IBK, pretty much my thoughts too. We are still very much a work in progress. The reality of the situation is that we are very much a Top 10 side, but at the moment, no longer a Top 6 side.

Despite losing back to back games, some of the play has been very encouraging in both the Wolves and Villa games. We are looking more like a "team" now and seem to be slowly developing a style of play. Despite this, we do still lack quality pretty much all over the pitch and I think it's going to take a few more windows to address that. You could also argue that a more experienced high quality manager could address several of the shortcomings in this team, take for example Chelsea hiring Tuchel and him ironing out the weaknesses in Chelsea's team due to Lampard's lack of experience.

Our current league position is pretty much reflective of the level of this team, I do personally think we have drifted quality wise away from the traditional top 6 even though I feel we are good enough to give all of them a very competitive game with the exception of City.

Regarding the Europa league and a possible route into CL, honestly I don't think we are at the level to progress from a CL group assuming we make our way into it via winning the Europa League, to be honest I don't think we are good enough to win the Europa League given the teams left in it.

I wouldn't fancy us to beat any of these sides over 2 legs or a one-off in the Europa League, AC Milan, Spuds, Leicester, Ajax & Man United.
Yep - 100% agree.

I suppose the only real question here is whether we persist with Arteta. The reality is that we should not be surprised about some of the mistakes he hs made - the principal one being his over-reliance on reputations and experience of some senior players, and alienation of younger ones. This is understandable to a degree for a manager who himself lacks experience and is relying on that of his players to help manage his team on the picth and the training ground. What is less so is his stubborn persistence with the likes of Willian when the overwhelming evidence is that he is simply not up to it and his signing was a huge mistake.

I always advocated keeping the manager at least to the end of the season. I still think that we should aim to persevere with Arteta - the Chelsea approach would IMO be a disaster for a club that has been through too much instability already, and we need to take the long view. Whether by accident or design, we are now a team with a far better profile when trying to build a platform for future sucess - even more so if Saliba can be re-integrated successfully, and unlike others I think that we are good to go with a half decent striker (remember we have Martinelli already); a MF (Odegard?) and a back up left back signed in the Summer.

Our January business was much more sensible than some of the previous transfer decisions under this regime, and has made me more confident going forwards.

But...we are now in another crucial stage of the season. IMO our recent revival will count for nothing if we go into another period where we drop more points than we gain, and our seeming improvement on the pitch must now be translated into fewer results than we have seen over the past week. European football seems unlikely next season, but we need to finish close to achieving this for even sesnible fans to feel confident about a future under Arteta.