That was an awful afternoon of football, which I dreaded from when I woke up at 4:30 am. The coup de grace was, while waiting for the first pen, I asked a woman who had been quietly watching near by, who she was supporting and she said, "chelsea....I'm not a chelsea fan, I support arsenal and don't want Spurs to get in the Champions League".
I agree with those who say it is our own fault, undeniably it is. The image I have thought of over and over is Walker sharing a laugh with Taarbat with 2-3 minutes left in the first half, away to qpr and Spurs down 1-nil. I know they were teammates, but can you imagine Roy Keane or Paul Scholes or Gary Neville or Dave Mackay finding anything funny 1-nil down in a must win game? I can't. They would have been consumed by a need to win and we don't have that. I don't blame Walker specifically, as I am afraid it is a general problem.
As for the near future, I'd say Modric (who I think was gone either way), Bale and Adebayor are gone. We will not be able to bring in a top class striker, who is the finished article and we will need to unearth other,lesser known players. I doubt Vertongen was ever coming and I suspect he was using us to whipsaw another club, we are now less useful in that regard. It may mean Caulker is brought back to play as Kaboul's regular partner, which I wouldn't mind, if we're going to be in transition anyway.
I think top 6 would be an achievement next year and I would suspect we'll do worse. I think even if we do get in some good new players, we will struggle for awhile as they'll need to settle and we'll need to figure out how we are going to play after the loss of Modric, Bale and Adebayor.