It’s typical of Arsenal’s season isn’t it? Despite particularly virtuoso performances against Italy and Russia, UEFA’s officials believed Xavi Hernandez more worthy of player of the tournament than Fabregas.

At least in lifting the Euro 2008, Fabregas personally made up for the disappointments of the Premiership and Champions League.

Suc-cesc at last for Fabregas?

But what of next season and beyond? While Tottenham fans are predicting they are on the rise and Arsenal will be on the wane – they seem to believe Modric was player of the season – Sagna is being wisely cautious about Arsenal’s season since the departure of Flamini who, frankly, provided me last season with the greatest moment of beauty seen for quite some time, as well as the imminent departures of Hleb and Adebayor. I won’t stress myself over the prospect of a departing Gilberto albeit he could be useful to retain in the squad.

Too often though, I feel Hleb has been played out of position. He is a right and not left-sided player. He makes a reasonable fist (yes, excuse the oxymoron) on the left but not as consistently as he does on the right.

Will he ultimately be a huge loss when he tends to shoot when he should have passed, pass when he should shoot? He is, however, exciting to watch and that in itself will be a loss.

Adebayor, great at holding the ball up but 30 goals last season were three quarters of his potential. His slide of form when Eduardo became injured cost us the Premiership as he struggled with being the effective lone striker after Eduardo’s injury which certainly put pressure on a squad whose morale sunk once Eduardo was stretchered off that day.

Adebayor’s lack of understanding with Bendtner is unforgiveable and Van Persie is still finding his game.

Ultimately though, it was (the nature of) Eduardo’s injury that cost us the Premiership alongside a couple of diabolical decisions from officials combined with an ill-advised woeful Premiership performance against Liverpool sandwiched in between the Champions League quarter-final matches against them.

Atrocious officiating again cost us the Champions League. I believe we’d have laughed in the faces of Chelsea and Manchester Utd had the opportunity not been torn away from us by the men in black.

However, I’m not pessimistic about next season. I’d rather Wenger didn’t predict a clean sweep: in 2002 he predicted an unbeaten season and we lost the following match to Everton when Wayne Rooney announced himself. He also predicted that Arsenal would dominate the noughties after Utd had dominated the 90’s. Well, truth be told, I think Liverpool have picked up more silverware than anyone else.

Wenger has learned his lesson from last season’s lack of depth to the squad and he is determined to be ready. As each season passes of beautiful football on a shoestring that makes us all live on air, he is increasingly ruthlessly determined.

Only one thing breeds success more than the experience of failure and that is the experience of undeserved failure – when the victors didn’t deserve their spoils at all. Manchester Utd 2003 Premiership; Chelsea 2005 Premiership and 2007 Carling Cup; Barcelona 2006 Champions League and Liverpool’s 2008 quarter-final victory.

Vela will be in our squad this time and hopefully Merida will be brought out of the woodwork to impress. As for Nasri, now he’s signed I hope lives up to his billing of the new Zidane. From what I’ve seen, he seems to have better ball skills than Hleb or Cristiano Ronaldo.

Adding Veluso would calm my anxiety but maybe we should think of playing Toure in Flamini’s position unless we get our hands on brother Yaya.

Arsene inspired me by picking up on my tip of playing Traore on left midfield towards the end of the season. Some truly breath-taking moments occurred. Having Rosicky fit would be helpful too.

Centre-back remains a worry. We showed a strong tendency in the end to leak goals we shouldn’t and I wonder if Gallas’ preferred CB role is actually justified. He performs better playing slightly wider to the left than straight centre-back, indicating a three-man defence could be an option and not 4-4-2.

Walcott has come on in leaps and bounds and rather than bringing him on to substitute Eboue, we should think of playing him either straight upfront or on the left as well where he has shown he is comfortable (e.g. for England against Germany). Finding his best position is critical, similar to Rooney’s relative ineffectiveness before Ferguson seemed to get it right last season.

But, until Eduardo’s return, upfront is my main concern. RVP’s thigh muscles problem seems caused through over-developing them. Now he whacks the ball hard but also high or wide. And his touch needs to return.

Bendtner needs to improve a lot and stay away from defending in our penalty box where his backward headers have proven a liability. Yet, would a Santa Cruz or Obafemi Martins ease my mind? Could they be the Yorke-Cole combination that Manchester United enjoyed or even resemble the early promise of a Wiltord-Henry partnership?