Something serious has to be done before this whole 'dark arts' thing becomes too widespread within the game. Yesterday, (through blue-tinted specs, of course) we saw the single most abhorrent display of cheating, feigning injury and time-wasting never ever seen before in the Prem years. There have been one or two teams in the past who have
adapted unethical and dishonest tactics to try and stop the opposition (the name Maureen just sprung to mind for some reason), but yesterday we saw the continuation of a style that Arteta has been practising for some considerable time - Dark-Artsenal.
Most teams will add a bit of skullduggery now and again to their play if they think it could help them win the game,
but with most that is just a last-ditch effort to salvage something because the tactics haven't worked. If a team is losing 1-0 in the 90th minute, you can bet your life they will start diving, looking for penalties or free-kicks and so on.
What you might call Plan C. But since Arteta took over the gooners have adapted this strategy as their Plan A, and it is getting out of hand.
When a player throws himself theatrically to the ground to try and gain an advantage, rolls around for a few seconds in apparent agony, finds there is nothing doing from the ref then jumps up and leaps straight in to the action as if nothing has happened, that player is unethical: he is a cheat, a devious and immoral human being. But when it is not just one player but approximately 7 or 8 of them carrying out the feigning and time-wasting continuously for the game's duration, then that club has a serious problem.
Their next game will almost certainly end the same way: accusations of dishonourable tactics from their opposition, yellow and reds dished out as if they were being distributed by an epileptic courier in some seedy, Mafia-controlled Las Vegas casino somewhere. And they will probably finish the game with 10 men again, a record amount of bookings and a disciplinary record Charles Bronson would have been ashamed of.
Truthfully, unless Arteta reigns in these disgusting antics he is going to find himself falling out with every manager and every club in the Premier league.