Martin Odegaard [Alexander-Canillas/SPP]

NOT sure if you saw all of Arsenal’s 0-0 draw with Everton at the weekend, but the cliché that they could have played all night and not scored was probably applicable.

The strategy seems to have been reduced to play it to Bukayo Saka and hope he can beat the doubled-up defenders and score a goal of the season contender each weekend.

It’s not a new sensation. For two and a half seasons, Mikel Arteta might have written different scripts for himself if he had concentrated on buying a lethal goalscorer, in the way that his predecessors acquired Ian Wright and Thierry Henry. Instead of buying endless full-backs.

A new forward wouldn’t even have to be that lethal, as they would have so many chances laid on for them by Martin Odegaard.

But, as much as the manager likes to overcomplicate things in a reach for some higher beauty, Arsenal do need someone who can get the ball and whack it in the goal.

That’s the kind of crude, blunt statement which does not sit with the modern managers who think it’s all a head-bending artform, nor the football tacticians that populate the Arsenal webisphere and tell anybody that suggests the Gunners could do with a selfish goalscorer that they are cavemen who can’t understand the complexities of false nines and midfield pivots.

And yet twice this week Arteta made revealing comments. In one press conference, he summed up the problem that has led to deflating draws against Fulham, Everton and more this season, without taking the next step and clicking what the glaring solution might be. (Psst.. it’s not Gabriel Jesus.)

“I cannot ask much more to the boys apart from putting the ball in the net,” he said.

Then when asked whether the Carabao Cup was important to him given he’d only one one trophy at Arsenal, he corrected the reporter and said he’d actually won three – and why were they not counting his two “Charity Shields”. It’s illuminating that he thinks people do count that as a trophy when nobody really cares whether you win or lose the season curtain-raiser. Maybe he thinks he has been too successful with all these Charity Shields to need a striker.

I know what he should be asking for from Santa, though.