I just wanted to get back to playing attacking football after my time in Italy. It was a little difficult at first but the atmosphere and the fans were just fantastic.
When I retired in 2006, I stayed for a further two years in England. I stayed because I wanted to be in England without being a footballer, without the rhythm. I wanted to enjoy the city.
It will be a hard game if you think about winning a championship. We need to think about our own game at the moment and focus on getting good results especially over the Christmas period.
I think these awards are always nice for a player but they also reflect well on the club. It shows that Arsenal's performance have been noted all around the world and it helps by having so many good players around me.
We're still a great team. In your mind you can understand that but, emotionally, we needed to express the same belief. We came out full of fire and scored two early goals, two really beautiful goals, and that changed everything.
Sometimes you feel the emotion. You think this might be my last pre-season or my last Champions League match. But, overall, those thoughts aren't important right now. But the time will soon come.
So here, at Arsenal, we are often surprised when we are shown some of the newspapers, and at the bottom of an article there is a line saying if you know of anyone who had an affair with a player, call this number. It is very strange to us.
It's fantastic for Arsenal, and for English football as well. You've got an English club with a lot of young English talent committing themselves to a club.
Arsene Wenger's idea is not only to play good football. It's to play good football to win. In my day, we knew that with our style we could hurt teams and win trophies too. But we did it our way, with the positional game, passing, movement.
When you beat a team so often - especially like this season when Chelsea had already lost three times to us - you know people expect you to do it again. But you also know they're going to be even more motivated to finally win.
Our two biggest rivals had adjusted their whole season to this one aim of beating us. Of course, it is a big compliment that they were so motivated to stop us but it was very tough to face two matches like that so close together. Suddenly three trophies are down to one.
