Extrapolate that over the whole season and they’d get 60, which would be their lowest tally since 1999. Over the past decade, they’re averaging 1.88 goals per game.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An Arsenal fan with a banner after the defeat to Swansea. Photograph: TGSPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

It would be easy, and not wholly inaccurate, to point the finger at Olivier Giroud, enduring his worst goal drought since he arrived at Arsenal, and Theo Walcott, who has all but dematerialised over the past month. But it is also to do with a shift in emphasis.

It has been evident over the past couple of years that Arsenal have modified the highly technical possession-based approach that became synonymous with late-period Arsène Wenger (although not the early days, when they often played muscular, rapid counterattacking football with players such as Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit and Gilberto Silva protecting the back four and Nicolas Anelka, Thierry Henry, Fredrik Ljungberg and Marc Overmars devastating on the break).

They have tried at times to sit deeper and absorb pressure, an approach that brought the win at Manchester City last season and at home to Bayern Munich this, and they have at times pressed hard and high, as they did against Liverpool at home last season or in beating Manchester United 3-0 this. So they are more flexible.

The defensive record is better than it was, say, in the three seasons between summer 2009 and summer 2012, and the crushing defeats away by title rivals have been staunched, but they are conceding a goal a game this season. If that remains constant, they will have let in two more than last season, roughly par for the spell between 2005 and 2009 – when they were scoring 68 goals a season.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest José Fonte, No6, scores for Southampton in a 4-0 victory over Arsenal in December. Saints drew at the Emirates Stadium in February, helping to explain why Arsenal have only the 13th-best record this season against teams in the middle third of the league. Photograph: Charlie Crowhurst/Getty Images

Goals for and against per game, though, perhaps doesn’t tell the full story: having an attack good enough to beat lesser sides 5-0 is all very well, but if the defence leaks goals against better sides, it is all but irrelevant in the final reckoning. Arsenal have scored more than three goals in a game just once this season as opposed to an average of 4.5 times per season over the past decade. At the same time, they’re second (behind Tottenham) in terms of points won per game (1.56) against other sides in the top third. Over the past three seasons, they’ve been sixth, fifth and eighth, averaging just 1.06 points per game. The modification to Arsenal’s approach can be seen as a necessary corrective.

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And yet it appears that is still not enough. Arsenal may not get hammered by the elite, but they do drop points against mid-ranking sides. They’re only 13th-best this season in games against the middle third. Still when the prize comes within reach, there is something that prevents Arsenal reaching out and claiming it.

For years, the belief had been that Arsenal’s problems were tactical, that they were being undone by Wenger’s stubbornness. There may still be some truth to that, but increasingly it is coming to seem as though the problem is mental, that Arsenal, somehow, will find a way to fail.

Wenger often speaks of the “mental strength” of his side, but almost always in the context of fighting back when all seems lost, when it may be that the flaw is this causes them to scupper their chances in the first place. And that, really, is the only hope they have left, that things are now so bad they can relax and start playing again.