SoccerBlogs

There was very little to play for in most of the games yesterday, which is why the Arsenal v Newcastle game and the Tottenham v Sunderland game were shown simultaneously on Sky sports. The papers and football websites have been building up the tension between the two north London rivals and saying just how important fourth place in the Premier League was.

It has been a testing time for everybody concerned with Arsenal Football Club this season, but the players made sure that it finished with a bang by beating Newcastle United at St. James' Park yesterday. You could see the elation and relief on the faces of the Gunners and the Gooners who had traveled to see the game, but we really must do better next season.

While the Arsenal players and fans can relax for a bit after another nail biting season, the agents, scouts and backroom staff will be a s busy as ever preparing for next season. Bacary Sagna and Arsenal have a big decision to make about the French defender's future, while Carl Jenkinson is desperate to get more games under his belt and become the first choice at right back.

With the managerial merry-go-round going on at full speed in the Premier League at the moment, Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger has insisted he has no plans to leave the Emirates any time soon.
The Frenchman is now by far the longest standing manager in the English top flight, having seen Manchester United's Sir Alex Ferguson decide he will retire at the end of the season after over 26 years at the helm at Old Trafford.

The last few weeks and months have been full of transfer rumours about players that Arsenal are apparently going to be signing which got me thinking about who is going to leave the club to make room for new players.

Lukasz Fabianski
The Polish keeper has been missing from the team since his fellow countryman Wojciech Szczesny took the gloves nearly two and a half years ago.

Why Cesc Fabregas is NOT the answer. by PH

Many of the readers on this site spend a lot of time reading the rumours about which players may be on their way to Arsenal. Great fun, and we all want to see the gunners linked with top players and see a few coming to us instead of the usual 'richer' clubs.

Arsene Wenger seems to have made his decision to include Jack Wilshere in the Arsenal starting line up today. Unless he is doing another of his old Jedi mind tricks, of course, and Mikel Arteta and his unmovable appear on the St. James' pitch this afternoon. Assuming the Spaniard has failed to recover from his calf problem, it will be Jack who plays alongside Ramsey.

For the last couple of seasons Arsenal have started off very sluggishly and have had to spend the second half of the campaign playing catchup to retain their position as a Top Four club. Arsene Wenger believes that this is because of the seemingly endless cycle of selling our best players and then having to help their replacements settle into the squad.

The myth of the decline of Wenger. By CI

Unlike many fans on the Just Arsenal website I am very pro Wenger. He has stuck with this club through thick and thin. When his best players, which he created, were leaving, when (and even now) we were having strong financial constraints. Would you really expect Wenger to willingly sell his best players and not replace them adequately?

If you could bottle what it is that makes Arsenal put in a storming run at the end of the season, you would be a rich man. While Tottenham generally choke at the end to leave them disappointed and out of the Champions League, the Gunners come good and get the results we need, despite a mountain of pressure.

Could Arsenal make a shock move for 33 year old Wigan defender Emerson Boyce? by SS

Arsene Wenger would hope to get Boyce cheap and use him as cover in a variety of defensive positions and to act as an experienced leader within the defence. Bacary Sagna looks set to leave the club this summer with Russian giants Anzhi and newly crowned French champions PSG interested.

It has been very impressive the way Arsenal have handled the pressure on them this season. From a morale sapping defeat to the hated spuds, Arsenal were left seven points adrift and it seemed like this would be the year Tottenham finally finished above us.

Maybe we should thank AVB, because the spuds' croaky voiced manager's gloating claims of a downward spiral for Arsenal had the opposite effect and we are now back in the driving seat.

Olivier Giroud is almost certain to be back in the Arsenal starting line up tomorrow and he will want to end the season on a high. At times this season he has struggled, especially in the first half, but the French international is now a key part of the team and one of the first men on the team sheet when he is available.

Arsene Wenger has been talking about who will replace the injured Mikel Arteta in Arsenal's crucial match against Newcastle tomorrow, and although he says that Jack Wilshere is the obvious replacement, he will leave it up to the player himself to decide if he can handle the pain.

Wenger said: "That is one of the things I have to evaluate before Sunday and talk to him as well,"

"He will have the final say in that because you cannot force a player, they have to be comfortable.

Wenger drops hint about bringing in top, top, top, players

The war of words has been raging ahead of this Sunday's make or break, last-day round of Premiership matches. We've had to endure reading and listening to an endless stream of pundits with their various predictions about which north London team will hold their nerve and claim the coveted fourth Champions League spot.

From the sounds of things, Per Mertesacker may have thought his Arsenal career would not last too long. The German international defender did not have the greatest of first seasons at the club, appearing in just 27 games in all competitions and winning few admirers among the Arsenal fans and the British press.

It certainly gives the Arsenal players something to think about as we approach one of the most important final days of the Premier League in years, at least as far as the three teams involved are concerned. After City snatching the title from United in the most dramatic fashion last year, this year will be all about the battle for third and fourth place.

Should Tomas Rosicky still be at Arsenal? by SS

It is a tough question because during his Arsenal career he has always been injury prone and missed large chunks of the season. Even when he has been fit and playing matches he has sometimes underperformed compared to the rest of the team but then again in some matches he has been the driving force for an important win.

Arsenal have been in a three way tussle with Chelsea and Tottenham for what seems like ages now. There has never been such a close run race for the final two Champions League places and it is all going down to the wire. Chelsea are definitely in the top four, although the Gunners could go above them into third.

Your whistle-stop guide to the latest Premier League arrivals Name: Yaya Sanogo Age: 20 Position: Striker Current club: Auxerre Fee: Free (with compensation) Did you know? Sanogo already has a cult following due to his propensity to turn into a virtual world-beater in the Football Manager computer game series.

Six Reasons Why Arsenal Can Dominate English Football Next Season by FD

Recent years have been frustrating for followers of Arsenal. The trophy drought has been bad enough, but we've also had to endure the regular exodus of our best players and the apparent reluctance of the powers-that-be to compete with the other top clubs on an equal footing.

Surely Arsene Wenger will sign a defensive midfielder for Arsenal this summer, surely. I know that Mikel Arteta and Aaron Ramsey have been doing a great job recently and that there is the versatile Francis Coquelin breaking through from the reserve ranks, but the need for a proper, no-nonsense midfield general has been stark at times this season.

What can we expect from the upcoming transfer window by NP

So we are nearing the end of another season and as usual a host of players, a.k.a. "Starlets" are already "being monitored by", "close to signing for" or "would love to play for" Arsenal. Most of them are homegrown stories by websites trying to increase their pay-per-click revenues or agents looking to place the players on the transfer market.

Preview:
It's been a strange season for Arsenal.

Pat Rice gone. Podolski in. Giroud in. Cazorla in.
Goalless draws; Steve Bould.
2-0 at Anfield. 6-1 against the Saints. 2-1 in Montpellier. Koscielny at the Etihad. Another 6-1. Invincibles again?
Not quite. Defeat to Chelsea.