Fearing more glorious Gooner failure

KNOWING that you’ll be reading this on a morning we’ll either be basking in the reflected glory of last night’s truly memorable turnaround, or be wallowing in the frustration of yet another anti-climactic end, to another “could do better” season, makes it a particularly awkward piece to write.

Obviously in my heart I want to believe in Arsène’s optimistic claims that it’s still all up for grabs and we’ve seen enough strange results in recent weeks to give us plenty of hope. The unpredictable nature of football remains one of its most endearing qualities. Yet in my head, all logic tells me that we blew it at Old Trafford, with our failure to trouble Van Der Sar in order to secure that crucial away goal.

The best that can be said is that we travelled back from Manchester feeling grateful that we were still in with a shout, knowing that United would be ruing a missed opportunity to put the tie to bed. But I couldn’t help but feel somewhat distraught, because we’d failed to do ourselves justice, as Arsène appeared to have repeated the very same mistake he made in the FA Cup semi-final, in his efforts to try and select a team to thwart the opposition, rather than simply putting his faith in picking our most in-form XI.