Well here we are folks. The eve of the season. It’s all out in front of us now and the hope that springs eternal, is now at its zenith. Tomorrow the Premier League campaign kicks off for The Arsenal and whilst we haven’t gone crazy with our acquisition plans this summer, the optimism that I’m seeing amongst Arsenal fans is pretty high right now.

This is the time of the year where I am in full Arsenal absorbtion mode. I listen to as many podcasts as possible, I take on as much season prediction blogs as I can, the radio is tuned to the channels I normally avoid and heck, I even pay attention to those media pundits and their predictions for the season ahead.

Neville says Arsenal, Carragher says City, Danny Murphy says City, Fara Williams thinks Arsenal, Steve Sidwell says City, etc, etc, blah, blah. I take it all in and I look around at where various people are at with their thoughts. I don’t know why, but I look for some kind of validation that we’re a good team from external sources. I already know that; we’ve run City close on two occasions and so many with no ties to Arsenal think we are going to go close again. But as a fan and one who generally tends to see the glass as half empty (my natural defence mechanism from building things up too much in my head, only to be even sadder when the ‘good thing’ doesn’t happen), I look for other people’s optimism to fuel my Hopeium addiction.

On the Same Old Arsenal pod on Wednesday I couldn’t make it, but I was asked to give my thoughts on a view different things that might transpire this season. So in lieu of Arteta’s press conference, which will happen today at some stage, I thought I’d ‘show my workings’ so to speak, giving you my ramblings, rhyme and reason as to why I’ve selected what I’ve selected for this season.

So, here’s my take on….

Premier League winners

I’ve gone for Man City again. Sorry. I am hopeful, I have optimism, but I’m just not ready to put on paper my thoughts about us winning the league yet. City may not have signed anyone other than  Savio (who looks good and who they already owned, basically), but they are still the team that went on a phenomenal run at the end of last season and still amassed 91 points to our 89. I don’t think they’ll get that again, but I do think they will do just enough. That’s because it’s what Pep does. If all they need is 85 points to win the league, they’ll get 85 points. If they need to match a phenomenal run like Liverpool’s five years ago, they’ll do that and it almost feels like an old adage but if you finish even a point above Pep’s City, then you’ve probably won the league. They’re going for five in a row, for Christ’s sake.

Of course we do need to add the caveat of the 115 Charges in there too. The noises from the Premier League are that this will reach a conclusion in this calendar year. Whether or not that translates to this season in terms of punishment I’m not really sure I believe; City will contest, there will be an appeal, it will drag out and if there is any punishment ever handed out then it will be in to the 25/26 season I suspect.

I want us to win it fair and square though, regardless of what City do, but I would absolutely take an 80 point deduction for them if it were offered, you can be damn sure of that.

That doesn’t mean we need to sleep on other teams though; just like us two season’s back, one team can click and that can also mean we have more than just one club to worry about. Liverpool under Slot are an unknown quantity, Aston Villa have been buying very cleverly indeed, plus there is The Scum and United. I know, I know, we all like to laugh at them and what they both did last season, but you never know what a bit of momentum does and until we see the first five or six games to know they will be the same as last season, we don’t know whether something might click with them too.

For me a lot of this will become a little clearer by the time we hit mid/late September. By then we’ll have played Villa, City and The Scum away – three really tough games – if we had seven points from those three away fixtures I’ll be getting rather excited indeed.

Top four

I’ve obviously got City and Arsenal in it based on last season, but I’ve gone with Liverpool and The Scum too. I think the Solanke move is an interesting one: he could do good things for them and if he does I think they’ll get their act together a bit more than last season. Villa have the Champions League to worry about. United have injuries yet again and Chelsea have to integrate a billion players with a new manager who was managing in the Championship last season. He could do something miraculous but that club feels like a basket case right now and I hope it stays that way for a long time.

FA Cup winners

I’ve gone for us to win this. I think Arteta needs a trophy this season and that feels like one we could do. We’re The Arsenal and we love this competition and even with a tough draw like last season, I still fancy us to give it a proper go this time around. I also think we’ve got an all round better squad to handle it as a comp as well.

League Cup winners

Randomly I’ve gone for Chelsea. It’s the sort of thing I could see them doing; being a bit up and down in the league but going deep in a competition like that. The other club you could argue would be The Scum, but the whole ‘spursy’ thing, plus I cannot bring myself to naming them to win anything, stops me from doing that.

Champions League winners

On my run this morning I listened to the Arsenal Vision pod and they did their predictions and I think it was Tim or Elliot that said that City and Real Madrid are the favourites for this, Madrid love that competition, they won it last season, they’ve just signed Mbappe and them and City are the two teams you’d probably say are the ones that you’d think would be in our way to stop us from winning it. But I’ve gone for City because I think they got the better of Madrid two season’s ago, it was Madrid on penalties last season, so I have a feeling those two will meet at some stage and the winner of that will be the eventual champions. I’d love it to be us, but I can’t quite see us going all the way.

Championship winners

Gone with Burnley, think Parker will get them going, don’t really fancy going in to much more detail than that to be honest.

Premier League relegation fodder

Ipswich will come closest to staying up, but I think they’ll go down. Leicester will be y team to probably be bottom of the table, then I have a sneaky suspicion that Forest aren’t going to be able to maintain what they’ve done in the last two seasons. So they’re my final of the trio to get sucked in to the drop.

Golden boot winner

We spread our goals around, so I don’t think it’ll be an Arsenal player and let’s face it, it’s hard to look beyond Haaland.

Golden glove

Got to be Raya, right?

Arsenal top scorer

Saka. Mainly because I think he’ll take a fair few pens.

And that’s it from me. I’m super excited for tomorrow. Can’t wait to get to the ground, see old friends, then hopefully see us kick off with three points against Wolves.

Match preview and my thoughts on Arteta’s words tomorrow.

Laters people.