“Let’s give Madrid something to think about”. Yes, let’s. Who the hell are Brighton, for starters.

It’s been a weekend for saying goodbye. Not only to the 2017/18 Premier League season — good riddance, on the whole — but also to some characters who’ve marked the competition’s last 15 years or so.

Happy new year. If that lasts past 5pm today, I’ll be amazed.

Usually I’d be positively bristling with anticipation at the prospect of getting round to the Arsenal, in the gorgeous spring sunshine, following the comparative purgatory of a fortnight’s international break.

So much for the great “let’s see if we’re better without Zlatan” experiment, then.

Well, how was your weekend? Me? Can’t complain, thanks for asking.

I think your best bet is to treat Swansea like the local vet. 

Sigh. Isn’t it a bit soon for Groundhog Day? How many more times this season will we have to sum up a game as follows?

Quick, find a straw to clutch. We’ve reached our fifth semi-final in two years. Not bad for has-beens. What? No, no actual cups per se, if you’re going to be picky and mean about it.

That was old school.

We don’t know whether Jose Mourinho keeps a cat for company in his lonely Lowry lodgings, but Tiddles would surely have needed to avoid his swinging boot last night.

A tired and emotional hack, scrabbling about for kickstarting inspiration before a Sunday night deadline, loves an anniversary hookline. 

Thanks to the vagaries of the modern telly-tampered football calendar, you and I shan’t be meeting here again for three weeks.

If we’ve learned one thing since Fergie left, it’s to avoid reading too much into a manager’s proper debut.

Arsenal 3 Liverpool 4

While myself and a substantial number of Gooners might well concur with the sentiments expressed in Saturday’s vague and decidedly futile protest, the somewhat embarrassing and decidedly schizophrenic scenes during our encounter with Norwich felt like a sad indictment of our modern day, social-media obsessed “supporters”.

Thanks Newcastle, for a minute there we might have begun enjoying ourselves.

There have been some legendary United ‘goons’ at Wembley down the years. Moments when all bodily and mental control flies out of the window, and gruff grown men can be seen kissing each other on the lips, ululating like possessed animals, and falling over each other into tangled heaps of blood and joy.

Leaving the ground on Saturday, I could almost pretend these last nine months hadn’t happened.

Just after Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero completed his hat-trick, a glum Roman Abramovich was texting on his phone. Two thoughts went through my mind — firstly, how different things could have been, had we bought the talented Argentinian.