Teenage midfield star feels Carling Cup final is just the beginning for this Arsenal side

JACK Wilshere helped fire Arsenal past Ipswich to their first cup final for four years – and believes this is just the beginning of an era of success for this side.

Wilshere will head to Wembley with his Gunners team-mates and more than 30,000 Arsenal fans on February 27 after the 3-0 win over the Championship side completed a 3-1 aggregate semi-final win.

And the 19-year-old told the Gazette afterwards: “We want to win trophies and we haven’t done that for a while so this is a great opportunity. It would be massive for the club.

“Any trophy is a trophy and it has been five years since we won our last one. We know that if we win one, hopefully it’ll come along, and then it’ll open up more for us.

“When you win a trophy, it brings confidence and if we can get confidence for the rest of the season then who knows what can happen,” added Wilshere, who in his first full season with the club is hoping to achieve what others have been waiting almost six years to do.

“There is a hunger among the players to win something,” he said. “It has been so long that we have almost forgotten what it is like. We need to bring that back into the football club – this is a big football club and we need trophies.”

The 2005 FA Cup win over Manchester United is the last time Arsenal won any silverware, and the trophy cabinet at the Emirates Stadium is still bare after the move from Highbury in 2006.

And Wilshere admitted: “I was about 14. I remember the game – I was sat at home with my family and [Patrick] Vieira scored the last penalty. You could see what it meant to them and we just want to do that again.

“Being a member of the team, they are hungry for trophies and it rubs off on you. Even though I have only been here a year, I want to win trophies – that’s what this club is about and we need to do that.

“Before the game, everyone was saying this was a great opportunity – just get a goal and it’ll open up and it did,” said Wilshere, whose pass released Nicklas Bendtner for the vital opening goal before Laurent Koscielny headed home a second and captain Cesc Fabregas added a third.

And it was his midfield partner Fabregas who Wilshere singled out for special praise afterwards, and who he hopes can win his first silverware as Arsenal captain at Wembley next month.

“He is a great captain and that is all he wants to do with this club is lift trophies,” said Wilshere. “I learn a lot from him. Just playing with him is so easy and some of the passes he makes are unbelievable.

“His performances have shown he is a great captain, a great leader, he loves the club and he just wants to win.”