As the end of the year approaches, it is a time for reflection. But as this is football we only need to look as far back as the summer, so cast your minds back to last July.

Thierry Henry had left us, and the cry was for re-enforcements or face losing our Champions League status to big-spending north London rivals Tottenham was deafening. Scour today’s press and we’re hardly linked with anybody.

By all accounts Arsene has a massive transfer kitty (anywhere between £30 and £60 million) burning a hole in his back pocket. But in all likelihood the board are pouring over details of the best high interest savings accounts available rather than players Arsene wants as I doubt he has asked for any new recruits.

And other than a goalkeeper, who would you want Arsene to buy?

The squad, when fully fit looks so strong and other than Eboue, who is let down by his on-field antics, this squad is full of focused hungry players.

Come to think of it, if back in July, someone had told you that our best player last season, Gilberto Silva, was going to be confined to bench duty and that Mathieu Flamini was going to keep him out of the side and that he’d be replaced by William Gallas as captain and that Alexandr Hleb would be the team’s best performer this season you’d have thought he was winding you up, but this is the reality going into 2008.

The end of the unbeaten run may be a blessing in disguise, a reality check to refocus young minds. And I defy any team to be able to keep on winning games with the quality of midfield players we had missing at the same time.

Failing to finish top of our Champions League group means we will face one of Milan, Inter, Barca, Real or Porto. If I could choose it would be the Portuguese team, but I would wager that the fans of all those teams are praying they don’t pull us in the last 16.

Of the five Inter and an Eto’o-led Barca would be ideally left for another day but I would really fancy our chances against a dysfunctional Real and the ageing has-beens at Milan. But we don’t really need to concern ourselves with that until late February now anyway. Right now the focus is the Premiership.

I think we would all agree with Robin van Persie’s assessment that our biggest challengers for the title will be United this season.

Liverpool will probably have a say but the Anfield ship has hit some choppy waters behind the scenes and that is normally all the excuse players need to underperform. Likewise Chelsea who will be able to pull out the transition mode excuse after switching from the Special One to the … quite boring one in mid-season. I imagine their season will start to unravel with the departure of their African contingent in January.

It’d be hilarious to see the Russians lose their Champions League ticket, but unfortunately none of the chasing pack are good enough to step up.

Even funnier though has been watching yet another comedy of errors unfold down in N17 with their bungled attempt at a managerial change. It’ll be interesting to see how Juande Ramos gets on. He seems an honest enough guy (unlike Jol) and his admission that his team are incapable of defending was music to my ears. Following that with his second admission that he was more concerned about getting embroiled in a relegation scrap than challenging for Europe was priceless. In fact that’s what got me thinking about what all those experts had been spouting on about in July in the first place.