Arsenal's worst start to a league season for 67 years will see the Gunners spend the next two weeks during an international break bottom of the table without a point or even a goal to show from their opening three games.

Mikel Arteta's position as manager is under increasing pressure with the Spaniard reportedly given four more Premier League games－against Norwich, Burnley, Tottenham and Brighton－to save his job before the October international break.

To rub salt into Arsenal wounds, for the first time ever it sits bottom of the English top-flight table while north London rivals Spurs are top.

However, the Gunners' decline has been a slow and steady process since the final years of Arsene Wenger's 22-year reign in charge and has only accelerated since the Frenchman's departure.

AFP Sport looks at what has gone wrong for one of English soccer's traditional giants.

Transfer trouble

Long after Wenger's great sides of the late 1990s and early 2000s stopped winning league titles, he managed to keep Arsenal as part of the Champions League fabric despite a limited budget to buy players and even selling some of his best as the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Robin Van Persie and Samir Nasri all departed.

Despite fan protests toward the club's American billionaire owner, Stan Kroenke, Arsenal has long since ditched its frugal policy on transfer fees.

Since Wenger left in 2018, the Gunners have spent 425 million pounds ($585 million) on new signings and have the second highest net spend in the Premier League behind Manchester United.

Even this window they have been the biggest spenders with 130 million pounds splashed on Ben White, Martin Odegaard, Aaron Ramsdale, Nuno Tavares and Alberti Sambi Lokonga.

However, so much of that money has been wasted.

Two years on from a 30-million-pound move, William Saliba is yet to play a game for the first team. Young midfielders Lucas Torreira and Matteo Guendouzi have been deemed surplus to Arteta's requirements and farmed out on loan.

Club-record signing Nicolas Pepe has failed to live up to his 72-million-pound price tag, while a series of huge pay packets have also been wasted and made it difficult to move players on.

The club had to pay up for the remaining months on contracts for Mesut Ozil, Sokratis Papastathopoulos and Shkodran Mustafi before they left for free in January.

Speaking of the club's recent transfer business, Arteta told Sky Sports: "We have had seven departures from the side that we had last year, maybe eight. With five coming in, we are talking already about a turnaround of 13 players, so it's huge."

Constant changes

Should Arteta be fired in the coming months, he will be the third manager in three years to leave the club. British media have reported that former Chelsea boss Antonio Conte could be in line to succeed the 39-year-old.

Changes have also been constant among the hierarchy. Highly regarded former Borussia Dortmund chief scout Sven Mislintat left after just 14 months in 2019 due to differences with then head of football relations Raul Sanllehi.

However, Sanllehi also left the club last year due to dissatisfaction with his transfer business.

Arteta was promoted from head coach to manager, with more say over recruitment, after nine months in the job. He insists he has a good working relationship with technical director Edu, who is a former Arsenal player, and director of football operations Richard Garlick.

"I've been in constant contact with the hierarchy of the club, with Eddy (Edu), with Richard (Garlick) and with our coaching team, trying to find the players we want to recruit and trying to be on top of every deal to make it happen in conditions we can afford."

Arsenal's focus now appears on youth, with all of its summer signings aged between 21 and 23.

Those arrivals followed the expensive mistakes of giving huge contracts to players over 30 such as former Chelsea duo David Luiz and Willian, Ozil and current captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.

"The club look like they're going down a road of signing youth players", former Arsenal fullback Lee Dixon told Stadium Astro.

"If that's the case then that suggests to me that they are going to give Arteta time because these players aren't going to turn it around tonight, next week or this season.

"It'll take at least two years. Has he got two years? I would suggest they're thinking yes, but ultimately there's always a breaking point."

'Bullied and weak'

As Arsenal has gone backwards, the teams at the elite end of the Premier League continue to improve.

City, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool have finished in the top four for the past two seasons and all look even stronger this season for their new signings.

During Wenger's reign, Arsenal boasted a record only matched by Real Madrid of 19 consecutive seasons in the Champions League.

Now it has failed to qualify for a fifth straight season and would need a huge turnaround to prevent that streak stretching into a sixth year.

Some observers have even suggested the Gunners could be facing a relegation battle this term. They have only dropped to the second tier once－in 1913.

Indeed, there's a growing feeling that Arsenal no longer belongs among English soccer's elite, with fans and pundits alike now used to the team's underachievement.

"It's just Arsenal. Weak. Bullied. Men against boys again. New season, same old story," ex-England defender Jamie Carragher told Sky Sports after the Gunners' opening-day loss at Brentford.

"We've seen these problems last season and in years gone by," added Carragher. "Arsenal fans have ridiculed Spurs over the years, calling them 'Spursy' for different things. But this is an Arsenal performance. I think we all know what that is now."

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