I’m trying hard this morning guys. I’m trying real hard. I’m trying hard because for all of the talk, the messages from ex players, the ‘manager’ who supposedly feels comfortable with this competition, what I’m looking at is a team of f**cking bottlers who stared Champions League and a trophy and not only blinked, but sh*t the bed and whimpered when the pressure was on.

I know in the cold light of day it feels very much like the benefit of hindsight is speaking right now but I’m sorry to say this, after 15 minutes in The Rocket I said to the lads with me, that we were in trouble. The game may have felt like it was in the balance at halftime but Steve and I had a conversation about it as soon as the halftime whistle went and I think even then the reality was setting in: this final was getting away from us and unless something changed we were going to see a difficult evening. Unless the manager changed something we weren’t winning this trophy.

The hope was that we had ‘the guy’ who knew the Europa. After all we’ve been told that this was the manager who ‘knew’ the Europa League. He had won it three times before and he knew how to do it again. “It’s ok lads, Unai knows how to get us in to the Champions League by the Europa”.

Well…here’s the thing…sans Ramsey, he didn’t really have a Scooby and despite the fact that it felt like he had some sort of ‘master plan’ in place when he was prepping his team for this final, what I witnessed last night showed me that actually he’s just free styling like Wenger was at the end.

That performance was the epitome off naivety. Chelski had control for large parts. Even in the first half at 0-0 it felt weird. It felt like we didn’t really know what we were doing. We never really had a ‘plan’. We were rudderless.

A bit like our club I guess. Wenger brought us a few trophies in the latter years but the Kroenke regime has delivered exactly what it had promised when people started reading up on it. We are turning in to an average club with a decent cup record. And we can thank the most pathetic owner we could have ever have wished for. A stain on our history and we’re due for more mediocrity under his tenure.

We have players suckling at the fat pig of Arsenal and I’m sorry if this sounds a little reactionary but here are a few:

  • Mesut Özil
  • Henrikh Mkhitaryan

There are probably loads but I don’t want to go through a long list right now. I just want to highlight those two. At £350k a week we need Özil to provide something different. What we got last night was what we’ve got all season: a few nice 10-20 yard passes that led to nothing.

This is the first time I’ve said this: time to get him out. This team is fucking average at times and we can’t have a player like him earning the wage he earns at our club, not delivering matching-winning performances.

That’s actually really important here:

“Match”

“Winning”

“Performances”

When was the last time we got one? Because for £350k-per-week we should have 20 a season. We get one at best right now. And for that reason I am finally in the camp in which I can’t see an Arse al with him in it. We need to get rid and we need to do it now.

This is going to be a long, long, summer. I hope the club knows what it is doing, because all I see right now is a mess, and it ain’t pretty.

see you tomorrow. Maybe.