If you, like me, find your­self suf­fer­ing from "Post-League With­draw­al" now that the Eu­ro­pean foot­ball sea­son came to an end last week­end, you know the feel­ing. Out­side the Con­fer­ence League fi­nal, which was played yes­ter­day, the do­mes­tic cur­tains have closed, leav­ing us with on­ly the Cham­pi­ons League fi­nal this Sat­ur­day be­tween the French and de­fend­ing Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­ons, Paris Saint-Ger­main, and the Eng­lish Cham­pi­ons, Ar­se­nal.

Ar­se­nal fans are cur­rent­ly liv­ing in a state of eu­pho­ria un­seen since 2004, hav­ing last won the Eng­lish Pre­mier League (EPL) 22 years ago when they com­plet­ed a mem­o­rable, un­de­feat­ed “in­vin­ci­bles“ cam­paign. The larg­er-than-life fig­ure Patrick Vieira led them with an­oth­er French­man, Ar­sene Wenger, as their man­ag­er.

At the time, they were blessed with many great in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers, in­clud­ing Thier­ry Hen­ry, Den­nis Bergkamp, Robert Pires, and Ko­lo Touré, just to name a few. This cur­rent crop isn't ex­act­ly a mir­ror im­age of that vin­tage, but they are a well-oiled, de­fen­sive­ly rigid, set-piece-ob­sessed ma­chine.

When they clinched the ti­tle last Wednes­day af­ter Man­ches­ter City tripped over their own shoelaces against Bournemouth, I was gen­uine­ly shocked by the sheer num­ber of "clos­et" Gun­ners who emerged from the wood­work and were kept in iso­la­tion here in T&T. Sud­den­ly, red and white jer­seys were every­where. Af­ter two decades of be­ing the brides­maid, I sup­pose they were over­due for a pa­rade, as it would have been un­bear­able to fin­ish as the brides­maid again.

I en­joy the EPL as it is a very un­pre­dictable league where, at times, any of the bot­tom clubs can de­feat any of the top five teams in the ta­ble. I’ve nev­er hid­den my al­le­giance: I’m a Liv­er­pool fan. But to say this sea­son was dis­ap­point­ing is like say­ing a hur­ri­cane is a bit of a breeze. Watch­ing the team sur­ren­der the ti­tle like tod­dlers let­ting go of a bal­loon was ag­o­nis­ing. There were times when I couldn’t take the medi­oc­rity of the per­for­mance and left the tele­vi­sion, hop­ing just to get a good re­sult. Even the great Mo­hamed Salah was left frus­trat­ed and looked like he was plot­ting his es­cape route to the near­est air­port; he must be hap­py he is leav­ing. For me, the ju­ry is still out on Arne Slot; as many a Ko­pite (Liv­er­pool fan) will tell you, he won the ti­tle with Jür­gen Klopp’s team.

Spurs fans should be light­ing can­dles of grat­i­tude for Un­ai Emery. By field­ing a "B-team" at home against As­ton Vil­la, he gift­ed Spurs a 2-1 win, keep­ing them above the drop zone and send­ing West Ham down af­ter 14 years of top-flight sur­vival. If I were a Ham­mers fan, I’d be check­ing the trans­fer mar­ket for "Fire Sale" signs, as they may lose some of their best play­ers.

Man­ches­ter Unit­ed fans are be­hav­ing like they won the league, fin­ish­ing a cred­itable third af­ter be­ing in the dol­drums for a while. Next sea­son should be in­ter­est­ing as their new man­ag­er, Michael Car­rick, has a full sea­son ahead to im­pose his style, but we all know the drill: like many oth­er teams, he’ll spend a small na­tion's GDP in the trans­fer mar­ket this sum­mer to "strength­en."

If you’re a Chelsea fan, you’ve spent the sea­son cry­ing, sack­ing man­agers, and hir­ing Xabi Alon­so. I tru­ly hope they give him a chance to man­age the team and do things his way—there’s enough tal­ent in that squad to be fight­ing for ti­tles, not just fight­ing the urge to fire the boss and get­ting such aw­ful re­sults. Plus, miss­ing out on Eu­rope might be a bless­ing in dis­guise; less trav­el means more time to fig­ure out why they aren't win­ning, and they can con­cen­trate on the do­mes­tic league and cups, sim­i­lar to what oc­curred with Man­ches­ter Unit­ed this sea­son.

On the top­ic of cry­ing, spare a thought for the Man­ches­ter City fans (if any ex­ist in T&T). They won the do­mes­tic dou­ble, yet they’re in­con­solable—part­ly be­cause they lost the league, and part­ly be­cause Pep Guardi­o­la has of­fi­cial­ly flown the cuck­oo’s nest. One won­ders how they are go­ing to re­place him. There is no doubt that they have an abun­dance of tal­ent­ed play­ers, but will he adopt the same sys­tem as Pep? Will he bring new play­ers in that will gel with those al­ready at the club? It is al­ways in­ter­est­ing when new man­agers come in, es­pe­cial­ly when they re­place a leg­end. As we all know, re­plac­ing a leg­end is a fool’s er­rand; just look at how Man­ches­ter Unit­ed are still trau­ma­tised by the ghost of Sir Alex Fer­gu­son.

On the brighter side, As­ton Vil­la were the sea­son’s "Wait, what?" mo­ment. Win­ning the Eu­ropa League and snatch­ing fourth place, Un­ai Emery has per­formed a mir­a­cle, though next sea­son’s Cham­pi­ons League will be a dif­fer­ent beast en­tire­ly. Bournemouth and Sun­der­land have both al­so ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions and have qual­i­fied for the Eu­ropa League. Both would be go­ing in­to that com­pe­ti­tion with lots of con­fi­dence based on Vil­la’s win and Not­ting­ham For­est reach­ing the semi­fi­nals this sea­son, which re­al­ly shows up the oth­er leagues as op­posed to the Eng­lish League.

Brighton & Hove Al­bion should have qual­i­fied for the Eu­ropa League, but los­ing the last game to Unit­ed meant they will play in the UE­FA Con­fer­ence League, a com­pe­ti­tion that Crys­tal Palace, who fin­ished 15th out of 20, in the Eng­lish Pre­mier League (EPL), played in the fi­nal yes­ter­day.

The EPL is cur­rent­ly the on­ly place where the bot­tom 15 teams have enough ego to be­lieve they can top­ple the gi­ants of Eu­rope. In my hum­ble opin­ion, it shows the gap in the EPL and oth­er leagues like La Liga (Spain), Se­rie A (Italy), Bun­desli­ga (Ger­many), Primeira Liga (Por­tu­gal) and Ligue 1 (France). While there may be 1 or 2 ex­cel­lent teams in the re­spec­tive leagues, the lev­el go­ing down the peck­ing or­der is not as good. I will con­tin­ue to en­joy the EPL and the com­pet­i­tive na­ture of it.

In clos­ing, I have writ­ten enough and have noth­ing more to say at this point about Joshua Da Sil­va; I’ve de­cid­ed to re­tire my com­men­tary on Joshua. Since his bizarre ap­point­ment as vice-cap­tain of the West In­dies Test team for the Pak­istan tour in late 2024, on­ly to be prompt­ly "dis­ap­peared" from the squad, the sit­u­a­tion has be­come a farce be­yond words. I will await the next move by King Sam­my and the board that ap­point­ed him sole se­lec­tor. But a word of ad­vice: don't hold your breath. You’ll turn blue long be­fore they make a log­i­cal de­ci­sion.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The views ex­pressed in the pre­ced­ing ar­ti­cle are sole­ly those of the au­thor and do not re­flect the views of any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which he is a stake­hold­er.