Now that the emotion of losing the Europa League final to Chelsea has subsided it is time for reflection and to accept the cold hard realities of life as an Arsenal fan.
Some of these facts will not be easy to accept and no doubt some of you will absolutely disagree with me but I would suggest that if you do disagree with me that you do so based on facts and not emotion and some kind of blind loyalty to Arsenal.
I am as loyal as any Arsenal fan out there and it is not disloyalty to acknowledge the mess we are truly in right now.
Some can point to the wins at Napoli and Valencia, some can point to the wins over Tottenham, Chelsea and Man Utd in the Premier League but without consistency, they are no better results than say what Bournemouth or Wolves achieved at home.
Anyway, these are the five cold hard facts that I believe Arsenal fans have to accept.
Stan Kroenke will not be injecting any money into the club.
There is no point screaming for Kroenke to put his hand in his pocket, he is simply not going to do it and the sooner we realise that the sooner will be able to move on and accept that we will be spending less money than any of our competitors.
Mesut Ozil will not be sold
No one will buy him and pay him the wages he is currently on with us and there is no way he will take a pay cut, he will see his contract out with us it is as simple as that. We are stuck with him no matter what we wish for.
Arsenal are bottle jobs
No point denying that because the results at the end of the season have proven beyond any doubt that we are bottle jobs. No one that saw the losses against Wolves, Everton, Leicester City, Crystal Palace and of course, Chelsea can deny that we bottled it. We had the easiest run in compared to Tottenham, Chelsea and Man Utd and ended up with the worse results, what other word can be used than bottlers.
We have not progressed under Unai Emery
If Arsene Wenger oversaw the end of season collapse that we experienced with Emery then the fans would have been calling for his head in record numbers, there is no way he would have been forgiven for that but because it is Emery’s first season he is given a pass. Now, I accept he does deserve another season but no one can seriously say that we have progressed because we have not.
Tottenham are better than us
It breaks my heart to say that but it is true, I am not for one second suggesting they are a bigger club or anything like that but it would be silly to claim we are the better team. They are in the Champions League final, they have not bought anyone in two transfer windows and still finished above us and if they did not have their own end of season domestic collapse we would not have got close to taking over them in the league no matter how many games we won in our run in.