We like stupid strikers? Adebayor vs Bendtner – that’s what we all remember. They squared up against each other against Tottenham in 2008 and never got on after that. Adebayor was finally sold to Man City for £25m in July 2009 as was Kolo Toure for £16m. And that led to the iconic moment of this season – the astonishingly long run of Adebayor after scoring for Man City against Arsenal. I watched open-mouthed in disbelief as he ran and ran and ran. I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Is he going to run off the pitch? Until finally he stopped at the away Arsenal fans and celebrated in front of them. Poor Adebayor. He was a tremendous talent but obviously not the sharpest knife in the block, as we say. He ended up going around various teams, even, and this proves what I am saying, Tottenham. Of course Bendtner was the same, not the smartest and he also ended up going around many clubs. We attract such strikers maybe. Aubameyang was similar. Adebayor could never find a home so he went to the Spuds I wasn’t too worried about him going but I was that we didn’t replace him. None of our strikers had many games that season. Van Persie 18, Eduardo 17, Bendtner 21, Carlos Vela 6, all in total. Our top scorer was Cesc Fabregas with 15 goals and 15 assists. He was doing everything for us. Attackers who can’t score and no central defenders? We did bring in Thomas Vermaelen for £10m to emphasise we were now a selling club and likely to remain so. We also brought the veteran Sol Campbell back as cover but we had a bit of a downgrade since the Invincibles in defence with William Gallas never becoming a fan favourite. Vermaelen, though was superb and played most matches scoring 8 times. Philipe Senderos and Johan Djourou had appeared but hardly played at all this season. Clichy, Sagna, Eboue and Gibbs meant we had good cover at fullback but central defence was a problem. Thomas Vermaelen was a classy player It is fair to say that winning the title or Champions League with the players we had would have been a miracle. All you ASCBers who had come on board around the times of the Invincibles must have been wondering about your choice. Our best time was over. We had a shiny new stadium but no winners. As I said in my last such blog, all we had was hope. I didn’t have a huge amount at the start of this season. But hey! Scoring goals for fun and wins We jumped out of the blocks with a huge win at Goodison. We had six different scorers and Vermaelen got his first. 6-1. And then we hammered Portsmouth 4-1 at the Emirates. Arsene knows! We are surely going to go on and win the league by the most points and goals ever? We were top of the league, I said we were top of the league. But then Man City and Man Utd spoiled all the fun by beating us away and we dropped to 8th. Despite winning 6, including a nice 3-0 against the Spuds, and drawing one of our next seven we never got back on top. 9 defeats overall meant that we ended up a comfortable third on 75 points with Chelsea on 86 and Man Utd on 85. The Spuds, who beat us late on 2-1 at their ground came 4th on 70 points. Fabregas was easily our best player We still had the Champions League to negotiate but as I have said, winning that seemed like a distant dream to me. We played a qualifier against Celtic and we won easily 5-1 on aggregate. Add that to the hammerings of Everton and Portsmouth and you can see why I was starting to believe the Prof had done it again, his team were flying at the start. Standard Liege about to destroy us? We had an easy group after that which we topped, although we all remember the fright Standard Liege gave us in going 2-0 up after 5 minutes in the first game. But we won that 3-2. AZ Alkmar and Olimpiacos were the other 2 and we topped the group despite Olimpiacos beating us in the last match. We had Porto in the round of 16 and I was a bit gloomy after the first leg in Portugal where they won 2-1. But the wonderful Lord Bendtner scored a hat trick as we won 5-0 at the Emirates. This was what the season was like. Great victories and bad defeats. Bendtner - the self proclaimed best striker in the world We can’t say the same in the quarterfinals. We had Barcelona and we gave them a fairly good game in the first match at home to draw 2-2. Then Bendtner scored after 18 minutes in the return leg. He shouldn’t have done that as he woke up a young Argentinian who showed us what a wonderful footballer he was in scoring 4 at the Nou Camp. At least our players got to share a pitch with Lionel Messi. Arsene Wenger conceded they were much better than us. That was our reality after the move to the Emirates. We were below the class of winners. League Cup? No. FA Cup? No. In the League Cup we went out to Man City in the quarterfinals, beaten 3-0. We had beaten Liverpool 2-1 in the previous match and West Brom 2-0 before that but the League Cup was never Wenger’s trophy. If Messi had played for us we would have won everything In the Fa Cup we beat West Ham away 2-1 but then played a very understrength side against Stoke were we were beaten 3-1. We did have a lot of injuries that season which explains why 41, yes you read that right, players played for us, and we had 20 different goalscorers. An Up and Down Year It was a strange season for me. Many times we scored lots of goals with 6 against Everton and Blackburn, 5 against Porto, and 4 against Fulham, Portsmouth twice, Wigan, Wolves, Bolton, and AZ Alkmar. But we were beaten by Blackburn, Wigan, Stoke twice, and Sunderland. Apparently, Arsene told the players to make their own way home from Wigan after that defeat. We didn’t really look like winning a trophy. Third place in the league was good considering the quality of our players and the amount of injuries that season. Wenger was getting the best out of the players but something seemed to be going wrong behind the scenes with so many injuries. Walk home, boys The fans were getting frustrated. Wenger out chants were growing. I was beginning to wonder if we would ever see Wembley again but we had next season to look forward to. If we could keep our players fit maybe one of the cups could be possible. The league and Champions League didn’t seem feasible. We just didn’t have the players of Chelsea and Man Utd nor, crucially, their money. All we had, once again, was hope. And maybe my belief was starting to wane. Still, it could all go right next season. Up the Arsenal!