A nervy 1-0 win at St. James Park ensured that the Gunners will represent themselves in the UEFA Champions League for a 16th consecutive season, a feat which has been credited as highly commendable. The cheers of manager Arsene Wenger and the Arsenal bench at the full-time whistle summed up their relief, along with perhaps being a sign of things to come for the North London club.
Things are looking good for Arsenal, as they have almost paid off all their debt on the Emirates Stadium, and for a change, are not fearing a possible exit of any major star players in the summer. They have struck big money deals with Fly Emirates and Puma and are set for a healthy financial injection for making transfers. It is believed that Wenger will have as much as £70 million at his disposal to spend on new players. They are also set to offload the likes of Andrei Arshavin, Marouane Chamakh, Nicklas Bendtner and Johan Djourou, which will free space for new summer signings.
Arsenal’s exciting young attacker Oxlade-Chamberlain spoke to SkySports and admitted that his club’s strong finish to the season has given the entire squad a stimulating feeling of self-belief and will charge them up for the start of next season. He said, “At Arsenal Football Club we want to be challenging for titles first and foremost, but towards the back end of the season we realised that we weren’t going to be able to do that so we set ourselves a new target to make sure we qualified for the Champions League, to make sure that Arsenal maintained its name at the highest level in Europe. In that sense, it was a success.”
“The way we finished the season and the confidence we can take from that will stand us in good stead for the start of next season.”
“I think we have come on in strides at the back end of this season and I think everyone is really buzzing and will be ready to go for pre-season and the start of next season.”
Clearly Oxlade-Chamberlain feels the club can take advantage of the momentum they created with their excellent push towards the top four in the last quarter of the season where they were the best team in the country – let’s hope he is right.