
The 2022/23 Premier League campaign drew to a close on Sunday as Arsenal concluded their splendid season with a 5-0 mauling of Wolves on a sun-soaked early summer’s evening in North London. The Gunners already knew they were guaranteed a second place finish but a win would see Mikel Arteta’s side beat their previous Emirates era points tally by a point (83 points achieved in 2007/08) and do that they did.
Arteta named an unchanged starting eleven from the side that finally conceded the title to the (alleged) financial dopers of East Manchester at Forest last week. That has been a common theme for Arsenal this season, Arteta has made just 38 alterations to his 38 starting line ups this campaign which is the lowest in the division. Compare that to a certain mid table club in SW3 who have made a whopping 131 tinkers to their comical excuse for a football team. We got off to a flyer as the soon-to-be departing Granit Xhaka nodded us into an early lead following an excellent cross from Gabriel Jesús from the right-hand side. It has been widely reported that the Swiss international will be signing for Bayer Leverkusen after seven rollercoaster years in North London. Few players have divided opinion quite like Xhaka, the outrageous character assassination he has endured from the parasitical English media, most notably the odious Gary Neville, most definitely affected him to some extent. And who can blame him? Xhaka accrued an unfair reputation as a dirty player who often lunged into reckless tackles. He was once branded by Neville as “a brainless idiot” “(ironic) and “uncoachable”. You decide which of these comments is the most idiotic. But Granit soon had another goal on his leaving party. Saka drove into the box, his cross took a nick off a Wolverhampton defender, and Xhaka passed the ball into the net to double his tally.
Arsenal were now in party mode and their opponents were on the beach. We made it three on the half hour following some precise exchanges between Trossard and Ødegaard. It was the Belgian whose ninth assist of the season found Saka, who took one touch to push the ball onto his left peg before blasting an emphatic finish into the far bottom corner. Not a bad way to celebrate signing a new contract. We were well and truly on Easy Street.
No changes were made at the break as we looked to add to our lead. We thought we had a fourth after Partey scrambled home following a corner but it was disallowed for a push on Jose Sá from Ben White. Replays showed VAR had got it right for a change. But moments later we did have a fourth. Jorginho played a sumptuous ball over the top for Trossard to run onto. He checked his run a couple of times, and swung in a teasing cross to the far post with his “weak foot” and Jesús was there to head home from a difficult angle. A really high quality goal from start to finish. We made a few subs, the game plodded along at the pace you would expect for a dead rubber game on the final day but there was time for a fifth as Jakub Kiwior notched his first goal for the club, scrambling in from a corner. Sá probably should’ve kept it out, and you could argue it was actually an own goal but life is too short for all that faff and nonsense. That was our eighty-eighth goal in the league this season which is a club record for a 38 game season. Our 19th different scorer too. Not too shabby.
So there we have it, another season done and dusted. A season where we led the way for some 249 days before the Financial Fair Play Oil Riggers of Middle East Manchester, eventually showed their quality. But the history books will read: The Arsenal in Second place with 84 points, 26 wins, 6 draws and 6 defeats. We are finally out of the Thursday Night Ropey League and after a long exile we are back in the Mostly Not Champions League which is no longer brought to you by Gazprom. We collectively look forward to being drawn in a group with our old friends Bayern Munich, Barcelona and of course, Olympiakos. Is that possible? Well no, but I’m sure those honourable trustworthy guys over at UEFA will get the hot balls out. To be perfectly honest we’ve been out of it for so long we’ll probably turn up on a Thursday and go to Baku instead of Barcelona. But at least we will be in it, and we didn’t make a song and dance about it unlike the Marshdwellers did a year ago. I wonder what European competition they’ll be in next year. Anyone know? Thankfully the continent will be safe from those gormless oddballs for the next twelve months.
I suppose the end of a season does provide an opportunity for some evaluation. Did we achieve our preseason objective of finishing in the top four? Yes. With quite some distinction. Have we progressed from the previous season? Massively. Are we coming out of the campaign with a touch of disappointment we did not achieve more? Somewhat, yes. It goes without saying that if you had offered any rational Arsenal fan second place and a title challenge before the season began you would’ve been laughed at even by the most optimistic Gooner. But then the season kicked off and right from the first minute of that warm evening at Selhurst Park we could all see something had shifted in these players. We were playing with a swagger we had not seen at this club for bordering on two decades. And we demonstrated this was no fluke. We won our first five games for the first time in a long time. Nine of the first ten became sixteen out of nineteen. Fifty points won from a possible fifty-seven. Not even The Invincibles could boast such a rapid start. Had we continued at the same rate for the second half of the campaign we would’ve won the title by a comfortable margin. It was an incredible ride until the start of April and that ought to be remembered. Throughout the season we on GHF have basked in the warm glow of being proud supporters of a club which is well and truly on the up after a gradual but elongated demise. We have perhaps grown closer as a small community in the ocean that is the Arsenal universe. Pre-match we met up with GSD (as illustrated above) and we all enjoyed great conversations and laughs on both Arsenal and non-Arsenal related topics. And this is what football is about; bringing people together who would otherwise be strangers to one another. And I suppose this has been aided by the positive vibes around our club right now.
I will finish by wishing you all an enjoyable summer. Try not to spend all day refreshing Arsenal NewsNow waiting to see if we’ve agreed a fee for Gonzalo Higuain or if Yann M’Villa has completed his medical yet. Now we face the prospect of two long months without The Arsenal and we must attempt to lead lives outside of the seasonal calendar that runs from August-May. I hope you have all enjoyed this season as much as I have. We go again in August.
COYG