It's Good to be Back, How Times Have Changed, and Chelsea on Sunday

First thing's first - it's been a while since my last blog post, September 2011 to be exact. During that period of absence I have to admit it's been the most frustrating period in my lifetime as an Arsenal fan and I somewhat expected the same outcome every year, we'd pretend to challenge and then fall away, because of this I wouldn't expect us to win every game like in the past - we were no longer favourites. yes our football was still to a good standard, but it wasn't the counter-attacking team who played 'sexy' football.

Knowing that it is never easy supporting the Arsenal, as they never make it easy on and off the pitch, but the whilst at the same time during 2011-2014 Arsenal have promised so much and have yet failed. We've lost key players and never truly had a squad depth capable of coping with injuries to the first eleven.

During these years we've had to hold back spending and selling our best players every year to cover the loan from building our impressive stadium at Ashburton Grove. The signing of Mesut Özil signified that we could now and go out and make a marquee signing. The German gave such a lift to the fans, the players, the club as a whole, as it showed we could compete with the best in signing world class talent, and he is world class, no matter what Michael Owen says, and yes he is better than Raheem Sterling. We won a the FA Cup last season and with the help of Özil we got to Wembley, the game against Everton comes to mind.

To truly confirm that we had passed selling our best players and now able to relax the purse strings without any financial consequences, the signing of Chile's best player and one of Barcelona's top wide men, Alex Sanchez, proved that we had moved forward and that we can now afford to buy at least one top world class talent every summer.

As we've seen the team has grown strong with an array of attacking players from Giroud, Welbeck, Alexis, Cazorla, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott, But what we have to special thanks to is Francis Coquelin being recalled from on loan at Charlton Athletic. He has been that solid dependable defensive midfield we've missed since the days of Gilberto.

We now see a squad just a few world class players from truly challenging for the title next season, and Sunday against Chelsea will be a true test of whether Wenger can finally challenege Chelsea with Mourinho in charge. With Wenger not having beaten a Chelsea side managed by Mourinho, this would be the best opportunity to do so. Chelsea aren't playing great football and only need to secure points here and there and Mourinho wouldn't want to lose this one and will most likely park the bus in front of their goal to nullify our attacking threat.

I expect us to have too much for Chelsea at home on this occasion with such a competitive squad looking to start the FA Cup final, this match will be a great audition in who to take into the big games. I think the team picks itself at the moment with Opsina, Bellerin, Gabriel (Mertesacker injured), Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Cazorla, Ramsey, Özil, Alexis, Giroud.

It's great feeling to be a Gooner again, and even if the other lot down Seven Sisters still don't think we can challenge for major titles, we shall see next season.

Gooner Till I Die.