Arteta gave an update following on from Sunday’s win over Palace and with a number of players coming off with knocks, there was a little bit of trepidation in my mind in terms of who might be fit not just for tonight, but for the weekend’s Saturday visit to Burnley. Thankfully Rice, Calafiori and Saka are all fine, but given some of their knocks and illnesses over the last week, if I was able to speak directly to Mikel Arteta today I would implore him to not start any of those guys and to go for a bit more rotation than he is used to.

Martinelli and Saliba are out however, with Arteta not even being drawn on whether they will play against Burnley at the weekend and if that is the case, I think we need to double down on our rotation. For example, we know that Arteta usually plays one of Saliba or Gabriel in this kind of position, but I really hope he has big Gabi out of the firing line tonight too. He had a knock going into the Palace game, he clattered against the post in the Palace game, I just think it would be prudent to sit him down tonight and let him rest up. Besides, we’ve got Mosquera who has been fab, plus Hincapie Arteta was bigging up at the weekend and saying that we fans will love him, aswell as telling the journo’s yesterday that he’s a warrior and the intensity and physicality he will bring to the team being such an asset. That’s the kind of ‘bigging up’ that makes me think he should start and when he was asked about the level of rotation, he did say:

We’re going to try to manage the minutes and the loads as best we can because, as you say, we have a lot of games coming up with a very short recovery time, which is a bit unusual, but we’re going to remain very competitive.

That feels to me like a fair bit of rotation, but I think it happens at the back rather than in attack, so I’m thinking we’ll see a line up like this:

Kepa

White   –   Mosquera   –   Hincapie   –   MLS

Norgaard

Nwaneri   –   Merino

Saka   –   Gyokeres   –   Trossard

It’s not the line up I would pick, it’s a line up that I think Arteta will go for. I would like to see Nwaneri and Eze together as creative eights, then Merino up top for Big Vik, but I think Arteta will see the need for the duel-winner in midfield and the battling attributes of Gyokeres as important in a game like this in which Brighton might rotate, but I still think they’ll have their big hitters like Dunk in there for the physicality. Then I’ve gone for Trossard because Martinelli is out, whilst Saka was bulled just after the hour mark on Sunday and if he’s over his illness, he should be fine.

It’s a team that is stacked with experience and quality and a few ex-Brighton players in there too to add a little narrative to proceedings. White, Big Vik and Trossard have all had minutes for the Seagulls and even though it was some time ago, I bet they still feel like they want to impress that little bit more against an old club. It’s only natural. But equally Brighton have a player in form in the shape of ex-Arsenal man Danny Welbeck returning to the Emirates. He’s similar to our ex-Brighton players; he played a fair few games for  us, but that was a while ago and he’s also had a move to Watford before he went to Brighton so it’s not as if he hasn’t long ago moved on his career. He was still such a good pro for us, just couldn’t stay fit, hence moving on with plenty left in his tank. It’s funny though because I think of him as ‘our’ player, but he’s made more appearances, scored more goals, played more minutes for Brighton than he did for us, so we’re a club with which he’ll no doubt have an affinity with, but there’s always going to be a stronger connection to Man United and Brighton for him when he hangs up his boots I think.

And for that reason I hope he fires complete blanks if he plays tonight!

Some players who won’t be playing are Milner, Mitoma, Gruda and a guy called Harry Howell who I think is less of a blow for them, but he has apparently been playing in the League Cup. There’s also Veltman who is out and that’s a good thing, because he’s a nasty little fecker and was the one involved in the sh*thousery last season that got Rice sent off for something that, unsurprisingly, we’ve never seen since. The German spoke to the press yesterday too and the main comments he made was “we will be ready” but my hope is that much like how Palace are not used to the volume and frequency of games, the same is said for Brighton and they rotate too. If they do, then I’d fancy my chances. If Hurzler plays his strongest available team then this might be a tough night for us because those players might be in to a cadence of games a little better than our starting line up. We saw in the Olympiajos game that White looked a little rusty, however what I would say is that if Arteta plays the team I suggest he might do above, most of these players have been getting regular minutes and so the only question marks over match fitness will probably be White, Hincapie, Norgaard and perhaps Nwaneri. Other than that we’ve seen Merino, Mosquera, MLS and Trossard all involved quite a lot and Trossard has started most of the games recently. So I’d still expect us to be quite match fit and ready for this one.

And it’s one I think we should all want to win. I get it, we hopefully have bigger fish to fry in other competitions, but a competition like this affords for rotation of players much like the Champions League home games or away matches like we should be doing against Slavia Prague. It keeps players ticking over on match fitness and then if we’re winning, an opportunity to give the likes of Dowman some minutes in the last third of the game or so. I also think that when the next time this competition comes around after this match, we’ll have a squad far more stocked. For example, if Madueke is fit but Saka has played most minutes, you could see him come in. Kai could play in it as he returns to fitness. You could have Martinelli in there, or perhaps Eze and Merino as Odegaard and Rice play the game after that. Those are all permutations that could happen, but you have to win in this competition to see whether they come true. So that is the aim tonight. Let’s hope we do it.

I’ll be back tomorrow with some post-match thoughts. So have a good one.

It’s my last working day today and also my last in the UK for the next three weeks, as I jet off to South Africa for the holidays, so it was fun to learn that the Scum almost blew a three-goal lead in the League Cup last night. Ol’ Mate-Mate was smiling in the end, but that team is batsh*t mental and it reminded me of that Sebastian Squillaci quote from about nine years ago:

It was very open, and often we found ourselves defending in the middle one on one with the opposition attackers. It was never easy.

Oh to be a defender in the peak Banter-era Wenger sides. Must have felt like that Jon Snow Meme:

Anyway, hopefully they learn nothing, they’ll most likely get smashed by Liverpool, so if we progress against Newcastle it’ll be us against the Scousers on neutral territory and that should be interesting. Of course we’ll have to go back to St James’ Park for the second leg, having played them at the beginning of the first leg and although we all knew whoever we played would be a tough opponent, the way the domestic cup chips have fallen has hardly made it easier for us.

The Scum also have basically a completely makeshift backline, which I only bring up because guess who they are playing this weekend? Yep, Liverpool. So Liverpool have played us with a completely decimated defence away, as well as now them down the road with the same. They played a Southampton side without a manager in the League Cup during the week, which meant they got to do a lot of rotation, whilst they play Accrington Stanley in the FA Cup after the League Cup, which will mean they can fully pull out all of their big guns and rest them for a weekend, whilst we get Man United at home, which means Arteta is less likely to be able to do that.

I reflected on how everything seems to be going Liverpool’s way – fixtures, lack of key injuries for a prolonged time, playing opponents with injury problems – whilst for us it is the opposite (we played Everton with them having had 10 days off, as an example). Arteta has been good and hasn’t moaned, but I’m a fan, so I get to do that on his behalf. It’s a little navel-gazing-y I know, it’s also a little too melancholy I admit, but I can’t help it. On the Same Old Arsenal pod we get constantly asked who is going to win the league and I am always a glass half empty guy, but this season it just doesn’t feel like it’s going our way. The silly suspensions, the constant injuries (admit it, you’re looking at the fact Rice didn’t make the squad in midweek and worried, right?), playing teams at the wrong time (I know everyone has to play everyone, but sometimes there are good times to play teams and bad times, right?), all seems to have added together to be working against us. Last season it was the opposite; we played a few teams when they were decimated by injuries (I feel like we played Wolves in a crisis on one game, as well as Liverpool without Salah) and we profited, but it’s almost like we’re having some kind of Footballing Gods punishment for some small slices of fortune last season.

I know, I know, it doesn’t work like that Chris. But maybe it does. Maybe, to win a title, you need to be good, have the right conditions, but also get your slice of luck. City previously mitigated it by essentially having 22 – 25 players who were all £40million+ players they built up over a number of years, but even their chickens are now coming back to roost. In the last time we won the league in 2004, we had a stable of players who basically stayed fit for the whole season; sure, we had injuries, but we also had core players who stayed fit. We were a superb team, but we also had things going for us, like the game at Old Trafford where van Nistlerooy hits the bar for the penalty. He leans over the ball a little more and keeps it down and we don’t go unbeaten and who knows, maybe we don’t go on to win the league.

Football can so often feel like a bit of Sliding Doors moments and this season it feels like every door is opening for the Scousers, but for us we’re walking in to them.

Then you realise that we still have two-thirds of the season left and that nothing is decided right now. There is still hope; the season could turn on its head and much like how we looked to have fallen out of any reckoning after the home FA Cup defeat to Liverpool in January of this year, suddenly things turned on its head and we went on that brilliant run post-Dubai. The games that preceded that trip were ones in which we battered opponents but looked profligate in front of goal. We got one spark – Crystal Palace at home in January as I mentioned previously this past week – and suddenly it all turns itself around. Maybe, in the most unexpected of twists, the spark from Wednesday night and Gabriel Jesus’ hat-trick, can be what we need to go on a goalscoring rampage? I certainly hope so.

There’s that privilege of the archetypal football fan – that word ‘hope’ again.

Maybe we can hope that Gabriel Jesus can go on a bit of a streak of scoring now? It’s not completely inconceivable. I feel like he’s always been a bit of a streaky player; his goals in his career have tended to come in spurts. His last season at City he scored seven in the space of about four games towards the end of the season and I think the season before he had a couple of spells of that. With us needing a ‘spark’ as I’ve bleated on about a few times in the last couple of weeks, and yet the January transfer window still two weeks and three games away (I’m counting 1st January as we’re not signing somebody the second it opens), we do need something to come from somewhere left of field. Perhaps Jesus can be our Christmas saviour (sorry-not-sorry)?

We have to hope so. But it will also be interesting to see what Arteta says in his press conference today and whether we get any hints as to whether Jesus is going to get another start on Saturday. He’s certainly put himself in a good position to do that.

Back tomorrow with some pre-Palace, post-presser, thoughts.

After the game on Thursday night I’ve been thinking about Fabio Vieira quite a lot. The man bought with little fuss from Porto for £30million, who came out of left field, who we didn’t see at the start of the season from injury but now has two goals and an assist in the two starts he’s made for us since joining. I was very impressed with him on Thursday night and I think he got man of the match for his performance against Bodo/Glimt. He is just so technically assured on the ball and looks like he will be a massive asset for us this season. Arteta raved about him after the game, calling him an intelligent player, a real threat, etc. Of course he admitted that he needed to do more but that was more on the defensive side and sure, the player has more room to grow. But at his age and from the little I have seen of him, I’ve been so very impressed. He has an eye for goal, can spot a pass and despite his slight frame, isn’t looking like he’s just stepped off the bus from a Geography field trip. Not footballistically, anyway.

Anyway, back to why I’m making the Reyes (rest in peace, Jose) comparison in the title, because as I was running this morning I was trying to think about why he reminded me of somebody and Reyes popped in to my head and it felt like it fitted so well. I’m not talking about where they play; Reyes was a left sided player who liked to run with the ball at his feet. He was a guy who would be good in interplay but was pretty much a wide left player. He was probably a lot more rapid than Vieira is, although we haven’t seen too much of Vieira’s running speed just yet. I’m not sure that Reyes was as good at linking the play and dropping deep as Vieira might be. My memory is a little hazy but I do remember the type of player Reyes was to some extent, certainly as a good finisher – which he shares with Vieira, plus whilst at Arsenal Reyes was a man who got a decent level of assists too. It was some of the ball striking for some of his finishes I remember and Vieira’s first goal for the club against Brentford from outside of the box had a touch of the Reyes about it I figure.

But I think what I’m trying to get at with my comparison, and why it has stuck in my head so much, is the circumstances surrounding the two players’ arrival. Jose Antonio Reyes arrived in the January of the Invincibles season and I remember thinking it was Arsene Wenger really making sure he wanted to cement our grasp on the league title attempt that season. We started in January just a point behind United that year and a few weeks later we’d be a couple of points clear as United slipped up in the January. We already had Henry and Bergkamp, we had Kanu who could chip in and score goals, we had Wiltord who could play as a forward or a winger, we had Pires scoring goals for fun, so when Reyes arrived I remember being surprised that we even needed him. I kind of thought that about Fabio Vieira in the summer if I’m honest. He’d played as a wide left forward or as a support striker and we already had Saka, Pepe who was deputy, Smith Rowe who could play there, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad we signed him, but it felt like we’d paid a lot of money and we probably should have focused on a midfielder and a right back this summer.

But the reason I see the similarities now too is I now see what Arsene was doing by signing Reyes, to raise the level of our forward line and attacking options that season, which Arteta has hopefully done exactly the same thing with the arrival of Fabio Vieira. In this Portuguese kid we have a versatile guy who is already knocking on the doors of being a regular if he keeps playing liek that and as fans, that is exactly what we want to see.

Who knows how his career will pan out and who knows whether it will go the same way as Reyes, which was unfortunate with all of the fake Real Madrid call stuff, etc, but it has started well and I hope it is the start of a long and positive relationship that Fabio Vieira has with Arsenal Football Club.

