Good season?

[Niall_Quinn]

btw - season has been a success, only 7 points off the leaders despite being cheated out of several results by biased officials (they tried to cheat us out of the cup today too), CL spot secured, FA Cup, outstanding season from Ramsey despite the injury, great CB pairing, did it all without Walcott and Ox (our pace) for much of the season. The only reason there are negatives is because we performed a lot better than expected and then the increased expectations were used as a yardstick. But we're certainly heading in the right direction. More improvement next season and we are right in the hunt.

[Niall_Quinn]

Yes - the text and the graphic are from the same article.

Not only that:

Babies delivered - big fat ZERO
Wars averted - big fat ZERO
Successful moon landings - big fat ZERO
Olympic golds - big fat ZERO
Presidential election victories - big fat ZERO
Cancers cured - big fat ZERO
Successful summits of Everest - big fat ZERO

I really don't know why we bother with this guy at all. He's taking the piss.

[Niall_Quinn]

From the comments

Why does it say in big bold caps that Ozil created ZERO chances, when the stat line shows he created TWO? That whole "journalistic integrity" thing is just too much of a hassle, isn't it Luke?

DM im sorry but yur article lost all credibility when you said Ozil was 24. YIf you cant get your facts right in such a simple piece of journalism then you dont stand a chance. Sloppy journalism yet again by this shambolic excuse for a paper.

Did we lose?

[Niall_Quinn]

They also rated Sagna as our best player on the day 8/10

The bitterness is hilarious.

[fakeyank]

I think we had a successful season and that is all because we won a trophy. PL campaign was similar to other years and so was the Champions league. BUT a trophy at the end makes a HUGE difference.
I am really hoping that this means that we are done playing the bridesmaid, and ready to go back to domination. Not 2% away, not playing in hand brake, no excuses but just top quality football.

[Letters]

Domination is a bit over-optimistic IMO, we're still competing with two sides with the infinite money cheat on now. But we are well placed to do what we can to challenge them, we arguably did this year but a few key injuries hurt us - that is an issue we need to deal with but it's one that City and Chelsea don't need to worry about. Aguero gets injured? Fine you've got other £20m+ players sitting on the bench. A real club can't do that.

But returning to the original question: yes, it's been a good season. I never felt we were true title contenders and while people will say we bottled it that, to me, is a lazy argument. We won the Cup, the semi-final on pens and yesterday we came back from 2-0 down despite the ref doing everything in his power to stop us. I think we've showed we can handle high pressure situations. We came up short in the league because we didn't have a really top striker and basically I think we just ran out of steam. We cannot afford to have Ramsey, Ox, Walcott all injured and be as effective, the players coming in aren't as good. We do need to add more depth but we also need to sort out the injury problems which hurt us every year.

Whether you think it's been a good season comes down to this: After last season would you have taken 4th place and the FA Cup this year? Especially after the Villa game! I think most on here definitely would so yes, it's been a good season.

[Letters]

The guardian didn't enjoy it clearly...

http://www.theguardian.com/football/...l-match-report

Wow

I'm generally not one who subscribes to the theory that the press are all anti-Arsenal but what a load of bitter nonsense.
Zero mention of the fact we should have had 4 penalties (one brief mention of Giroud going down easily aside).
They've spent the last 9 years gleefully reminding Arsenal fans how long it's been since our last trophy, now they're saying "You only just got past Wigan in the semi-final and was only Hull in the final, that doesn't count". You know what? Yes it does, so fuck you. Fuck you very much.

[Bumble]

btw - season has been a success, only 7 points off the leaders despite being cheated out of several results by biased officials (they tried to cheat us out of the cup today too), CL spot secured, FA Cup, outstanding season from Ramsey despite the injury, great CB pairing, did it all without Walcott and Ox (our pace) for much of the season. The only reason there are negatives is because we performed a lot better than expected and then the increased expectations were used as a yardstick. But we're certainly heading in the right direction. More improvement next season and we are right in the hunt.

you still going on about the City game!!! they could have scored 20 that day if they tried.

anyway 7 points off and a cup win is a massive improvement on last season but the CL was still a huge disappointment. It was quite fitting that Koscielny and Ramsey got the key goals yesterday as they have been our best players this season. Szczesny should have played yesterday as Fabianski is off in the summer and he is 2nd choice keeper so who cares. Sagna is different he is first choice right back.

If we don't make the right signings though I think next season wont be better than this season. Chelsea are already signing a new striker, City just need a proper defender alongside Kompany, Liverpool need to get more depth but with CL money could happen and United just need about 10 players to become competitive but will have a new manager.

We are already losing Sagna, Fab and probably Vermalaen and all 3 will need to be replaced before we can even improve the squad.

[Letters]

anyway 7 points off and a cup win is a massive improvement on last season but the CL was still a huge disappointment.

Was it? We got through a difficult group which some didn't expect us to progress from, we were holding our own against Bayern till the (ridiculous, frankly) sending off. Once that had happened the die was cast. I'm not suggesting we'd have beaten them over 2 legs otherwise but we were playing pretty well and it would have been close IMO. We hardly dropped out of an easy group or went out to some pub team.

[sibreen]

I have three criticisms:
1. We didn't seem to create so many chances or score so many goals as years gone by (not sure if that's actually true or not, but that's what it felt like).
2. Sanogo as the only striker to bring off the bench in an FA Cup final is pretty crap. Imagine if that had been Higuain or Suarez.
3. There's not enough pace in the side.

Having said that, I feel in all other respects we made progress: more points, more consistency, and, of course, the cup!
Very happy all in all, and I think we can make progress next season, too.