MATCH DAY BLOG: MINI-CUP FINAL

LAST HOME GAME, LET'S GET THE BEERS IN!

Crystal Palace winning the FA Cup? What a moment for them. Steve Parish deserves all the success he’s had. The job he’s done there has been remarkable (I know there’s a new group involved, but be real, it’s all him). Their fans are extraordinary, they’ve survived against the odds, and an FA Cup win against a club that can just drop £250m in January is an extraordinary achievement.

We LOVE to see it.

Oh, you want to point out that we haven’t won anything this season? Wait and see, my friends. The ‘Top 2 three seasons in a row’ trophy is on the line today AND the Top 2 trophy. Basically, we could do the double this afternoon, and you probably didn’t even realise?

Glad to put a bit extra on your weekend.

Can we just take a moment to look at Spurs and United losing AGAIN? Their seasons have been the WORST on record for a generation. Probably more. Cataclysmic, in fact. Amorim has a worse points-per-game total than that Derby side under Paul Jewell. Yet both managers could still get European glory and a Champions League spot… and there will be a section of our fan base doing YouTube videos telling teenage boys they’d have preferred their season.

They could be right… a trophy, no need to care about the league, no chance of relegation… one team gets UCL next season.

But, you have to sift through that bullshit and put yourself in the Crocs of those fans who have to go, sit in the group chats, and have their week ruined by being 10x worse than they thought they’d be. Remember, Spurs fans thought they were going somewhere under Ange, United thought Amorim was the chosen one… it’s now the end of the season and United have lost 18 games and Spurs have lost a whopping 21 games! Neither side has reached 40 points.

You’d want that, over a season? Really? Get out of here.

Give me where Arsenal are right now all day long. Europa League is fun but forgettable. To this day, I have never heard a Chelsea fan brag about winning the competition—and they brag about a lot.

At the end of the day, if you’ve been craving those sorts of finals for the past 15 years, good for you, but all I’ve wanted is to be competitive at the highest level—competing for the big trophies. I want to be on the stage with mega clubs, with mega players, with bloated wage bills, and smack them up. Have we completed the vision under Arteta? No. But do you think we’re far away?

I don’t. We’re on the cusp of greatness. This is usually the hardest hump to get over. Patience runs thin, you feel like flumping to the end of the season feels like steam has been lost, you write things like ‘that was our best chance’—and then you look at what you have.

A young group of players moving into their prime. We don’t have many players close to 30, but we have a lot moving towards their mid-twenties. Tie them down and we are getting the peak of some of the best players on the planet. Saliba, White, Timber, Saka, Kai, Odegaard, and Raya. We have players like MLS, Ethan, and Dowman coming through the ranks to give us some more Hale End vibes. Then we have a serious piece of equipment as the Sporting Director, and he has the chance to make a huge impact with some big, bold, early moves to rectify the mess of last summer. A striker, a winger, a 6, a centre-back, and some floor-raising signings. He’ll tie down our biggest names so we don’t have exit concerns.

Then we’ll go again and win it all. Next season is the one. It has to be.

But for now, let’s get the double over the line. Also, sign up for the On The Whistle podcast right now and show up after the game for the Discord and the LIVE show. x

P.S. Massive shoutout to the guys over at Arsenal Vision and Arseblog who landed Mikel Arteta at their event. Incredible the pull new media has these days. I hope they pushed him on the striker question HARD.