One way or another, Arsenal will be a very different club next season.. As the goals flowed, they chanted “boring, boring Arsenal” with a sense of irony only those supporters acclaiming a mightily impressive League and FA Cup Double championship can muster. They have done so, under Ars? Wenger, repeating his achievement of 1998, with a liberating concept of football, underpinned by a resolute rearguard, which even those residents of Salford, Merseyside and Tyneside, would begrudgingly admire. Here, finally, Wenger’s men could relax after a season of relentless pressure. Indeed, so deficient in concentration did Wenger’s team appear at times that they were in danger of ending a run of 12 successive Premiership victories with the ignominy of defeat by a team of notoriously poor travellers on this, the momentous occasion of their championship trophy presentation.Yet, ultimately, a brace from Thierry Henry, which installed him as the Premiership’s top scorer and winner of the Golden Boot, with 32 goals – “For someone who was convinced he wasn’t a natural goalscorer, it’s amazing,” said his manager – and one apiece from Dennis Bergkamp and former Evertonian Francis Jeffers meant that Arsenal claimed the championship by seven points from runners-up Liverpool.

Perhaps even more satisfyingly, the Gunners finished 10 points clear of United. “The star of the season was the squad,” declared Wenger, as the Highbury faithful celebrated long and loudly “This team are tremendous. Their togetherness is fantastic.”This was always going to be a carnival rather than a classic, an occasion for unabashed emotion at which the tears of exultation were quietly shed along with those of sadness as Highbury bade fare-well to Lee Dixon, retiring after nearly 16 years at the club; Bob Wilson, goalkeeper and coach here for 39 years; and maybe Tony Adams, at Arsenal for an eternity, but who, having lifted the FA Cup last Saturday, sat this one out.In addition, one Frenchman, Gilles Grimandi, departs and possibly another will follow. You imagine the question of whether Patrick Vieira joins those other P45 recipients could well occupy much of Wenger’s summer. Despite the Arsenal badge-kissing ritual after Wednesday’s game and claims that he wishes to see out the remaining two years of his contract, financial considerations will presumably be paramount for a player, who, in fairness to him, has been at Highbury for approaching six years. These days, that is almost worthy of a loyalty medal being struck.

Time will tell whether his protestations are real, or if he is bound for Real Madrid.For Wenger, the Vieira issue will be his prime concern as the manager prepares to justify his assertion that the completion of his second Premiership-FA Cup Double is evidence of a “power shift” from the north-west to north London. Wenger would be the first to acknowledge that Arsenal have underperformed in Europe for several seasons, including this one, in which his team failed to qualify from the second group phase. Until Wenger corrects that trend, his nemesis Sir Alex Ferguson, who responded with magnaminity to United’s Premiership capitulation, will continue to stand supreme on the pantheon of managerial greats.There were presentations aplenty before the game – to Footballer of the Year Robert Pires and Dennis Bergkamp for his ITV goal of the season, an extraordinary effort against Newcastle in March And there had to be something for Freddie Ljungberg. He claimed the Premiership Player of the Month award.Wenger, evidently determined to complete the season in the style to which their devotees have become accustomed, resisted any inclination to introduce aspirants from Arsenal’s Academy. Vieira and Ljungberg were on the bench, David Seaman and Sol Campbell were rested and Adams and Keown were injured, but otherwise Arsenal’s line-up yielded the visitors little optimism So it was to prove. Within four minutes, Ashley Cole had cut back the ball from the goal-line, and though Alan Stubbs appeared to have control of the situation, he passed the ball obligingly across goal to Bergkamp, who duly despatched his 14th goal of the season.