I said last August that given the players we were forced to sell and the distractions of the Champions League (more on that later) I’d have been happy with top six and the Champions League knockout stages. We managed the first, more than matched the second so I can’t be too upset. Well I can, and I wouldn’t complain if Old Trafford was blown off the face of the earth but you get the drift. In fact, adding the horrendous injury list we had at the turn of the year and the uncertainties that culminated with the sale of our very own Captain Chaos, you could even argue that we exceeded expectations.

There were some incredible European nights, and for a chance they weren’t all heroic failures. We had the most talked-about striker in Europe, even if it wasn’t for very long, although there was no chance he was going to be with us for much longer. For the first time in decades we had the best player in the world in his position. We had a couple of promising kids who broke through into becoming genuine stars and a few more who won the FA Youth Cup. We beat Manchester City again and at times played some pretty decent football. We’ve had worse seasons.

But there were, of course, some disappointments and if-onlys. If we’d held on for another couple of minutes in Paris, if we’d started at the same time as PSG in the return instead of half an hour later and if we’d started at Wembley at all. The final day of the season gets most focus and there’s a special place in Astonian Hades for Thomas Bramall but it should have been sorted long before then. Letting in an equaliser in the dying minutes at home to Brighton and in the dying seconds at home to Bournemouth, then away to Manchester City. Ipswich having a keeper who played like Mark Bosnich at Sunderland and will be playing for Scunthorpe in a couple of years time.

But, and this is the thing to remember, we did this all in the face of some formidable obstacles. Finance regulations apart, we had to learn how to cope with the Champions League, which was a strain mentally and physically; we had to learn how to cope with playing two big games most weeks and did it better than most. We had to overcome a nightmare fixture list at the business end of the season without any help (Villa and Spurs; compare and contrast) and we did it.

There does, though, seem a bit of an end of an era feel to this summer. Chris Heck’s gone, and whatever his successor does he’ll surely do it with a bit more tact than the man who turned Make Money Not Friends into an artform. ‘Only’ being in the Europa League means we won’t have as much money to play with and won’t be as attractive to new signings. We might even have to sell a couple of our current ones, which seems to be a preoccupation of the national press lately. And there’s a nasty suspicion that the Fates provided a chance in 2024-25 that we won’t be getting again for some time.