******************

From a press conference perspective, I could probably write another 1,000 words from what Arteta did or didn’t say, the team news being the now standard response from Arteta in giving nothing away. The journos are probably going to stop asking soon at this rate. He played his usual straight bat and didn’t give any opportunity for Liverpool to stick any inspirational messages up on their walls, which is what you’d expect, but it is clear that he had to spend a fair bit of time keeping a calm head and not sounding too over-confident ahead of what he knows will be a really tough game. And it will be a tough game. Liverpool will finish in the top four, I’m sure of that, they’ll also show just how good they are as a side tomorrow and they’re sure to get goals against us, but it will be about how we can also hurt them defensively. What I’m seeing from Arteta and his team right now that is pleasing is this feeling of “we aren’t there yet” and I just wonder if that will forever be his mantra. It is a good one to have; continuous improvement is what is the marker of great teams. You have to never be satisified, never be fully happy with where you are at, all striving for more. It feels like Arteta has that in his DNA and it feels like the Arsenal players are having that drilled in to them this season that has shown such a great laser focus on that need to keep being better.

Let’s hope it transmits itself on to the pitch tomorrow.

That’s it from me today. Off to do a day of chores like going to the dump, shopping, then cooking a lovely steak whilst crossing my fingers that Brighton can smash the scum and Man City can drop points against Southampton. Not holding out much hope for either but you never know, there could be a surprise or two in store.

Until tomorrow.

I’m not. Hate this fixture more than anything else. Home or away, I hate it. The worry, the nerves, the stress, it all just builds until the moment of kick off, in which it reaches a – pun intended – fever pitch of nerves and I basically just stand in my seat in row 11 with my arms crossed and my gaze firmly fixed on the ball for a solid five minutes before I start to feel my way in to the emotional drain of the game.

The players don’t feel that, of course, but we do. They shouldn’t feel that, anyway, because they have a job to do and I’m praying that they get it done on Saturday lunchtime.

Meh…lunchtime kick offs…I mean, I get it, because they don’t want the fans spending hours tanked up and there possibly being riots, but those lunchtime games always seem to be at The Emirates, rather than at their Toilet Bowl. Last year it was a night game, that adds a little more atmosphere under the lights. Mind you,  they did do last seasons game on a Sunday at 4.30pm, so I guess that blows my theory out of the water! But still, the idea that I’m not going to be able to have a good solid two hours of drinking beer to numb any potential nerves and pain that I feel, doesn’t exactly make me the happiest man on campus, that’s for sure.

Moving away from the NLD this weekend (because it is already occupying most of my time this week), it sounds like the club are thinking about heading out to Dubai during the World Cup for some warm weather training and potentially some friendly matches. That sounds like a good idea to me. If there’s a solid month and a bit in which there’s no football, you can give your players a little holiday to head off with their families for a week or two, then get them all back in a nice climate to prep themselves for the Christmas rush that will be the return of the Premier League and intensive football schedule. That’s a point – I wonder if the players themselves would kind of like the way that it’s going in terms of the concentrated fixture list. Me personally, in my work, I love to go hard Monday to Thursday, work longer hours to get my work done, then have an easier Friday to wind down the week. In a similar vein, I wonder if some of those  players not going to the World Cup would quite like the idea of the intensity of matches now, then as a result getting themselves two weeks off mid season to go on a nice holiday? If I was a player I’d quite fancy the idea of that.

I guess the only down side is that my type of holiday and their type of holiday are quite different. If they’re going on holiday midway through the season, there’s no way in hell they’re doing what I’m doing when I go to San Fran and Napa in about a month’s time; i.e. drink and eat myself into oblivion!

The idea of being closer to Qatar so the knocked out players could re-join the team sounds like a good one too. It means they can get back together quicker, build that team camaraderie whilst on tour, so it might work well as a bit of a mini pre season. Of course for those players that go deep in the competition it will mean no rest at all and I wonder if, when those players return, we’ll see the Christmas period with heavily rotated teams? I suspect we might. And that’s going to impact the bigger sides rather than the smaller sides. Imagine playing Bournemouth on Boxing Day as the first Premier League game back, when the World Cup final is just a week earlier? Imagine if it’s England versus Brazil, for example, and a team is playing Bournemouth knowing that some of their players have just had one of the most intense periods of their lives in football, followed by the – with all due respect – come down of playing on the South Coast the following week.

Arsene Wenger used to talk about how the World Cup impacted players moods when they returned and it took them a while to get back to their normal selves. After all, these guys are human, so playing in a World Cup final on the international stage and then heading home to play a regular Premier League game will feel a little like ‘after the Lord Mayors show’ if ever there was one. I suspect some of those players who play in the semi and final of the competition will be granted the Christmas off, depending on how important they are to the team, but if it is an England vs Brazil final, we’ll be in trouble potentially, because there will be Ramsdale, there should be White but maybe not, Saka, as well as the three Gabriel’s. We play West Ham at home on Boxing Day and you’d be looking at six of our best XI being missing for that game. Conversely, West Ham would probably be missing Rice if they did the same, so immediately we’d be at more of a disadvantage.

This all just serves to highlight just how ridiculous this mid season World Cup is going to be. Hopefully it is a muted one and everyone hates it, so we never have to have it happen again, because it is a bit of a joke really.

On the upside, if Arsenal go out to Dubai and play some friendlies, there will be a proper football team playing in November that we could potentially watch on the officially website. That’d be nice.

Right, I’d better leave it at that for now. Unfortunately Arteta’s presser isn’t until the afternoon so we probably won’t have any team news, but maybe there’ll be some leaks over the next 24 hours that give us a better indication of who is available.

catch you all tomorrow.

I could get used to this, that’s for sure.

I could also get used to The Arsenal winning lots more football matches and even the ladies got in on the action to trounce the Scumettes 3-0 at the Emirates last night. I’m not the biggest fan or follower of ladies football, but I’ve flicked it on once or twice and whilst I don’t watch too much, it’s always nice to hear that those representing the badge are getting one over on the old enemy. It probably won’t land them that title they need as the season finishes next week I believe, but at least Arsenal Ladies appear to be in a good place and going in a good direction under Jonas Eidevall.

As for the men’s team, I saw  this morning the Holding quotes about how Arteta gave them a bit of a pasting at half time against West Ham last weekend and how that drove them on to improve in the second half. I do think there was a slight improvement and obviously we didn’t concede in the second half so you can argue that it must have had some impact, but it made me wonder how much impact a half time shouting session has by the manager and how often he unleashes a tirade against players that he thinks are under performing. I have probably mentioned this before, but I was told about an article on man management that appeared in the broadsheets years ago, when Roy Keane was in charge of Sunderland, about how he drove them to Championship success in what I think was his first season at the club. I believe they won the league in this particular season and Keane and his approach was fundamental to that. Players spoke to being in awe of him, then of wanting to impress him as the great footballer he was, which drove them forward. But when they made the step up to the Premier League there was obviously a difference in class, but also there was a change that happened in the players. That was because after a couple of years of being given rollicking’s every halftime, or being in awe of him/fearful of him for so long, that kind of just…well…wore off. The players became numb to his approach and it didn’t inspire or change him. That’s why as a coach you need to vary your approach and it made me wonder about how often Arteta unleashes the hairdryer treatment.

Every couple of months? A couple of times a season?

I remember a game we won at Anfield under Wenger in which we came from behind to win. After the final whistle Cesc was interviewed and he said Wenger went berserk at halftime. He said he’d never seen him do that. But clearly Arsene was a ‘once a season rollicking’ man and at the right moment he knew he had to pull out that club from the man management bag. So how often does Arteta do that? When you look at him on the touchline shouting, encouraging, cajoling his players, you could be forgiven for thinking that he probably spends all of his time barking, but I wonder if he actually very rarely does it. Maybe he saves it for occasions when it is needed? That’s what I hope anyway, because there’s been a few people talk about how he’s not a great man manager, but I don’t think that any of us can really be unanimous in knowing this because we don’t have access to what goes on behind closed doors. We have to piece together what we know based on hearsay, paper talk, speculation amongst fans and when we see how many players have fallen out with him. But for the team to react when he gives them both barrels, whenever he decides to do it, must show that he has himself a core of players who will react depending on whether they are given the carrot or the stick treatment from Arteta.

And my hope is that we have a guy who in fact IS a good man manager and motivator because he knows when to go in which direction. We’ve had him as manager for two-and-a-half years now and although the personnel have changed, there are some players who are still responding to his approach, so I’m hopeful that it works. Regardless of whether we trip up in these final stages of the season, we have to acknowledge that this season has been better than last, that the team as it looks is more likeable than last. So from that perspective we can at least say we’ve gone in the right direction. And when you think that we’ve now confirmed our Europa League spot – which many thought would be an acceptable ‘par’ for this season to show progress, it feels like we’re going in the right direction to me.

Other than that there’s not a lot else going on. I suspect we won’t hear from Arteta until tomorrow so until that time, we can enjoy a serene Thursday as we look ahead to another massive weekend for The Arsenal.

You have yourself a good one.

The Interlull is so seemingly interminable that yesterday I was even attracted to stories about Nacho Monreal supposedly digging out Mesut Ozil for having issues with everybody. I must admit to falling foul of journalistic licence though because whilst the headlines are about Monreal saying that, you read the context and it’s not as much of a bashing of a former teammate as the headline suggests. Here is the exclusive from FourFourTwo. When you read it, it reads like Monreal is talking about how Ozil fell out of favour with every manager, even citing that as a person he got on with everyone. What I will say, however, is that Monreal’s last line in that article on the website is interesting because it almost seems like a cursory ‘he missed a lot of games through injury’ and I just wonder if there was a view in the various squads that he was in, that he got special treatment, that sometimes some of those ‘injuries’ were just pandering to a pampered star. I remember going to a game up at Newcastle and because I was inside the stadium and didn’t get much chance to see the team news, the first I saw Ozil was missing was when the players came out and he was nowhere to be seen. Wenger put it down to injury but he was back and fin the next week. It was almost as if he just didn’t fancy the trip.

Of course there is no way of knowing the reality of what happened that day, but plenty of noises have been heard over the years about his absences and how he was pandered to. I’d always been a fan of his and thought he was a fantastic footballer for the first half of his time at the club, but you hear little stories, or see throwaway lines like that final one from Monreal (who himself was an exemplary professional), which lead you to start questioning the character of the man himself. We still don’t exactly know what happened with his acrimonious exit from the club and whilst again some have speculated, it would have been good to get the Amazon cameras in on some of the conversations that took place between Ozil and the club. If only the crews had been in there at that time a couple of year’s back.

But that is part of our past that is now best left consigned to history. It was a dark time and as it stands nearly all of us agree that we have put that behind us and are currently witnessing a rebirth of form and belief in The Arsenal, brought about by Mikel Arteta and his young charges. So whilst I would like to know the details as to what exactly happened with Ozil, for now I’m happy to just leave it be and focus in on the team of the moment and how the remainder of our season will pan out.

The rest of the news taking centre stage from an Arsenal perspective is all about transfer rumours and if you’ve read my nonsense before you’ll know I’m not really somebody who wants to write about it too much if I’m honest. I do it during the summer as it’s something to discuss when there’s no football on, but it always feels like such a redundant exercise nine times out of 10. That’s because if Arsenal are linked with 100 names over a period of time, the only ones that ever seem like they’re even getting close to reality feels like one or maybe two of those 100 names. So if you spend all of your time and energy talking about players that will never put on the famous red and white, what’s the point? I am not interested in players who ‘could have’ signed for The Arsenal. It’s why I always rolled my eyes when people talk about how Ibrahimovich could have signed for us, or that Yaya Toure could have signed for us after a trial. I don’t care about how Wenger got close and could have taken Cristiano Ronaldo at The Arsenal. The fact is none of them played for us and it feels completely pointless mentioning it after the fact. It is why I have the same feeling about most transfer rumours. Particular during the season.

Of course when that all stops and it’s all we’ve got left to talk about, I’ll give it a go, but I don’t really watch enough football outside of The Arsenal to every properly have an opinion on some of the guys we’re linked with.

I also think that it feels like an impossible objective to try to suss out what players would be good for us or not. That’s because footballers are human beings and the variables involved in a signing are so many. Take Lucas Torreira, for example, who was EXACTLY the kind of profile we should have been looking at when he signed for us. Combative, ball-winning, had a decent passing range on him, looked every bit the type of signing to sit in our midfield. He was a little on the small side, but so was Kante, who has bossed midfields for years. Yet after an initial good spell we had a manager in Emery who didn’t play him in his correct position, confidence hitting his form, then there was the fact he never really settled in England and apparently struggled with the language. How can you legislate for a player who doesn’t settle? You can’t really, which is why with each passing season I find myself less and less enamoured with taking too much time to invest myself in transfer tittle-tattle.

Not until June, anyway.

Right, that’ll do it for today I think. Have a good one and I’ll see thee in the morrow.

