How can Arsenal start scoring again?! Serhou Guirassy, Roberto Firmino and the strikers Mikel Arteta could sign to prevent Gunners' season from collapsing

The Arsenal fans who were sat near the press box during the Gunners' galling FA Cup third-round exit to Liverpool on Sunday did not hide their feelings. "Sign a striker," they shouted, as their side wasted chance after chance during the eventual 2-0 defeat.

Quizzed on this at the end of the game, Mikel Arteta gave an answer that will not go any way to addressing the fans' concerns. "At the moment, [signing a centre-forward] does not look realistic," he told beIN Sports. "What my job is, and what we have to do is improve our players and try to get better results with the players we have."

That may indeed have been the club's stance prior to Arsenal's third-straight defeat in all competitions, but sporting director Edu will no doubt be performing all sorts of creative accounting over the coming days in an attempt to provide Arteta with some extra firepower. Indeed, the manager himself later admitted in his press conference: "One thing is what we need and another is what we can do."

This lack of goals is becoming increasingly untenable, and if the Gunners boss cannot find a way to get his team scoring again, their season is in serious danger of petering out.