Arsenal have ended the season in fourth place and thereby qualify for the Champions league preliminary round next season. This was far from a foregone conclusion round the turn of the year when the Gunners dropped to tenth position. In fact, seasons have come and gone for the Gunners following a rather regular pattern with a slow start due to the departure of important players and a late fightback to secure top-four status. Robin Van Persie and Alex Song both had left in the summer and Arsene Wenger moved quickly on the transfer market, bringing in Santiago Cazorla, Olivier Giroud and Lukas Podolski. All three were quality signings, which fitted the Gunners mould and they blended in quite well over the course of the season. Cazorla, in particular, shone in the early stages of the campaign and went on to be the inspiration in midfield alongside Jack Wilshere. Mikel Arteta and Aaron Ramsey took up the deeper midfield roles while in the attack Theo Walcott made a claim for a central role when Olivier Giroud struggled initially to find his range. Podolski was fielded most often on the left hand side, with Walcott on the right in Wenger’s preferred 4-3-3 set up. Captain Thomas Vermalen and Per Mertesacker were initially the central partnership of choice while Carl Jenkinson started the season at right back due to an injury to Bakary Sagna., Wenger had to go in the transfer market in January to get Spanish international full back Nacho Monreal to cover at full back due to injury to Kieran Gibbs and the ineptitude of Brazilian Andre Santos.
The season started rather inauspiciously with two consecutive goalless draws. Abou Diaby was the star player in the Gunners first away win of the season at Anfield but sadly, it was a good as it got for the Frenchman, who was once again held back by recurring injury. Players like Andre Arshavin and Marouanne Chamakh also remained on the fringes of the squad. The Gunners suffered their first defeat at home against Chelsea at the end of September. In all, they would only take two points against ManUtd, Man City and Chelsea, who finished above them in the league table. Going into the New Year, their form took a turn for the worse as they struggled to compete on all fronts with a rather small squad. They painstakingly secured a second place finish in their champions league Group, with Schaalke 04 piping them to top spot. Meanwhile, they dropped out of the League Cup at League Two Bradford on penalties, later losing, also to lower league opposition, in the fifth round of the FA Cup at home against Blackburn. Arsenal’s season came to a head when they were outgunned by Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter final first leg at the Emirates, losing 3-1 on their turf. Wenger made the bold decision to drop Vermalen and Szczesny, who had underperformed since the start of the year, and opted for a Mertesacker-Koscielny central defensive partnership with Lukasz Fabianski returning in goal. The Gunners remained unbeaten after that till the end of the season and managed to claw back the deficit they had with Spurs to finish just a point ahead of their North London rivals in the table.
