A close run thing...

So Monday signals a return to the salt mines and what laughingly passes for normal service around here is grudgingly resumed.

It may well be a misquotation but Sir Arthur Wellesley’s (or the Duke or Wellington to you squire) incisive post-match analysis of the great Anglo French encounter at Waterloo 1815, “It a was a damn close run thing”, could equally be applied to the climactic finish of our current footy season.

Everywhere you look there’s a damn rum cliché to be mined, with nothing certain and everything to play for and we have to say the footy is all the better for it. In the Premiership one of the big four has usually walked away with it by now, but with Arsenal heroically eliminating themselves for the second time in a week, Chelsea v Man Utd later this month is going to be truly colossal and surely the Premiership decider.

Down in the bowels of the Championship it’s even tighter than a proverbial gnat’s chuff, with anyone of the top seven in contention for a seat at the top table and a chance to wallow in the pots cash that enables. Even our own beloved Hornets might squeeze through if they can actually remember that games aren’t contractually obliged to end in a draw.

All in all the most exciting climax to a footy season in many a long year. We’re sure the Iron Duke would approve.