FMR: Nothing Changes

After todays result, many expected manager FMR to go back on his words and halt any plans of settling for another season in division two. Interestingly though if you were one of the many, you would be amongst a large majority that is very much mistaken, as Gooners prepare to ship out yet another fans favourite in the form of Iain Wright. Madrid is the destination and the player who is among the best and most experienced strikers in the league said goodbye to the fans in a moving press conference earlier today. Wright a legend in these parts has quite an amazing record when it comes to scoring goals, and one would have thought his experience was much needed at this moment when Gooners are so close to both promotion and silverware.

An emphatic 2 - 0 away win against tile leaders Bullies has had no effects on the Gooners bosses plans and it seems that FMR was not playing mind games with the other two managers involved when he suggested his own ambitions this season where on hold. Many have been calling for FMR's job and others think him plain crazy, we caught up with the coach who is never far away from a headline recently to get his point of view.
"The result today was fantastic, to take all six points from Bullies obviously means alot to the players and myself after everything that has gone on this season. There were many things that stood out for me today, but I must speak about the defence first... especially Sol Campbell a player who was not performing and did not figure in my future plans. Just recently he was for sale well under his market value, the lad was told to start fulfilling his potential if he wanted to stay and the turn around is nothing short of amazing. He has put in the best performances of his career consistently and is playing at the top of his game! Having sold a player of Adams calibur was a risk but Sol has filled those boots immediately and made the changes work in our favor.

The only downside in todays game was the injury, Patrick is a great player and many over look his contributions over the years with so many talented players in the middle of the park. This being his second injury this season it may spell the end of his career, wether he has time enough to regain his form remains to be seen... for sure we havent given up on him and he still has an important part to play as we enter the latter stages of the season. We hope he can develop further this season and continue to play his football here.

As for our priorities, the win over Bullies changes nothing, we stated our intentions clearly with the sale of Adams and those intentions are now reinforced with the sale of Iain Wright. Today is a sad day for everyone at the club and the decision to sell Wright was one not made lightly and I am sure it will take the team sometime to come to terms with the loss of such a large character. It may take even longer for the fans to forgive me! We have a long history of signing special players here and Wright certainly falls into that category and I am sure Madrid will feel the same way about him.

So what are our intentions and my feelings about the season so far and where we are heading? It is simple really... firstly I never once said we cannot win the title, I think had we not taken on young players and focused on winning we would be some points clear now. I had a feeling after playing certain teams on very low form and still asking questions of them we might find ourselves back in this position. In my opinion the two above us will still lose more games before the end of the season.

The team we have now after the sales of Wright and Adams, should not be winning a title and when you look at Dream Team and compare their youth and ours... I think we should not be promoted either. That said we will play to the best of our abilities whilst giving the young players every game they need, the problem we have is three of these youth are strikers. Along with the sale of Wright our oldest striker, things are going to be difficult to manage upfront. If I look at a game and think we may lose by playing certain players or need to change formation to suit match experience, I will do this without hesitation.

Of course we try to manage the situation best we can and now is the time I really earn my pay cheques! So lets be clear... we play as best we can under every circumstance as it arises, I think if we win or are promoted it will be because the others didnt want it bad enough and certainly not because we had the stronger team,

In my mind it is simple the teams are very close in skill and titles will be won and lost in the future through the next few change reports. We also have key players such as Henry, Bergkamp, Lang that are at critical stages of development and need to get maximum results. Then you need to look at potetnial, Winterburn, Lipscombe, Overmars, Bould, Akinfeev, Fabregas and then next couple of players we bring in will give us massive scope for improvement. We must focus on these things first!"