So the final press conference of the season was done yesterday, coinciding with the launch of the new home kit for next season, in which the club released a bunch of new social media and press about it to generate plenty of online chatter. On the kit, personally, I might give it a miss next season. I bought all three of this season’s kits because they were great. This one looks ok, but I’m not blown away by it, so I’ll leave it to the players on the pitch to look good on it. My gut can breathe a sigh of relief.

On to proper football matters – and to Arteta’s presser ahead of the Wolves game tomorrow – and team news is that there has been a few problems in the camp with injuries apparently. Arteta said that Bukayo and Trossard have had little niggles, whilst Saliba and Zinchenko are out as we suspected. He also listed Tomiyasu and Elneny but it doesn’t look as though he mentioned Martinelli. I thought he was also out for the season but perhaps we have him back. I hope so. He’s been a great addition to our team and I’ve thought he’s been one of our shining stars; getting goals and assists and being a massive contributor to our season, so you want him to play that final game so we can see him off with a round of applause come the end of the match.

He was asked about Saliba and he was naturally cautious, but I suspect they’ll be earmarking pre season for him, which is good to hear. The better news is that it sounds like Tomi will be back for pre season. That’s great to hear. I’m sure I read somewhere that there was a fear that he could be out until November / December time, so to think that he might be able to get a proper pre season under his belt before we go again in August is brilliant news for him and us. If you recall I think he missed the first game of this season because he was recovering from injury and was being nursed back to health for the first few weeks. Ben White obviously stepped up and we saw just how great he was and Tomi never really got back in to the side with any kind of regularity, so you see how important availability is. He’s missed 12 games this season through injury and I’ve already talked about how the club might need to think about whether they need another full back to cover for him because his absence coupled with Saliba’s has had a massive impact on the final couple of months of the season for us. But that is for another day as we have the whole summer to speculate on squad composition.

For now, it is back to the presser and the game tomorrow and as you’d expect he said nice things about the Saka contract, as well as how he wanted us to finish this season in style. I agree. We need an Arsenal team that, despite its injuries, needs to give the fans a good send off. He talked about the connection with the fans and how we’re so close for the perfection that he wants, which is ultimately that dream of lifting a cup. I am going to say it again guys; we should have taking the Europa League more seriously. Sorry, I know I am probably in the minority here, but for me I like to play the percentages; I’m an ‘each way’ man on the Grand National as I like to hedge my bets and the Europa League would have been a brilliant fallback after defeat in the league. We would have beaten Juve, we are better than Sevilla and Roma are another team I’d have easily have fancied us to do over. Had we have had a Europa Cup to parade at the end of the season, I think some of the media nonsense in the narrative would have been very different. But that’s all done now and we have to move on.

I also liked what Arteta said when he was asked if there would be celebrations. He was quite straight with that response – nope. That’s what I want to hear. Be appreciative and talk to each other about the improved journey, but be very clear that this is not the end goal. The final destination is to be top of the pile and if this starts to fuel the hunger that helps to take us to the next level, then I am 100% on board with that.

Final point I want to make on the presser, which was Arteta talking about how last season it was important to get the deals done early in the transfer window to build the foundation of the side. I like this kind of talk; no more pontificating over a few extra mil over a player if it loses us precious weeks to get them embedded in to the team. Don’t get me wrong, if you take somebody like Declan Rice and West Ham ludicrously tell you they want £120million, you can’t just ‘pay up’, but there has to be a balance to be struck. When we signed Thomas Partey we waited all summer to trigger his release clause, but Atletico just weren’t budging on our other attempts, so we ended up paying what they wanted on deadline day. That deal could have just happened a month earlier and maybe he’d have had a better start to his Arsenal career? Lessons have been learned I think though, if last summer is anything to go by, so my hope is that we replicate that approach and get our deals done quickly.

There’s little point in talking about tactical set up or line up differences for the match tomorrow, because it is a dead rubber and that will probably be reflected in the game state. Of course we want Arsenal to win, but the motivation won’t be there for Wolves or the desperation won’t be there for us, so it feels moot to ponder over line up selections. Maybe I’ll do that tomorrow ahead of the game but it won’t be based on any real urgency.

Anyhoo, I’m done for the day, so I’ll catch you sexy bitches all tomorrow.