Arsenal added the motto ‘Forward’ to the bottom of the club’s crest for the 125th anniversary season, and for a large slice of the season, that was looking like an embarrassing move. It seemed like we were a club in decline, and one that was definitely moving backwards. No-one could have envisaged that we’d end the season with a higher points total than the previous campaign, and finish a place higher.

It might only be a small step, but we have gone forward as a team and as a club this season. Whilst we should be rightly pleased at how we recovered from the dreadful start, this achievement shouldn’t be looked at as the be all and end all for this group of players. It needs to be the start of something.

We’ve stumbled over the line, but finishing third not only puts us back in the Champions League group stage, it gives us more clout when negotiating new contracts for certain members of the current squad, and helps us in the transfer market to attract players. One of the reasons for the ill-advised trolley dash at the end of last summer was that we weren’t able to guarantee potential signings that they’d be playing in Europe’s top competition because of the Champions League qualifier with Udinese. We won’t have that problem this summer.

At 2.45pm on Saturday, it looked like we were going to be in desperate need of Tottenham suffering another lasagne induced bout of food poisoning, as in 2006. However at 4pm on Sunday, things weren’t looking quite as desperate. However given Arsenal’s remarkable ability to throw away our good work this season, we should probably start planning in the kitchen just to make sure we secure third place.

If Arsenal fail to finish in the top three, it will be our own fault. We’ve had the chances to secure that position, but have so far contrived to blow every one of them. To have one final chance is unexpected, but it must be utilised. On the basis of the season we do deserve to be where we are, you’re not third by accident after 37 games, because whilst we’ve had our failings, so have our closest challengers. The team should learn from the numerous mistakes we made against Norwich and give everything to take advantage of our final chance, as failure to do so could still result in Europa League football.

Our recent run is concerning ahead of the final game because we haven’t won for four matches now. After our win against Wolves, we’ve lost to Wigan, and drawn with Chelsea, Stoke and Norwich. A win in any of those games, and we’d virtually be safe in third place. It’s amazing that our fate is still in our hands, but the form ahead of a must-win match doesn’t fill me with confidence. At least in the draws with Chelsea and Stoke, we generally defended well. That wasn’t the case against Norwich.

After the great comeback this season, Arsenal are stumbling towards the finish line as the need to secure third place in the league has become greater. Chelsea's unexpected success in Barcelona means we have to take the possibility of them winning the Champions League seriously. The thought of Chelsea being the first London team to win the Champions League isn't a good one, but to have them also put us in the Europa League by taking the fourth spot in next year's tournament, would be close to unbearable.

There's two ways to look at the Stoke match. It's easy to say that we dropped two points against a team that haven't had a brilliant season. However, on the positive side, it was a point gained at a stadium where we've had little success in recent seasons. With Newcastle's defeat, it's a shame we couldn't extend our points lead in third, but we still have third place in our hands. Beat Norwich City and West Brom, and we come third. Simple.

However this is Arsenal, it's unlikely to be simple. We can still optimistic about the two games though, as there were plenty of positives to take from the Stoke draw. We've been quick to go into our shell at the Britannia before, but we saw an Arsenal team on Saturday that were willing to face up to the more direct Stoke tactics, and then play our own attacking game.

The season isn’t over, but watching the match between Arsenal and Chelsea on Saturday, it would have been easy to think that both sides had nothing to play for. For Arsenal, we are in danger of undoing the good work of the second half of the season by not finishing off the job of finishing third. Apart from Newcastle’s good run of form, we’re fortunate that the teams behind us can’t put a string of good results together.

The team looked fatigued against Chelsea, which is understandable at this stage of the season, however when the opposition were in a similar state and were mainly focussed on defending, it’s frustrating that we couldn’t win the game. It’s hard to be angry at the result though, because it was a poor game, and Arsenal didn’t force the issue or grab the initiative to press forward for a win.

We’re still in a good position to finish third, but we have to take the last three matches seriously and not just let the season drift and meander away, as it did at the end of last season. The negative vibes that built up during the last few weeks of last season then continued into the summer, and things hardly went smoothly in the last off-season. Fatigue does play a part, but it’s also the case for every team. The players should be able to deal with it and be prepared to give everything, otherwise we’ll find ourselves slip out of the top three, and possibly the top four.

I'll start this blog with some honesty. I don't like Wigan. I went there in 2010 and saw Arsenal lose 3-2 as another hopeful title bid spectacularly crumbled and for obvious reasons didn't enjoy my trip to the DW as much as I'd hoped. I don't really like that Wigan can't get more than 200 fans to come to an away game. I sometimes feel that there are clubs that would bring more to the circus of the Premier League than Wigan Athletic.

However I have nothing but the upmost respect for Roberto Martinez, and Dave Whelan as their chairman. Whereas other chairmen might have sacked a manager that was in charge of a team that seemed in free-fall, Whelan stuck by Martinez and it's paying off at this stage of the season as they are now looking like a good bet to avoid relegation. Loyalty can go a long way in football. Martinez hasn't just got Wigan playing boring, functional football either. They play with ambition and he has developed a different formation that is hard for anyone to play against. Martinez is getting the best out of a limited squad at the most important part of the season.

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However the best thing about the way Wigan Athletic are playing at the moment, and thing Arsenal really should learn from, is to pressure the ball high up the pitch, to play with freedom and without fear. A classic Wenger-ism to say that we have the handbrake on; Wigan's was non-existent at the Emirates whilst ours was firmly on. With so few games left this season, that shouldn't have been the case.

