Per Mertesacker, the Arsenal defender, has admitted that his side are still misfiring despite pulling off a dramatic late 2-1 win over Anderlecht on Tuesday night to remain on course for the Champions League knock-out stage.
The London side got away with a largely average display at the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium, with late goals from Kieran Gibbs and Lukas Podolski rescued all three points for the visitors.
Arsenal now have qualification for the knock-out stages back in their own hands ahead of next month's return tie against the Belgian club at the Emirates, before hosting Group D leaders Borussia Dortmund.
Mertesacker, though, is aware the Barclays Premier League team cannot afford the inconsistencies which have caused early-season promise to revert to familiar faltering displays and questions about the direction of Arsene Wenger's squad. Indeed, Arsenal have registered five wins from their opening 14 matches.
"Everyone knows that it was a difficult start for us and our confidence is not that much how we wanted it," the erstwhile Germany defender said. "The character is good, the mentality is good, but football-wise, we lack a few things. Our passing game is not as efficient as last year. We are not at our best. We have to admit that, be honest with ourselves and train harder."
By his own admission, Mertesacker has not produced the consistent form he showed last season, with the 6ft 7in German culpable for failing to deal with a cross which lead to Hull City taking the lead last Saturday.
The 30-year-old retired from international football after Germany's summer World Cup triumph but accepts the highs in Brazil came at a cost to his club performances of late.
"Personally it is difficult at the moment because that was really a long season last year," he added. "To come back from that World Cup and get the motivation back . . . I am nearly back, but you can feel there is something missing at the moment."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article