Then I realised the game hadn’t been played yet and whilst I instantly felt better, I suddenly realised that this League Cup means something this year. Normally it’s an ‘oh well, never mind’ kind of competition when we get dumped out of it, but this year it feels like it could have a deeper meaning to it. Hence why, I think, I am dreaming about it and getting my usual bout of nerves in the stomach ahead of the game.

I wondered why I want this victory tomorrow so much. Is it because of the fact that it feels like Liverpool tried to cheat to gain an advantage by wrongly claiming false positives (allegedly, although we all know the reality)?

I don’t think it’s that.

Is it because it is an opportunity for me to get myself to Wembley again for a cup final and share in the joys of that having had a fair few years away from a cup final?

It might be that.

Or is it because it feels like this could be the first validation point for Arteta’s new regime and new, young, crop of players who as he himself has said “we haven’t done anything yet” earlier in the season?

There is definitely something in that.

I went running this morning and on my early morning run I was listening to the Arsenal Opinion podcast as I trotted along, and as I did so there was something Matt from the show said that resonated with me, particularly after my dream last night. He said that when Arteta came in we all thought we were going to get Arsene 2.0. We thought we would get a manager who would come in, bring the short passing, exciting football, swagger back to the club. After all Arteta had been a player under Arsene, he had been schooled by Pepe Guardiola, he was a student of the game and we hoped that The Arsenal could return.

But we didn’t get Arsene 2.0. We don’t play that quick transition, fast-pass, back to front with lightning speed football. We are more methodical in our play. Matt went on to say that what we are actually getting is more akin to George Graham 2.0 in Arteta, rather than Arsene, and it got me to thinking. Defensively Arteta has worked a lot in making us more solid. That is true, although some of the stats don’t suggest that because we’ve had some big defeats. But Arteta has built on a solid defensive foundation just like George did. He has the same disciplinarian approach to the way he wants to run the team., but he also needs to have something that kick starts all of this off because in 1987 George won the League Cup and that started a period of seven years of trophies and success.

So to link this back to the game tomorrow and Arteta’s quote from earlier in the season, I think we really ‘need’ this to show that we are building something that can be successful. We need a trophy to validate that this side can go on to great things and if we can parallel what happened in 1987 at the start of that period of success for the club, who knows just how far this team can go?

We might also get the benefit of a certain Ghanaian being back in time for the game too. Thomas Partey played last night for Ghana but they crashed out against Comoros to get knocked out of the competition. That means that he will be heading home to London at some stage and whilst Twitter was awash of jokes about getting a private jet out to him ASAP, I wonder if the club are thinking about the feasibility of him playing tomorrow evening. It is probably a little bit too much to ask. The flight time from Cameroon to London is around seven hours I think. He will probably be in the team hotel now and if they have a debrief and then all go their separate ways after media duties at some stage today, he could potentially fly back this evening. He will be down just like his teammates and even if he touches down late tonight, it is a lot to ask to say to him “get yourself to the Emirates lad, you’re playing” by the evening I think. It will have been less than 48 hours since his last game.

Perhaps a case can be made to have him go along, maybe at a stretch he might make the bench, but I suspect the club will recognise the need to look after his welfare and tell him to be ready for the Burnley game on Sunday. That, in itself, is a big boost to us as I didn’t expect him to be ready for that game, so the fact we could have him back as Xhaka serves the final of his two game suspension, is a big boost for us.

The Vlahovic stuff is still rumbling on but I think I might call time on talking about any fresh new rumours unless it all becomes a little more official. It’s getting a little boring now and with each new ‘scoop’ it just feels like journos trying to fill online column inches. Not for me, thanks very much. So with that in mind, that’s me done for the day. You have a good one and I’ll catch you all tomorrow for a match preview.

It’s funny because when we lose I view the internationals as either a painfully slow creepy death in terms of football (i.e. you can’t get ‘back on the wagon’ with a result), or a momentum killer (i.e. what happens if you come back and suffer because the players don’t have the cadence of working together more regularly?), but either way I get to a couple of days in and I’m already wishing my life away. From a footballing sense, anyway. When I get to the weekend and I have other things to distract me with then it’s very different, but as it stands this right here is a proper ballache.

All the chatter appears to be about the Arsene Wenger documentary. I haven’t been able to get an early copy to have a watch but I will do; the great thing is that people who read his book and – like me – thought it was an average at best attempt at an autobiography, have all been saying positive stuff about this documentary. Probably because it’s been left in the hands of other people to manage, rather than Arsene himself. But I’m looking forward to reliving some of those glory days when I do get around to watching it.

I was at Uni from 2001 until 2004 in the North West and so when you are surrounded by northerners all supporting United, Liverpool, Everton, etc, what you can really do without is a stumbling and bumbling London club that you’re a supporter of. Thankfully I didn’t have that in the slightest and those three years were a delight in terms of the ‘bantz’ with different fans. I remember a Liverpool fan – mature student about five years older than most of us – telling me to ‘drink it in because they won’t always be this good’. My response, as a 22-year-old upstart with the arrogance and swagger of a fan whose team and manager was blowing everyone away, was just to respond with a ‘nah – best manager, best  team, we’ll be at the top for decades’.

Time teaches you many things, I can tell you that. But those three years were amazing and going to the pub in Lancaster to watch The Arsenal usually ended up in joy. In 2002 at the end of my first year I was in the Graduate bar (a college for all of the students studying a Masters or above) to see Arsenal beat United with that Wiltord goal in which I thought he was standing up with his fist in the air and Kanu had jumped over it about eight feet in the air. In 2004 I was back home for a couple of weeks when we clinched the title at The Scum, watching before I travelled back up north for my leaving set of parties before the end of my tenure at Uni. On both occasions I was in ecstasy at what a fantastic couple of teams we had and whilst Arsene and his demise at Arsenal is still too fresh for some people, my appreciation and thankfulness remains for one of our greatest ever managers.

There’s been some chat online about a statue, or naming a stand after him, which I can understand all he has given to the club. I’m not sure about a stand being named after him, but he should probably get a statue at some stage. I’m not sure right now is the right time though. I don’t really have a proper answer why, but in my head I feel like Mikel is starting to build something with his current crop and there is real potential in this team, so do we really need the physical and metaphorical spectre of a Wenger statue looming over us? It’s probably me being too sensitive but I just wonder if it is something the club should revisit at the end of the season, or even the season after, when things don’t really feel as tense. What I mean by ‘tense’ is how delicately balanced everything is right now. A win and we’re top of the world, a defeat and all the worries come rushing back. When we play Liverpool in a week-and-a-half’s time it’ll probably be a ‘free hit’ but when we rock up at home to Newcastle the week after that, a defeat at home to them would probably have a lot of people getting frustrated again too. Including me I hasten to add, because I feel like I’m usually in line with what most normal Arsenal fans feel; in that I don’t have a stupid “kick him out” mentality regardless of what the football is doing because I want to get a few more clicks to my YouTube channel, or the swing the other way where you have to support him regardless of how turgid the football is. I’m just a guy who wants to see Arsenal win at all times but I have a moderate view of where we are at and what is success and what is failure.

So for me I think the statue debate for Wenger is one that should be had, but maybe not yet, with perhaps him returning to watch a game the next step because there will be appreciation, etc, when that happens. But even that needs to be timed right. Imagine we’re playing a game in which we need three points at the end of the season to get in to the Champions League, or Europa League and Wenger turns up, only for the crowd to chant his name, etc, etc – it would feel like a bit of a distraction, no? I think it would and in a tense atmosphere you don’t need that. What we need is a final game of the season in which we’ve already hit our objectives, it doesn’t really matter what the scoreline is, so if there is a bit of a distraction at home to Everton, it doesn’t really have an impact.

Whether that will happen or not remains to be seen. But until then we focus on us, Wenger focuses on his role at FIFA, but we should all have a little moment to thank him and tip the cap to a man who brought us so many happy memories.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Flippant responses to what has been a pretty tragic season aside, I do wonder how much the ‘relief’ feeling will last when the season is finished, you know. I think what is making it worse is also all of the ‘on this day’ stuff you see on social media these days. I saw one yesterday which was for the FA Cup Final when we beat Hull by coming from two goals behind to win 3-2. That was my first Cup Final as a fully paid-up adult not relying on my Dad’s mate Roy to have spare tickets to cup finals. It was – in the end – a glorious day and the high I got from that as I exited the stadium was unreal. I got similar highs from the Villa final, as well as the two Chelski finals, but that Hull City one felt special because of the nature of the fightback, as well as the fact we’d not one a trophy in year’s.

So even though I’ve just besmirched those ‘on this day’ videos, it has given me a little kick of adrenaline and enjoyment about just thinking and writing about it for a minute or two. But broadly speaking I’m not always the biggest fan because when that initial joy subsides you are reminded that where we are right now is so far from any kind of glory days it can be quite depressing. Bernd Leno – in coming out and saying he’s happy at Arsenal – has also spoken of how far the team is in an interview in a German media outlet Sport1 and in it he talks about how he’s had a good season, but the season of the team has been less so. He talks about how the club are battling against the history of the likes of Thierry Henry et al and just how far away they are from that. No Sh*t Sherlock! He also talks about getting some decent wins in the big games but as we all know the one thing that sets you apart in the Premier League is consistency and we’ve had none of that all season. The thing about Wenger teams was always that they could dispatch those smaller teams in the league. It’s why we managed to finish fourth each season; playing the role of flat track bullies may not win you a Premier League title, but usually it gets you easily in to the European spots and Champions League specifically.

But we have been far from that and losses to Wolves, Burnley, Villa, Leicester, as well as draws against Fulham, Southampton and Crystal Palace have all had a fairly big impact on us this season. If next season is going to be anything like success then that needs to be arrested. We need to miles better at home and the hope is that home fan support can play a part. It does make me chuckle at people online who talk about how rubbish the fans are in the stadium. Well, hopefully when fans get back in and Arsenal can start winning home matches again, we can see just how much of an impact the Arsenal fans can make on the team. As a collective we may not be the most vocal at times, but I do think that a lack of fans has impacted us.

It’s probably impacted the bigger teams more than anyone else. United, Arsenal, City – all of those teams have been rattling around in massive empty bowls for nine months. Sheffield United, Burnleyt, West Brom have smaller grounds and so perhaps it doesn’t feel as eerie playing matches in those types of grounds?

I dunno, perhaps that’s just me spuriously clutching at straws, but the thought of another season like the one we’ve just had fills me with dread, so in my head i’m trying to rationalise the season by filing it as an isolated series of unfortunate incidents that can all be explained away. As a fan I’m looking for a silver bullet; a panacea that when removed from the equation, instantly turns Arsenal Football Club back into one of the top teams in the division. Be it the wasters who were just hanging around on their big contracts that we needed to shift, or the lack of fans inside the stadium, or unfortunate injuries we’ve suffered – I’m looking for anything that when removed can mean that we instantly bounce back.

But as you will know as well as I, deep down I know that this isn’t a simple equation. There are too many variables in terms of why the team has failed this season. This isn’t just one of those ‘pull a thorn out of a lion’s paw and all will be well’ type things. When fans get back in we will still have a fair few of the players that have failed us this season in the team. The manager will most likely still make some baffling decisions that we are all confused about. We will still make silly brain dead mistakes that cost us games. That’s just bound to happen and we won’t just switch all of the problems off overnight next season. The hope just has to be that we can at least arrest some of the biggest issues that have arisen.

Right, that’s me done for today I think. There’ll be some kind of press conference ahead of Palace tomorrow evening I suspect, so it will be interesting to see who is fit and who’s playing in the next dead rubber in our season.

Of course I am jesting, but at this time right now and after another disappointment at the weekend, I feel like a bit of Gallows Humour might as well be feasted upon, because right now it is isn’t exactly the most fun you could be having being an Arsenal fan. The whole season has felt like we’ve had as many signs of progress as we have of regression and lately, as we mercifully see the end of this wretched season in sight, I find myself for the first time starting to think about Arsene Wenger’s old ‘judge me in May’ adage, but applying it to Arteta and his first full season in charge too.

I’ve started to properly think about that and realise that unless he succeeds with victory in a competition in which the tiniest of margins could see you go out – the Europa League – there will be so many of us Arsenal fans who will ‘judge in May’ and when that judgement comes,it feels like right now it won’t exactly be the most positive of ones.

I am fully expecting us to finish between 8th and 12th, most likely 10th it feels like right now, because we seem to be permanently stuck in 10th and it doesn’t matter whether we win, lose or draw, that is where we remain. Looking at that it feels as though we’ve regressed and that is what we must be expecting to feel if we finish in 10th come May. But what is weird is the fact that last season after 27 games we’d actually got one additional point more and were sitting in ninth. It’s still hardly an upgrade. But the distance between the top four and below has grown, because last season it was Chelski on 44 points, this season they are on 50. That is the real worry rather than our comparative league position and points accumulation.

