And now, the end is near..

…And so I face the final curtain. That folks as I’m sure those old enough will know are the opening lyrics to Frank Sinatra’s ‘I did it my way’. The end is indeed in sight of the 2007-08 season, it could also be the end of Alex Hleb’s Arsenal career, but I’ll get onto that in a moment. 

This season I think many a Gooner was worried just what the season would entail as we sold our record breaking goal scorer Thierry Henry, didn’t really beef up our squad and teams around us was spending in their millions. Spurs fans for some reason thought that because the chavs spent in excess of £40m that they would suddenly be thrust into ‘the big four’ – how wrong could they be? A bit like (some) Arsenal fans who thought the team would struggle as the signings we made were ‘only’ a Polish keeper who was going to be a reserve, ‘only’ a Brazilian born Croatian who many of us had known to have scored against The Arsenal in a previous Champions League qualifier and ‘only’ a French right-back who sported a dodgy barnet. However all those fears were allayed as Lukasz Fabianski, Eduardo and Bacary Sagna proved to be inspired signings. Particularly in the Sagna signing, so good was he that he didn’t look out of place in his first season in the Premier League and even being voted into the Premier League Team of the Season, which is nice. Fabianski seems to be progressing and the loss of Eduardo to a horrific assault by Birmingham City thug Martin Taylor put paid to his season just as the Crozilian was showing us what he could do. 

The season actually panned out like Sinatra’s iconic song too:

I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried.

‘I’ve had my fill, my share of losing.

And now, as tears subside,

I find it all so amusing.

Well I must admit I’m not too sure about losing out in the Premier League and Champions League in the last few weeks of the season is amusing but you get my drift. A lot of great football was played but ultimately we’ll end the season empty handed. If prizes were given out for mesmerising, hypnotic, tantalising football then The Arsenal would have more trophies than Tomáš Rosický has had injuries. 

So here we are, the end of the season and no silverware. The season had much promise but then after that epic 2-0 win against AC Milan at the San SIro in March we pretty much self-imploded. The last game of the season Arsène Wenger has said he will bring in some youngsters (shock, horror!) to face a Sunderland team who will be playing top flight football next season. However I don’t see any team Roy Keane puts out to just make up the numbers, but in all honesty we should win this one, but if we come out like the game against Everton last weekend then that theory will be turned on its head. 

There’s not much to play for apart from pride, we’ll finish in third no matter what the other results are around us. So I’m sure every Gooner will have half an eye on who will win the Premier League, it’s going to the wire. It would of been nice to be part of it but we’re not. I’ll be paying attention to Manchester USA’s and CSKA Chelsea’s games just to see which of those two pick up the trophy. And since you’re asking I can’t say ‘I would prefer the manc’s to win’, I can only say I don’t want CSKA Chelsea to win, if you get my gist. It sits very uneasy for me to say I would prefer the manc’s to win anything but them other CSKA any day of the week. 

The battle at the bottom will be interesting as well, as any of Birmingham City, Fulham, Bolton and Reading could join Derby County playing Championship football next season. I really don’t care who out of those are relegated but I wouldn’t lose any sleep if Birmingham City were relegated. I got some good mates who are blue noses (probably not now though!) but after the way they handled the Eduardo injury affair I’d love to see them go down, I’m I being bitter?

And as I said before in regards to ‘The end is near’ in Hleb’s case, is the end near? His agent thinks it is. However Hleb would have to buy out his contract triggering the ‘Webster’s Clause’ which isn’t as easy as the media would have you believe, as Hleb would have to reveal the why’s, who’s, when’s and what’s in triggering the release. So in my eyes, if Hleb were to leave then Inter would have to stomp up the cash, simple. If he does leave though Gooner’s, we’ll be OK we’ve sold bigger and better, remember that. 

As Frank sang in ‘I did it my way’ 

And now, the end is near;

And so I face the final curtain.

The curtain will soon be drawn on the season and possibly on Hleb, who knows?