Assuming Ivory Coast go far in the African Nations Cup, Arsenal will not be able to call on Gervinho until mid-February.

But for many Arsenal fans this might be a blessing in disguise. The former Lille winger has supporters tearing their hair out with his lack of end product – although he has two in two for his country at the Nations Cup which is not much use to the Gunners.

Yet this is a player who believes in his own ability. He was recently quoted as saying that he aimed to surpass Arsenal legends like Thierry Henry and Ian Wright, which seems a little optimistic bearing in mind his performances in his 18 months at the Emirates.

In the real world, the 25-year-old is often used as an example of Arsene Wenger’s diminishing talents in the transfer market.

The manager and his assistant Steve Bould were singing his praises earlier in the season when he was in reasonably good goalscoring form - even going as far as to compare him to Henry.

Cul de sacs

In one sense you can see what Wenger sees in the Ivorian. Gervinho has technical qualities. He is a good passer with an accuracy rate of over 85 per cent which remains at over 80 per cent when in the opposition half.

Gervinho does like to dribble - but usually into cul de sacs – and is consequently dispossessed far more frequently than Theo Walcott, Lucas Podolski and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain.

And when it comes to end product, his statistics are almost laughable. In the league he has put in 12 crosses. Guess how many reached their intended target: zero. Firing balls into the box is not one of the Gunners’ fortes but for a player that normally plays as a winger, that is incredibly poor fare.

Consequently he has no assists this season.

His shooting is equally wayward. He may have scored three goals during a purple patch earlier in the season, but his accuracy precludes him from ever having serious aspirations of a career in archery or darts, with fewer than one in three of his attempts on goal hitting the target.

That is particularly poor considering the fact that Wenger gave him a run at centre-forward earlier in the campaign.

Gervinho has recently found himself on the bench more often which suggests that he may have lost Wenger’s trust, but the 25-year-old is symptomatic of the problems at Arsenal.

The squad is packed with technically gifted players who are adept at keeping possession and playing pretty football.

Yet when it comes to the most important tasks of scoring and defending, they tend to let the manager and the club down with Gervinho one of the biggest culprits.