The worry is that we are drifting, or at least standing still, whilst other teams – even in this bat-shit mental season – have been clawing back points in the second half of the season. We’ve been better in the second half of the season but the mountain we were left to climb was from the first half of the season. So if Arteta can manage to continue to stabilise the ship more – even though it doesn’t feel like it with all of the individual errors we make every week – then how will we be able to properly judge him and his performance for his first full season. Things got so bad in the first half of the season that a really successful end with a load of wins is going to feel like some kind of success story, when in fact you have to look at the whole season and conclude that we haven’t really learned very much at all.

If we win the Europa League it’ll be Arteta’s second season in a row in which he’s delivered a trophy. That will be amazing and there is nothing like lifting a shiny silver trinket to boost a club. And for a club like ours which has so rarely been victorious in European competition, it would be a sign of massive success that we’ve once again brought something home. I’ve made it clear that I think it is an extreme outside bet given all of the teams in the competition, but we are still in it, we can still win it. And if Arteta and this Arsenal team do indeed win the trophy, it will feel like we are progressing. But when you look at the final league table in isolation, it will be hard to make a case that over the duration of a season, for your bread and butter that is your marker of how good a team REALLY is over a consistent basis, we will have been found wanting. AGAIN.

At this point it is worth pointing out – once again – that I still back Arteta. I want him to have a crack at next season and I see signs that he can coach some players in to being better. But he also can’t coach the ‘stupid’ out of some players and if he decides to keep them around, then I’m afraid he makes himself a target, fair game for fan ire because he fails to recognize when the players he puts his trust in simply aren’t good enough. Which is why I don’t think either way we can ‘judge him in May’. I don’t see how it is possible to properly judge him until we get in to next season and see whether he can coach in consistency whilst shunting out the stupidity that has cost us results this season. I think we’ll probably get a better indication of it by 1st September actually, because by then he will have laid all of his cards down and we’ll have seen whether he is going to continue to put his faith in those that make mistakes, or if he himself has learned from his and has been ruthless in exiting some of those players who have cost him this season.

I am hopeful that he will, but decision making like leaving Martinelli out all of the time versus the continued attempts to resurrect a dwindling career in Willian’s, make you question.

I hope he gets it right. I am desperate for him to get it right. But I don’t think we’ll know until September whether he has got the summer right, then November, to see if he has the (lack of) consistency question right too.

Catch you all tomorrow.

The international breaks I mean.

It still rumbles on but thankfully not for much longer and whilst some people still got suckered in by the prospect of seeing Thomas Partey strut his stuff for Ghana last night (apparently he racked up a couple of assists in a 5-1 win against Qatar), I couldn’t really bring myself to watch anything if I’m honest. So I played with my new kitten and then went shopping. Far more entertaining than a bunch of international football matches.

Some people made different evening choices, however, and one of which included an evening with Arsene Wenger talking about his new book. It is out today but I suspect I’ll wait a bit before I make my purchase. Mainly that is on account of the fact that everywhere seems to be selling out as Arsenal fans flock to purchase it in the hope for some gems that are hidden within the pages. I’m not sure we’ll get the dirt and if I’m honest i’ll be shocked if we do; Arsene is a man who will take some of the more controversial stuff to his grave I suspect and even if it meant a larger opportunity to make the sales go stratospheric, I’d be stunned if there was anything more than him talking about his philosophy on how football should be played, what his life was like growing up, etc.

He always used to joke when he was our boss that he’ll leave the true stories to his book but when push comes to shove we won’t get a “warts ‘n all” rendition of his life. I’ll still buy it though because this man had such a long lasting impact on our football club and whilst the last couple of year’s were painful and should have been cut a lot shorter than they were, ultimately he is a guy who delivered us a wealth of trophies and we should be eternally grateful for that, with his crowning achievement being giving us something that even when we see clubs like Liverpool blowing away league campaigns, we can still ask “yeah, but is yours gold?”

We can always be pleased about that.

We can also be pleased about his effusive praise about Mikel Arteta and Le Boss Talked up his current squad, saying they’re good enough to win the league this season at the recent Sky evening event that took place recently. Last night he was at the Palladium so I don’t know if he was asked a similar question, but to hear him speak in such glowing terms is heart-warming; he could have played it cautious and said that it is the beginning of the journey and I suspect if you asked Mikel that’s what he’d say, but Arsene was clear that he thinks it is a good enough squad to have a go.

Personally I’m not convinced and having watched Liverpool blow us away a couple of week’s ago I certainly wouldn’t say we have the best players in the league. They were promptly dispatched by Aston Villa the following week but that feels like a freak result more than anything. There have been times at which teams who are not the best set of players in the league have managed to get together winning runs to take the title though. I don’t think Leicester City had the best set of players when they won the league, but they were very consistent and that saw them through, combined with the right tactics and counter attacking style.

I think the difference between that year and now, however, is that there are probably at least three teams that are better than us in terms of what they have on paper. You can’t look at Man City and Liverpool and not say they are better than us and whilst I am hopeful we can make a good account of ourselves this weekend, I’m not exactly putting my house down as collateral on a win, so to speak. But I also think Chelski probably have a better team than us too. They have spent big and will be a force to be reckoned with this season, eventually when they get up and running, even with the relative lack of experience that Lampard has. Then you’re looking at the Tiny Totts and their firepower that has just been bolstered and you have to wonder whether between us we’re very similarly matched. I think United aren’t looking great but in a few week’s we go to Old Trafford for our annual dropping points/defeat to them, no matter how terrible they are, so it’s a very difficult league to the one that Leicester City took everyone by surprise on back in 2017.

As it stands we’ve won three from four and we play Man City this weekend, followed by Leicester City and then away to United, then it’s Villa, Leeds and Wolves before a trip to the scummers at the beginning of December. By the time we’ve hit mid December we’ll have played 11 matches and be just under a third of the way through the season having played all of the traditional ‘Big Six’ away from home except Chelski. If we’re still in a decent position in the league and but a few points from the top four then you never know, but as I already mention above, I think that is very much an outside bet. You only need to look at most of the bookies to see that we’re in at between 20/1 and 25/1, behind Everton, Tottenham, City and Liverpool.

So whilst I admire Arsene’s optimisim, I think I’ll temper any Harry Redknapp-esque excitement until we get towards the Christmas period; then we’ll have a look at where we’re at.

And on that note it’s me done for another day. Catch you lovely people tomorrow with some more random Arsenal-related thoughts that pop into my head based on what we’ve read.

Laters.

What I always find fascinating about these breaks is not so much the football itself, but rather all the speculation that seems to be whipped up as a result of players going away with their respective countries on international duty. It happens almost as regular as clockwork that something slightly controversial seems to crop up. We’ve had it in the summer when all of the noises around Torreira seemed to surface and once again we have a little bit of nonsense around another one of ours.

Of course the news I’m talking about is the fact the Swiss FA are saying that Xhaka will need time off to become a father when the next international break comes around – as well as Xhaka himself saying he may take time off – is our latest talking point.

I must say Granit doesn’t help himself sometimes. He’s just come off the back of a pretty shocking performance in the North London Derby, followed up by an interview – in English so you can hardly blame translation issues – to say “so what?” In effect to his actions that cost us three points, whilst now saying that he’ll take time off to become a dad.

Now, I’m not saying he shouldn’t be at the birth of his child, of course he should. If, for example, his wife was due to give birth on a Friday but it went until a Saturday, then you’d not expect him to play on a Saturday or perhaps even Sunday or Monday of that week. But I’m reading talk of paternity leave and I’m like “wtf?!?”

He’s entitled to it as a UK resident of course. And for every other Tom, Dick and Harry nobody begrudges them that two weeks time off. But if we’re seriously talking about that for footballers then I’m afraid the world’s gone mad. Well, madder than it is at the moment, anyway…

For one thing footballers don’t work the same hours as a normal employee. They do about four or five ours a day. They are also paid so much at that level that ten years of working is enough to set you up for life. They simply don’t need paternity leave because they don’t work the same level of hours and so Xhaka will get plenty of time with his child straight after the birth anyway.

I know people are talking about us gradually phasing him out of the starting XI anyway given his propensity for error, but he’s still paid vast amounts of money by the club and no matter what you think of him he is a player we can use and so should be wishing he is available for selection as much as possible.

My hope is that this is just spurious conjecture and that when he does become a Dad he’ll miss maybe one game, max.

Of course it could come over the international break and therefore not affect us at all and I believe that’s why the Swiss are talking about this. But regardless of whether it affects us or not, my hope is that this isn’t a worrying trend we might start seeing.

The only other noises around the club, after a pretty quiet weekend it has to be said, is that Arsène Wenger did an interview saying he wasn’t prepped to got back to the Emirates any time soon.

I think that’s fair enough and his reasoning makes perfect sense, stating that he didn’t want to cause a cloud over Unai Emery and his team on the touch line, which is a good move in my opinion. Just think about what it was like when Moyes took over United that season. Ferguson was there almost every home game and almost every home game featured a camera panning to him with a “You wonder what he would be thinking right now” from the commentator of the day. The same would happen with Wenger in the stands and so we need a little more time to elapse before we get him in and the inevitable fanfare that would ensue.

Other than that there isn’t really a lot else that’s been said about the club over the weekend. There are some noises about Torreira possibly picking up a knock whilst in the Uruguayan national team but I can’t find anything other than one or two very tenuous links, so we just have to hope that it’s a wee bit of scaremongering from some of the press.

So I’ll call it a day with that one and I’ll catch you all in the morning.

Laters people.

Of course we’re all disappointed. We know that Arsenal probably need a decent centre half, a wide forward and possibly another full back, but I think the reality of Unai’s words are just the veil being lifted from the tragic mismanagement of a club that is supposedly the sixth richest in world football.

The poor decisions made by the trio of Stan Kroenke, Ivan Gazidis and Arsène Wenger have left us in this mess we currently find ourselves in.

For Stan it is an owner that probably turns white at the prospect of ‘speculate to accumulate’. He doesn’t want to spend a buck to get two back. He’d rather take half of that buck and put it in his piggy bank, whilst hoping the other 50 cents sprouts green shoots and magically makes him more money.

The sad thing is that’s exactly what has happened due to the money swirling around the Premier League and Champions League trough.

And the likes of Ivan Gazidis lapped it up whilst he could. He saw that we could basically be a profitable entity by simply treading water and has used that to his advantage. From a personal point of view he probably thinks he’s played a blinder; mismanagement with a bit of fortune that the Premier League money spiralled, whilst feeding spin and then when it looked like it was all going to go Pete Tong he jumped ship.

And he has jumped ship. Consider this: one year ago we signed the Mesut Özil mega deal, whilst also picking up Aubameyang. Great PR for Ivan and he made sure he was snapped with Sven in Dortmund doing the deal. Fast forward to the summer and there’s rumours of his exit. Seven or eight months later. Chief Executives don’t just go on Indeed.com and search for roles. They plan waaaay in advance and Ivan will I’m sure have been putting the feelers out at least a year ago.

But to really show you’re a top draw CEO you need to make sure you have a few gems to show your potential new employers. The Özil deal said to those Ivan wanted to “hey, I’m overseeing this guy and his renewal. I can keep our best players” and the Auba deal said to the same people “hey, no Champions League, no problem! I can sign the big players and get the deal done”.

Make no mistake about it folks, Ivan Gazidis has a massive role to play in the shoddy situation we find ourselves in.

But so does Arsène Wenger. Arsène spent years procrastinating on players. He spent years turning his nose away from deals to tell us that we could have signed that player years later. He kept his network and didn’t think to freshen it up. When he needed a cabinet reshuffle to get new voices he buried his head in the sand.

And now we find ourselves with plenty of overpaid and underperforming players. I say underperforming because for the transfer fees and wages we paid we really should be looking at being an established club. Yet the top four looks a little bit beyond us this season and finally, ahead of an away game to West Ham, we get the current coach admitting that it’s all a bit of a mess.

But what if we’re saving all of our cash for the summer?

That would be lovely and if we could all trust that the club truly did have a “war chest” in May, June and July then perhaps it’s something that we could stomach, but we all know where this is going. We all know what happens in the summer and it involves Arsenal hoping that those young players we have step up, because Arsenal spending £100million to dine at the top table just isn’t us.

And it never will be under Kroenke. I don’t know very much about the accounting side of football but I do know that until Arsenal file accounts with companies house at the end of February we have no idea what the situation is with the finances. And by then the window will be well shut and we’ll probably know our fate with regards to the Champions League too. If we miss it, well, I suspect it’ll be another summer of praying for a few untapped gems.

Sven and his diamond eye will have never had to work as hard.

We should be talking about the game tomorrow. We should be looking at a bright future at The Arsenal. But right now it just feels like the failures of the past are etched a little too clearly in our minds eyes to get us thinking about the stuff we actually love.

Perhaps things can change and let’s all be pleased that two of the three protagonists are gone from our club. If we could just get the final millstone from around our collective necks in the shape of Stan Kroenke and KSE then that would be great. Sadly, however, it feels like that particular turd will not be flushing itself for some time.

