by Nia Griffiths

Speaking at the victory parade on Sunday, Aaron Ramsey predicted that our second consecutive FA Cup win could be a stepping stone for greater things next season.

The Welshman was all smiles on top of one of our open topped buses this weekend and wanted to highlight just how big of an achievement winning the same trophy two years on the bounce is.

“It has been a successful season now,” Rambo said. “It is not an easy thing to do to win back-to-back FA Cups. It hasn’t happened a lot in the history of this competition so it is pretty special thing for us to take into next year and if we can get off to a good start we can focus on the league and go from there.”

Arsenal have now won the trophy 12 times – more than any other team – overtaking Manchester United, who have won it 11 times.

Moving on to our potential for success next season, Rambo believes we’re truly closing the gap on our title rivals.

“I think we are closing the gap on Chelsea,” he said. “I think we have learned in the big games how to manage them and it will be important to go into next season now with that sort of mentality.

“If we can get off to a good start next year, put ourselves into contention we’ll have a good year and challenge for the Premier League.”

Although we stumbled a bit in a couple of our final games and finished 12 points behind the eventual title winners, our improvement over the course of the season was phenomenal. We found our groove, main players came back from injury and we grew this confidence, which saw us finally seeing our big games and grinding out hard-fought victories.

If we have a season with more or less all our players fit, performing the way we have been during the second half of this season, we will be challenging for the Premier League next season.