Arsenal Here, Arsenal There – Scotland

This article might seem a little superfluous, given that we’re hardly talking of the footballing dedication of a nomad in the hills of Belize who still manages to follow his team through thick and thin. I’m *Scottish*. I live in *Scotland*. It’s really not THAT different. But I thought I’d write it anyway, mostly because I felt like it. I don’t really know if any differences that may or may not exist are tiny and totally insignificant, or whacking great huge ones worthy of a reaction similar to the astonishment that would presumably be felt by most onlookers if Kleberson did something with a football worth writing down. It’s just what it’s like for your absolutely average guy with an accent that VCC has said is “unintelligible after midnight”.

Arsenal Here, Arsenal There – Scotland

Think normal England, with normal English restrictions (or maybe lack thereof)…and then go up a bit. The land of haggis, claymores, Oor Wullie, kilts, tartan, Kappa-wearing Neds, utterly indecipherable accents, Barry ‘Chav’ Ferguson, misty castles, picture tin shortbread, Sellick and the Huns, and we, up here, tend to look down at Highbury with a degree of wistful longing. I speak only for myself, of course. The more I look, the less Gooners I find. When I was on Alcatraz in Summer 2003 there were two (Three if you’re wanting to count myself, not a bad number at all, really) people wearing Arsenal shirts, and let me tell you, that’s two more than you’ll find on Sauchihall Street, through the sickly hue of green and white hoops mingling with that appalling orange away kit the less subtle half of the Old Firm tactlessly decided to adopt. If I was asked to describe one experience which probably sums up keeping up with the Arsenal here, it would probably be when I nipped into Smiths when in Nottingham, found a pile of the Arsenal magazine, stared at them in an astonished fashion for a few seconds, and then immediately bought one, not because I particularly wanted to read about Sylvain Wiltord trying to hide that he’s a bone idle want-away, but because I wanted to have that magazine for the sake of HAVING it. I have still never seen it anywhere in Scotland, despite the newsagent in Waverly station happily sporting shelves full of the Manc equivalent.

I have my dad to thank for the mismatching accent and footballing affiliation. Evidentally sick of growing up IN Islington, of sneaking under the turnstiles and perching on top of the crush barriers to watch Don Roper (Dennis has displaced him as the all time favourite, but it took a fair old time for his mind to shift), and harbouring memories of being there at the Busby Babes 5-4 game (Swears it’s the greatest game of football he’s ever seen even though he can’t remember much except “There were a lot of goals”), he decided he’d had enough and came up to Edinburgh via. a few other places on the way (Geneva’s not THAT far sideways…). And he stayed here. And he passed the faith on to me.

A digression. Scottish playground protocol dictates that one, if one is male, must pick a football team. At the age of nine I had two complete SPL Panini albums. I could tell you the rarity of the Aberdeen Kit History sticker in the ’94 edition. I could sneer at the sheer prospect of trading Gus MacPherson for that rather elusive action shot of Pierre van Hooijdonk going up for a header. I could tell you every critical swap made that contributed towards each painstaking benchmark of getting towards the completion of the album. My final trade in 1994? Derrick McInnes of Kilmarnock for, out of desperation, a slightly disfigured with pencil Steven Tweed of Hibs. Quality.

My point of course is this – as a nine year old, one is not logical and one is more wiling to accept a rather duplicitous existence. The aforementioned unwritten school regulations made it desirable, nay, FASHIONABLE, to support a Scottish team. I chose Hibs. And living this dual footballing life after my Dad took it upon himself to force the red and white tradition down in the lax and non-committal manner that one might expect for someone who’d been living in Scotland for so long was something I never thought about, and neither did anyone else for that matter. Still, my Dad never really needed to bother. Little Ally would sit spellbound by Radio Five all night, flicking through copies of Shoot magazine when it was still cool, and taping Match of the Day and storing the memorable ones for years afterwards. Arsenal, from age eight onwards, was basically my life.

This duplicity, this alter-ego-ness, schizophrenia if you will, is just what happens. You quite often get SPL games where kids will go along, cheer like mad for their team and then wait for the half and full time Premiership scores over the tannoy and cheer like mad for them too if it’s favourable. I still look out for Hibs results, and I still care about one fixture a year – the Edinburgh derby, because there’s nothing quite like it anywhere else in world football, in terms of a crazed mob of people randomly hurling abuse at anything that moves. It does make for an awesome atmosphere though and it remains one of the few PROPER footballing rivalries left anywhere in Britain.

If you’re wondering how all this relates to following Arsenal in Scotland, well, it’s all just part of the wider picture. The focus on the SPL is more widespread and more concentrated than you might think, hence why for three or four years now we’ve had Football Focus replaced on BBC1 Scotland by Lunchtime Sportscene, ie. the Rangers Roundup with either Dougie Donnelly or Dougie “Oh, I, er..do apologise for the, eh technical problems we, meh, seem to be experiencing…” Vipond (yup, ex of Deacon Blue. Superstar culture abound, then).

It’s all a bit tragic really, especially when On the Ball seems to be on the air more sparsely these days (Either there’s a Grand Prix or it merely appears sparse to me cos I’m still in bed – lazy bastard, the Scottish way), and even if you actually support a team, the content appears to be a bit questionable (Joe Cole *is* a nice guy off the pitch! Robbie Earle once had a run-in, evidentally worth recounting in an anecdotal fashion, with Vinnie Jones whilst at Wimbledon over a pair of nicked shoelaces in the dressing room, and so on). Whatever, my point is this – Arsenal are not helped by SPL interest. Oh no. One notable fiasco recently involved nearly missing the FA Cup Semi against Sheffield United because Rangers v Dundee United was on instead. We finally worked out that on Digital Freeview, the punditry Channels were still available on BBCi, one of which included a quarter-screen size feed of the game. So that was all alright, then.

This hassle is, I suppose, a bit indicative of a long distance relationship, but not SO distant that your target is actually out of sight, as it were. Tantalising is the word I’m looking for. Some of these work, and some of them don’t. And as in all long distance relationships, you need to be trusting, and patient. After our brief tour of up here in ’96 which included, as I recall, a pasting off Sellick after Dicko had scored (And for which I had failed for one reason or another to get tickets), I waited seven years for us to come back.

The tannoy guy at Sellick Park pronounced Aliadiere’s name wrong and then skimmed through the whole Arsenal XI without drawing a breath before milking their starting lineup one by one so Shaun Maloney, who might be at the stage where he can take his stabilisers off now, gets the slightly slurred, slightly high-pitched but good meaning ‘Yayy!” off the pre-season friendly brigade that have still managed to shift themselves along in numbers of 40k, give or take. The game was a let down, in the sense that it was as much of a let down as you might expect with Franny Jeffers trying to work with Ali up front for forty five minutes, and not until the arrival of Kanu did things liven up, and we got out of a humming second half with a 1-1. I’d like to believe that this was the first of many for me, and I remain hopeful that it was. But practical considerations make things rather difficult – I’m on the train enough as it is, and frequent trips down to London just now just don’t fit in. Not to mention being drained dry as far as income goes by an apparent fetish for junk off eBay, anything and everything to do with Jack White and adding to sixteen shelves of videos – distance and money is my undoing, really.

Scotland is, of the Home Nations, perhaps the most aware of it’s sporting significance, ie. there is none and we like a good moan about the national team. When I say ‘sport’, I basically mean football and nothing but. Oh sure, we have the bastard egg chasers, but honestly, who cares? The psyche dictates people will watch when we play the wine-sippers from Doon Sooth, and will celebrate if we win (hell, even I’ve been to a Scotland rugby game once [spit]), and this obligatory patriotism filters down into the domestic Beautiful Game which is of course more engaging and less geared towards wankers than the other ‘sport’.

Make no mistake – people care DEEPLY about football. Following Arsenal in this kind of environment requires….patience. Chances are, if you want to watch them in a pub (we of the stone age haven’t quite managed to discover Sky within our house yet), you’ll have to do it on a small TV perched way up in the corner above the bar while Aberdeen v Sellick hogs the big screen. Chances are that the sound might also be down. Take the Car Thieves game at Anfield this season where me and my Dad sat huddled and sitting next to a Pool fan (Not a Scouser, so it was bearable) trying to make out what was going on while the Old Firm contingent a few metres away were happily howling their respective teams on in their quest to kick bits out of the opposition’s shins. To make matters worse, the picture kept freezing because it had been raining heavily the night before and though we didn’t actually miss Pires’ winner, the feed had broken up seconds before and kicked back into life the VERY second the ball left Bob’s foot. Much glee and joy followed, but only after a fraction of a second’s worth of disorientation. I wasn’t even drunk. Wow.

This passion (the bigotry issue – and the sectarian one – is one I don’t intend or need to get into) just makes it awkward. The insatiable appetite to show games whenever possible obviously means there is little Scottish-based attention given to Arsenal, so thank god for Sky Sports News. All of this would explain why I tend to spend a rather worrying amount of time sitting on the sofa under the shrine (Well, poster) dedicated to Henry, with the worst photo of me in existence with the two trophies from 2002 on the mantelpiece, watching SSN’s loop over and over. It would explain why for ages I basically lived on this website, leading to the flattering though accurate nickname ‘The Bandwith Leech’.

As I wrote a first draft of this article, months ago, we (For yes, it is ‘we’) were about to take on Holland in the Play Off 2nd leg. To paraphrase the film of Fever Pitch, “I knew they’d f*ck it up, cos they always do”, but I was excited. I genuinely was. I wanted to see us at Euro 2004, and I reckoned we deserved it too; the first leg performance was truly sublime. This hope, possessed by a fair proportion of the Tartan Army, barring the one or two sober realists (blindly so, it relating to Scotland after all), which I should stress is most certainly NOT the arrogance and disrespect (add in a little xenophobia here and there and that’s about it) of the England fanbase, has rubbed off. The Scottish psyche is, to say the least, completely and I mean COMPLETELY screwed up (If you’ve seen more than one of Bill Forsyth’s films, you’ll understand), and this unintentionally obstructionist environment does me no favours when I just want to follow Arsenal. I know it’s not exactly comparable to waking up at four in the morning in Qatar or wherever to listen to constantly buffering commentary off the official website which sounds like it’s been recorded in a small metal box at the bottom of a lake, but following Arsenal up here is, basically, shaped by attitudes of people who’d rather do something else.

That playground protocol may have long since worn off, but for many it’s a lifetime thing, resulting in alliegances no weaker (most likely stronger given closer proximity and that sense of community that I don’t have) than mine for my club. I may have Five Live, pubs with big screens, Sky Sports news bulletins on how Wenger, actually, cannot now afford to sign another striker, and more besides. It’s the same as England in many ways, ie. as conventional as you’re gonna get for someone who lives in the same ‘country’ but outside Islington. But in others, it’s a rather different world. One which I’m used to, but different nonetheless. As Herbert Chapman once said “It works. I am just waiting until everyone has copied it, then I shall come up with something new”. We, up here, are frankly happier to do the copying, and being about thirty years behind England in terms of technical footballing ability and production of talent, it would be just nice if more people would regard the Arsenal with at least some enthusiasm. I’m an idealist, but who knows. The Hibees might learn something still.