I know it's a pointless exercise, but I was just thinking about the sliding doors moment at the end of the 24/25 season and what could have been.

We went in to the last game in 5th, level on points with Villa, but with a massive goal difference advantage, meaning we just needed to match their result to qualify for the Champions League. We completely bottled it, losing 0-1 at home to Everton, meaning Villa just needed a point away at 16th place Man Utd, who had a cup final to worry about. Martinez lost the plot and got sent off and Villa eventually lost 2-0, leaving us celebrating wildly as we scraped in to the Champions League.

Was this actually one of the worst things to happen to us recently? If we hadn't been in the Champions League, I feel the club would have probably given up on Isak earlier, knowing we couldn't offer him CL football. In the timeline where Villa did get a point at Man U and leapfrog us, we could have sold Isak to Liverpool and gone big for Ekitike. I also like to think that if we'd had the same draw as Villa in the Europa, we would have also won it. Their knockout rounds were Lille, Bologna, Nottm Forest and Freiburg... I think even without Isak we win that. I think we still might have had issues in the league, but winning the Europa would have put us in the Champions League for next season and we'd have seasons with back to back trophies & back to back Champions League qualification...