Also, it's a real disadvantage if you can't be assured of European qualification, how do you build a squad to have the right number of players when one year you might have 15 extra games than another?

Yeah there really needs to be a proper management of the number of games. It's not realistic to expect sides to have squads capable of so many games and it's also not realistic to expect players to be happy sitting out because the always wanting to play is an elite mentality you want to keep.

Yeah I can see that, actually. Fair.

I think it's the wording. "Sour taste" implies something unfair or unjust. Of course it leaves you feeling disappointed, any injuries to big players will do that.

And yet you've got them claiming an offside that simply, by the rules all teams have been playing with for years, simply isn't offside.

There's a similar one against Watford years ago. It's not a new rule.

You haven't had bad luck though. You've had 2 years of good luck, followed by 1 year of bad luck. That's still above average on the luck scale, especially when you consider how little Arteta rotates his squad.

Arsenal's injuries this season just feel like a reversion to mean after 2 seasons with relatively few injuries compared to other top sides.

I don't get why that leaves a sour taste, really. You're not entitled to a fully fit squad for the biggest games of the season.

Making it sound harder than it was there.

Agreed 100%. End of the day it doesn't matter. Good learning experience / minutes for players who needed it. Job done.

Basically: the thing we’ve been been warning about for the last seven or eight years (if you don’t protect public service broadcasting by funding it properly, we’ll lose our ability to tell our own stories) has now happened.