This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…

Speaking to Sky Sports, Arsenal defender Rob Holding has issued a rallying cry to his teammates as they look to arrest their poor run of form.

What did he say?

Unai Emery’s side have endured a miserable start to the current campaign, finding themselves in sixth place in the Premier League, and already languishing eight points behind Manchester City in fourth.

The Gunners are currently on a five-match win-less streak across all competitions, and were beaten 2-0 by top-four rivals Leicester before the international break. Ahead of their upcoming clash against Southampton, Holding insisted the club are not at a “crisis point”, and simply insisted that a couple of wins would turn things around considerably.

He said: “We just need to string a couple of wins together and I think that will lift the confidence again and hopefully set us off on a run. We just need to stay calm and stay positive. We’re sixth, we’re not a million miles off it. We’re going into a busy Christmas period now where there’s going to be three Premier League games a week.

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“We’re eight points off the top four but if we have three wins in a week we’re back up within touching distance so it’s not crisis point by any stretch of the imagination. We need to keep calm, keep positive and keep working on what we need to improve on.”

Ignores the big problem

While the 24-year-old’s words of inspiration are understandable, and even admirable, they simply do not address any of the underlying issues that have caused the Gunners’ season to unravel to this point. Emery’s men have faced a staggering 16.4 shots per game on average – a statistic that is only better than newly-promoted Norwich and Aston Villa respectively.

Their lack of defensive stability means they are always feeling the pressure of needing to score multiple goals in a football match to win. Keeping a clean sheet has become such a rare phenomena, that their last away shut-out in the top-flight came in their opening game of the season against Newcastle. So whilst Holding may do his best impressions of a public motivator, those words will simply fall on deaf ears until they set about fixing their shocking back-line.