The trouble with a bank holiday, especially when the weather has been nice, is that it makes it that little bit harder to get yourself up for going to work. I mean yeah, it’s useful that the working week is shorter, but still it’s a little frustrating that you have to go back in to work. Why can’t somebody pay me an extortionate amount of cash just to surf the internet, play on my computer and go to golf when the weather is nice, eh?
And because the football season is now essentially over (I’m not going to bother watching City beat United and Inter to claim the treble, thanks), there’s just a big expanse of nothingness going on right now. Actually, that’s not true, because of course we have the whirring noises of the tabloid journos preparing for another summer of rumour and counter-rumour. But that even feels hollow at the moment because nothing will happen for the next few weeks anyway. Players go on holiday with their families/friends to get away and relax and very little gets properly sorted until we start getting in to July. So I find it really difficult to get too invested in some of the rumours going on at the moment.
Take the Declan Rice to Bayern stuff. I saw something this morning from a German journo saying that Tuchel and Rice have spoken, the manager likes the player, wants to sign the player, etc, etc. But I’m struggling to get too stressed about this sort of stuff yet. If Bayern are interested then fine, but does Rice want to go to Germany? I’m not sure. Then you have to wonder whether they will fork out the expected outlay on Rice, as well as going for Cancelo this summer, who City will probably want at least £45 – £50million for minimum. Bayern make a habit of snaffling all the best players from their own league, so would they break the back and fork out €110million for one player? I’ve just had a quick look on their transfer spending over the last ten years; the most they have spent for a player has been €80million on Hernandez a couple of summers back. Then last summer just gone they made their biggest financial outlay on players spending a total of just over €146million. They bought five players in with transfer fees attached to them. So would they really want to spunk €110million on one midfielder? I’m sceptical.
So there isn’t really too much to get worried about when what we have is journalists trying to fashion new angles on transfer sagas just so they can fill some online column inches. So what I think I’ll try to do for the next few days and weeks is to focus in on what we’ve just been through in turns of our season. Maybe some reflections on specific players, or parts of the pitch, etc. We did an awards show – as every other Arsenal fan-based media is doing right now it seems – on the Same Old Arsenal pod. I went for player of the season as Odegaard; I can’t help myself because I just think he is – and has been – sublime. For least improved I went for Smith Rowe because of his injuries and also the reluctance of Arteta to use him. A lot of it is out of his control, but when you think about how important he was at times last season, you have to say he has ‘least improved’ out of the current crop of players. He may not have been given as many opportunities to ‘improve’, but you can’t argue that the expectations that we all had of him were that he’d kick on a little more.
For game of the season it had to be the United match for me. That was against a rival, it was a late goal, plus it came at a time in which we had a host of difficult matches and we came out on top, firing belief in to the players and fans that we could compete right until the end of the season. But the worst game for me was that Southampton home match. Man, we should have smashed them and shown City that we were going to take them right to the end. Instead we shot ourselves in the foot and to me that is where the capitulation became very real and it felt like the tide had truly turned against us.
That was then followed by one of the worst individual moments, which was the first goal against Brighton, because the game was properly up at that stage. It was gut wrenching to see those players have all of the belief sucked out of them and it happened to the supporters too, as we all collectively had to just sit there stunned and watch that car crash unfold right in front of our eyes. Harrowing stuff.
But with the fullness of time I suspect we’ll be able to focus back on the so many positives of the season. It didn’t end the way we wanted, but for the vast bulk of the season we were a very impressive outfit picking up wins at home and away against teams that had been problematic for us in many seasons previously. So we managed to banish some historical demons and hopefully next season we can continue that trend and have another good one.
Right, that’ll do me for today I think, as I’ve got to face up to the fact that I do indeed have to work for a living. Have a good one peeps and I’ll catch you all tomorrow.
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