Two things that I hate about Arsenal

I love The Arsenal, I love the fact that we are ‘The’ Arsenal and the reasons why we have the right to use the English definite article in our name when no-one else does. For the uninformed it is intrinsically linked to our roots and our status as London’s club – not North, South, East or West, the whole place. Middlesex F.C. can throw as many Woolwich ‘insults’ as they like but I am proud that we started off as Dial Square, the team of The Royal Arsenal. A place where for centuries this country’s protection was forged, a place that genuinely helped put the Great into Great Britain. It is why our badge is a cannon whilst N17 has a cock.

This has extra pride for me as my grandfather worked there as a 15 year old lad in 1917. 12 hour shifts, six days a week. Too young for the Western Front, but not too young to contribute during this country’s original ‘Darkest Hour’. However (obviously from the title, there was going to be a ‘however’), there are two things that really get on my ***s about our wonderful club and I thought that today was a good a day as any to get them off my chest!

St Totteringham’s Day

Now this may be related to the fact that I am originally from the Isle of Wight, not London, but despite my 55 years and counting of unwavering support for our club and living three doors down from Arsenal tube station during the Wenger Years, I have never really developed an intense dislike for the lily-livered swamp dwellers from the wrong end of the Seven Sisters Road. Don’t get me wrong I do enjoy laughing at them, but our true rivals are Man City, Liverpool, Real Madrid and Bayern whilst theirs are West Ham, Leyton Orient and Harlow Town. Outside of the NLD (not overly keen on that acronym either), I barely give them a second thought and whilst we may live rent free in their heads, it is not a two way street. So it is an anathema to me to mark the annual ‘occasion’ that we are guaranteed to finish above them. This ‘Day’ is a social media invention of the awful end days of Arsene Wenger when we weren’t winning anything and needed something to smile about. We are not there now and we don’t need reminding of those dark days. As an aside to that I also hate the sound of the phrase, It feels unnatural like the relegation fodder that it relates to.

Oooh to, oooh to be, oooh to be a *******

Back in the day before the Emirates and long before we started singing The Angel (that’s it’s proper name, by the way!) ahead of kick off and songs of varying quality featuring every player in the match day squad, the home Highbury crowd had a fairly limited repertoire. The Perry Groves chant was a particular favourite of mine as was one nil down, two one up. Oooh to be…. was also part of our pretty unimpressive song sheet at that time and a tune that I was quite happy to join in with. So it is is not the song itself that winds me up, it is the term ‘Gooner’ itself that I cannot abide! Before anyone starts, yes I know that it is the title of a long standing and much loved fanzine and going even further back it was, in the plural, the name of a particular group of our fans who more than held their own alongside the Chelsea Head-hunters and West Ham’ ICF, but now somehow it has become the ubiquitous term for all Arsenal fans. I cannot explain why I have developed such a visceral dislike for the term, but I have and whilst I’m probably in a minority of one here I don’t see that ever changing.

I feel much better now!! Please feel free to comment below on my completely irrational position here or even to add any foibles of your own.

P.S. I despise tifos too…….!!