It’s Arsenal. They’ll be as Arsenal as ever.
First home match of the season. It used to be the opportunity to have a look around, see what improvements have been done and sink inwardly when you saw that the miserable bastard who was sat behind you last year had renewed. Now you can take a age to work out how to sort your tickets out, wait even longer in the queue because the readers don’t work then find out where your new seat is and see who’s sitting where you used to be before you got kicked out for someone who’s paying five times as much for a bit more padding and a programme.
And then the opposition arrive. This time it’s Arsenal, and anyone who can’t write a few thousand words about thir blight on football isn’t trying. Old-school football was enjoyable, it was fun. It didn’t take itself too seriously and it might have been a bit rough at times but that was all part of the attraction. New football is Arsenal; smug, self-satisfied and too far up its own arse to care about anything else.
It’s a sign of how far we’ve come that Arsenal seem to have developed some sort of dislike of us. Maybe it’s because we’re showing them how wrong they were to sack Unai, or because he’s taken their reserve keeper and turned him into the best in the world. It might be because they know we’re looking capable of taking their place. It’s certainly a long way from the days of Coventry and Bristol City hating us.
Arenal have got a manager who isn’t anywhere near as good as their last one and nothing else matters. We haven’t had a player injured yet and if that’s not tempting fate nothing is. Beating West Ham showed that we don’t intend to let last season be a one-off. Beating Arsenal will show that we can do even better.
