It’s the penultimate press conference of the season today and I’ll bet Mikel Arteta can’t wait to be shot of them at this stage. It’ll be more of the same as he’s had in the last few weeks and I suspect he’ll have to go on the defensive a bit for the form. Other than a comprehensive victory over a poor Ipswich side who went down to ten men on the half hour mark, it’s been pretty turgid watching in the league; since the beginning of March we’ve beaten a pretty poor Chelsea side who weren’t in great form by one goal, we’ve beaten a Fulham side who had just been knocked out of the FA Cup a few days earlier and so will have been licking their wounds, then it’s been draws against United, Everton, Brentford, Palace and Liverpool, with that defeat to Bournemouth at the beginning of May. In short, it’s been a really sucky end to the domestic season.

I saw that Jones Knows fella on Sky Sports suggest that he fancied a draw in our game on Sunday and, at this point, I’m a bit like “chuck another one on the fire, what difference is it going to make?” because a draw secures Champions League for us and for Newcastle it means they just have to beat Everton on the last day to get theirs. So maybe they’d take that too. Heck, we’ve had 14 draws, what’s another one really going to make? I don’t care about second, I don’t care about fans from other clubs going full banter and doing the whole “third in a two-horse race” nonsense. We know the reality of the situation, the season, how it panned out, so let’s just take our licks and wait for the club to take action in the summer.

I wonder if Mikel will be in reflective mood, or in fighting mood when he get’s asked his questions though? It could go either way. He was quite feisty at times pre Liverpool and of course when the game is on Sky TV you have to do those sanitise interviews that have been highly scripted inside one of the training ground sports hall complexes. This weekend he’ll no doubt be obliged to do the same thing, which will be taxing for him, but I’d imagine he can see to the horizon and the beautiful metaphorical sunshine that is no more talking about this season beyond next week. I feel ya, Mikel, I really do.

The club at least made us all happy yesterday by announcing the new kit and I have to say, it’s a very lovely one. Crisp, clean, looks good on the players, probably won’t look as great on me, but I’m going to get a version of it anyway. I suspect the club shop will be absolutely rammed on Sunday with people buying it. I’ll wait until the noise dies down before I pick mine up I think. But I do enjoy the nod between old and new that adidas leans in to. It’s the old Arsenal ‘A’ from the 90s badge (well, it’s longer than that, but that’s my frame of reference, being a 90s kid) and this kind of connection with the past is, I think, an important and clever approach that Adidas have always stuck with on our shirts. They recognise that Arsenal as a club may be a ‘brand’, but football is tribal and people value the traditions passed down of the history and success of the club, are what define us and our tribe. So speaking to that heritage, that tradition, that legacy, will resonate with all Arsenal fans of all ages and I for one am pleased that Adidas are embracing that legacy mindset.

In terms of team news for this weekend we’ll hear more specifically from Arteta, but I think most of us expect it to be mostly positive. We saw the open training session pics released by the club and various journo’s in midweek and we now know that we should – fingers crossed – be getting some key players back for what will be a Newcastle side who would probably find it quite amusing to make it four wins in a season against us. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen, but I think I might save some kind of tactical analysis or look at them for tomorrow. Suffice to say, having played them three times already this season, it feels like we know the approach we’re going to get from them. They’ll be physical, they’ll dig in, they look to spring transition counter attacks and do what they’ve done in every game against us this season – score with the few chances they get. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to suggest we didn’t deserve to get anything from the two cup games, but in the first game at the Emirates we had 23 shots to their seven and we dominated in basically every stat but the most important one. They had the clinical finishes and on more than one occasion Arteta has – rightly in my opinion – referenced that as the difference between the sides. Even in the League game at St James’ Park we outperformed them on every metric except the most important one, so I think the stage will be set and the difference between the two sides will be in the sharp end of the pitch. It has felt like Newcastle always seem to score with their first effort on goal against us, so we need to make sure that doesn’t happen this weekend.

More on all of that on tomorrow and Sunday’s ramblings though. For now, I’ve got a day of pencil-pushing so I’ll catch you in the AM.