Enjoying the ride

Trophies or trophyless, watching Arsenal is fun. I'll be making the most of it.

So there’s been one post here since September. Can you tell I’ve had a baby

Rewatching games and putting pieces together hasn’t been much of an option for me lately. So here’s something a little more from the heart.

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Monday, the day Arsenal beat Sheffield United 6-0 at Bramall Lane, was the anniversary of 2023’s much more dramatic 3-2 win over Bournemouth. After both wins, for very different reasons, it’s been hard not to feel like Arsenal will win the league and, by extension, that anything else will be soul-destroying.

Now I should say I don’t think Arsenal will win the league, not up against two similarly performing teams who, to me, have friendlier fixtures remaining. Not to mention we sit third and have played both teams at home. Still, at this point Arsenal have a decent shot at it (and the Champions League) and are playing superb football that I want to cherish as much as possible for as long as possible.

At some point on Monday afternoon, as fellow Gooners made the journey from London to Sheffield, I found the time to watch a video the Premier League posted on YouTube showing the full final 10 minutes of that Bournemouth game exactly a year earlier.

A few months ago, I don’t think I’d have been able to do that. But, like with Danny Welbeck’s late winner against Leicester back in 2016, I’m once again able to watch Nelson’s winner and have it transport me back to March 2023 and the adrenaline, the excitement, the belief that rushed through me when the net bulged. The memories are tinged with regret, sure, but I hold them fondly all the same.

What a moment last March. A moment that gave us all so much belief and so much enjoyment. I couldn’t help but think about how one yard would’ve taken it all away. Nelson could’ve shot one yard further to the right. Or Chris Mepham could’ve been stood one more yard to his left and he’d have blocked Nelson’s shot.

For all the inevitable, overly simplistic talk of “bottling” that is now aimed at whoever doesn’t win a big trophy every season, it’s worth remembering that a couple of yards over the course of the season is probably all that will separate the champions and the team(s) just behind them. For all the planning, all the talent, all the hard work and the psychology behind it all, that’s how close and how random these things are. That’s all it can take to decide a title race. A yard. Sometimes much less than that.

And so it seems utterly ridiculous not to enjoy every good moment as much as possible.

That joy is fragile. The memory of that joy months later can become tainted so easily. A singular moment can mean everything in the grand scheme of things or it can, if we’re not careful, end up meaning absolutely nothing. I’m not prepared to allow that happen to all of these moments when I look back on them in years to come. Not winning the league with a team like this, playing the way they’re playing, is heartbreaking, but there’s still so much enjoyment to be had along the way.

Of course, it’s impossible not to look ahead and just enjoy each moments as they come. Every kick of a ball right now is absolutely loaded with stress and relief and greater meaning. But step back from it all for a second and you can appreciate we are witnessing something special right now.

Mikel Arteta’s side have become the first team in English league history to win three consecutive away games by 5+ goals, a record that will surely be extended with a trip to Manchester City next on the horizon.

They have recorded the most consecutive halves (eight) with 2+ goals scored in Premier League history.

They have scored the most goals across any seven-game stretch (31) in Premier League history.

They have won seven league games (and counting) in a row for the second season in a row. The last time Arsenal won eight consecutive league matches was 2014/15. Arsenal never won seven (or more) league games in a row in back-to-back seasons under Arsène Wenger.

With 27 games played, Arsenal have scored the most and conceded the fewest goals in the Premier League. Arsenal have the most clean sheets (11) of any team in the league, two ahead of Liverpool.

And all of it could lead to absolutely nothing. We’re currently third.

But that doesn’t mean it means nothing. If we don’t win the league, it can feel like it was all for nothing for many that may mean they draw a line under the season and don’t look back on it again. But they way Arsenal are making us feel now, in this moment, means everything. The joy, the excitement, the hope. It’s an absolute privilege.

It was a privilege to watch Arsenal in 2007/08, it was a privilege to surprisingly lead a title race (before spectacularly falling out of it) in 2013/14. In some of the years between those it was a privilege to watch Cesc Fàbregas at the peak of his powers — perhaps the highest peak and greatest powers any professional footballer has still had as a teenager, then as a captain in their early 20s — and Robin van Persie play for Arsenal. The last time they played together, May 2011, is probably the last time until now that Arsenal fans could claim to be watching not just one but two of the very best players on the planet week in, week out. It’s been a long wait.

We didn’t win titles with those players. And as desperately as I wish we did, I’m not bitter that we didn’t. Time heals all wounds, right? When I look back, I remember how I felt week to week. How much pleasure watching Arsenal gave me, how much I looked forward to each game, how I would bask in performances and then the highlights until it was time to start looking ahead to the next one.

That feeling, those feelings, felt a lifetime away in 2016-2021. There were moments — there always are — and there were FA Cups. But truly enjoying Arsenal, and not Arsenal being a lifelong obligation I couldn’t step away from, was a distant memory and the idea of that changing to what it is now so soon was absurd.

Yet here we are.

I saw some things on Twitter on Monday night. Digs at Zinchenko, who didn’t play. Complaints that Cédric Soares did.

It’s hard to avoid or escape all the point-scoring that goes on or agendas and narratives that have to be hammered home after every single thing that happens and I wish everything could be a little bit less about those things. Because this is supposed to be fun and if you aren’t having fun now, I don’t know what to tell you.

I have no idea what comes of this season. If it ends trophyless it will, once again, feel like a swift kick between the legs both preceded and then followed by a punch in the stomach. But it felt like that 10 months ago too. By August I was ready to feel like that all over again. Now, in early March, Arsenal have given me all the terrifying hope and exhilarating enjoyment I could’ve hoped for and then some.

I’ll be back home next week to take in the Brentford and Porto games in person, feeling very grateful that I’m in the privileged position of that even being something I can do.

Before then, I guess I’ll find the time to watch Monday’s highlights again. I’m going to soak up all the fun I can for as long as it lasts so I can look back on 2023/24 fondly no matter how much it makes me squirm — if indeed it does — by the end of May.

Thanks for reading, welcome back (to myself, I guess, but also to anyone who got this far) and here’s to The Arsenal, however this season pans out.