Never in doubt. Never. It was nerve-wracking, at times deeply painful, and caused me to age 20 years in the meantime, but Arsenal have yet again secured a Champions League place for next season, the 17th consecutive year under Arsene Wenger.
Lovely.
What’s better, Gareth Bale’s Tottenham side, despite the Welsh monkey impersonator-cum-powerful winger scoring another late winner for the other North London team, find themselves below Arsenal and in the Europa League.
Lovely lovely lovely.
The boss
The game was won in separate ways by Laurent Koscielny. The French defender scored the only goal of the game, in the midst of an incredible defensive performance. Surely there is no better centre-back in the Premier League right now.
His partner, Per Mertesacker, had an awful start, but recovered and the partnership between the two is a solid base for next season. Let’s just hope we don’t sell one of them...
Elsewhere the team were fairly ordinary. Mikel Arteta limped off after 25 minutes and was replaced by Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. Arsenal struggled going forward and conceded possession a few too many times against a Newcastle side that were unnaturally up for the game. I wonder if the pictures of Alan Pardew and Andre Villas Boas out in London before the game were from some kind of secret meeting...
Credit must also go to the other Boss, Arsene Wenger. After being written off yet again, and having a side in 10th place in November, he’s done it again. It’s not been the beautiful football we remember, but it did a job and now is the time to fix that.
The future
We hear it every year, but this time everyone appears to be on the same page: This is the summer Arsenal spend actual money on actual footballers. We’ve been linked to the likes of Lars Bender, Stevan Jovetic, Gonzalo Higuain and even Wayne Rooney.
In his post-match interview Arsene said Arsenal would go into the market ‘in a very proactive way’.
Isn’t that nice to hear? Of course, there’s always the risk they’ll wait until the CL qualifier is out of the way, but there really is enough money for that not to be an issue. No excuses.
What’s more, there’s no furore around a potential major departure. Last season could have been the turning point but for a certain Dutchman, but apart from doubts over the ageing Sagna and disinterested Vermaelen, Arsenal are set to keep their squad completely together. And hopefully make the necessary additions to take the side to the next level.
Here’s to three months of peace. I’m off for a celebratory fizzy orange juice.
Happy St Totteringham's Day!
Latest:
