If there’s ever a good time to be out of work, it’s probably now. With the Euros, the Olympics and Wimbledon all locked and loaded, rather than networking, putting out feelers and seeking new employment I can sit on my arse and watch sport until the cows come home. I’ve not relayed my plan to my wife yet, but I feel fully confident she will agree. It is but a minor hurdle that I know very little about any of the teams or their players unless they play for Arsenal or are big names in the Premier League. In fact that makes it better, I think. My ignorance and lack of curiosity lend a certain exo ..read more

Clearly, Reiss Nelson’s goal was all a bit much for me. Surfing on a wave of excitement, I extolled the virtues of his winning goal against Bournemouth that kept our title challenge alive.  And then… nothing. I don’t know why. But I stopped blogging again, thereby missing recording the agony of falling short (along with the glee at coming second and getting back into the Champions League). And then I missed it all again, swerving the quill for the entirety of this season, during which we came second again but only by several points, and were better in almost all discernible ways. Almost ..read more

Arsenal 3-2 Bournemouth Mere seconds divide desolation from ecstasy in this most glorious of sports. There is nothing that compares to it – nothing at all. This is why we go through it East Lower (@eastlower) March 4, 2023 It really is why we go, why we go again, and why we keep doing it to ourselves. It’s a sport where scoring happens less than in many other sports. How many goals do you get in a game of football? Sometimes none at all, other times maybe a maximum of five. Often somewhere in between. Goals are like gold dust. They are each and every one of them moments of real meaning, much ..read more

Arsenal 1-1 Brentford As if one goal in three games combined with a new-found defensive hesitancy wasn’t enough to get you biting your nails, along comes a VAR decision that took three or four minutes to get the decision… wrong. “I forgot, guv” is not a good enough excuse, but don’t hold your breath for meaningful change from the PGMOL. Omertà then business as usual. Penny for the thoughts of the Premier League, an organisation that prizes its brand above anything, because inconsistent officiating is a blot on its slick landscape. Sometimes you need to cling on to win, and yesterday was one of ..read more

Everton 1-0 Arsenal Typical really. Rather than blogging right after one of our recent high points – the first away win at our neighbours in nine years, or the Platt-like last-minute winner against Utd – I’ve picked up my pen after our second league defeat of the season. A genius move. Rough with the smooth and all that. To say I’d had a premonition about this would be a tall story: to be fair, my default position before most games is ‘potential banana skin: treat with ultimate caution’. But in hindsight it had all the ingredients for a slip-up, and slip up we did. I suppose the worst thing yo ..read more

On and off the pitch, Arsenal are barely putting a foot wrong at the moment. Top of the table, a smooth passage to the 4th round of the FA Cup and talk of an imminent (and expensive) reinforcement to whet the appetite. (Strong whiff of a saga about this, with breathless updates emerging even during the writing of this post, so who the hell knows). UPDATE: looks like that ship has now sailed. €100m is nuts. That’s a wrap There’s been a lot of hard work off the pitch too – some of it thanks to Arteta and the players, some of it thanks to the the club’s execs and some thanks to fan input – that h ..read more

Would Arsenal’s form survive a six-week hiatus, we all wondered? Is it possible to bottle momentum and uncork it again? We needn’t have worried – out came the Boxing Day fizz.  Will my ability to write blogs survive a six-month hiatus? Don’t put the champagne on ice. It’s been nearly eight months, truth be told (or three league defeats – it depends if your default calendar is Gregorian or Artetian) and I have no idea why. Other than one minute it was May, and the next minute it’s now.  You’d think that playing the best football in years would have drawn me to the blog like a moth to ..read more

West Ham 1-2 Arsenal  Any excuse to wheel out and remodel the Bonnie Tyler headline and I’m there, frankly. I was watching us arrive at the latest stop on the Rollercoaster Express, all stations to Who The Bloody Hell Knows Where But It’s Quite Fun, with my 16-year-old son. What is it about teenage sons? He just kept wheeling out stats about equivalent fixtures, who scored in them and when, and there I was looking blankly at him. “Remember last season, when Lacazette scored right at the end, dad?” “Nope.” “We were three nil down, remember?” “I do not.” And on it went, him pinging stats at ..read more

Arsenal 0-0 Burnley The tentative optimism of Thursday morning had well and truly evaporated by 4pm yesterday. There was a smattering of boos at the final whistle – boos of frustration more than anything else – and off we plodded to make sense of it all. It was a weird game from the get-go, because in the first few minutes you could see the pace of the game wasn’t right. Burnley, who manned the barricades all afternoon, had erected their defences and largely just sat there. For the most part, Arsenal didn’t know what to do about it. It was walking pace at times, with sideways passes, then back ..read more

It’s been quite the week. With all the hoo-hah there’s been, you’d think Arsenal were the first team to request a postponement due to a squad decimated by Covid, injuries and absences. We’ve followed the rules but have still somehow done it wrong. I’ll just check my notes here, but I’m fairly sure that’s right. Here’s a thought: you can’t change them now, but for the rest of the season let’s have some more clarity and openness on those rules, and the reasons each club’s postponement is granted. Maybe then it wouldn’t be all about Arsenal.  Much manufactured fury later, and here we are at ..read more