2006-07
Ok, so we have had 1 season of no trophies, 1 season with an empty trophy cabinet, I think we were all ok with that. We were moving to a new ground and knew that things were going to be tough for a spell. Transfers would be difficult and sales would be more high profile than purchases. We wanted to compete still and were told that the move to the stadium would help us to allow this, maybe not straight away but it would come again.
Transfer wise we had swapped Cashley for Gallas and £5million, Alex Song came in, Tom Rosicky joined from Dortmund and Julio Baptista came in on loan from Madrid which saw Jose Reyes go the other way. We lost some important players in the summer with Bergkamp retiring, Pires leaving for Spain (Should never have been allowed) and Sol Campbell left for Portsmouth when we all thought he was going abroad.

The first competitive game in our new stadium, Emirates, was against Villa where we could only manage a draw after going 0-1 down, Arsenals first ever competitive goalscorere in the Emirates Stadium? Anyone? Answer was Gilberto Silva. Villa`s goal came from Olof Mellberg who will forever be the first ever competitive goalscorer in our ground.
We qualified for the Champions League by beating Dinamo Zagreb home and away, our group for the competition was Porto, Hamburg and CSKA Moscow.
We started the season well enough, we again lost our second game of the season as we did in 2005-06, this time it was away to Man City. We had 5 wins in our first 10 games losing only twice to City and West Ham, one of the wins came against United at Old Trafford with a late Adebayor goal.
November was a horrible month, out of 5 games we lost 3 times against West Ham, Bolton and Fulham all away from home, the 1 game we won was against Liverpool at home and we drew at home to Newcastle.
3 defeats in a row, just like last season pretty much confirmed we would not be anywhere near the title, away at Everton, away at Liverpool and home to West Ham all coming in March. We had also slipped up at Sheffield United over the Xmas period.

Scanning through the results I can see we drastically improved our results against the big teams, only losing once to Liverpool away. We beat United home and away and drew against Chelsea home and away, we beat Liverpool at home to give our record against the other top 4 teams a much needed boost. The problems are again the same as the season before, consistency, beating the small teams. West Ham did the double over us!,we also lost to Sheffield United, Bolton and Fulham which is not the sign of the title winners. We were comfortably 4^th and tied on points with 3^rd place Liverpool. We were not making any progress in being able to challenge for the league but were having small improvements, for example against the top 4.

We went out of the Champions League in the first knockout round to PSV after an 83^rd minute header from Alex put us 1-2 down on aggregate. We managed to top our group and still went out in the qualifying round! Who would have thought that could happen, especially with so many opinons flying around about finishing 1^st or 2^nd in the group stage lately!

We went out in the FA Cup in the 5^th round to Blackburn in a reply after we could only draw 0-0 with them at home in the first game. In the 3^rd round we played Liverpool away, the game where Rosicky scored 2, one of them being an absolute peach! Im sure you remember it.

The Carling Cup was the year we got to the final and played Chelsea. We had managed to put out Liverpool where Baptista scored 4 at Anfield, WBA, Everton and Spurs in the semi final.
The final I went to and Theo scored one of my favourite ever Arsenal goals. We were not fancied as winners at all, we started a team of youngsters and reserves amongst a couple of first teamers. We managed to go 1-0 up but that man Drogba scored twice meaning we lost another final we had reached. Im sure you remember it all kicked off as well with both managers having to go onto the pitch to calm things down, Kolo and Adebayor were sent off in the late stages. Diaby did kick John Terry in the head though and knocked him out cold, every cloud and that!

In summary we had reached another final giving ourselves another chance to win a trophy. We were not close to finishing top of the league but results had improved and consistency was the missing ingredient. We went out of the Champions League too early I think, and didn’t do anything of note in the FA Cup. Being up against Chelsea in the final made it difficult to win the Carling Cup but we have to take that as being in with a chance of winning another trophy.

2 seasons with no trophy and counting!

Cheers for reading
Norby
Follow @mattwigley

*You can read part 1 here
https://shewore.com/2014/01/16/8-years-and-weve-won-fk-all/

Of late I have been thinking more and more about doing a series of write-ups about that song which other Premier League teams sing at us as we travel around their grounds.
The sentiment behind it implies that we have not been challenging or fighting for trophies, we have not been close in the league or finals, we have simply been doing enough to finish 4^th and get by as a club.
This is false information as we all know, we have challenged and been close to winning the title, we have been in finals and have been closer than people know to collecting that coveted first trophy since the move to Emirates Stadium. I want to cover the seasons since that last trophy, the FA Cup win against Man United, to show how close we have become and what scuppered us in the final stages, where we fell down.

We are closer than ever this season to being able to win the league, we are fighting as a team in every game and showing we deserve to be in the run in, lets remind ourselves of past seasons where we did the same and see what went wrong.

Unfortunately after that opening to this review, the first season covered was not a competitive one in the league. 2005/06 was the first season after we won the FA Cup and we did well to scrape into the top 4 after a last day disaster for our North London neighbours at Upton Park.
It was the last season at Highbury and we had sold Paddy Vieira to Juventus with Thierry Henry taking over as captain.We had signed Alex Hleb and Nick Bendtner most notably in the summer, with Diaby, Adebayor and Theo coming in the January window.
It was an indifferent start to the campaign losing away at Chelsea in our 2^nd game but being 2^nd in the league after 5 games. Who could forget the infamous penalty attempt by Pires and Henry against Man City when they tried to replicate Cruyff and Olsen’s genius penalty for Ajax, it ended in disaster when Bobby touched the ball twice.
Our title charge ended before Xmas with 3 defeats in a row, the first time under Wenger that this had happened.
The main thing that grabbed me in scrolling back through the results for this season was our games against the other top 4 teams. Against Man United, Liverpool and Chelsea home and away we only won 1 game, against Liverpool at home, and drew at home to Man Utd. This is clearly not going to win you the league, especially when you are losing to teams such as Middlesbrough, West Brom, Bolton, Blackburn and West Ham.
We finished the season well losing only once in our last 11 games. The last day win at home to Wigan meant we finished 4^th after Spurs had lost 2-1 at West Ham, the now appropriately named Lasagna-Gate controversy.

The one shining light was our Champions League run, we got to the final for the first time in our history, we went to Paris to see our team play in the most prestigious competition in world football. I was there to see it and ill never forget it, to see your team play in that game, to be in the stadium watching your club compete in that game is something special. I wasn’t distraught that we lost, I stayed and clapped Barca off the pitch but there are regrets there for me. I wish the ref would have let play go on and let them score instead of sending off Jens, keep 11 men on the field so we could compete in the game. Henry could have won us the game when we were winning 1-0, he could have put us up 2-0 and I think we would have held on but it wasn’t to be. I was proud to be there. In the run to the final we played some big teams and put them out, one of the most famous wins was Madrid away with Henrys goal, again I was there to see this and its simply something you will never forget, winning in the Bernabeu is a great feeling. It was ultimately the thing that kept our season alive, doing well in the Champions League gave us the momentum to finish the season strong and get into the top 4.

In the domestic cups we went out in the Semi Finals to Wigan and out in the 4^th round in the FA Cup away at the hands of Bolton.

In Summary, it was the first season after we had won the FA Cup, we sold our captain and didn’t have a good league season only finishing 4^th on the last days results. We got to the Champions League Final but lost, still had a chance at winning a trophy only the first season after winning our last.

Cheers for reading
Norby
Follow @mattwigley