Emirates stadium…See you in July / Laurent Blanc

Another season at the Emirates comes to a close and it is a similar story. It was bitterly disappointed how flat we were against Aston Villa and it was sometimes painful to watch.

A season of ‘what ifs’ dominated life at the Emirates this season and questions will be asked again.

I think it’s a bit of a under statement to say we were a bit flat yesterday and the game was very much that sort of end of season game. A win was vital if we want to go straight into the group stages of the Champions League but now we have to rely on other results.

We will just have to wait and see.

One thing interesting that happened yesterday was that I met Laurent Blanc (French National manager plus World Cup winner) and he was happy to answer a few questions we had for him.

I was keen to ask him about Mamadou Sakho and how he rates him because Arsenal have been linked to him for a while. Blanc said that he is very strong physically and very strong mentally. I asked him if thinks he may become an Arsenal player in the future and Blanc thinks he might.

I was keen to ask him about our Arsenal lads and in particular Samir Nasri. Blanc thinks Nasri has a lot of potential but is not there yet. That got me thinking about Nasri playing in the Cesc role if Cesc goes this summer and I had never really been convinced and listening to Blanc has made me see that Nasri will get even better and it really is vital to keep both Nasri and Cesc as one can learn from the other.

A player I think that has had a good season and will be a star for this club is Laurent Koscielny and as Arsene Wenger said the plan was only to play for him for about 20-25 games this season but he was ‘thrown in at the deep end’ and Blanc thinks he can be a real player and just needs to develop and get stronger and he will get there.

Laurent Blanc saw me turn to the Jack Wilshere page on my program and instantly pointed and told me how good Jack Wilshere is and thinks his vital to any future Arsenal and England have.

As you can imagine, talking to Laurent Blanc was probably one of the more interesting parts of my day and it was quite amazing talking to an international manager and Blanc was a very intelligent man.

He was a world cup winner too and I was keen to see what he thought about players he played with and he said that Ronaldo was the best player he ever played with followed by Zidane. He really rated Manu Petit too.

He also thinks Arsene Wenger is the right man as he complimented my In Wenger We Trust t-shirt.

Now comes Fulham away and then perhaps one of the more important summers of recent years will start (after a few weeks holiday though!)

Come on you Arsenal!