I’m not overly religious or ‘owt, but whoever decided to call it ‘Good Friday’ were clearly being ironic, because there ain’t much ‘Good’ about it in normal circumstances. The Management’s whole family are Catholic, so today is the one day in the year in which no booze can be had, nor meat. For a man like myself whose diet is predominantly made up of those two important food groups, it’s like torturing a lion by putting it in an enclosure surrounded by lettuce, tomatoes, butternut squash and tofu. It’s just plain wrong.

And to add to the general malaise I have around this holy day, there isn’t even any Arsenal to speak of. We’re slap-bang in the middle of a period of time where we’re all off work/school/uni (or most people are, I’d assume), yet there’s not even an Arsène Wenger press conference to listen to, watch, over-analyse, break down the minutiae of, then accuse the poor old fella of saying something in the wrong way or antagonising the fans. Oh woe is us, eh?

On the press conference thing, that’s one element I’ll miss when he does eventually depart from the Arsenal shores, you know. Arsène is a very erudite speaker and has given years of brilliant soundbites for us to smile and laugh over. When his replacement comes in, will we get the same level of intelligence and verbal jousting with the press?

Possibly. But it’ll be a real challenge to do it with such consistency over such a long period of time. Probably because the next manager will probably only last a maximum of three years in the modern game. Regardless of how successful he is. It’s funny, everyone goes on about how Mourinho can’t stay in a job for more than three seasons, but isn’t it the same for Pep? Or for Ancelotti? I guess the only difference is that those guys don’t try to burn every bridge with every party through their antagonistic style.

Anyway, as I was saying, nothing much on this weekend other than pointless friendlies, one of which is England vs Germany which we all know will end up with Özil clattering in to Welbeck to rule them out for the rest of the season, right? An injury to a key Arsenal player is almost as sure as night following day, so I can only hope that the Arsenal players are doing a ‘Rivaldo in the world cup‘ to get out of playing. Of course they won’t be, but it would be nice.

I wonder if Alexis is going to be playing the piano during his spare time this weekend? Apparently it relaxes me and allows him to get away from football, given that football is his life, which I find interesting. When I first started getting in to football at the age of seven, that was supposed to help me to find a hobby and later on in life allow you a bit of escapism. But to say that it relaxes me would be the polar opposite of what it actually does. In fact, it stresses me out quite a lot, so maybe I should take up a musical instrument to relax me from my hobby. Which is supposed to relax me but in fact worries me on a regular basis.

Look at me, I’m rambling, but what do you expect when I have nothing else Arsenal related to say? I’ve had my drug cut from me and now i’m going in to remission.

Right, that’s it, I need to go for a long walk. I’m doing the three peaks challenge in June and need to ‘train’ for it apparently, which means 15 mile pilgrimages every month until then. Who ever heard of ‘training’ for a walk? Surely you just put one foot in front of the other again and again, no? How hard can that be? For 26 miles. It just takes a little longer than usual. Anyway, I’m doing it for charity and so if you fancy sponsoring me that would be awesome. The link to the JustGiving page is here – https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/chrisr3c. Good cause and all that jazz.

Catch y’all tomorrow.