Morning all, I have to admit it’s a bit painful watching the Champions League semi-finals. United were fairly rubbish against Barcelona last night but Barcelona were pure Arsenal at their worst. Lots of nice passing with hardly a shot in anger.

And the Gods ignored my pleas so that if United were to get through to the final then at least Ronaldo would be suspended or something. Pffff. Tonight’s it’s the ‘smashers v Cuntski. I have to say from a news point of view Liverpool v United in Moscow could be fun, those KGB fuckers would have great fun when the two sets of fans started killing each other. We shall see.

Arsene Wenger reckons losing the game at Old Trafford was the one that cost us the title. He says:

I feel we were one game away in this championship. If we win at Old Trafford, we are champions. It’s just one game, and in that game we were 1-0 up and we had two or three chances to score the second goal, so you cannot say we had a bad season.

I would have to disagree with the manager there. I think it was three games that really cost us. Birmingham away, Boro home, Wigan away. Those three came as part of a sequence of four draws – the other was against Villa which, given their position in the league, you can’t say is a bad result. With all due respect to those teams we should have won those games, not easily, but we should have won them. Even losing to United and Chelsea if we’d done that we’d now be sitting two points clear at the top of the table. I can see where the manager is coming from with his assertion, but even had we won at Old Trafford we’d be two points clear of United but one behind Chelsea.

Emmanuel Adebayor has warned title rivals that we’ll learn from this year and come back stronger next, saying:

This season we may end up with nothing, but it will not look the same this time next year.

That’s the kind of spirit you need in the squad. I’ve said it before that often the pain of coming close and losing is as great a motivator as you’ll get as a footballer. There’s no doubt this season will have hurt this squad, their pride will be dented and I suspect they won’t look back on the Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge results half as much as they will to the games at St Andrews and the JJB and the Boro game at home. Hopefully lessons will be learned.

Speaking of Adebayor the boss says he scored twice as many goals as he expected him to this season. Which must be a nice surprise. He’s challenged him to show a ‘mark of class’ by repeating it next season and frankly I’m a little worried about how people will react if he doesn’t. Anyway, that’s by the by. You get the feeling Arsene thought that with the sale of Henry we’d become less reliant on one player for our goals. Maybe he thought they’d be spread about more but with only Cesc really getting any from midfield and injuries to van Persie (whose removal, no, not that kind of removal, against Derby was merely precautionary) and Eduardo it meant the responsbility fell to the big man and for the most part he stepped up and took it.

Eduardo’s injury was the real downer, I think. He’d just settled in, got used to the pace of the English game, and with 12 goals up to that horrible day had begun to start scoring regularly. People were comparing him to Robbie Fowler and I sincerely believe that had he been fit he would have scored the goals which made the difference in the those drawn games. He might have prevented the losses against United and Chelsea too. So fuck you Martin Taylor, you big, clumsy cunt.

Lukasz Fabianksi says his goal for next season is to be Arsenal’s number 1. The young Pole says:

I am not here just to be the second goalkeeper, I want to be the main goalkeeper. Manuel and Jens are fine goalkeepers and we all get on well but I will be fighting to be ahead of them.

He’s set to start the final league games of the season as the manager gets to look at him in a more pressured environment than the Carling Cup. He was ok against Derby, I thought, made a couple of good saves but he needs to be more dominant and decisive in the area. Let’s see how he goes.

Today is the day that Arsene Wenger put a deadline on Mathieu Flamini’s new deal. There’s a contract on the table from Arsenal and the manager says he still doesn’t know if the player is leaving or not. I don’t think you need to be a genius to work out that if he was going to sign for us he’d have done it by now. With crazy Bosman money on offer elsewhere I think it’s now safe to assume that he’s going. Which is a shame but there you go, we’ll just have to find someone else to replace him.

Right, that’s about it. Don’t forget the competition to win the classic 80s shirt from Toffs, the very difficult question is on yesterday’s blog. You have until midnight tonight to get your entry in and the two winners will be announced tomorrow.

Until then.