AT the end of Arsenal’s first leg defeat to Paris St-Germain this week, Peter the red-nosed pundit was asked what the Gunners needed to do in the return leg in France.

“I think everybody needs to play just a little bit better,” Schmeichel replied ­– and that’s why they pay him the big bucks, folks, and conversely I’ve been stuck here giving you this lovely column for the past 15 years.

What do I know that the former Manchester City goalkeeper doesn’t? But might it be that players like Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli can’t actually play a little bit better. This is them. Good, honest players, but not on the same scale as some of the talent that PSG – effectively owned by the state of Qatar ­– have acquired.

This isn’t the Arctic Circle Rangers that Arsenal are playing in this elite semi-final. It’s one superpower after another in the Champions League and we’ll see what’s really possible next week.

• Liverpool celebrated winning the league on Sunday. They are probably the weakest champs since Leicester City and have benefited from no other team getting their sugar together this season. They bombed out of the FA Cup to Plymouth, bottled a winning position against the aforementioned PSG and flunked the League Cup final against Newcastle. With the quality proving to be so bad in the Premier League this season, anybody could have won it by putting a few wins together. What a season for Spurs then to rack up 19 defeats.

• Man City struggled to fill their allocation at Wembley for an FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest which drew all the attention away from Liverpool’s big moment due to silly scheduling. Pep Guardiola and some indignant fans responded to the small club chiding by raising the cost of having to travel down south and Wembley tickets. Don’t listen to this whining, unless you really believe that a club with gluttonous amounts of money, as City have proven to be, could not have filled those seats by covering the costs of taking coachloads of disadvantaged families there as a treat on them. They could have easily have afforded to do that once they realised the tickets weren’t all selling out. It reflects badly on them that they’d rather leave those seats empty than do something nice.

• The stay-home City fans should think of the Spurs lot who spent big money on tickets and travel to Anfield on Sunday. All that way for a insipid 5-1 defeat. Tottenham can say that all that matters now is winning the Ropey League, but the travelling fans deserve better. Nobody looked like they were even trying for them.