THE problem with modern day Arsenal has been so obvious that Mikel Arteta’s refusal to concede that he should have signed a top striker in any of the last three transfer windows seems almost stubborn now.

It’s as if he’s fearing the sound of hundreds of thousands of people saying “we told you so”, if he was to give in and acquire the missing and vital piece of his Arsenal jigsaw. Better not to win, than listen to that.

But like tonsillitis, ignoring it only makes it worse and so the Gunners manager had to endure the awkward squeeze this week of his pride and joy, Kai Havertz, shouldering a free header out and wide in the same match as Alexander Isak scored for Newcastle.

Here was what-you-could’ve-had playing out in technicolour on the Emirates turf; what we could’ve had is last year’s championship trophy if the forward line push hadn’t been left to a player now lost as a Crystal Palace substitute.

So what did Arteta say afterwards? That the actual ball itself was different in the Carabao Cup and affected his team’s gameplay.

“I think we kicked a lot of the balls over the bar and it’s tricky that this ball flies a lot,” he said.

Sometimes, however hung up on a theory you are, it’s better to say nothing at all.

Arteta’s comical excuse was up there with the Ukranian national side manager who blamed losing 4-0 to Spain in the 2006 World Cup on his players being kept awake by frogs croaking noisely outside their hotel rooms in Germany.

There was also, of course, Sir Alex Ferguson blaming grey away kits for Manchester United being thumped at Southampton, suggesting somehow the players couldn’t see each other.

But Arteta is in good company.

Any Liverpool fans in the house can stop laughing because King Kenny himself, Kenny Dalglish more or less made the same excuse back in 1998. By then he was manager of Newcastle and had been humbled in the FA Cup by drawing with lowly Stevenage.

“The balls were too bouncy,” Dalglish moaned afterwards, an explanation which got the same derisory reaction as Arteta received this week.