A friend who works in recruitment once told me that he could tell if somebody was right for a job within two minutes of meeting them. A firm handshake, strong eye contact and an outgoing nature were all things that he looked for in a candidate. Ability, he said, was very much a secondary consideration. If somebody was hardworking and had a positive outlook, everything else usually fell into place.

It is a skill that Arsene Wenger would surely love to emulate. Despite the Frenchman’s shrewdness in the transfer market and his astute eye for spotting unearthed gems, many of his signings over the years have come a cropper - not because the players haven’t been talented, but because they have often had a poor attitude.

First there was The Incredible Sulk, Nicolas Anelka, whose meteoric rise at the age of 18 in 1997/98 helped the club bag their first league title for seven years, only for him to exit at the behest of his sports-agent brothers in one of the most drawn-out transfer sagas in the history of English football.

Then there was Jose Antonio Reyes, a whopping £17m acquisition from Seville, who started brightly, but soon began carping on about his dislike of all things English. First it was the weather, then the food, before he ludicrously claimed that there was nothing to do in London because “everything is shut at 5pm”.

Julio Baptista, Reyes’ on-loan replacement from Real Madrid, continued the trend this week, saying that the weather in England is “killing him” and that the pace of the Premiership doesn’t give him sufficient time to show off his fancy flicks and overhead kicks.

The latter gripe, in particular, had me doubled over in laughter, as I’m sure it did anyone else who attended last Saturday’s match against Bolton in which Baptista, in acres of space, attempted the most robotic of step-overs and immediately surrendered possession. As for the overhead kicks, he has barely mastered the basics of ball control, let alone begun performing acrobatics, and his second touch is invariably a desperate sliding tackle to retrieve a ball that he’s just (needlessly) lost.

Still, his rant went on: “We'll get one day of sunshine for every 30 days of rain, and it is driving me to despair. My girlfriend and my mother are frightened about not seeing the sun in England.”

How odd. I live a stone’s throw from the Arsenal training ground and we’re experiencing something of a drought of late.

Baptista’s underlying message seems to be that his shortcomings are not down to him, but the fault of other people – e.g. “the teams from the north of England are terrible” – or unrelated external factors like the weather.

His is not the attitude of a winner and it is exactly this kind of player who needs to be vetted out when Wenger draws up his next list of potential signings. Alarm bells should have been ringing two years ago when Baptista turned Arsenal down to join Real Madrid. Simply put, he showed no interest in the club then and, apart from a few flashes, very little has changed. He always saw Arsenal as a stepping stone back to Real Madrid, just as Reyes never viewed the club as a long-term fixture in his plans.

And the Brazilian can hardly claim that he has not been given his chance to shine. He has made 31 appearances for Arsenal this season - 14 as a part of the starting 11 and 17 as a substitute.

His attitude, although more caricatured than most, is indicative of many of Arsenal’s senior players this season who, in the absence of Thierry Henry and Robin van Persie, have failed to bridge the gap left by the two goal scorers. Only stand-in captain Gilberto has really raised his game and it says volumes about the lack of personality in the current Arsenal team that Cesc Fabregas, a supremely talented 19-year-old, is its most influential player.

Arsenal’s history is full of players who, while talented in their own right, won a unique place in the fans’ hearts for their battling qualities – their grit, determination and relish with which they entered a battle.

Ray Parlour is an excellent example, as are Lee Dixon and Nigel Winterburn. Pat Rice, Arsenal full-back of the 1970s, did not immediately impress the Highbury coaching staff of that era with his talents, but he soon won them over with his desire and work rate and he went on to play 520 games for the club. He was a born winner - a priceless quality - and the rest of his attributes soon blossomed.

But which players of the current era would fit the same billing? Where are the unsung heroes, and the players that stand up to be counted when things are going badly?

The acid test comes on Saturday at White Hart Lane. No Henry, no Van Persie and, quite possibly, no Fabregas owing to a virus. Three players; three strong characters. Who, in their absence, will step to the fore?

The general consensus amongst many fans appears to be that the season is over and that the Spurs game means very little. Maybe they are right, but it is a north London derby nonetheless and, if the players cannot get themselves motivated for that, then we really have got problems.

Have the current Arsenal squad got the instincts of winners? Send your views to Sportingo.

Originally published at Arsenal-Land.co.uk