Morning all. Happy Tuesday unto thee. Hopefully you’re feeling grand and the usual bitter taste after a weekend defeat doesn’t feel as lingering in your mouth as it usually does for me.

I’m all for the idea of the season taking a reboot after next weekend, you see, because with a new formation, new style of play, new manager and some new players, it was always going to be tough. We all knew that.

And I think it’ll be just as tough next weekend. We’ve got a now traditionally terrible away record at the bigger clubs and my usual Chris pessimism has already set in, with the difference that I kind kind of accept a defeat next weekend, possibly in part down to the result this weekend just gone by. Let me explain my workings…

At the beginning of a season, before any ball is kicked in anger, every football fan has hope. That hope is built from the unknown and endless possibility. For us lot it’s the possibility that things may have just ‘clicked’ for Unai, that he could beat the Champions and maybe, just maybe, he’s got a tune out of some pretty dodgy sounding instruments from last season.

But the defeat to City on Sunday just confirmed what – underneath all of that hope that I had (although I didn’t say it on the blog. A kind of self preservation thing, if you will) – was the realisation that we simply aren’t anywhere near City’s level. They are the benchmark. The blueprint for success this season. “Finish above them and you win the league” type stuff. I think the result on Sunday showed us that we have a long way to go before we can even look that far north in the table, which means we just need to get that game and the one this Saturday out of the way, so we can start again and begin our season in earnest.

So I’m taking next Saturday’s game as a ‘freebie’. Who knows, the players might surprise us a bit, which would be nice.

What isn’t nice is that we already have people who are Arsenal fans getting on each other’s backs. Those that want to chastise the team are few and far between from what I’ve seen, but I’m also seeing the ‘moral high ground’ brigade take to Twitter and call our collective fan base ‘sh*t’, ‘idiots’ and ‘worst fans ever’, because they leave early, or react immediately after a defeat when still feeling raw, etc.

Do you know what? I don’t feel like calling any Arsenal fans idiots right now. I’m sure a time will come during the season when that lot who stand in front of a camera outside the ground hungry for attention will have me rolling my eyes but right now, simply, I just want to focus on the football and how we’re going to improve.

I want to learn things about the way in which Emery’s Arsenal might improve. Like a mate of mine – Woz – has tried to do on Twitter yesterday. That’s what I want to watch, read or listen about, because that will help me more than having “OUR FANS ARE SH*T” thrown on my timeline because some people want to win some sort of “I react perfectly normal during every situation related to football” award. You don’t. I don’t. We don’t. It’s life. Live and let live.

Perhaps those people asking the fans in the stadium to not be so sh*t, but at the same time talk about how the team needs time to bed in under a new manager, realise that it’s probably going to take the fans a bit of time to adapt their mindset too?

Anyway, that’s all I really wanted to say about the negativity because despite me taking to Twitter on a thread about being disappointed straight after the game – which I still am by the way – I find myself being a little more accepting of some of the positives of the performance this morning.

Must be that new season smell in the air.

Catch you all tomorrow.