Eugh. Really don’t feel like writing about what transpired in Nottingham yesterday.

Before the game The Management asked me how I was feeling about the match. “Meh, the season is over so I don’t feel like there’s any real jeopardy here” was my response. Of course she knew I was lying as much as I did. You can tell yourself you don’t care all you want, but ultimately Arsenal is Arsenal and I always want us to win football matches. So even though we all knew the jig was up re: the title, winning would at least prolong it until this afternoon when City invariably beat the steaming mess that is Chelsea.

So to hand City the title without them even kicking a ball is tough. We’ve said for the last few weeks that as long as we can push them, ‘make them win it’, then we can at least show that we gave it a good fight. But yesterday’s performance had absolutely no fight in it at all. It was pathetic in reality.

Those Arsenal players are done for the season. Mentally you could see that they weren’t up for it and although Forest’s goal was a fluke that epitomises us at the moment, there was still time in this match to show a bit of fight and for the players to demonstrate that they will fight until the bitter end.

But they didn’t. We looked a broken side; devoid of any creative inspiration, playing at walking pace when we had the ball, barely troubling Navas all evening. It was a listless performance and one in which Mikel Arteta needs to take a serious look at because what went on at the City ground was, frankly, unacceptable.

I could tell pretty early on that the players were in beach mode. Their heads had gone. When you’ve got Ben White walking with the ball at his feet and doing a remarkable impression of David Luiz from three years ago, you know that you’re in for a tough evening and that is what transpired. I’m not trying to dig out just Ben White though, because there was no movement in front of him and that’s because in attack we offered nothing, it’s just that seeing White walk with the ball and have nobody go near him, just reminded me of the Arsenal of the earlier Arteta era and that is a worry.

Mikel will need to take a look at the mentality of his players because the way in which we have crumbled in this latter part of the season is really frustrating. Yes we’ve had injuries, yes we’ve been unfortunate, (that sort of ‘unluck’ found in online casinos only), but we still have enough players who have the requisite quality to beat teams like Brighton, Nottingham Forest, West Ham and Southampton. But there has been too many errors and it has cost us at a critical time in the season. Yesterday Odegaard’s hospital pass was yet another example. Punished to the maximum, but still, that’s what happens in elite sport and that sort of sh*t needs to be cut out.

Arteta and Edu will be looking at how to upgrade and perhaps there is a little more work needed than we might have thought a month or two back. Like, for example, how we probably need to think about the striking options. Gabby Jesus is a fine footballer, but a 20-goal a season striker he is not. We’ve spread the goals around this season and that’s great, but you still need that stellar goalscoring threat to get you over the line like City have just done. That is something I hope they look at in the summer because we need a different option. It was evident against Brighton and yesterday Jesus offered nothing really in attack.

But it wasn’t just poor performances from the players on the field that was a problem, because Mikel’s decision making and tactical set up was…well…a bit weird. We dropped Partey in to right back at times, we had Xhaka occupying the left space that Zinchenko does, but it just felt confusing. It was a hotch potch of a set up and I don’t think it helped the players one iota. It certainly didn’t enable more fluidity and movement in the team. We looked sluggish and laboured and could probably have played for a week and not scored, such was the efforts on display from those players in black.

This season has been good up until the last month. In the last month the issues in this team have been laid bare and I think for me that’s one of my worries. Finishing the season as meekly as we have is bringing in doubts over the long term viability of having title dreams. Perhaps I’m just feeling raw at the moment, but I’m looking at the depth of this team and it is making me wonder whether this season was a fantastic outlier. Momentum can do so much in football and we’ve ridden the crest of that momentum wave for 75 – 80% of this season. But perhaps we need to find a way to just chug along and win football matches without it feeling like we are riding the confidence wave? That’s what City did towards the beginning of the season; they just kept on winning, stayed in touching distance, then now the after burners are on right at the critical moment. That’s an element of naivety that perhaps we have had this season.

We’re all hurting at the moment, but perhaps after the dust has settled during the week more reflection can take place and maybe I’ll be much more optimistic about the future we have. We’re a young team, hopefully we will come back even stronger for this, and go again next season.

Catch you lovely humans tomorrow. No pod this evening, we’re going to do it tomorrow evening.

Laters peeps.