I don’t know whether today will be a relatively short blog because if I’m completely honest, I’m struggling to get too bent out of shape over rumours that Ivan Gazidis could potentially be on his way to AC Milan. You’d have got long odds on that happening, on a website like this website, six week’s ago that’s for sure. Especially as he was masterminding the exit of Arsene and the ‘New Era’.

I have no real issue with Gazidis. I think he’s done an okayish job at Arsenal and now that he’s managed the transition at Wenger we would see whether or not he does indeed have what it takes to steer Arsenal in northerly direction towards the summit of the Premier League. But in the decade or so that he’s been at the club he’s hardly been the massive driving force that he might have liked to have been.

Perhaps that was because his hands were tied with the control that Arsène exerted, but there have been times in the recent past in which he’s had an opportunity to speak out a little more than he’s done, whereas at other times he’s said a lot of very impressive things, but it hasn’t always been backed up.

If he were to jump ship any time soon it would just tell me that perhaps hiding behind the fact his hands were tied by Wenger was something that suited him.

Huh, look at me, I said I wasn’t really that fussed about talking about Gazidis and yet here I am nattering away five paragraphs deep into today’s ramblings.

It’s probably because there’s little else going on. There’s so little going on that the other day I switched my Twitter notifications for the Arsenal Twitter feed on. I’ve been regretting it since however, because they do tweet a lot of rubbish, I have to say. I keep finding myself dismissing 75% of what they’re going on about but just like when my brother Steve and I had to keep watching Lost for fear of the next episode being amazing and revealing all, I find myself not able to switch off the Arsenal notifications, just in case something important is announced.

There’s some semi interesting reading from Arsène Wenger after he did an interview for beIn Sports and he gives some interesting snippets away. I do find myself still a little bit reticent to read or listen to his stuff just yet though. I think it’s kind of like having to listen to an ex partner after a break up or divorce. Sometimes you just need a little time and I think for me I need a little bit of time away from Arsène’s words and interviews before I can go back to the man who I once revered so much. I’ve skimmed through the interview but stopped about halfway through. Feel free to have a read if you so desire.

Right, that’s pretty much it from me today, on account of there being little else going on other that Unai working his players into the ground. We hope.

Catch you on the other side of today. Also known as tomorrow.

This is the type of profile of player that we needed at the club. Lucas Torreira may be small but he looks like he’s got a bit of bite to him, certainly the energy about him, as he alluded to on the official website when talking about the ‘garra charrua’. Personally I think that it sounds like a tiny little dog that yaps too much and that celebrity Z-listers keep in their purses, but apparently not, apparently it’s something that is difficult to describe but includes a bit of tenacity thrown in there.

What I hope we get from him is energy and the ability to cover ground. I think we saw some of that for Uruguay at this World Cup and if he can continue that form for The Arsenal as he did for his national team and Sampdoria, we could have a very important cog in the Emery machine.

He impressed me during the World Cup and what his signing does is show that this current Arsenal structure is more than just visiting old stomping grounds. The arrival of Sokratis did feel a tiny bit underwhelming, particularly because it looked like Sven was just going back through his old numbers in his little black book, but signings like these show that the club is looking hard to find the right pieces of the Arsenal puzzle to put together a successful team.

It’s also heartening to see this business done early. The worry with the Torreira situation is that post a World Cup a player’s value can skyrocket and you can bet your bottom dollar that had we have done what Arsenal traditionally do in the past and sniff around a player for five to six weeks, we’d have found a club in Sampdoria who knew they had multiple suitors, knew they had the upper hand in negotiations and knew they could charge a premium. We’d have ended up losing a player like this because we’d have baulked at the price.

I think Arsène Wenger would have been one of the biggest contributors to the former stance we would have taken in years gone by, but I don’t think it would have been all him, so perhaps there is a realisation from the club that we need to just be more decisive on a player. So the results of that are now evident in the current rapid nature of the acquisitions this summer and we can now look towards pre season preparations and the start of the season without the worry of gaping holes in our squad that feel like they need to be filled.

Quite what it means for how we’re going to line up I’m not so sure. We have a team which is looking quite full now and there’s no doubt that some trimming probably needs to be done. I’d expect that to be Jenkinson, Ospina, probably Martinez, a centre half will surely have to go out on loan, plus someone like Willock needs more minutes. If Ramsey doesn’t sign a new deal soon I suspect we need to start looking at getting some cashola from him too but such is the club’s swift response to getting what it feels it needs this summer, that I’d feel confident that we’d at least have a replacement of sorts lined up. I doubt they’d give us exactly the same as what Ramsey produces but it feels like a good plan B could be on the cards if we lose the Welshman.

So all-in-all I think we can be happy. No more deadline day scrambling, no more “we’re one or two short”. We have what we need and now it’s up to Emery to get the most out of his squad and get them 100% ready for the visit of Man City for the first game of the season.

#FeelingPositive

We’ve spent years being led to believe that it’s Arsène’s laissez-faire attitude to team structure, to specific and detailed instructions, that have been an issue for these players. We knew that he was a man who preferred to trust on the intelligence of footballers to ‘work it out’ themselves when there were instances on the pitch that required tactical shifts in approach to play.

We knew that this approach to Football had become dated and as a result the man who once could do no wrong in the eyes of us supporters, looked a lost figure, a dated relic of a time long past. Like woodchip walls, VHS tapes and an Atari.

And I’ve heard so many Arsenal fans talk about some of the qualities of our players. About how they’re not playing to their full potential, they’re regressing, they needed change more than anybody else.

And now we have it. But I can’t help but wonder whether it was in fact Arsène holding some of these players back with his approach to games, or whether it was in fact some of the players that we have that have been the issue.

Perhaps, just perhaps, some of them aren’t as good as we think they are. Maybe some of them are just simply not built for the Premier League, where as others just don’t have the mentality for its ‘blood and thunder’ approach?

Let me be clear on Wenger for a second though, because he is equally culpable either way, I’m afraid to say. Because if it was his approach to modern day football that was holding the players back, then we can all breathe a sigh of relief that these players will step up and hopefully we’ll be more competitive more quickly. As football fans we want to see The Arsenal back up the top as quickly as possible and if it was that the players just needed a fresh voice and more emphasis on overcoming our weaknesses, then happy days.

But if these players really aren’t good enough then again you have to look at Wenger as the main man that brought these players in. We all know that Wenger was judge, jury and executioner on a player and their subsequent Arsenal career and unlike every newly elected Politician, he can’t after 22 years blame it on the previous incumbent.

These were his players. He sanctioned every one of their rise into the first team or purchase from another and if we see that actually their poor performances were not down to tactical deficiencies on the part of the manager…well…that’s all the more worrying in my book.

It’s more worrying because it means that the road to glory is longer, more expensive, plus has a greater propensity for failure. The risk is greater and it will mean more years of transition than I think we were all hoping for.

The new season brings with it more excitement than anything else in my mind. But by the beginning of November I think the answer to my question will be presenting itself. As a result we’ll also know just how much more work is needed to make Arsenal one of the best again.

Laters people.

I must say I’m surprised by some sections of our fan base who appear to be against a move like this. I’ve heard people talk about the process being a joke, about how Emery isn’t a top draw name, also how Arteta was at least so different that we knew we were going to try something that we had absolutely no idea whether it would work or not.

Me? Well, I’m pleased with the appointment, because when it comes to my football team I don’t want to be spinning the roulette wheel knowing I’m putting everything on a couple of numbers. I prefer that we’re spreading our Arsenal chips accordingly; there’s a better chance we’ll have some success that way.

Let’s also not suddenly think that we’re a fan base that would be completely healed by the divisions that existed amongst ourselves, the fault lines resting where Arsène was and Arsenal fans falling either one side or the other. Those lines still exist and the appointment of Arteta would, I think, created a starker contrast in opinions than the Emery appointment has.

Like it or not there are people in our fan base who will turn on the new man for attention and tv air time the second the first ‘L’ is recorded. If it was Arteta the ire would be felt very quickly and it would be pointed first at Ivan et al but eventually at Tricky Micky A.

But Emery’s appointment feels a little more like a blurry line than the clean and clear one Arteta’s appointment will bring. Some fans will always be attention grabbing, baseball cap wearing, morons who will turn on a manager in an instant, but the majority of normal people will take time to process his appointment. They’ll dissect and deliver their verdict over a period of time.

And hey, if eventually it doesn’t work, we try something different. That’s the modern game we all watch where you try and try until you succeed when it comes to appointing the right man and that is the world that Arsenal have to embrace.

The thing about Emery that I’m also ok with is that if it doesn’t look like it’s working I think the club will be swifter to make a decision than they would have been with Arteta. I think because Arteta is a young coach, a well-regarded coach, a former player and still has connections, if it really was obvious that it wasn’t working I think we’d have seen his time in the hot seat extended longer than it probably should be.

Emery’s experience and footballing CV means he doesn’t get that same leeway and as a result, his remit is clear: get us back in to the Champions League. If he does that next season it’s progress, if he doesn’t it’s failure. With Arteta I think the club would have moved those goalposts a little because of his lack of experience.

So whilst the fault lines for the fans would have been clear and divisions obvious earlier on with Arteta, I think the number of ‘lives’ he would have been given by the club is greater than Emery.

Under Arsène we had people who seemed to be more with him than the club and whilst we can all bemoan some of the things the club does sometimes, as fans we should always be behind the club ahead of any individual, whether that’s Arsène, a player, Ivan, whatever. If Unai Emery doesn’t work out then I think as fans as long as we know the club will act accordingly and try again, we have to accept that, whereas with Arteta if it was going pear-shaped and the club persisted, we’d have seen similar unpleasantness to what we saw towards the end of last season: extreme apathy in the form of a half-empty stadium.

I seem to have spent a bit of time talking about the negatives of both appointments but let me assure you, dear reader, that I am positive at the moment. We have a new dawn we are waking up to, the club appear to have made this decision swiftly, we’ll get an announcement this week, then it becomes all about shaping the squad for next season. We have a raft of players who will be back and fit for the new season because they aren’t going to the World Cup and hopefully that gives us a bit of an advantage when the 2018-19 season begins.

For me there is a lot more to be hopeful about than there is to be worried. If you want to talk like the Gary Neville’s of the world and lambast the ‘process’ then fine, crack on, but it’s done and I think what we’ve got is a very good man who could work out to be a great manager for The Arsenal.

Catch you all in the morrow.

You’re right, how silly of me, Petr Cech being given the number one jersey, Xhaka bizarrely choosing to up his short number to 34, whilst Hector and Mo Elneny got single figures with 2 and 4 respectively.

I reckon that’s what should be focus of today’s blog, hmm….?

Or we could, y’know, talk about the fact that the Ornacle dropped an absolute ITK bomb on us yesterday by announcing that the club will be replacing Arsène Wenger not with Arteta, but Unai Emery, who I spoke about yesterday morning.

I’ve got to be honest though, whilst I did a little reading on him as an option for us, it wasn’t really something I was completely convinced would happen because I was pretty sure Arteta was an absolute done deal. That’s certainly the way things seemed to be heading and after a few weeks of this speculation growing, I found myself coming around to accepting the idea of the Spaniard in charge.

Yet Arsenal did themselves ‘an Arsenal’ and went completely against the grain of what we were expecting and appear to have gone with the more experienced coach.

This is an interesting one on so many levels. Firstly, the process, because we were led to believe that Arsenal had a checklist of needs for the new manager – bold, progressive, working within the existing structure, etc, etc – and that’s why the names of Arteta and Vieira were considered. They were both unproven to an extent and that is why they seemed to fit an extreme version of the mould that Ivan had laid out in his press conferences.

But Emery is an experienced man. A man we can actually have a frame of reference with in terms of how he will stamp his mark on Arsenal. A man who has won European and domestic trophies at PSG and Sevilla. Despite having tonnes of cash at PSG, he still had to win the league and even did the domestic treble, winning manager of the year in the process. You still have to know your onions to get a team to perform, no matter how much talent you have at your disposal, so that should please us.

What should also please us is that this is a guy who will be chest deep into the detail. He’ll study everything about us, about the opposition, about how to play, then look to find solutions that get us winning football matches. We’ve had so long of Arsène and his trust in his players and the players haven’t delivered (in big trophies, although I have nothing against the FA Cup, because it’s brought some fabulous memories) when they’ve been given the chance. Now it’s time to put a leash on some of them and direct instead of gently suggest.

There may be a few players whose noses might be put out of joint but do you know what? Screw it. They know Emery is a winner and has won competitions before and I hope that his reputation and CV in recent seasons ensures that the players up their games as individuals and as the collective.

I’m excited. I’m excited because I think this is an appointment that is going to be different and I’m excited to see how he sorts us out and brings back an actual style of play to Arsenal, which I feel had been lacking for the last couple of seasons, but hopefully we’ll now start to see form again.

