(Ed’s note – We had some trouble being able to post material last Friday which has resulted in a minor backlog of pieces waiting to go up. So if you’ve sent something, please bear with us. Until things return to normal again, I’ll just put a note on pieces explaining when they were submitted, so that they can be read in that context. The one that follows was submitted during the week before the Reading match last weekend)

Arsene, it’s crushing to have done so much so right, so well, and so outstandingly, only to fall short at the finish line and maybe not even finish on the podium; to have filled hearts and minds around the world with a mythical nostalgia of meaning that is not reflected in the harsh facts of tomorrow’s history books; to have created the processional Zeitgeist only for someone else to steal your crown.

And if Senderos cried after we lost to Liverpool, it showed he cared. It showed that he believed he was culpable for Liverpool’s two goals. And it says that he will pick himself up and improve as he has done ever since Drogba exposed him, the young, cultured Swiss mercenary who can talk about monotheism, the boy we all believed could become the next Tony Adams.

Wenger may talk about keeping the team together and bringing them even closer. Don’t forget that the season is not over. The crown is not gone – yet and still there’s the time to chase Manchester United down the street and into a dead end when we can try to wrestle back what we think is rightfully ours.

We have a mathematical chance to win and we need to show our class, show we mean business and destroy our opposition with the clinical finishing that has slipped us by in recent matches. One win in eight Premiership games… 27 million Arsenal fans deserve more than that and so does our team. Now’s the time to prove it.

It may seem unlikely but there is the chance Manchester United will lose at Chelsea and draw their other three games and we need to be prepared for that, to be prepared to beat them on goal difference which means going out and being prepared to win 5-0 every game from now on. Basically, do what we should have been doing since February. Do what we should have done at Old Trafford on Sunday. And, make no bones about it, we outplayed for much of match what is now becoming possibly the best ever Manchester United or at least the greatest since the days of George Best.

If there is one amazing thing in football, it is the growing admiration and almost friendship between Ferguson and Wenger. In some strange way, Wenger has done for Ferguson what Nureyev did for Fonteyn. Despite being opponents, they are also dance partners. I am sure Sir Alex thinks: “What would Wenger do if in this situation? How would he develop this team, this individual?”

And I feel certain Wenger has done the same over many years with Sir Alex. Between the two of them they fuel each other’s ambition, sense of perfection, from vanity and obsession to increasing admiration. If anyone has not realized it, they form one of the most curious partnerships in modern days, a reverse of the poets Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath that any modern day Russian Realist writer, a Dostoevsky, a Tolstoy, would do well to depict.

Anyone who has truly lived, has not tripped lightly through the security of life’s usual cosy rites of passage; anyone who has been ripped through and crushed the existential and metaphysical traumas, fundamentally deconstructed and forced to reconstruct the very basis of their existence will know that as hard a journey as it is, the character building, the conviction, the desire is always built on stronger foundations and greater, deeper perspective.

And that reconstruction is not easy, like the Myth of Sisyphus, pushing the boulder up the hill in existential futility, repetitiously, is a lonely hellish gratuitous task.

As Albert Camus rightfully said; “Life begins on the other side of despair,” and I feel that the disappointments of Paris, the empty runners-up medal in Paris – a referee dispatching our keeper, the runners-up medal against Chelsea in last season’s Carling Cup – a referee denying us a penalty and a linesman not flagging for offside, and our recent failures all so well documented – has taken us past the disappointment, and past the blows to the ego and effrontery to dignity and is forcing us to question the very basis of our values, our self-worth.

Remember Giggs in 1999, his courage came as United were at the point of extinction – losing to us in 1999 would have seen them blow the Premiership and blow out in Europe. They were mesmerised, they were scared they were losing belief until that moment.

Theo deserved more last week – his run deserved to win anything. And there is no justice in this world. When you’re on the low-side of life, gratuitousness, fortuitousness it really can seem like Hell is other people – sometimes.

So, Arsene Wenger, bring that team closer, you may need to kick out one or two but hopefully everyone, Flamini included, will want to dig deeper in the existential adversity of your, my, our Homeric voyage, our Aristotelian narrative.

We will need those essential reinforcements to help pushing those boulders up the hill twice a week for next season and another leading light or two to help shine the light of glory.

But before this season ends – let’s show everyone that we are worth it. Existence precedes essence, to be is to do and dominating the world’s football scene for the next decade will be no easy task but I’ll ask you one question. Are we entering the hard part of the journey or has it just past?

I think our life is just beginning.