Anxiety

‘We have earned the right to be in a great position in four competitions and in the next four months, we’re going to live and play with enjoyment, with a lot of courage and with the conviction that we’re going to win it. And this is going to be the mindset and where we’re going to put the energy.

‘And I’m just hoping that everybody that is related to this club, especially our supporters, jump on that boat because this is the way that we’re going to live the next four months because we deserve to live like this.’ I have always felt that Mikel Arteta is an excellent communicator (which ought to be an uncontroversial opinion, really but in 2026’s media landscape…)

I have written before about my sense that the distance between the reality of what Arteta says and the perception of what he says are so far apart that a helipad is required between the two. This article is less about the external perception of Arteta and Arsenal and more about our internal experience as fans.

I have to speak my truth (well, I don’t really, but I will) I struggle to fight a feeling of disappointment that Arsenal fans are actively assisting bad faith actors (guys who played for our rivals for two decades who are now encouraged to amplify their biases are unlikely to provide good faith commentary). I get slightly irritated that, inside the stadium, we often allow our (understandable) anxiety to act as a further barrier for our players.

But those are my crosses to bear, more rationally I understand that I cannot lecture people on how to feel. I have come to learn that you cannot tell people how to feel. Facts? Sure, let’s actively correct one another. Opinions? Yes, by all means let’s debate. But feelings? Emotions? The things you experience deep in your bile duct? You can’t cheat on that.

I have been writing this column for almost exactly 15 years now and my only real manifesto is honesty about what I feel. I loved Mikel Arteta’s message in that pre Kairat press conference. I don’t doubt his players needed to clear the air a little after a jittery performance at home to Manchester United and it looks like that happened. The evidence we have from the ensuing games is that it worked too.

The quotes at the head of this article, however, were for the supporters and evidence of, in my view, excellent leadership. When the plane hits a little turbulence, you look at the air stewards and stewardesses for reassurance. If they are calm and smiling, you calm down a little too. I regularly revisit Arteta’s opening press conference as Arsenal manager, which was his manifesto of sorts.

‘In the difficult moments, the tree is going to shake, so my job is to convince everybody that this is how we are going to live and if you are going to be part of this organisation it has to be in these terms and in this way.’ It looks strikingly similar to the quote I opened this article with.

I think it is fair to say that Arsenal needed to ‘flip the script’ a little. So much of this season has felt like it has been about what Arsenal can lose rather than what they can win. Really, it ought to be a feelgood story. That a former club captain with no managerial experience has led the club from the (relative) doldrums and looks on course to deliver a first league title in 22 years.

I understand why it is not framed that way given the feeling that Arsenal should have won the league by now but I also think it is worth reframing the season internally, just as Arteta seems to have done with his players (for the time being, the tree might shake further and Arteta’s skills of union will be called upon again).

I appreciated Arteta’s message because I have fought pretty hard to see this season through the lens of enjoyment and anticipation. I am an anxious person, generally. I am probably on the ‘soft’ end of people who require treatment and intervention for it, but I have sought therapy, medication etc.

Anxiety is something I have accepted as my driver in life (and it gives me advantages too, I am punctual, reliable and hyperaware of my surroundings because my brain is constantly assessing threats and I detest the idea of letting people down).

But it is largely a curse that I would remove without a second’s thought if I could click my fingers and do so. I sometimes ask myself why I invest so much of my free time into placing all my emotions into something that I cannot control and that makes me highly anxious. ‘Why the fuck do I do this to myself?’ I ask. Why didn’t I take up chess or knitting instead?

The answer I have arrived at is that being anxious about Arsenal is a preferable way to both exorcise and exercise my demons. If I am going to be highly anxious about something it might as well be about something that a) doesn’t enormously matter in the grand scheme of things and b) that is at least capable of providing me with a huge dopamine payoff.

I go to bed every night worrying about electrical fires in my house, or my boiler exploding, or being burgled while my family and I sleep. I am relieved every morning when none of these things happen, but I don’t leap around in fits of ecstasy punching the air. I have learned to enjoy my football anxiety as a preferable form of my demons.

The world feels like an especially crazy place at the moment and I think it has never been more important to enjoy football as an escape. Right now, there are some incredibly fucking grim things happening in the world that make me so angry.

If football becomes a genuine stressor in my life, as part of this bundle of anger and vexation, then I have lost its most useful and beautiful purpose- to care deeply about something that isn’t actually important in any serious way. As much as, like the rest of you, I fret and worry and feel anxious and start thinking about bus parades in May before chastising myself for doing so.

I don’t believe in any gods nor do I believe in phenomena like ‘jinxing’ and I will say that confidently- but I still behave as though there are wrathful football gods. But I have learned to enjoy, even relish, that anxiety, that being in the title race is fun (well…) and for all life’s worries and toils, this is one of the better rides you will go on.

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