What I will say though, is that the way this has all come about does feel a little, well, fishy. After all, he – like Sarri and Jardim – haven’t really been in the running at all if you believe the journos. And as much as I try to ignore 90% of what they say, when most of them seem to be singing from the same hymn book, it isn’t usually because they’ve all got together for a guessing game session and all randomly selected the same bloke.

As the news started to filter out yesterday we got an insight into the way in which Emery was settled on as the main man and it all seems like it was a ‘blown away by the interview’ narrative the club are taking. Supposedly he came from left field with his ideas. Again, this all sounds a little fishy but more than that, it worries me about our selection process that we can flip-flop so dramatically after a process which only ever seemed to be going on one direction. Ivan and his team don’t really appear to know what they want and that’s a little worrying.

But only a little to me, because whilst I think Ivan has gone for the safer approach and blinked at the last minute re: Arteta, I do think that it’s the right thing for Arsenal to do now. If somebody asked me to bet it all on a guy who I suspect would have been a massive success or massive failure, or somebody with more experience and probably more of a known quantity in terms of risk, there’d be absolutely no way I’d choose anybody but the man with experience. So from that perspective I’m happy and I think we all have to be.

And now we have to back the new man when it’s confirmed. We have to be pleased that this announcement has come now and we have to hope that Arsenal can be as swift in their decision making for transfers and we get some deals done in the next few weeks before the World Cup starts.

It’s time for us to become more unified as a club and it appears we’re doing it with Emery in charge.

Laters people.

Ooh, a quick ‘p.s.’ for you. Last night I made my radio debut on LoveSport Radio. It’s a new radio station on 558AM and DAB digital radio (other listening options here) and yesterday Dave, Giles and myself were on The Arsenal Fans show. I think it will be available as a podcast but we might also be doing it on a regular weekly basis so I’ll keep you posted on any movements on that front. Cheerio people!

I’ve watched this interview a couple of times now and when you see what he’s saying written down on paper or online it certainly looks like he’s giving Arteta his backing. But perhaps it’s just me, perhaps after years of looking into Arsène’s eyes at press conferences, pre and post match TV interviews, but there was something in his eyes that said to me he’s not entirely convinced by what feels like the inevitable decision to appoint the Spaniard.

And that makes sense. It makes sense because whatever people say about him, nobody can argue that he won’t want the best for Arsenal Football Club and we’re all collectively saying (most of us anyway) that this is such a massive gamble.

It is a huge gamble by Gazidis. Imagine if we feet into December and we’re out of everything and further adrift than ever before. Imagine if this looks like a massive Ivan vanity project for his ego because much like Arsène, he’s wanted to do it ‘his way’ and it has failed spectacularly, with everyone on the clubs back again. Imagine the chanting in the stands. Yes, if it went wrong there’d be calls for Arteta to go, but I think the direction of fan ire would be more directed towards Ivan, rather than how it has been solely on Wenger for the last few years.

Wenger is gone. There’s no more parachute for the likes of Ivan. Sven and Raul are still new and so will probably be able to survive one dodgy appointment. But do you think after positioning himself as the main man, moving his office to London Colney, bringing in senior appointments as he’s done, Ivan could get a free pass from the fans, media and more importantly for his job security the Kroenke’s?

I don’t. I think this is his decision and he must know that if it fails it’ll be on his head. If he has the final say and he ends up betting the house on a risky appointment he must know that his head could – and probably should – be on the chopping block by the Kroenke’s.

Bringing in Arteta is a massive gamble on Ivan Gazidis’ tenure.

But if – and it is an ‘if’ because I acknowledge (and desperately hope) – it goes well, it will be the making of Gazidis. Arteta would get plaudits and it would be justified if he makes this successful, but I think the fans would also give props to Gazidis too. There are still many who think that he showed a bit of cowardice to not speak up at times last season and this season and many will probably see how Ivan manoeuvred Wenger into where we’re at now and think that there was a bit of backstabbery that went on. But I think a lot of the uncertainty under Ivan would dissipate if he puts his balls on the line and comes up trumps for the benefit of Arsenal.

And that’s what we are all collectively praying for. Whoever the manager is will get the fans backing come the first game of the season and all we all want is to see them do well.

It’s a an exciting and scary time being an Arsenal fan at the moment.

Catch you all tomorrow.

Arsène’s time as Arsenal manager has now finished and thankfully it did so with an away win. A monkey that had firmly attached itself to this team’s back has been prized from its metaphorical shoulders with Arsène’s final win and the man who we have all known as our manager sails off into the sunset without us after 22 years as captain of our ship.

The game itself pales into significance, but briefly before this talks about an Arsène Wenger discussion, it had parts of it in which we can at least take some rays of sunshine for next season.

Firstly, we kept an illusive clean sheet away from home, which has been few and far between for us this season. There were some scary moments like when Huddersfield hit the bar and Ospina made one or two good saves, but we held on for the clean sheet and for a defence that has looked so beleaguered all season, at least we can take some solace in the fact that these players can actually defend properly. Whatever about the fact Huddersfield are safe, and there might not have been the intensity had that not have been the case if they were desperate yesterday, I’m taking whatever small crumbs I can from yesterday’s win.

And it was a win that once again delivered a goal for Aubameyang who has now notched ten this season again. Now imagine what he could do in a full season for us if he stayed injury free? We could easily be talking about a 25 goal+ forward in our team for next season and as Liverpool have shown this season that will always give you a chance of success. I’m excited to see what a full pre season and availability in all competitions can do.

As Arsène alluded to in his post-match presser there are some good players in this Arsenal team and although we don’t know who will be charged with setting them up next season, there are one or two that we can be excited for seeing next season.

But yesterday was about bidding farewell to Arsène and it happened with a pre-game walk and clap for appreciation from the manager towards the away fans, as well as a 22 minutes celebratory round of applause for the manager in the game, aeroplane banners thanking him, the works.

Arsène got his farewell at home to Burnley last weekend. He’s been given the appreciation of the Huddersfield fans and the away support yesterday. He leaves with us thanking him and not shutting him out the door with a press release on the Arsenal website like we probably would have seen had he have gone next season or at the end of this season had the club pulled the trigger when all of the football had finished.

This was an exit that his service deserved. The last few week’s have been good to give the man a proper send off and I’m glad everyone has got to give him that.

But now we must turn our attentions to the new man coming in and just as the dust was settling on yesterday’s result we got news from Italy that Allegri has pretty much said he’s staying at Juve next season. Of course things change quickly in Football and of course it could just be for the press that he’s saying things like that, but it sounds on face value like we might not have a shot at getting this serial winner and if that is the case, the list of names that are intensely linked with us looks decidedly short on experience. Everything seems to be pointing in the direction of a certain assistant manager at Man City and whilst we all love the guy, I’ll not pretend that I’d be over the moon at getting a novice in charge at a club as big as Arsenal.

People can chirrup at me all they like and say that nobody knew Arsène when he arrived, but this is totally different, because for one thing Arsène was an experienced manager who had won the French league and been managing a couple of clubs before he took the job. Arteta has no such experience on his CV.

Anyway, that talk is for when it looks increasingly likely that we’re on the verge of making an appointment, which I am hoping will be soon but I have suspicions that it probably won’t be for another week to ten days minimum. The club need to let the dust settle on Arsène’s reign, there needs to be clear daylight between the old and the new and as soon as the new manager arrives we will all have press conferences, commentary, etc, in abundance.

So it’s a case of sitting back and waiting for this all to unfold.

For now it’s ‘Merci Arsène’ one more time, and goodbye.

Catch you all tomorrow.

It still hasn’t properly sunk in that he won’t be around after today but I suspect once we see all the tributes pour in, the media fawning and the Match of the Day crew talking him up so much despite bemoaning him for the best part of five years, then it’ll feel a lot more real.

It’s a sad day to see the era end not with a bang, a trophy, the final triumph and glory, but with the whimper that is a meaningless game against Huddersfield who are already safe. The home fans will give a good reception to the Arsenal manager for that reason I’m sure, although they’ll all be wanting to inflict more damage on the woeful away record that has seen us lose every single week on our travels for the last five and a bit months.

And for that reason this season can get in the f*cking bin. Personally, I’ll be absolutely delighted to see the back of what has been an incredibly disappointing campaign and having seen an Arsenal team fall even further from the big boys at the top, even the fact that we’re losing such an historic manager isn’t enough for me to feel sad about the fact we don’t have to endure much more after today.

We all need a rest and some time apart when it comes to The Arsenal. Some of those players need to go away and have a think about what they’re doing with their careers. Others need to work out if they’re going to stick around. But everyone at the club needs to have a look in the mirror and say to themselves “how do we stop a repeat of what happened this season?”

Today needs to be about giving Arsène a good send off, but it also needs to be about having some pride and one eye on 2018-19. So I’m hoping Arsène plays Chambers, Holding, Maitland-Nile’s, Nelson, Aubameyang, Mkhitaryan, Xhaka and Ramsey above all else, because they are players who we should be looking a as guaranteed for next season. You should probably throw in the likes of Monreal and Bellerin but at 32 the Spanish left back is sure to be on the wane whilst Bellerin still has questions over his head given the fact we might need to raise some funds and he’s of the age profile to ensure that we’d get a princely sum for him.

I think we should look at a team which goes a little something like this:

1. Cech
2. Bellerin
3. Kolasinac
4. Chambers
5. Holding
6. Xhaka
7. Maitland-Niles
8. Ramsey
9. Mkhitaryan
10. Nelson
11. Aubameyang

That would give us a blend of pith and experience and with Auba banging in goal after goal you’d fancy him to have one or two againt a Huddersfield team who should be ok the beach today.

I hope they are. I don’t want to go into the season with commentator after commentator mentioning this stupid calendar year stat. Les just put it to bed today and hope that the team can fully eradicate any chance of it being reused again and again when we hit August onward. If we think it’s boring now, it’ll be intolerable in a few months time, let me tell you.

The hope is that the Arsenal players are up for one last hurrah today. That there’s some anger at the abysmal record in the league and that professional pride takes over and they put on a show.

I think they will though. I don’t know why, I just have a feeling, but I think we might at least get a point today. Let’s hope so.

Then we can close the season, stick two fingers up to 2017-18, and plan for what might be with a new man at the helm next season.

Laters people.

It was like Arsenal’s very own version of Night of the Long Knives, with Ivan deciding that his power needed consolidating by making sure that the old guard were given clear indications of where their futures were.

Away from from the club.

Gerry Peyton Gone. Neil Banfield gone. Sal Bibbo possibly gone (although still to be confirmed). Born Primorac gone. But probably the most alarming of all of the departures of Steve Gatting and Carl Laraman who, whilst they should be celebrating leading the Under-23s to their respective league title, instead find themselves suspended this morning following accusations of bullying.

IT’s this kind of news coming out, right at the end of it all, which starts to make you question just how many issues there were at the club that were just being left whilst Arsene had complete control. I’m not saying that Arsene new anything of the bullying issues, because he most certainly wouldn’t have tolerated it, but it feels to me like we’re starting to find out of some of the issues only now that his reign is ending and the natural assumption that he tried to portray at the club that everything was rosy in the Arsenal garden, clearly wasn’t the case.

Perhaps it’s the fact that after two decades of employment there were some people who thought their positions were without reproach or recrimination? P{perhaps a culture where everybody knew they would be protected by the overarching presence of Arsene Wenger? And perhaps his exit has now opened pandoras box?

Who knows. But there’s one thing we do know, and that there will be plenty of change at Arsenal this summer. Some people are speculating that these exits are part of an entourage for a big name manager coming in, but I’m not so sure, because as much as I’d love Allegri to come in and see what he can do with this collection of Arsenal players, I don’t think we’d be exactly to his liking right now. He’s a guy who will probably look at this Arsenal team and say “I need north of £120million to turn this side into winners” and as we’ve seen in recent years, Arsenal value sustainability and sound financial management above competitiveness in the Premier League.

So no, I don’t think this clearing out is for a big name to come in, but I do think that it is happening because Ivan, Raul and Sven probably all want to have a clean sweep of the old Arsene guard and get on with moving the club forward without any remnants of the old empire.

It does call into question the issue of getting a younger manager in though. Tricky Mickey Arteta has been long touted as a successor but he’s part of an entourage, not the man who brings the entourage, so would he really be the right man to be stipulating who comes in to join him? A younger manager also represents a bigger gamble too, so do you really want to take a risk on a younger manager and have him bring in a load of people, only to find it might not work out and then shunt them out of the door along with the manager if you have to sack them?

It’d be nice to have an indication as to how well the club are progressing with their search, but I can kind of understand why we haven’t seen very much just yet, not whilst the season is still ongoing. Technically. Ivan et al will want to see this season finish, then I suspect we’ll also have a bit of time for dust to settle, before a new man being announced. The club won’t want to be seen to be having a new man jumping into the seat of Wenger whilst the red leather manager chair is still warm I think. So I don’t think we’ll get anything from the club next week. Perhaps the week after but I would suspect we’ll have an announcement right at the beginning of June. That way it’ll give a decent amount of distance between the new and the old regime, some of the players leaving on a free transfer will be out, plus a new man will have a couple of week’s before the World Cup starts and so he can have some time to work out which games he’s going to watch his new players in during the World Cup.

