Arsene Wenger's 5 Best Decisions for Arsenal This Season

Taking a step back to reflect isn't the easiest task during the heat of a Premier League season, but in order to analyze just how significant the 2011-12 campaign has been for Arsenal, it's necessary to do just that.

Stuck in 15th place in mid-September after a psychologically damaging 4-3 victory to Blackburn, it looked for all the world as if the Arsenal we had come to know during 15 years under Arsene Wenger's tutelage was coming to a close.

There were clamors for Wenger's ouster as immediately as this season. Many felt a sense of stagnation had been allowed to develop at the club, where entitled youngsters no longer had the edge needed to endure the rigors of a 38-game season.

Who knows what turned everything around. 

Obviously, Wenger's last-minute spending spree at the close of the summer transfer window added some necessary veteran steel to the club fabric. 

It took time, but the Gunners steadily began making their way up the standings. They now reside firmly in third place.

In a season where the prospect of Champions League football in 2012-13 once looked frighteningly dim, that must be considered somewhat of a feat.

Here's five reasons why Wenger was able to see through the darkness and get to the light.

Binge Buying

With the way Mikel Arteta was able to integrate himself into the Arsenal framework, seemingly from the first moment he donned the red and white shirt, you'd have thought he'd been playing with them his entire career.

He is perhaps the most recognizable success story out of the five players Arsene Wenger brought in during the final days of the summer transfer window, beating out Per Mertesacker, Yossi Benayoun (loan), Park Chu-Young and Andre Santos.

While fans were (perhaps rightly) reticent to believe in the lumbering Mertesacker, he did serve the club well at a time when defensive options were at a premium. Now injured for the rest of the season, it remains to be seen how big a role he will play next term.

Park Chu-Young may well be the most baffling summer purchase in the entire Premier League. A reliable scorer for AS Monaco, he simply has not gotten games at Arsenal—which may well signal his departure this summer.

Benayoun, while only with the club this season, has provided excellent games when given the nod in his preferred position on the left flank. 

His experience is undeniable, and while fans may have been scratching their heads when they saw his name on the list of starters for the match against Manchester City ahead of Gervinho and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Benayoun was once again a good player.

Andre Santos, like Mertesacker, has had to deal with a crippling injury this season, but the Brazilian is back now and ready to provide his attacking flair from the left-back position.

He's scored some important goals this season (Chelsea, Olympiakos), and that aforementioned experience cannot be discounted.

But the most plaudits must be reserved for Arteta. He has been near impeccable in the central holding midfield position, playing alongside Alex Song.

He's not the dynamic option Jack Wilshere was in 2010-11—the Englishman may well resume that position in 2012-13 when he returns from his debilitating ankle problem that has kept him out all season—but he has been immense in so many games for Arsenal.

His winner against Manchester City, sweetly struck from 25 yards out, was the latest proof.

Wenger has never been one to dip into the transfer market, but events forced his hand.

Thankfully, he made some astute decisions.

Tomas Rosicky

Arsenal fans had every right to believe they'd never see Tomas Rosicky make good upon his considerable potential while with Arsenal. 

Signed in 2006 from Borussia Dortmund, the Czech dynamo was flush in his prime and looked for all the world as if he would become one of the premier attacking talents in world football.

Arsenal, with its footballing philosophy predicated upon passing and individual talent, seemed the perfect environment. Rosicky was expected to take to it like a fish to water.

Then came the injuries. Rosicky missed the final portions of the 2007-08 season and the entire 2008-09 campaign with an injury that seemed to baffle everybody and cast a foreboding cloud over his future as a footballer.

It looked like he might retire, so grueling and psychologically trying was his recovery, fraught with false alarms and hope.

He was healthy for most of the past two seasons but appeared a shell of the dervish he'd once been. The technique was still there, but something of the incisiveness and attacking verve he'd once displayed so frequently had gone missing.

Then came January, and a match against Manchester United. All of sudden, it was as if the old Rosicky had never left. 

Murmurs of a potential transfer fell softly to the ground. Rosicky was pulling the strings in the Arsenal attack with near superlative ease, showing a sense of subtlety that has always seemed to elude Aaron Ramsey, his closest competitor for the attacking midfield job.

It seems like a basic decision: Play the man who gives you the best chance at victory. But Wenger should be applauded for making Rosicky his top option at the AMF (no, not the alcoholic drink) position.

Arsenal, winners of eight of their last nine league matches, owe a lot of their new-found attacking fluidity to the diminutive Rosicky.

We've seen what a world of difference a talented midfielder can make in the middle of the park. Just look at how Manchester City have seen their title campaign grind to a halt without David Silva these past few weeks.

Arsenal once looked bereft of ideas as well. But August and September seem worlds away now.

For one very distinct reason. 

Unleashing the Ox

As is the case in so many situations in life, great is separated from good by the slimmest of margins.

There's just something about Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's game that is more dynamic, more complete, than those of Gervinho or Theo Walcott.

The Ox has Walcott's pace, but he couples his speed with an uncanny technical ability that has often looked to have escaped Walcott's development.

It's the same with Gervinho. Whereas the Ivorian's technique often lets him down just when the Gunners need it the most, Oxlade-Chamberlain looks most comfortable when he's in the heat of on-field battle.

Wenger brought him along slowly, but he unleashed him at the end of January. The potential displayed by Oxlade-Chamberlain was evident from the first moment, but his production, at just 18 years of age, has been phenomenal. 

He has seen less time of late (is Wenger cutting down his minutes, and therefore the stress on his young legs, with one eye on the upcoming European Championships, where it looks likely Oxlade-Chamberlain will play a role for England?), but that does not diminish the hope he has engendered in Gooners.

He is part of the new wave of youth flooding through Arsenal right now. It is a future that looks increasingly bright.

Finding a Back 4 That Works

This was more a case of his first-choice options at the back becoming healthy again, but the defensive steel Arsenal have shown since mid-February—when Bacary Sagna, Laurent Koscielny, Thomas Vermaelen and Kieran Gibbs were finally fit together—must be credited in some measure to the Frenchman.

He compiled those players through varying transfer windows (Gibbs was the only one to come through the Arsenal academy); whether he ever foresaw this formation when Sagna came on board in 2007 is beyond anyone.

But it has worked, and while the four are still susceptible to mental lapses (City were in on goal a worrying number of times on Sunday), they have shored up what has long been such a weakness for Arsenal.

And going into next season with all four fit, one has to feel good about Arsenal's chances to contend.

Fostering a Positive Culture

Samir Nasri certainly wanted no part of it when he decided to leave Arsenal for the riches of Manchester City last August, but perhaps the Gunners are all the more fortunate to be rid of that dead weight.

Because when you see the fun-loving aura currently wafting about the side, infiltrating each player with its infectious quality, you begin to believe that something big is being built here.

In a profession where you're likely to hear match commentators speak about how you don't have to "like" your teammates, Arsenal have created an environment that directly counters that claim.

It's more fun, and a whole lot easier to succeed, when you enjoy where you work. And if you look at each player currently with Arsenal, you have to believe that that is most definitely the case.

Wenger's hand may not be directly involved, but again, he amassed these players and then gave them the place in which they could thrive.

At no point in recent memory could he be prouder of his charges than he must be at the moment.