Well, the Europa League Final happened yesterday. At least one team bothered to show up for it.

In roughly 2013 I chose Arsenal, fairly randomly, as my favorite team. Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I chose a different team.

If you didn’t bother to watch a game that started at 2pm on a Wednesday (at least for me), I can’t blame you. Chelsea smashed Arsenal 4-1. And, honestly, that scoreline makes it seem closer than it actually was. Arsenal was in the game for the first half, but I think they forgot that they were supposed to play two halves and spent halftime getting drunk. That’s the only way I can account for the complete collapse of an entire team.

There were a few decisions that didn’t go our way that could have dramatically changed the game. UEFA could have decided to not host the final in a city where our third top goal scorer may be literally killed if he went there, but its UEFA so I’ve stopped expecting them to do the right, or even ethical, thing. There was a clear penalty on Lacazette from Keppa in the box in the first half. But that was reviewed by VAR and not called, which just begs the question: what’s the point of VAR? There was a foul on AMN before the Pedro goal (Chelsea’s second) that should have stopped that play. The penalty on Giroud was a flop (which, again, what is the actual point of VAR?).

But none of that matters.

What matters is the fact that Chelsea was the better team and Arsenal played like a team that deserves a spot in the Championship instead of the Premier League.

It’s been years of Arsenal floundering and I’m sick of it. The board and the ownership do not care and that is apparent. The offseason is supposed to be a time of hope and excitement for the top teams in the league, wondering who your side is going to bring in, what star players you’re going to add to your squad. I’ve been an Arsenal fan long enough to not bother to get my hopes up at all. We’ll sign one 17-year-old prospect who will see the pitch one time in three seasons, get injured, and be shipped out. We will bring in no big names. We will do nothing. Especially now that we do not have the Champions League funds coming in to offset the cost of this big name signings.

Liverpool and Man City have shown that this is a pay-to-win league. You cannot win the Premier League without buying it. FIFA clearly doesn’t care about the spending rules. We have to spend money to be competitive, but we won’t. We never do.

I’m glad we’re not playing in the Champions League next season. We don’t deserve to be. Our team is not a Champions League team. I’d rather play in the Europa League again, a competition that we actually have a shot to win, than lose in the group stages of the Champions League.

But I know all of this doesn’t matter. I can talk this talk now when I’m disappointed, but nothing is going to change.

I’ll be back in front of my TV at 6 am on a fall Saturday, watching Arsenal take the pitch to kick off the 2019-2020 Premier League Season. I’ll have my hopes up all summer while reading countless transfer rumors. I’ll be disappointed but hopefully optimistic when we start the season having made 0 noticeable transfers. And I’ll be right back here at the end of next season with another post about how frustrated I am at the ownership.

Because that’s what Arsenal fans do.