To call Arsenal's season successful just because they won the Double could seem a trifle simplistic. The north London club's mastery has been so evident over the past eight months that they also bagged the Manager of the Year and Player of the Year awards, and the Premier Youth League and Southern Junior Floodlit Cup, not to mention Groundsman of the Year. They even picked up the Programme of the Year award, and Arsenal's women lifted their FA Cup. The 29-player turnaround during Arsene Wenger's 19-month reign, and the shifts in diet and training techniques, have been as dramatic as the results they have achieved.

It is a revolution which began with open hostility and yesterday ended in an open-top bus driving triumphantly through north London streets.

"We always felt Arsene would be a manager to put the club at the top where it belongs," said the Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein. "It was a judgment call by the board," added Dein, who had known Wenger for 11 years. "Yes, the knives were out. But you have to have the courage of your convictions."

When one thinks that Wenger bought Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit and Nicolas Anelka for roughly the same price that Newcastle forked out for Gary Speed, that was some conviction.

And compare Speed with Arsenal's own left-sided wide man Marc Overmars, a world-class player bought for not much more than the Wales-class Speed, but scorer of 16 goals this season.

Dennis Bergkamp and Ian Wright were again absent from the starting line-up but this has been a sub-plot nagging the whole of Arsenal's season and the Cup final faith shown in Christopher Wreh and Anelka - perhaps ahead of Wright now in the pecking order - was a fitting tribute to all those other squad players such as Alex Manninger, David Platt, Steve Bould and Stephen Hughes who came into the team when needed and literally did not let the side down.

A place in the Champions League will examine Wenger's ability to shift his team up yet another gear as well as improving the squad without upsetting the spirit.

"You cannot succeed in England without mental strength," said Wenger. "If you are not strong enough you don't survive."

Wenger is currently mulling over a new £6 million, five-year contract. "It is no secret we have had offers from people for him," said Dein. "One came from the French national side and two from European clubs. But we are confident we will keep him. He has taken the team to a different dimension and I believe he is totally committed to this club and its supporters."

And now, it has to be said, all of them to him.