Mikel Arteta has had to deal with a lot at Arsenal this season.
In what really should have been the campaign in which his side finally got their hands on the Premier League title, he's had to contend with a general drop in form and a dreadful injury crisis to his frontline.
Worse yet, instead of pushing the boat out and signing the Spaniard a new forward during the winter window, the board decided to keep their powder dry, which some saw as a white flag for the season.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta before the match
This chronic lack of options up top has led to Arteta playing Mikel Merino as his starting number nine, and while the summer signing has done okay, his efforts have paled in comparison to a centre-forward sold by Arsenal for a pittance last year.
Arteta's Merino experiment
If you had asked Arsenal fans who they thought would be leading the line for the team towards the backend of the season earlier in the campaign, we'd hazard a guess that precisely none would have answered Merino.
Mikel-Merino
However, this is the situation the Gunners now find themselves in, and while the Spaniard will not be playing up top next season - lest another set of disastrous circumstances play out - he hasn't been dreadful for a central midfielder anyway.
For example, he helped the team avoid an embarrassing draw away to Leicester City with a perfect header and brilliantly placed shot in his first appearance leading the line.
Moreover, he scored and assisted a goal away to PSV Eindhoven in the Champions League and headed home the winner against Chelsea just before the international break.
However, while his tally of four goals and one assist in seven appearances up top is genuinely impressive on paper, he failed to score or assist a goal against West Ham United, Nottingham Forest and Manchester United in the league and against PSV at home.
Mikel Merino as a striker at Arsenal
The former Real Sociedad ace might just about work as an emergency stand-in striker for a game or two, but it has become abundantly clear that he's not good enough to play up top for any significant period.
What makes it all the more annoying for fans is the fact that a striker the club sold for pennies on the dollar in the summer has been scoring for fun on the continent while Merino has been struggling.
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The ex-Arsenal star who'd be their best striker
It would be fair to say that while Arsenal made a bit of a mess out of their signings last summer, they did pretty well when it came to their sales, getting £30m for Eddie Nketiah, up to £34m for Emile Smith Rowe and up to £25m for Aaron Ramsdale.
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta -3
However, while fans were pretty happy with the sizable fees the club got for players deemed surplus to requirements, they may not have been aware that a young up-and-coming striker was sold to Austrian outfit Sturm Graz for just £4m: Mika Biereth.
Now, at the time, those who were aware likely didn't care all that much, as while he managed to rack up a tally of 15 goals and nine assists on loan with Motherwell and Sturm Graz last season, he had never played for the Gunners' first team, and with a fit Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus in the squad, it seemed like he never would.
Mika-Biereth-Sturm-Graz
However, the Dane's simply sensational form this season has since proven that not only was it a massive mistake by the club to sell him for such a small sum of money, but a mistake to sell him full stop.
For example, in the first half of the season, the "crazy" talent, as dubbed by former GOAL reporter Robin Bairner, hit the ground running and by January had already scored 14 goals and provided five assists in just 25 appearances.
Biereth's 24/25
Team
Appearances
Minutes
Goals
Assists
Goal Involvements per Match
Minutes per Goal Involvements
All Stats via Transfermarkt
Such a rate of return was enough to tempt AS Monaco into spending £10.8m plus £1.75m in add-ons on the 22-year-old early into the winter window and to say that the investment has since paid off would be a considerable understatement.
In just 12 appearances for the Ligue 1 side, totalling 860 minutes, the London-born gem, whom former Manchester United defender Paul Parker described as "one of Europe's most dangerous strikers," has scored 11 goals and provided three assists.
That means he's currently averaging 1.16 goal involvements every game, or one every 61.42 minutes on the French Riviera, which is just the sort of attacking output Arsenal desperately need.
Ultimately, while Merino is clearly trying up top, he's not a natural goalscorer, and had Arteta and Co kept hold of Biereth, there might not even be a discussion around the club's lack of cutting edge at all.
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