I thought the match away at Wolves would be more nerve racking than Sunday’s Manchester City game. Despite our good recent run, I can never be sure which Arsenal team will turn up for each match, and with memories of the QPR defeat still fresh, there was a fear in the back of my mind that we’d end up being remembered as the team that Terry Connor’s Wolves actually managed to beat.

As it turned out, I haven’t been that relaxed when watching Arsenal for a while. To be 2-0 up inside 11 minutes adds a large degree of comfort to any match, but when the opposition are down to ten men, you immediately feel like victory should be assured. The team still had to do the job well though, and whilst we could have scored more goals, and could have absolutely demolished Wolves, Arsenal were professional in the approach and got an important three points.

Wolves played well considering they were a man down for the majority of the game. They certainly attacked us more than Manchester City did with 11 men, and they closed us down well. However there was always a sense that should Wolves threaten a way back into the game, we’d just step up our game and kill the match off. That’s effectively what Yossi Benayoun did; just moments after Wojciech Szczesny’s superb save.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of the media focus after Sunday's match has been on Manchester City's fading title challenge, and a certain Italian striker. However this being an Arsenal blog, it's time to redress the balance and give our team the credit they deserve for a fantastic win.

The victory wasn't without its difficulties, mainly of our own making with some interesting finishing in front of goal, however no-one could deny that we deserved to win and outplayed and outclassed our opponents. On paper, the match was between two teams with completely different philosophies on running a football club, with one attempting to buy the best players, and the other having a self-sustaining business model. There was also one team chasing the title, and the other 13 points behind them in a scrap for the top four. If you were an outside observer watching the game, you'd never have guessed correctly which club was which.

We looked like the team that were chasing the title because we actually were intent on attacking to try and win the game. It's been a while since we were involved in the title race right until the end of the season, but we know as Arsenal fans that in these sorts of games, you need to make a statement. City didn't do that. It was partly because we didn't allow them to. Arsenal put the QPR defeat behind them and played with the confidence that comes with winning seven games in a row. However, Manchester City again came to the Emirates and were mainly concerned with defending.

Arsenal's recent run of form has been fantastic, but our celebrations about claiming third place have been premature. The ‘Mind The Gap' jokes, Spurs' demise and our own winning streak have been worth celebrating and enjoying, however we can't assume that we'll finish above Tottenham and that third place is ours.

Momentum is a strong thing in football, and we've used it brilliantly to our advantage recently as we turned the momentum against Spurs through Bacary Sagna's thumping header in the North London Derby. We now have to work hard to make sure that the slip up at Loftus Road, and Tottenham's win against Swansea, isn't as big a momentum swinger as Sagna's header. Maybe it was complacency, but the team seemed to take their eyes off the ball against Queens Park Rangers and there wasn't quite the same level of work rate and incisive attacking that we displayed during our winning run.

We do need to put the defeat in some perspective though. The fact we're in a battle for third place at all is brilliant considering how dark some of days were this season, and we have to give credit to QPR. They've beaten Chelsea and Liverpool at Loftus Road, and are in a relegation scrap where others around them are picking up points. They had to raise their game, and they did.

Three goals, three points, a three point lead and third. Three really is a magic number at the moment. Obviously in the longer term we want the number one to be the magic number, but it’s hard to complain about it being 3. We haven’t just claimed third, we’re now beginning to cement it and move clear of others. Complacency isn’t setting in and we’re playing fantastic football. It feels great to be a Gooner again.

There is still a long way to go in the season as we’ve got to face Manchester City and Chelsea at the Emirates, and travel to Stoke, but we’re in such good form, that even some of my pessimism is being quashed. We have a real chance to beating those sides because the aura about this Arsenal team is constantly growing.

It has to be said that Aston Villa weren’t overly challenging opponents. I’m not sure what Alex McLeish is doing to that team at the moment, but they’re struggling and playing some poor football. However we didn’t allow them the chance to get in the game. When they came to the Emirates in the FA Cup earlier in the season, we were a bit tentative going forward and allowed them to get a foothold in the game, which subsequently turned into a 2-0 lead. Even though we came back and won that match, Arsenal look like a different team to the one we were watching two months ago.

I think I’m going to give up trying to predict anything this season. The Premier League, as proved by most British clubs failing in Europe, isn’t quite at the level it was in terms of quality, but the excitement, tension and unpredictable results produced have more than made up for it. It isn’t just in one-off games either. I’d never have predicted that Arsenal would be in the top three at any point in this campaign considering our start to the season, and our start to 2012.

Now we’re actually there, we can’t assume that the job is done. As much as Spurs’ demise is hilarious, they’re still only a point behind us and have some winnable fixtures left. However confidence and momentum can be powerful things in sport. To make a change to recent seasons, we’re heading into the run-in with some confidence and momentum flowing through the team, while others around us continue to fail. Given the previous fragility of Arsenal, I can’t bring myself to be overly confident that we’ll hold onto third, but now it’s hard not to be positive about the way we’re playing.

The Everton game was slightly different to our recent wins, mainly because we didn’t have to go behind to click into gear, and because we allowed Wojciech Szczesny to have a quiet match. After Spurs lost at Goodison Park, I was really concerned that the hosts would be pumped up for the match and that we’d suffer up north again. Instead, we dominated the match in the early stages and looked capable of cutting Everton open every time we attacked.