Alas the new year is upon us and following the usual New Year festivities where joy is shared and merriment is enjoyed it also offers us all a bit of time for some quiet contemplation. One is given the chance to reflect upon the last 365 days not as if they have any intrinsic meaning, a year is an entirely man-made construct that basically means this - we've just flown around the sun through the vast nothingness of space and we are now in roughly the same spatial coordinates as we were this time last year. Which is true of any other day, but I digress ...

Greetings, Arsenal aficionados and haters alike, are you sitting comfortably? Well then let’s begin.