Former Arsenal midfielder Paul Merson believes the Gunners should have signed Danny Drinkwater from Leicester City instead of Chelsea.

Merson has given us a number of cracking opinions this summer. From suggesting Arsenal should swap Alexis for Aguero, to claiming we should have signed a 36-year-old Gareth Barry, he’s certainly not afraid to speak his mind.

Well, he’s at it again. In his column for the Daily Star, Merson believes Arsenal should have signed Danny Drinkwater instead of Chelsea. “Arsenal should have bid for Danny Drinkwater rather than let him go to Chelsea. At least he will fight for you. This lot just give up,” he wrote.

“In my day, the dressing room after a performance like that would have been a war zone. You would have had to call the police because there would have been fights everywhere.

“This bunch don’t have any fight in them from what I can see. The third goal, when they cleared a corner and Hector Bellerin gets robbed in the opposition half and Liverpool score – that shouldn’t happen in Sunday league football. It was pathetic.”

It’s typical of an English pundit to laud Drinkwater as a “fighter” rather than talk about the technical and tactical qualities he might have brought the Arsenal team. For example, Arsenal have struggled in midfield so far this season and might have benefited from Drinkwater’s discipline and energy that served him so well at Leicester.

There are better midfielders out there, but that would have been a solid enough reason. No one player is going to come in and change the culture at the club. If Arsenal have a lack of fight, it’s because of the culture that’s been developed there over many years, not because we specifically sign players with no fight in them.