I saw a post from somebody I follow on Twitter yesterday and they said that they simply aren’t feeling the nerves ahead of Sunday. I also listened to the Arsenal Vision podcast yesterday on my run and Clive was talking about how emotionally he had just put a bit of a pin in his feelings because he didn’t want to be as down as after the Villa game. And I gotta tell ya, friend, that I feel exactly the same ahead of tomorrow’s game. I am not really nervous at all. My expectation is quite low because West Ham concede tonnes of goals and they have nothing to play for, with an exiting manager who will not be fussed too much if they lose. He’ll want them to win – of course he will – and I’m sure he’ll set his side up not to get a hammering (no pun intended), but I basically have all but zero hope that we will lift the Premier League title.

And in my head I have spent this week making peace with it, so I am going to go in to tomorrow just enjoying the fact we’ve come so far and played so well, as well as looking forward and being excited for what this Arsenal team can deliver next season. And I think Arteta probably feels a bit like that too because he looked relaxed and happy in his pre match presser yesterday as he told the assembled media how excited he was.

He was asked about whether he’d spoken to Pep or David Moyes and of course the answer was ‘no’; these guys are professionals who have to prepare for a football match so they don’t engage in chit chat or WhatsApp’s to each other. He had nice words to say about Moyes, about Pep, even about Everton as is the custom for Arteta to give no opposition manager any quarter when we play them. I wrote about what to expect from Everton here if you fancy a bit more reading, but yesterday we also got to hear a little about Sean Dyche who simply said he wasn’t interested in us potentially winning the league and he wanted to focus on Everton and keeping their good form up. You’d have to expect that to be fair and I think Moyes said something similar in his press conference.

And Arteta’s approach to questions fielded about what happens in Manchester was similar as well; he talked about having a beautiful day on Sunday and going out there and doing our job. That’s all we can really hope for I think and regardless of what happens in the City v West Ham game, I will be celebrating the season that this Arsenal team has delivered to us, because this season there have been so many times in which I’ve been out of my seat cheering. To think that five year’s ago I’d go in to games thinking “we’ve got no chance here” and when we got to the final game of the season on so many occasions it’s been a bit “meh”. But this season at least the pre match chatter will be a bit more meaningful than it has been in the past and I for one am glad about that. We have Arteta and his players to thank for that.

Of course Arteta rightly said he can’t think like that. In elite sport mentality can be everything and if he’s in that dressing room tomorrow telling the players to just go out and enjoy it and not worry too much about the result here or in Manchester, then that’s the 1% that could even cost us the game. Because Everton will be up for it and will happily punish us if we don’t deliver.

The one stat I saw from the presser yesterday which has also kind of made me crystallise my view that we have little else to play for was that no team has ever overhauled the Premier League leaders on the final day in the Premier League. Again Arteta has to say things like “that won’t stay like that forever” but if you look at the reality of a situation then it’s fairly obvious why that stat remains in tact and will probably do so tomorrow; when you get to this point in the season most of the time you essentially have about 14 teams who have nothing really to play for. You can talk about pride and about finishing as high up in the league as you like, but the reality is that for many teams that 1% I mention above is missing. That desperation just isn’t there and so when there’s a 50/50 ball that you’re challenging for, if you’re one of those players who is playing for a team without any jeopardy, you’re not risking a big injury and losing your summer if you don’t have to. But if you’re fighting to win a title, you are going in for that 50/50 and you have that extra 1%, so you do go for it.

That will be us tomorrow and it will be City tomorrow and that’s why I have made peace with the likely outcome. I think I read somewhere that the Opta Supercomputer has us at a 13% chance of winning the title. That sounds about right to me. This City team has won nine in a row in this competition, they’ve slowly but surely completely eroded that massive goal difference swing we had. They haven’t played amazing in that time, they’ve just been relentless and got the job done. They are an emotionless machine and their stadium will be relatively emotionless tomorrow too. Don’t get me wrong, their fans will be singing and their voices will be loud, but there will be something just a bit sterile about their win. Six out of seven, four in a row and then when you see them rock up to Wembley to complete the double in a week’s time it wouldn’t surprise me to see there’s a few empty seats in their half of the stadium. We saw that for the Community Shield; we filled it up and made a big ol’ noise; their fans have been doing this so much that they only seem to half care about trophies these days.

Hey, it is what it is, as Arteta says let’s focus on us and just enjoy and celebrate that we’ve competed for the second season in a row. And hopefully next season too.

Catch you wonderful people tomorrow. Have a good Saturday.