Part One: Arsenal 2009/10 Season Review: The Good

With the season over and a long summer ahead of us, I suppose it's time for me to attempt some sort of a season review.

When it came to my season preview, I waited until the transfer window was closed, in the hope that we would sign a few new players but that didn't happen.

My preview can be read here and in it I mentioned the goalkeeping options (or lack thereof) and the fact that our central defenders needed to stay fit.

I also wished for some cover to be found for Song before he went to the ACN and I predicted that Cesc would have a great season.

I know all of those things were very predictable, and so too was my assumption that the FA Cup was our best chance of a trophy with Chelsea being the team to beat in the league, and a last four or eight spot in the Champions league not being beyond the realms of possibility.

Looking back, I wasn't too far off with those predictions and I still maintain that the FA Cup was our best chance of a trophy. Although, I fully understood the reasons for fielding a weakened side when we went out to Stoke.

Anyway, in this first part of my season review I'm going to look at some of the highlights that made the lower points more bearable.

The season got off to a fantastic start with a 6-1 away win to Everton in the league, and things were looking really good, as we played so well that day. 

As the season progressed the amount of goals we were scoring was a joy to watch and our never say die attitude in every match was fantastic as well.

When we went 2-0 down away to Standard Liege after only a couple of minutes, the players just kept playing their own game, even though they weren't doing it too well and we came back to get the 3-2 win.

The 3-0 home wins against The Spuds and Aston Villa, were great performances as well with Cesc starring in them both, and showing us all why he is considered the best midfielder in the league.

The early season form of RVP was a joy to behold, and even though I wasn't sure how well he would work as the focal point of our attack in our new formation, I was happy to be proved wrong.

It was also great to see our only new signing of the season working out so well as Vermaelen defended excellently, as well as being able to play, as well as any centre back in the league and score quite a few goals too. 

No matter how many times we were knocked during the season the team managed to pull themselves together and turn things around to come back even stronger.

We were written off for the league race on more occasions than I care to remember but after every crushing run of results against the teams above us we managed to come back and even if we didn't score until injury time we kept getting the wins when they mattered.

It looked like we were finally out of the title race when we lost back to back matches against "Manure" and Chelsea, and we were well and truly outplayed in both of those games.

With 13 league games to go, we knew that only 13 wins would give us any chance of winning the league, and it seemed to be asking too much.

However, as the wins started to mount one after the other the confidence among the fans grew as well, and we did manage to win the first six of those games before our luck ran out away to Birmingham and they got an injury time equaliser from a bizarre goal.

Just as a footnote it is interesting to note that if we had won all those games we would have taken the title but sadly it wasn't to be.

In the middle of that run we had an awful result away to Porto in the Champions league round of 16 when two terrible mistakes by Fabianski meant we lost 2-1.

The doom merchants gave us very little chance as they told us how good Porto were and how they had coped so well away to Chelsea before losing by one goal.

Of course, when we beat them 5-0 and Nasri scored a wonder goal we were told that Porto were past their best and Nasri would never have scored that goal in the Premier league as the defenders there are so much better.

There were other positives to take from the season such as the emergence of Song as player worthy of playing in our team and Sol Campbell signing for us again in January and playing so well when called upon for the rest of the season.

We loaned players out to a variety of clubs and quite a few of them performed very well and will hopefully be pushing for a place in the squad next season.

I'm looking forward to seeing Szczesny, Bartley, Lansbury, JET and Wilshere being stars of the future if they can continue to progress.

Financially, it would seem that we are the only club in the Premier league being run on a sound basis as we made a profit as well as greatly reducing our debt as the Highbury Square development added to the clubs coffers.

If the criteria that UEFA want to introduce into football does come into existence we are the only club in England that will be allowed to play in Europe as the likes of Liverpool and "Manure" run up huge debts while Chelsea and Man City are only able to survive because of their very rich sugar daddys.

Our ladies team won their seventh league title in a row and our youth team have performed very well in the league with a FA Academy final against Nottingham Forest at 2 p.m. today as a reward.

The game is on at the Emirates and it's free to get in so hopefully they will get a good crowd and win the trophy as well.

Finally for today we are linked with CSKA Moscow goalkeeper Akinfeev and I know LadyArse want's us to sign him.

We are again linked with Shaun Wright Phillips of Man City and Luis Suarez of Ajax is another player to be mentioned in the same articles as Arsenal.

As usual, I will take them all with a pinch of salt until I see the player signing a contract at the Emirates.

That's it for today but if I have forgotten any highlights of the season feel free to tell me. 

See You Tomorrow.