In terms of news that matters, there was only one story yesterday and that was the one about five young Arsenal players signing up to long term deals and showing their faith in the club. Of course, two of the players had signed their deals last month (Jenks and Ox) but by way of a PR exercise and a massive FU to Theo Walcott, it worked a charm.

At a time when people are questioning the direction the club is heading in and focusing on the players who want to leave who are, let’s face it, in the minority, to have Jack Wilshere, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Aaron Ramsey, Kieran Gibbs and Carl Jenkinson commit their future spoke volumes.

It has been a dark few years for Arsenal, there can be no getting away from that. We were told there was money to be spend when there clearly wasn’t and now that we are coming out of the period of financial exile, we are starting to hear fragments of truths regarding our financial position since we moved to the Emirates.

I’ve often wondered why the club didn’t just come out and tell us they had no money to spend until I saw someone tweet that the first rule of business is that you never admit you have no money. People will point to the xxx millions that we are supposed to have had in the bank but ask yourself would you spend all your savings after you’ve just bought yourself a fancy new mansion and weren’t sure how the job market was going to pan out over the next few years?

Arsenal were prudent and while there is no doubt that some of the money which has been spent could have been perhaps spent more wisely, they took the best course of action to secure the future of the club.

And that’s where we are now, starting to see the light at the end of the Arsenal tunnel. The players, each one of them who could no doubt play for another club, have chosen to put their faith in Arsene and Arsenal. I truly feel like with yesterday’s announcement a corner has been turned.

People will, no doubt, ponder the decision to reward Aaron Ramsey who has, admittedly, been in a shocking run of form. But it isn’t about rewarding him, it’s about tying him down and I feel sorry if you are not able to see the potential he has, the horrendous two years he has suffered through and the fact that he is still only just in his 20’s.

Anyway, it was a great day and gave the majority of Arsenal fans something to smile about and those types of days have been few and far between this year.

The Ox tweeted his delight at his new deal, saying

Delighted to have signed a new contract along with the rest of the young lads. Really looking forward to the coming years at this club!

While Wenger told the official site

“We are delighted that these five young players have all signed new long-term contracts. The plan is to build a team around a strong basis of young players, in order to get them to develop their talent at the Club. Jack is certainly the best known, the leader of this group – but the other four players are exceptional footballers, and we’re very happy that we could conclude their new deals at the same time.

“Gibbs, Jenkinson, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ramsey and Wilshere represent a core of the squad and it’s an extension for a long period for all of them. I’m a strong believer in stability and I believe when you have a core of British players, it’s always easier to keep them together and that’s what we’ll try to achieve going forward.”

In other news there wasn’t that much about really, well, there might have been but I had a lazy day. In the morning we were in talks with Huntelaar about signing him in January and by the afternoon he was getting ready to sign a new deal with Schalke. I’m not sure if that’s a reflection of our negotiation technique or simply poor reporting by the media.

Alex Song rambled on about some stuff which included the words ‘no offence to Arsenal’ while offending Arsenal and there was the usual transfer guff floating around, none of which I can be overly bothered going in to.

Tomorrow we’ll be looking forward to the weekend’s game, from last up last weekend to first this, we don’t have much longer until the next game against Wigan where we will hope to see more of what we witnessed against Reading, minus, of course, the second half wobble.

Til then.