Morning.

I’ve woken up to a feeling that I thought I wouldn’t get for at least another couple of days. I’m over the Bayern defeat already. 

Perhaps it’s because I always knew we weren’t good enough. Perhaps it’s because I vented my spleen on my blog yesterday. Perhaps I’m just so bored with Arsenal I don’t care any more. Or perhaps it’s just that with Arsène hinting a decision will be made about his future by March, I feel like there might actually be some closure on this matter, although the fear is that we see another two year deal and yet more of the same. 

But whatever it is, I do feel like I’ve moved on, which is just as well because the quicker I can forget about the mental strength of this team being as resilient as a chocolate tea pot, the more I can focus on other things in my life. Like family, friends and even playing more FIFA and watching less of the real stuff.

Who am I kidding though, right? I’ll be watching the Sutton game. The hope for a glorious season may have completely evaporated, but I still love ARSENAL and always will, so I’ll watch on Monday and hope that the collective of players who take to the fake pitch do themselves justice.

It’ll be Arsène’s presser today and I do wonder if he’ll look as broken as he did on Wednesday night. He didn’t have an answer to the TV interviewer and although I’d still expect him to put a brave face on ahead of Sutton on Monday, I wonder if his mannerisms will belie what he says. I wonder if he’ll be reserved, or be tetchy, or perhaps even argumentative? I suspect he’ll be dishing out plenty of the ‘bemused Arsène’ when asked about the mental strength of his team, or the noises around his future, you know the look: a blank stare that doesn’t really give away anything as if he’s saying “I literally have no idea what you’re talking about”. Yeah, I suspect we’ll see a bit of that today.

Then he’ll actually give some indication on the team that will play on Monday and with some time off for the next couple of weeks until the next game, I do wonder whether he’ll stick with a strong side or just rotate out most of the first team and tell them to bugger off somewhere warm and think about what they’ve done. 

Not that many of them would do that, mind, as they’ve shown they can’t think properly on the football pitch so why change a habit now?

Arsène will bat away comments about his new deal until the end of the season today, but I saw a great Tweet yesterday which I wholeheartedly endorse, which stated that the best thing for all concerned could be for him to announce now that he’s not staying and that would a) give Arsenal time to start the process of finding a new manager, but b) give everyone the opportunity to appreciate the manager and support the team until the end of the season. 

Couldn’t agree more. Of course there is the whole “if he’s not going to be here next season, what difference does it make?” mentality from some of the players, but you’d hope that an announcement of this magnitude would galvanise everyone involved. 

Wouldn’t it just be great to win the FA Cup as Arsène’s last game in charge of the club? I’d love to see that. 

But in order to do that we’d need some answers now and, quite frankly, I don’t think we’re going to get anything until the end of the season. That might work for Arsène but it certainly wouldn’t work for Arsenal and I’d have thought that a man who quite clearly loves the club – no matter what any naysayer might say – wouldn’t want to leave this hapless board a short window with which to try to appoint a successor. 

Good lord, I’ve just had a thought about our board and them being the ones making the decision on the next manager, it feels very much like the FA and that scares the crap out of me. The FA always go for the safe choice with a manager. They go for the path of least resistance and even in Sam Allardyce – before he was greedy and stupid – it was supposed to be a simple and steady manager. The proverbial ‘safe pair of hands’. That’s my worry. My worry is the Arsenal board won’t pick a winner, they’ll pick somebody who will ask the fewest questions. They’ll plump for the chap who will coach the team and be the ‘nice boy’ appointment. They’ll make the wrong choice. After all, they’ve not had to worry about that for 20 years, with the last four at least being a safer bet to not make a difficult decision, so to keep the manager on again. 

This current ‘Old Boys Club’ set up is a disaster waiting to happen. If Arsène goes, I can see the list of good European managers whittled away so that a random ‘David Moyes’ type manager is brought in. All I can say to that is: Eek.

But something has to give. Let’s take the ‘eek’ now, rather than the apathy, because that’s the option if Arsène does stay on for two more years. Eek over Apathy for me folks.

Eek over apathy.

Right, I’m going now, to do other things in my life not related to The Arsenal. 

Over and out.