Enjoy

In April 1971, when his team stood on the precipice of a historic league and FA Cup double, Bertie Mee, a manager driven by traditional values even by 1970s standards, supposedly told his players, ‘Just for the next few weeks, I want you to put your families second.’ He recognised the enormity of what his team could achieve in those final weeks of the season.

I am unsure what type of rousing speech, if any, that Mikel Arteta will opt for when his team recongregates at London Colney this week, but the next few weeks feel just as momentous and just as worthy of Churchillian oratory. Arsenal are in about as good a position to win the treble as they could be expected to be, yet the chances of bagging all three of those trophies remain small.

That means some pain is probably coming in the next few weeks and however that disappointment eventuates, the manager will be lambasted from all quarters as a result. Even if Arsenal won two of the three trophies on offer, years later we will probably all rue how he idiotically fumbled the treble- much as we continue to do when we reminisce about 2003-04 and the failure to add the Champions League trophy to the unbeaten league season.

Such is the nature of football and fandom. A few weeks ago, ahead of the Carabao Cup Final, I felt that losing that game on the cusp of the international break would prove to be a narrative laden nightmare. It proved to be the opposite, I think. For the players, the opportunity to get away into a different environment with their national teams or the chance to dust themselves down from knocks and bruises was for the best.

For Arteta and his staff, I imagine they rewatched the Carabao Cup Final many times in an attempt to iron out the wrinkles of that defeat. Maybe I just insulated myself but I even feel the content machine went to sleep a little during the international break. A lot of journalists and pundits either take annual leave, or else their channels of choice are just not in action.

I also think the overcrowded fixture list is having an impact on fans. There are a lot of reasons why this season, in particular, feels like a grind for Arsenal fans. But where I use to detect disdain for international breaks, I now think supporters are starting to welcome them as the games continue to flow back to back to back to back for months on end.

It gets tiring, especially when there is an external content machine explicitly aimed at winding Arsenal fans up. Entire social media strategies are now formulated on the idea that Arsenal fans should be poked and prodded into angry retort. It is easy to instruct people to ignore it but even if you manage that successfully, it takes a level of effort that feels tiring and a little joyless.

If you walked down the street or boarded a bus or train to work every day and 50% of the people you passed pointed at you and shouted ‘LOOK AT THIS CUNT!’ over and over and over and over again even the most patient individual would, at a minimum, start to develop a weariness for it.

In the real world, Arsenal are in the quarter-finals of the FA Cup and Champions League and top of the Premier League table. It is a very nice position to be in, you couldn’t really ask for much more. There could be a few more points in the gap to Manchester City and there could already be a trophy on the sideboard.

It is fair to lament those things, as we all have this season, but we really are in the ‘complaining that one of our Ferraris is scratched’ area of the first world problems spectrum. But, of course, nobody is going to give us a nice cake for being in this position in April if there is no bus parade in May. In fact, Arsenal could win the Treble and it feels like 70% of the football content ecosystem would greet the achievement by whingeing about corners.

From the beginning of the season, the framing has been about what Arsenal can lose not what they can win. We have to accept that and a lot of the reasons are understandable, the club’s behaviour in the transfer market last summer was a tacit admission that it’s half past winning time.

On one hand, Arsenal are still punching above their weight financially by being in this position. On the other, the expectation is high because the quality of the squad and the manager is high. You can’t really insist what a great team we are and then complain too bitterly when you are held to the standards of greatness.

I think a lot of the next eight weeks are going to be torture, frankly. But my pledge is, as always, to try to enjoy it. Because the alternative is that Arsenal are either playing for nothing, or else playing for the sort of also-ran achievements the club was criticised for (not always entirely unfairly) just over a decade ago. I know what I prefer.

I know some pain is probably coming and I don’t relish it. I also know there is the prospect of unparalleled joy and why else do you devote so much of your life to this stupid little sport if it isn’t for periods like this? Like Andy Dusfrane in Shawshank Redemption, we have a sewer of shit to crawl through; but we could come out smelling of roses on the other side. And I promise to try to enjoy it as much as possible.

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