It means another couple of weeks of frustrating silence from our perspective, but let’s all face it, this appointment sets the tone for where Arsenal want to go so it’s important that they get it right.

Right then, that’s me done for another one, I’m off to buy some World Cup stickers. Back tomorrow with a match preview. Maybe – i’ve got a Eurovision party and things can sometimes get boozy-messy….

Of course the journos lapped it up. Talk of saying goodbye to trees, having early press conferences just to wind the journos up, plus many more quotes that had them all chuckling into their microphones and iPhones. And as I sit here thinking about those journos who have made more than enough references to how he should go, yet telling us as fans we were the ones that hounded him out, I can’t help but smirk at the hypocrisy of them all.

They have poked and prodded at him for years. They have made comment after comment about him and now, at the end of it all, it is these same journos that fawn at his every word.

Perhaps they just realised that they’re not going to get such an erudite man as Arsène as the next in charge. Perhaps they realised that with him going that’s the last of the old breed of manager disappearing, being replaced by the sullen likes of Mourinho. And perhaps they’ve realised how much fun that won’t be.

Everything that is Arsène’s ‘last’ feels weird right now. Every occasion marked hits home that he will no longer be the centre of all Arsenal attention this time next week. When the news was announced that he would be leaving I was obviously pleased because it was the right thing for him and the club to do, but I don’t think it has even sunk in yet that he’ll be off from next week.

Even the little things he said yesterday, like having to do some work in France on Monday and Tuesday and then coming back to London Conley to clear out his desk; all of that kind of stuff chips away and reminds me that “oh yeah, he isn’t going to be around next season” and, well, it’s just strange.

It’s not as foreign to me as some though. A lad I go to football with – Tom – is in his early 20s and all he’s ever known his whole life is Wenger as Arsenal coach. I at least have a George Graham and Bruce Rioch frame of reference. For Tom what lies ahead is strange and alien. For me it is evolution and the next chapter in an illustrious club’s history. But that doesn’t make the feeling any less weird to me.

There wasn’t really much talk of the team for Sunday’s game at Huddersfield but let’s be honest, I don’t think it really matters and despite saying his mind is on preparing for Sunday’s game, the press nor Arsène offered up any real team updates. I wonder if Arsène will just make it up on the day.

“Lads, I’ve hidden your kits throughout the Huddersfield stadium. The first ones to find them can start. To find the kits, you’ll need to decipher a series of clues, each more fiendish than the last…”

I suspect the team will be up for it though. They should want to put on a final showing for the manager and although it was another sh*tshow result on Wednesday, there did look like there’d be signs of the players wanting to go out with a bit of effort. More on that probably tomorrow and a match preview on Sunday I think.

For now everything is just about soaking up the good times of Arsène’s reign. Of appreciating what he has brought to the club and also looking at some of the cool things the club are doing every day to remember his legacy and the good times. Check it out across the different social mediums. It’s quite nice I have to say.

Right, not really a lot else going on, so I’ll take my leave and bid you a good day.

Laters folks.

I could talk about the worst run of away form for Arsenal in the league since 1966. I could talk about why we seem incapable of replicating the ‘home’ Arsenal that has seen us so impressive at times on our home soil, yet away from home we look so bereft of confidence you wonder how long it will be before we actually pick up a single point away from home.

That’s how shocking it’s become: we aren’t even talking about wins any more, just a single point, that has eluded us and shown this team to be pretty spineless at times in the last five months.

It’s a really tragic end to a managerial career and with Huddersfield away on Sunday you just wonder if there will be more misery to come.

What’s weird with this game is that in the opening exchanges we looked up for it. For large parts of the second half Arsenal looked up for it too. Yet the same deficiencies at the back cost us in both a goal and a man disadvantage.

Mavropanos could be deemed to be harshly given a red given that Holding was on the cover but in real time he’s in the centre and Holding’s run is diagonal behind him and so I can see why the – appalling – referee gave the red card. I still think there’s a good player in there but he’ll need some pre season games now to prove it because he won’t get a chance on Sunday I don’t think.

That sending off turned the tide the way of Leicester and they peppered us a bit before halftime, with Cech coping admirably with their efforts. But in the second half at least the players reacted. There looked to be some fight and in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang we have a gem of a finisher. Next season will be exciting just to see him getting the nod from day one and with him available in all competitions we know we have a player who will get us goals and assists anywhere.

Sadly though, right now, we also have a defence who will shoot themselves in the foot anywhere too. Then, whilst hopping around on that foot, that same defence would look down the barrel of the gun to see what comes out before shooting ourselves in the face.

It’s what we do.

Leicester’s second goal and penalty was as soft as can be but it feels like Leicester are masters of that against us. Remember Vardy kicking his leg out at The Emirates a couple of seasons ago?

Of course it was that little scummer that smashed the ball home and of course it was then Mahrez who made the points safe in stoppage time. I didn’t bother listening to any commentary so I can only guess how often the terrible commentators made references to Vardy turning down Arsenal and Mahrez being a target. Yawn. Effing yawn.

I’m more interested in those players currently playing for Arsenal and it has become clear over a number of games this season that change can’t come quickly enough. Harsh truths need to be dealt out. I’m not specifically talking about this game but the season as a whole; this game meant little in the grand scheme of things but there are some players in that Arsenal team who need to realise that if they don’t perform there are serious consequences for them. That simply isn’t the case under Arsène any more.

There needs to be personnel changes. Significant personnel changes. We need a bastard managing the team. And by that I don’t mean a Conte or Simeone who would shout and scream every five seconds at them, I mean a stone-cold manager who will hook off a play on 30 minutes if he doesn’t look like he’s fighting. I mean somebody who doesn’t have favourites. I mean a person who thinks “hang on a second, my job is on the line here, I’m not taking any chances”. That is not in Arsène’s make up and where historically he has had enough backing and history with the club’s hierarchy to feel confident that he could make a decision like playing Ospina in a semi-final second leg, rather than being a bastard and telling the Colombian that he is second choice to Cech and so that’s why he isn’t starting, this time it hasn’t worked. Now we need somebody who is going to make that call.

What’s sad and something I thought about this morning whilst I was on my morning run, is that even as little as five years ago I remember worrying about losing Wenger because some of our best players would leave the club. I don’t feel that way any more. That may be partially due to the fact that it doesn’t feel like this club has many players that are indispensable and so it’s hard to feel too attached to some of them, but I also think it’s because Arsène isn’t as much of a draw any more.

In fact, I don’t think many managers are for players, because these Dad players join clubs for ‘projects’ and money. Ten years ago players joined managers. They wanted to play under those managers and that’s how Arsène had an advantage, because he is a wonderful person, by all accounts. Think of the Ramsey story about him being contacted by Wenger and Fergie, about how Fergie sent Giggs to show a 17-year-Old around Carrington, but when he got to London Conley he was given the tour by Wenger himself.

That’s where Arsène could steal a march on other clubs but not any more because the ‘project’ and the money is too big.

I’ve moved a little off topic from the Leicester game but I really can’t be bothered to go into the details of how Leicester broke us down, particularly because a red card fundamentally changed the dynamic of a football game, but also because despite rallying, we still have away some shoddy goals.

And we’ll continue to do that until the club can bring in somebody who can analyse the failings of the defensive unit – I’m not just talking about back four and ‘keeper by the way, but the whole way in which we play when we don’t have the ball – and look to take some corrective action.

Some of it I think can be coached. Then there’s a smattering of new signings needed. Then we need to develop an identity. Then we have the makings of a team because there are some good players in there. But right now we’re seeing a rudderless ship that continues to fail when on its travels.

So tonight it doesn’t really matter what happens. Of course we all want Arsenal to win, but it’s more about breaking the current media catchphrase of “zero points in 2018” which will be used ad nauseum until we final pick up at least a solitary point.

It’s at this point in the blog that I usually start to look at our fitness concerns, then our opponents, how they’d line up, etc, etc, but it all feels a little redundant to be honest. Arsène gave his update and it appears Mesut has been gifted an extended break due to a persistent back problem, whilst the rest of the news is nothing we didn’t already know. It would have been nice to see Santi put on an Arsenal shirt in a ‘competitive’ fixture on the final day but it’s not surprising that he isn’t ready having spent as much time out as he has. Let’s just hope that delightful little Spaniard hasn’t had his career ruined and can still play a season or two somewhere.

We should also spare a thought for Koscielny, who had it confirmed that he’ll miss six months with an Achilles injury and when you think of his age profile too, you can probably say it’ll take him a month after that to be ready for first team action. That’s half the season and at 33 he’ll be a player who will be desperate to get as much out of the remaining years as possible, so it’s hard not to feel sad for such a great servant, and a good guy by all accounts.

As for who will play tonight, my gut tells me Arsène opts for a semi rotated team. I think he’ll play Cech, probably Bellerin, then you’ve got Chambers who has impressed and I wonder if Mustafi plays tonight alongside him. I’d give Mavropanos another shout but I think Arsène will play the German because he is higher in the pecking order. Plus with the rapid pace of Vardy you need somebody with a bit more pace and I’m not sure how much Mavropanos has, although we’ve only seen him for a short period of time and I don’t recall seeing him in many foot races so far.

On the left will probably be Monreal and if so I think Kolasinac will play at the weekend. I think Arsène will give starts to all of the first team squad in the next couple of games so it’ll be one or the other from those two.

Midfield should have Maitland-Niles in it and I’d probably give Ramsey a run out given he didn’t start on Sunday. Then we will have an attacking trio that I think will include Mkhitaryan and Lacazette, mainly because those two haven’t had as many minutes as some of the others have had through injury.

That would leave one of Iwobi and Welbeck behind Auba and I reckon it’ll be the Nigerian, with Danny playing on Sunday. If that happens then you could also expect to see Wilshere and Xhaka come in at the weekend.

Leicester will probably fancy a bit of rope-a-dope against our back line and that’s why I really hope Chambers and Mavropanos play. We need to test them out in different scenarios and so having seen them in a big game perform well, then seen them in the classic ‘home team domination’ display at the weekend, if they impress against a side who will look to break rapidly on us, I think we’ll get a better idea as to whether they can at least plug some of the gaps that we currently have in the centre of our defence.

We’re at the stage of the season where it doesn’t really matter what the result is, but with it due to be all change this summer in terms of the way the team is managed, I want to see performances of individuals rather than results. If we get some players who look like they can step up next season, then as far as I’m concerned, that’s happy days for me.

Catch you tomorrow with some match review thoughts.

It’ll feel a bit weird doing a match preview tomorrow if I’m honest, because quite frankly, most of us just want this to all be over now. I’m talking about the season more than Arsène but there’s a feeling within me that’s a bit sad that we can’t just throw the remaining two games. Bit like on FIFA when you used to be able to just get loads of men sent off and then when you’d reached three or four reds you’d automatically have a match abandoned as a 0-3.

Sunday should have been Arsène’s passing gift to the fans. Bowing out with one final hurrah of Wengerball would have been about right.

But instead we have to go throw these motions and so I suspect we’ll have a press conference today talking about the Leicester game tomorrow night. It’ll be a weird one I suspect because the journos have already said their farewells via people like John Cross and so I suspect a few of them will be shuffling in their seats as they all try and work out what to ask now that all of the pleasantries and ceremonial gifts have been given out.

I suppose they’ll have to talk about the game and who will play and Arsène will no doubt be his professional self in talking up the desire to win. Personally though my desire is on seeing who is going to give the new manager a selection headache and so I’m hoping to see if Chambers can build on his form and get another chance to impress alongside Mavropanos, although I suspect we might be told that tomorrow night’s team will have more first teamers in it than we’ve seen in recent weeks.

Fitness wise there will obviously be questions over some of them but I would expect Özil, Mkhitaryan, Welbeck and Ramsey to all be fit and ready to fight for a start either tomorrow night or on Sunday. What I suspect will happen is Arsène will be thinking about splitting the first team down the middle and alternating for the final two away games. Perhaps the players could get one more monkey off their backs and actually win a domestic league game away from home though? That’d be nice, eh? The last thing we all want is the team going in to the new season off the back of that many away defeats. I know each new season brings about a freshness and a sense of the past being the past, but with this current crop of players and the clear mental deficiencies they’ve shown at times over the last couple of seasons, I wonder what psychological disadvantage we might end up with if we continue to fail to win away in the league.

The press love a stat like the one they’ve been busting out against us in recent weeks and if we lose these final two games then that’s all we’ll hear from them at the beginning of next season.

“Arsenal haven’t picked up a point in 2018”

“Arsenal have gone over eight months without a point in the league – the worst form of any team in Europe away”

All of that kind of rubbish. And it is rubbish because firstly, measuring Football on an annual basis is pointless, and secondly, even if we do lose the final two games of the season, we’ll have two and a half months of now Arsenal matches. So talking as if we’ve played every week for eight months and last is a misnomer.

