Not The Boys of Summer

Definitely not North London

It is odd how quickly the absence is felt. The matches--some watched, some read about--provide a constant ebb and flow, a framework to the week. As another season ends it is met with mixed feelings of relief and regret. That team, those players will never exist in the same way again. You hope that it will be better after a period apart, but worry that some of the magic might be lost. You wonder if love is everlasting.

The odd years are harder, lacking the respite of the even years' tournaments. These events confuse as well as console. To see Song do all he can to stop Bendtner and Van Persie, watch Gallas bundle Vela off the ball, chinks the mythic unity bestowed upon the team. The transfer rumours and gossip fuel this idea of disunification.

Not quite wanting to let go of this season just yet I have gone in search of a mistress; to squint a little and pretend it was someone else. I stumbled upon the Blackpool game that John excellently reported on, and wanted this plucky little team to win. Blackpool are not Arsenal: theirs are rough brush strokes compared to silky smooth lines. Charlie Adam, their talismanic Fabregas-a-like, is Scottish not Spanish (it shows). Yet as I hear the roar of the crowd, the shared hope, I hear the echoes of friends' cries of joy and frustration, and I cannot wait to join them again next season.

Follow our Nottingham Forest vs. Blackpool liveblog below:

Promotion Watch: Tangerine Dream

Blackpool edged Swansea by one point for the final playoff spot and now lead their semifinal with Forest. Pic via Guardian.

With Portsmouth, Burnley, and Hull going down along with Newcastle United and West Bromwich Albion assured of promotion, we currently know 19 of the 20 teams that will be in the Premier League next season. The Championship playoffs (between the third through sixth seeds) began today to determine the final team to earn promotion to next year's top flight.

The playoffs are being contested between four teams that have been in the top flight before, though for some, not in a very long time: Nottingham Forest, Blackpool, and Cardiff City (and Leicester!)

Forest's last year in the Premier League was 1998/99. Forest has spent five seasons in the Premier League since it's formation in 1992. They were also the very first team to finish last place in the league's first season. In those five years, Forest defeated Arsenal once, 2-1 at City Ground shortly before Christmas 1996. Of course, if you know your history, you also know that Arsenal wears red because their first set of kits were borrowed from Nottingham Forest.

Ah, but Forest currently trails in their two-leg semifinal with Blackpool, whose run of points in eight of their last nine league fixtures allowed them to pip Swansea City for the final playoff slot. In today's first leg in Blackpool, Forest struck first in the 13th minute, but the Tangerines equalized in the 26th and won the match from the penalty spot in the 56th. Blackpool leads the tie 2-1 with the final leg to be played in Nottingham on Tuesday night. Blackpool was last in the top division of English football in Arsenal's first double season - 1970/71.

The other semifinal tie begins tomorrow as fifth placed Leicester City (out of the Premier League since 2003/04, when they managed a 1-1 draw at home from Arsenal in the Gunners' unbeaten Invincibles season, as Craig Hignett equalized for Leicester in injury time) hosts fourth seed Cardiff City, looking to become the first team in Wales to play in the Premier League. Cardiff was last in the top flight in 1961/62.