However, when they finish above us, Arsene will already have his long list of excuses lined-up and endorsed by the board
- Summer disrupted by player sales. We tried everything to keep them but what can you do when a player decides they will not sign
- We had to come from 'deep' (something he's already said) and the new players took time to gel, but "overall I believe they showed great mental strength to come from 17th place to finish 6th".
- When you look at the facts Spurs had less injuries ("we lost six full backs and nobody could cope with that, plus Wilshere etc".....can almost hear him saying the words now), could play a reserve team in the Europa League, went out of the League Cup at the start, had easier FA Cup games to rest players. Our gormless buffoon will make it sound like he has scientific evidence that they had it easy but that now they have qualified for the CL it will not be so easy. Furthermore it will be spun that it just goes to show our remarkable consistency for 15 years that Spurs finishing above us is viewed as a great achievement
- Can not compete with the other 3 clubs in the CL places, but "overall look at Liverpool who spent many millions but still only finished 'x' points ahead of us in fifth"
The board can sell the one remaining world class player we have in RvP to plug the loss of CL income for one year and charge every one another 4-5% uplift on ticket prices (as RPI is still 4.8%, it will be Gazidis-proof i.e. another weasly-worded corporate one-liner blaming macro economic factors).
And the sad thing is the board will carry on buying into the Arsene story (they have no alternative as they won't pay £12m for a player this window let alone for a paid off manager), bluffing the fans, whilst Spurs superior finish from this season can be explained by the "special circumstances" above
You all know that this is what will happen !!
