And breathe! Thank God that is over is all I can say! Although I am still not over it!
So, my fellow Gooners the dust has finally settled on the football season and what a season it was!
I mean it still hasn’t sunk in that we capitulated and gave the title to Manchester City. I think it’s fair to say that it’s been long enough for me to sit and mull over a season that had so much potential, yet failed to deliver and now although it still hurts, I can finally bring myself to write something about it.
I guess the only positive thing is that the season has ended and we can strengthen our squad even more where we need to, as today marks the first day of the official opening of the transfer window. Although I will be surprised if we get ALL of our targets!
So, here we go for how I view our season…
Had we won the league there wouldn’t be this chat and uproar about us “bottling” things. But I can’t help that feel we did actually bottle things.
What team is top of the league for the majority of the season and then capitulates with six/seven games to go? That is absurd and no matter what angle you look at it from it doesn’t make it any easier.
People are saying we exceeded expectations and yes, maybe we did after how recent seasons have gone, but for a club of our calibre, we should not be happy with just getting top four and qualifying for the Champions League!
We should be utterly ashamed of ourselves for giving up at the end of the season and practically handing the title to City. We shouldn’t lay down and accept they were the better team because “we are the youngest team in the league and it was a big ask for us to go all the way” or that they “had strength in depth”. Yes, they did, but you know you need a team of A and B players to compete on all trophy fronts, and Arsenal going into the season didn’t have the team to start with to go all the way.
So I am sorry, but these are all poor excuses, and I do not accept any of them!
The way we lost it, I still cannot get my head around it either. And given the way Manchester City had ended the season, with a loss and a draw, had we won the games we drew and lost, we would have won the league. You could argue City may not have lost or drew their last two games if we had won ours, but we should not have drawn the games we did, and we should not have thrown the leads away in the manner we did either!
Winning the Premier League is no easy feat, yet City have managed to win it five times in six years, and we haven’t even managed it once in 20 years.
Martin Odegaard said: ‘I’ve tried not to see so much of that stuff there, because it still stings,’ ‘I try not to think too much about it. Even though we delivered a very good season for a long time, I am left with a sour feeling.’
This season was definitely one where there were ups and downs and twists and turns, but in the end Arsenal did bottle it, and we did fall just short of a title that has eluded us for 20 years.
And the fact that this has been the closest we have come and, in my opinion, will come again for a long time. You cannot deny other teams around us won’t have stronger teams and fight next season. It hurts even more as I do not see us fighting for the title next season let alone getting top four. But of course, I love being proved wrong so I hope I am!
All in all, I cannot even begin to understand how or why we lost the title at the end, but I know for a fact I do not want to see the same thing happen again. All we can do is hope that Arsenal come back even stronger next season where, once we are at the top if we are, we DO NOT bottle it and capitulate when it really matters!
This hurt will not go away for a while I think because it will always be a case of “what if” and “how did we lose it” and constant head shaking when I think of it. But we have to move on, and we will do that by getting some strong and experienced players into our ranks and starting the season as we finished the last, by battering anything and everything that comes our way in order to finally become champions of England after 20+ years!
Heres hoping hey Gooners? Rant over! 😊
Shenel Osman
@sh3n3l_
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