Do you know what’s really weird? It’s match day today and yet over the last 24/48 hours I keep forgetting Arsenal are playing Crystal Palace tonight. It goes to show just how much this season is paling into insignificance already. Part of me thinks it’s a good thing, because I’m not going to get worked up regardless of the result tonight, but part of me is also thinking it is pretty sad that my apathy for Arsenal this season has me that I can’t even be doing with getting worked up about them any more at the moment.

It’ll all return soon though. We just need this travesty of a season to get in the bin. I know it’ll return soon because as I was shopping for summer/work clothes in the Westfield, White City, last night, I came across the Adidas store. The Management was getting her iPhone sorted out so I went for a wander and I thought to myself “i’ll just go in here for a bit”. Sure as I suspected I saw the new away kit which, I have to say, I’m kind of in love with in relation to the cannon instead of crest (yes, I know it’s not the original or the right way round, but take your links to the past where you can get them), as well as the mellowed yellow colour. Have I been a sulky teenager since we got knocked out of the Europa League and been bemoaning Arsenal ever since? And has that stopped me turning in to an excitable new teenager when a nice new kit is produced?

I prefer not to speak.

Or rather, write. Well, not about the answer to those questions anyway. Instead I suppose I’ll talk about the Palace game at Selhurst Park tonight and the fact it’ll be Roy Hodgson’s last game as a home team manager. Often parodied, never really managed to do it at an elite English team or the national side, but by all accounts he seems a nice enough bloke and I suspect he’ll get a bit of a send off from those Palace fans allowed in the ground this evening.

As for our motley crew, there aren’t really any changes and Arteta confirmed yesterday that Luiz is still out and there’s a question mark over Xhaka. The manager is still peddling the ‘mathematically possible’ line but I think we all know that ship has sailed. It’s probably a ninth or 10th finish for us and forgive me for not really giving two sh*ts which one we end up at. It may add a million on to the coffers or two, but that’s a pointless drop in the ocean and a mere month or so of a Willian salary, so I don’t really think it’s going to have that much of an impact on where we are and what we do in the summer.

The worrying line of the press conference was when asked about whether Willian will remain next season and Arteta said “Every player that is under contract is very likely to be here with us next season”. I sincerely hope that is just a bold faced lie because there is so many players under contract that we need to ship out that if what Arteta said is true, then we are going to have another season of pain next year I suspect. It will also mean we have a number of players we will ONCE AGAIN lose for nothing and whilst i’d love to say that Arsenal aren’t crazy enough to do that, we have seen so many examples of that being to the contrary, that it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

I get that Arteta can’t go all Homer Simpson the Football Coach “you’re cut” to his players, but he could have just steered away completely and said “we will talk at the end of the season about all of the players and what they want to do” rather than his comment about every player staying who is under contract. Perhaps it was just a clever statement of fact because unless clubs come in and offer money then the players will stay, but I just don’t know right now. I’m not sure I fully trust anyone at Arsenal right now if I’m honest.

Over 700 words in to today’s blog and I’ve already managed to keep the pre-match thoughts to a minimum. Impressive, eh? Like I say though, I just don’t really care enough about the result of the game to start going in to the extreme detail of how Palace might line up against us and how we are going to react. I’d love to get excited about the potential of Arteta giving some of the kids a run out in match like this; give Azeez and Balogun a sniff of first team football, but I suspect we’ll see the same people. It’ll probably be Willian stinking up the joint, Auba up top, Holding and Mari in defence, Tierney left back, Chambers right back, Leno in goal, Partey and Ceballos in the middle and Saka and Odegaard perhaps also playing. There are a couple in there worth seeing how they get on – the likes of Saka and Odegaard, or to see if Auba can bag a goal or two before the season ends, but with Ceballos and Willian still miraculously getting game time, it’s hardly the kind of build up to get the juices flowing, is it?

So we’ll all try to soldier on, watching the pain unfold, knowing that this time next week we’ve all been put out of our own misery. And that I will be thankful for.

Catch you all tomorrow for a match review of the ‘mehness’.

Laters peeps.