Danny Mills has told ’s players to ignore manager Mikel Arteta’s tactics if games are not panning out the right way.
The Gunners have lost their last three Premier League games and are now facing an uphill struggle to qualify for next season’s after dropping to sixth place in the table and three points behind rivals Tottenham.
Arteta cut a frustrated figure on the touchline in Arsenal’s defeat at Southampton on Saturday as he bellowed out orders to his team to pass the ball forward.
However, Mills, the former defender, believes Arteta’s players should be able to diagnose their own problems on the pitch without the help of their manager and says the team lacks leaders.
Speaking to , he said: ‘When we talk about leaders, it’s players with a voice, influence and experience. So when things aren’t quite working on the pitch, whatever the manager’s instructions are, you’re not a robot and you can change.
‘ is one of the most fluids games. You can have a game plan but it might change, it’s not stop-start, you can’t reset every two minutes.
‘If things aren’t going your way you need players to be adaptable, to adjust to certain situations and tell their teammates to adjust and do things a different way.
‘If you don’t have that ability within players and they constantly look to the bench then there’s an old saying, if you’re looking at the bench then you should be on it.’
Arsenal’s collapse in recent weeks has coincided with the loss of two key players with midfielder Thomas Partey missing following a thigh strain and left-back Kieran Tierney out for the rest of the season with a knee injury.
Understudies Sambi Lokonga and Nuno Tavares have struggled to replace Tierney and Partey’s quality in the team despite being bought by the club last summer for a combined £26 million.
Having looked odds-on to finish in the top four, Arsenal’s young players Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli appear unable to halt a downturn in results which has seen defeats to Crystal Palace, Brighton and Southampton in consecutive games.
Mills thinks the Gunners’ latest slump has exposed the squad’s lack of depth and has labelled them ‘Spursy’ for not being able to cope with injuries.
He added: ‘Arsenal have become Spursy. They were on a really good run then all of a sudden they are fragile, there’s no backbone. That’s been their problem.
‘They’ve got a lot of good, young attacking players but they are trying to put square pegs into round holes and it’s not quite working for them.
‘Do Arsenal have that fight and tenaciousness of the Arsenal of old? They clearly do not.’
Arsenal next face Chelsea in the Premier League at Stamford Bridge on Wednesday night.
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