Gooners Fate Always In Their Own Hands

Gooners will now have to prepare for the challenge of division one football, the club had expressed it's preference for division two but it never looked likely and FMR was correct in his prediction of goal difference carrying them easily through. Gooners made light work of PSV scoring six whilst keeping a rare clean sheet, Wiltord was the star of the show and managed to score the first two to set Gooners on their way. He has come under much fire from both the fans and manager for his contributions recently but will atleast justify a chance to show he has made some progression and have a proper run of games alongside Henry before FMR makes a final decision.

Gooners without captain and midfield maestro Dennis Bergkamp, still managed to muster an end of season show for the travelling fans! Fabregas having recently being called back to first squad duty managed to add to his impressive first seasons tally, while the ever impressive Henry managed to get in on the action and Borja grabbed some headlines also and seems to have had an immediate impact in midfield. Ljungberg played what may have been his last game and Seaman will certainly not be feeling very comfortable when the window reopens.

We grabbed a few words with the boss as he collected yet another Manager award:
I guess it's great way to end the season and it is also nice to present a little reminder of what we are capable of when an opportunity arises to play a more familiar line up. It has been something of a roller coaster of a season, we started strong but hit a real bad patch form wise, then during that period I took on some more young players and only added to our troubles. It has been a massive task to keep everything in order whilst trying to win the important games but i think we will come out the other side looking better, although we will wait to see the change report before we can call it a sucess. What we do have though is money to invest and will look to use that to attract someone of a very high standard.

While we are happy to have gained promotion, it will only make our plans slightly more difficult to carry out. There where many reasons we preferred another season in division two and I guess the main one was our keeper situation, it now looks like we will have to invest in a new keeper which will not be cheap, had we of remained in division two this could have been delayed a season and more funds channelled towards outfield players. Then for obvious reason we would have preferred to play the younger players alot more and it will be difficult to find a high number of games for them in division one.

All that we can do now is hope our younger looking squad has enough depth to cope next season, it is a finely balanced squad and an injury or suspension to the wrong players could leave us very exposed. We have no plans to bring in any more mature players and are only looking to add young players who can hit the ground running. It has been a hard season for me transfer wise and everyone knows I hate to sell players! So to see Wright, Pires, Lauren, Lukic, Diaby, Viera and even Adams going in the other direction has been hard. We are also planning to sell Ljungberg and possibly Seaman which will end all our sales as far as i can see for sometime.

Obviously bringing in players such as Fabregas, Borja and Lipscombe make things a little easier for me. Fabregas has had the perfect season and I see only good things where that lad is concerned. Borja joined late on but has had an immediate impact and will add even more fire power to the midfield! Lipscombe was a player i simply could not resist buying and will make great progress here. Anelka's season was ruined by a sloppy challenge at Abu Dhabi but if he can manage any sort of improvement we will persist with him.

So lets see what can be done in the window in regards to strengthening the squad and what the change report brings. We still have a core of very talented and experienced players and another promotion is not out of the question, at the same time we are more than aware of the problems we may face with many of our players still very young. As always though we wont be there to simply make up the numbers and I feel that each season i have been here we look to have made real progress.

Now we are looking forward to the RMI cup and a friendly with Tigers, we are looking for a kinder cup run this time round and hoping to go a little further. Also we hope to get any new faces in sooner rather than later and certainly we hope our main purchase will see some cup action. Finally I would like to send my congratulations to all those winners and promoted teams and a special message to Bayern and Legends who I am certain will gain promotion next season! Best of luck next season.