Well, the time is almost here when the Premier League draws to a close. It's been a very mixed season for us and I'll talk about that in a later blog, but for today it's a combination for me of feeling disappointed as the season ends but also rather happy that we won't be put through the nerve shredding rigor of scrapping for fourth with Spurs. We'll finish fourth win, draw or lose today and I think that'll reflect on the squad.
I understand that game time is important ahead of the final next weekend but it seems utterly stupid to risk the like of Ozil, Ramsey, Cazorla etc. in a meaningless game. Therefore I think we'll see players like Jenkinson, Diaby, Rosicky, Sanogo maybe Kallstrom play. I also think purely for fitness we'll see Gibbs and Wilshere play. It'll be an interesting team and I'm sure should it go wrong we won't look back with too many regrets. That said we can't allow the players to be on their holidays already, next week is the biggest game we'll have played for years and they need to be prepared for it.
On the other side of that make no mistake the players will have half an eye on Wembley next week too and I don't think they'll be playing to their full potential today if they can help it. In many ways I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't win today. But our fans have traveled up there and hopefully they'll all be rewarded for doing so. A win today would take us to 79 points which would be our highest tally for 6 years.
So this is essentially a meaningless game for us playing just to finish on a high ahead of next weekend. Finally I'd like to just say that whilst everybody gets wrapped up in the Hillsborough saga, we should never forget that 29 years ago today 56 people went to Valley Parade and never came home in the Bradford City fire.
Until next week enjoy the final day, for once!
