Mikel Arteta should be sacked if Arsenal fail to reach the Europa League final

Arsenal's former boss Unai Emery stands between the club and a second Europa League final in three seasons, the first of which he led them to.

You haven't got to be a rocket scientist to understand the significance of Thursday night's semi-final second leg. It's massive in so many ways but in the event the Gunners fail to progress, Mikel Arteta should be sacked.

When it was announced the Spaniard would take charge of his former club back in December 2019, not everybody was convinced. The club had hired a rookie with zero managerial experience to pick them up off the floor. However, during his first press conference, Arteta immediately won over many of the fans. He said all the right things, showed a stern side that we'd never seen during his playing days and quickly made it clear he had arrived to change the culture at the Emirates Stadium.

An FA Cup win at the back end of last season earned him further goodwill with the fanbase but fast forward to today and the Gunners are in an even lower league position than the one they finished in last time out.

It's getting harder and harder to spot the 'progress' his loyal supporters keep bleating on about and having failed to put up a respectable defence of the trophy that he lifted in his first season, a semi-final exit at the hands of Emery would further increase the calls for him to be axed.

It took the 39-year-old up until Christmas to settle on a formation and having done so it seemed the team were on the right path. Better late than never.

However, the reality is Arsenal are ninth in the Premier League, having already lost three more games than they did last season. The size of the task at hand was underestimated by many and, to be fair to Arteta, he has had to deal with a number of issues, most of which have not been of his own making.

Injuries have been a huge problem and have forced him to rotate more than he'd have liked. The pandemic has created a need to condense the season into a shorter period of time, leading to fixture congestion and less minutes on the training ground to prepare for upcoming games.

His side have been on the receiving end of some questionable refereeing decisions, impacting negatively on their points total. Issues have arisen with regards to his talisman and star player Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang that nobody could have foreseen pertaining to his health, his personal life, and his conduct.

At times, however, Arteta's obsession with the attitude of his players has seen him cut his nose off to spite his face regarding team selection and while a culture change has been necessary for quite some time, positive results are a must for a club as big as Arsenal. Arteta's 'process' is ongoing but he can't be afforded unlimited time to reach his final destination - the fans won't accept it and rightly so.

The lack of a new manager bounce when he first took over was swept under the carpet when he ended the campaign with silverware but given the Gunners are on course to finish in a worse position than eighth, it feels like securing another trophy is the only way he can relieve the pressure on him currently.