Regardless of that though we do need to get this weight from around the teams necks. I don’t think it will do them any good to go into the summer off the back of that form. We’ll just have to wait and see if we get the types of performances the quality of player we have deserve tomorrow night and on Sunday.

Right, that’s it from me. More thoughts on the game tomorrow. Until then, adios amigos!

It’ll feel a bit weird doing a match preview tomorrow if I’m honest, because quite frankly, most of us just want this to all be over now. I’m talking about the season more than Arsène but there’s a feeling within me that’s a bit sad that we can’t just throw the remaining two games. Bit like on FIFA when you used to be able to just get loads of men sent off and then when you’d reached three or four reds you’d automatically have a match abandoned as a 0-3.

Sunday should have been Arsène’s passing gift to the fans. Bowing out with one final hurrah of Wengerball would have been about right.

But instead we have to go throw these motions and so I suspect we’ll have a press conference today talking about the Leicester game tomorrow night. It’ll be a weird one I suspect because the journos have already said their farewells via people like John Cross and so I suspect a few of them will be shuffling in their seats as they all try and work out what to ask now that all of the pleasantries and ceremonial gifts have been given out.

I suppose they’ll have to talk about the game and who will play and Arsène will no doubt be his professional self in talking up the desire to win. Personally though my desire is on seeing who is going to give the new manager a selection headache and so I’m hoping to see if Chambers can build on his form and get another chance to impress alongside Mavropanos, although I suspect we might be told that tomorrow night’s team will have more first teamers in it than we’ve seen in recent weeks.

Fitness wise there will obviously be questions over some of them but I would expect Özil, Mkhitaryan, Welbeck and Ramsey to all be fit and ready to fight for a start either tomorrow night or on Sunday. What I suspect will happen is Arsène will be thinking about splitting the first team down the middle and alternating for the final two away games. Perhaps the players could get one more monkey off their backs and actually win a domestic league game away from home though? That’d be nice, eh? The last thing we all want is the team going in to the new season off the back of that many away defeats. I know each new season brings about a freshness and a sense of the past being the past, but with this current crop of players and the clear mental deficiencies they’ve shown at times over the last couple of seasons, I wonder what psychological disadvantage we might end up with if we continue to fail to win away in the league.

The press love a stat like the one they’ve been busting out against us in recent weeks and if we lose these final two games then that’s all we’ll hear from them at the beginning of next season.

“Arsenal haven’t picked up a point in 2018”

“Arsenal have gone over eight months without a point in the league – the worst form of any team in Europe away”

All of that kind of rubbish. And it is rubbish because firstly, measuring Football on an annual basis is pointless, and secondly, even if we do lose the final two games of the season, we’ll have two and a half months of now Arsenal matches. So talking as if we’ve played every week for eight months and last is a misnomer.

Regardless of that though we do need to get this weight from around the teams necks. I don’t think it will do them any good to go into the summer off the back of that form. We’ll just have to wait and see if we get the types of performances the quality of player we have deserve tomorrow night and on Sunday.

Right, that’s it from me. More thoughts on the game tomorrow. Until then, adios amigos!

Arsène was given a guard of honour and the fans chanted his name for most of the day and it appears that Burnley even decided to gift Arsenal the freedom of north London yesterday, a gift which Arsenal duly took, then made hay in said sunshine.

Arsène named pretty much the same team as he did against Old Trafford and I have to say I was impressed by the younger players once again. It’s true that the game itself was one in which Arsenal were in pretty much total control of throughout, so defending with backs to the wall wasn’t exactly called for against the Clarets, but I thought Chambers and Mavropanos did really well in the early of the defence, whilst Kolasinac got a great goal and also looked decent going forward.

I’d talked up giving some of these players a run out to see if they’re good enough to stake a claim for next season and whilst I don’t know whether Arsène will still do that against Leicester and Huddersfield, he did yesterday and there was plenty to be pleased about.

My hope is we see more of Mavropanos, Chambers and Maitland-Niles for the next couple of games, because I’m hoping they’re the real deal.

I’ll tell you who is certainly the real deal though, and that is Aubameyang and the Gabon international showed just how good he is in the box yesterday. I know his first goal was a tap in but when you watch the movement again you see just how good he is. He took that step in between the defender and the goal to stay on side at the precise moment which enabled him to touch the ball home. It was a great finish and I have to say I am getting quite excited to see what he can do next season.

I’m also excited for whether Lacazette and Aubameyang start together more often. A lot has been said about the Mkhi and Auba partnership but Laca and Auba appear to be striking up a bond. Add in the mercurial talent of Mesut Özil into the mix and I think we’ve got a very tasty looking forward line. Lacazette got another tidy goal and having gone through quite a drought in the midpoint in the season – probably when we were at our worst – he is cropping up with goals left, right and centre at the moment, which is pleasing when you couple it with Aubameyang’s form. We’ve got some quality players in our attack that’s for sure.

And that was on display yesterday with a 5-0 win. Sure, it doesn’t expunge some of the woeful performances this season, but as a football fan you always need hope and I certainly saw green shoots yesterday and hopefully next season we can see that attacking flair on show, but with a more disciplined and organised defensive set up.

Even Iwobi got on the scoresheet yesterday and the finish for his goal was pretty special, I have to say, with a weird technique but the way he rifled that ball into the roof of the net was very impressive.

The result was a comfortable one in the end and Burnley never really turned up if truth be told. But this was a day of appreciation for Arsène. At a time where the fan base have been fractious and at each other’s throats at one stage, it was nice to see everyone unified in appreciation for a man who has given us plenty of highs and is at least leaving the club with the fans singing his name. If you think about what it could have been if he’d have seen out his contract next season, it could have looked a lot uglier and whilst he’ll be sad he didn’t get to see out this deal and it wasn’t his plan to go, hopefully in hindsight he appreciates that this is better for everyone and we all get to give him the send off his service deserves.

The season is thankfully nearly over. There’s a couple of away games for us to probably lose but let’s just get them done and get on with our lives.

Up the Arsenal.

For me, I’m just sad that a once great manager is having his Arsenal career peter out like it is going to this season, without any glorious trophy ending, just a few games that really aren’t significant.

And let’s be honest, today’s game isn’t really significant, despite some people dressing it up as a game we need to win to stop Burnley from leapfrogging us in sixth. If that’s where we’re at where we care about finishing sixth then it shows how far we’ve fallen.

But let me not descend into the issues of this season or last season in the league. Let’s focus on the fact that a celebration of Arsène’s career is going to take place in the run up to kick off and hopefully the players selected today will perform enough to get a win, because it’ll be a sad way to say goodbye to the manager if the stadium is half empty come full time.

Who starts for Arsenal today will be interesting though. Having played on Thursday and with a late night flight that would have got the team back into England in the early hours of Friday, there’s not a lot of turnaround time for the players and so I suspect there will be one or two that might be rested, but I doubt it will be loads.

I can see Cech starting, Bellerin at right back, possibly Kolasinac at left back, with Chambers and Mustafi in the middle. I hope I’m wrong though and we see Mavropanos and Chambers together again. Having both played well against United it would be good to see them both get another game and it would be good to see if ‘the Greek lad’ has the minerals for the Premier League. Given what I wrote about yesterday as well, it would be handy if we could have a young defender or two who look like they’re ready to step up for next season.

Midfield will probably include Xhaka and perhaps Arsène might pick Ramsey again, but I can see the benefit of having Maitland-Niles start in central midfield, again for the same reason as I’d have a younger central defensive partnership.

But I’d probably have a bit more experience in attack. That would be a three of Mkhitaryan, Özil, plus one other with Aubameyang up top. But how good would it be if Wenger just said ‘eff it’ and went with Lacazette and Auba up top with Mkhi and Özil floating behind them?

I’d love that. I think it’d be ace but you’d need to have those players communicating well with each other because you’d have to have them popping up in different areas of the pitch. So if Özil picks the ball up in the centre of the pitch for example, you might see Mkhi wide right, Lacazette wide left and Auba off the shoulder of the last defender. Or if Mkhi picks the ball up in the centre perhaps you’d have Özil on the left and Auba on the right with Lacazette through the middle running in behind. Whatever the outcome, what would need to happy with the formation is that there’s a lot of fluidity. The front four players would only be assigned a position on a team sheet, with the reality being that each of them play in three or four positions in a match.

That might also be a good idea because Burnley are organised, they defend deep and steadfast, are difficult to break down and no doubt will want to frustrate this afternoon. Sean Dyche is a clever guy and he knows how to set up an organised side. This won’t be easy for us and so we’ll need a good performance to get three points today. A much better performance than the last few home games in the league.

We’re nearly at the end of Arsène’s reign. Are the players up for getting a few wins on the board?

Defensively not at the races, offensively not quite potent enough, with players that at times look like they were trying but ultimately the team just wasn’t good enough.

Weirdly though, despite how nervous I was before the game, in the cold light of day today I don’t feel as bad and down as I thought I would do. That’s probably because I set myself up for one of those nights like when we play Barca or Bayern. You know, an early goal, followed by a second and maybe a third against us, then a whole second half of Arsenal players paddling against the onrushing tide.

Had I been any kind of regular Spanish Football watcher I’d probably have realised that it isn’t exactly the Simeone Atletico way. His way is of defensive solidity. The Argentine sets up his team to first not lose, then progress forward from that. A solid foundation n’all that.

And ultimately that’s where this tie was won over two legs. Despite more possession, despite more attempts on and off target, despite knowing that we need to get the ball out wide to get in behind the Atleti defence, we simply weren’t good enough to break down an inspired Godín and his Madrid team.

That is some defence they have though. Bodies on the line, compact, good in breaking up play and fantastic at those last ditch tackling.

It was at halftime in the first leg that I realised that this wasn’t just Atletico putting on a ‘backs-to-the-wall’ performance in London, it was the way they play anyway and now that we have the benefit of hindsight, I have absolutely no idea how or why any Arsenal fan thought we would stand a better chance over two legs than one.

Arsène named a line up that you’d expect and in came all of the normal players that you’d expect to play. Even Ospina seemed the right choice to me. He’s nowhere near as good as Cech in most areas of goalkeeping except for his distribution and with Atletico pressing occasionally and him not just lumping it forward for Godín and Jimenez to mop up, I thought he did ok.

It’s just a shame that both of our ‘keepers have to play in front of the car crash of a defence we have and whilst I must confess to envy for what Atletico’s back line delivered, what ours served up was pretty turgid and let’s face it, cost us a place in the final.

In the first leg it was Koscielny with his stupid attempt at an over the shoulder clearance and last night it was Bellerin who was simply not watching what was going on around him. If he had been he’d have seen Costa on his shoulder getting in behind. Diego Costa. One of the most potent strikers in Europe. And you’re just ambling back.

In truth though, one of football’s biggest clichés – the goal changed nothing because of Atletico’s away goal in the first leg – was true and despite going behind in the first half we had a whole second half to try to get one back.

And we had our chances. Monreal overran a ball in behind, Lacazette got in only to have a heavy second touch, Ramsey got in behind late on only to bundle the ball wide. But for all of that it was just a Xhaka long range shot that tested Oblak. And that is where the frustration kicks in because we knew we had to push forward and score and yet at times it felt like that old ‘handbrake’ was on.

We needed our ‘big’ players to step up and last night we didn’t get that. I think most of the game passed Özil by and whilst he was good in the second half in patches, the fact that I didn’t even see him touch the call for the first 15 minutes pretty much tells it’s own story.

I thought Ramsey was better and certainly made himself more available last night than Özil, but he had his chances and failed and he looked leggy towards the end of the game, which usually means his tricks and flicks come off less and less with every passing minute.

Likewise I think our fullbacks weren’t exactly great and with Atletico a compact team who concede possession out on the flanks, you need your wide players and full backs to be good with their distribution. Bellerin was woeful. I think I counted at least three overhit crosses and when you add his brain fart switch off in defence, it tallies up to a poor night, by his standards.

I said this last night and I stick by it, if someone like Barcelona come in with a £50million bid for Bellerin, you have to consider it. I think he’s a good player and he’s just fallen victim to the calamity that is an Arsène Wenger defensive set up, but if the rumours of us having only £50-£60million to spend on players is true, then you need to bolster your coffers by offloading him, getting that kitty up to £100million and spending the money on a new ‘keeper, centre half and right back. And I’m not buying any of this “£30million doesn’t get you much these days” rubbish; look around Europe and away from England and you can see that actually if you are sensible enough then you certainly can pick up players for that. Let’s have Sven earn his cheddar.

So back to where we are now, which is out of Europe and a season which I think we can all agree, can end now for all we care. There might be a bit of a farewell party atmosphere on Sunday against Burnley but I have the handy excuse that it’s my mother’s birthday, so I won’t be there and frankly the way I feel now, it’s probably better that Arsenal and I have our time apart for a bit.

Let me recharge my batteries and then get excited for the new season when the new manager comes in.

Catch you all tomorrow.