Hello, I’m back in Dublin now after a great weekend in London. Tired, somewhat pickled, but you wouldn’t change a thing about it. We’re obviously heading into a big week with that board meeting and the decision about the manager’s future, but I feel like we need to enjoy the FA Cup win for a bit longer.

There’s been enough speculation and all we could do now is try and read between the lines, so what’s the point when we’ll found out soon enough anyway? You don’t win the cup that often – well, we do obviously because we’ve won it more than anyone else – so you have to soak up all the good stuff while it’s fresh.

While there’s a lot to enjoy in general, I think we need to bask in one of the greatest individual FA Cup final performances I’ve ever seen: Per Mertesacker. Two weeks ago he would have felt his chances of even making the bench might have been slim. With Rob Holding emerging, Laurent Koscielny, Gabriel and Shkodran Mustafi all available, and even Nacho Monreal as another option, it was hard to see how he’d be involved.

Then Koscielny picked up that red card, Gabriel got injured, Mustafi got clobbered in the head and had dizzy-pukes, and just like that football opened up the door to him. The last time he’d started a game for Arsenal was on April 30th 2016 in a 1-0 win over Norwich, and he didn’t even do the 90 minutes then, coming off with a hamstring problem.

Of course he’d been training, but we all understand the difference playing makes. We hear all the time about players not being ‘match fit’, and to get there you have to play matches. He hadn’t. More than being able to run and last the 90 minutes though, it’s about your timing, how you read the game, fine-tuning your decision making, and on that basis alone what we saw from Mertesacker on Saturday was remarkable.

There was one tackle in the box in the first half, he slid in on Costa I think, and hooked the ball away perfectly. That was reassuring. There was another when he came sliding in to block Costa from having a shot on goal, it ended up with an Arsenal goal kick. To come into a team, on a hot day, on a big Wembley pitch, and time your tackles so impeccably is just outstanding.

He won his headers, used the ball well, kept things organised and marshalled his defence brilliantly. It was a huge collective effort – epitomised by this wonderful block by all three centre-halves – but when people speak about Arsenal lacking leaders, they certainly did not on Saturday, because the German was exactly what we needed. It’s also worth pointing out that pre-game he admitted he’d never, ever played in a back three during his career, adding another layer of awesomeness to his overall performance.

I enjoyed his post-match interview as well, as it backed up what he said before the game about owing the club a performance:

Everyone trusted me and supported me throughout the season and the manager gave me the opportunity. Our team had three centre backs out and he didn’t go small, he went with the big fella and I wanted to give something back to this club and this team.