Make no bones about it, we were beaten by the better team over the 2 legs, but that knowledge in no way makes us feel any better. Losing in the semifinals of any competition is disappointing, losing to the Mancs is a bitter pill to swallow under any circumstances. Surely this must be the death knell of Wenger’s fabled youth experiment.

yet another barren season for Arsenal.

All things in consideration, this side has actually done well to reach this far. If you compare this season to our “more successful” previous season you’ll see that appearances can be deceiving. It’s not as bad as we perceive, compare.

• Premier league position 3rd 83pts, 4th possible 79pts
• FA Cup 5th round (4-0 loss to United), Semi-finals (2-1 loss to Chelsea)
• Champions league Quarter finals, Semi finals

No I didn’t forget the Carling cup, it’s just a test bed for the youth squad. It’s not that bad.

I’m not calling for Arsene to be axed, especially not for the result last night. Really does anyone of us actually think that the defeat was down to squad selection or tactics? That we we knocked out of the champions league was down to the fact that our team is just not good enough.

We’re not a bad team, this is a very good Arsenal team and a few tweaks over the summer can turn us into a great team. Very much like the great team we lost to last night. I hate united with a passion, even more than Spurs, but I have to acknowledge that theirs is an exceptional squad. They have the right mix of youth, experience, flair, grit, nous, everything you need in a complete squad. From goalkeeper to striker they have a squad that should be the template for us to follow.

Zero losses in the league this year, a champions league and Fa cup semi-final show that we are not that we are not far off. We all know that a few additions to the squad will make all the difference, the £15m investment in Arshavin is a start. Arsene intimated that as well saying

“It’s a difficult question to answer tonight because I am too disappointed. I need to take some distance with this season. We are on a consistent run of 21 games unbeaten but recently in the games that have mattered, like Chelsea and tonight, we couldn’t win. That of course needs thinking.”

We must accept that the great experiment have not yielded the results we wanted, but along the way we have uncovered a few gems, which can be used to the the club forward. There are some that are genuine jewels, others that need a bit of polishing and a few that can be discarded.

Trophies are all that count in this game, win some and everyone loves you, players want to be part of the team, win none and you’re a desperate failure, players leave and it’s hard to replace them. This season we have failed again, there’s nothing we can do now but to start planning for the next.

We still have two big games coming up, although they don’t mean much in terms of trophy, wins against Chelsea and Manchester United be a massive boost for the team and us fans.

There we a lot of lessons to be learnt from this season hopefully we will have learnt them and come back better next year.