Week One – Here We Go (Again….)

Well, the pre-season diary is kind of finished with now, so I have decided to carry on with what I was doing, this time over the course of the whole season (sanity permitting). 
I aim to do the same thing as pre-season, which is to cover the changing moods, the ups and downs, highs and lows etc over the course of the season. Jesus, and I thought that seemed a daunting thought at the start of the summer…..


I won’t be giving in depth match reports or anything, that’s not what I’m here for. I’m simply going to spout the same sort of crap I have been all summer, but with added football.
If you saw the last pre-season diary piece, you will have seen that I gave you a handful of figures of ridicule we could try and focus our attention on when the stresses and strains of being an Arsenal supporter becomes too much. Well, whilst looking into this a bit further it turns out there are literally hundreds of the c*nts out there! So, as often as possible I will bring you the Let’s All Laugh At corner, or as it shall be known from hereon in The LALA Corner. So if you feel that you are spending too much time on Twitter, or getting a bit too stressed out over the season, you can always go to the LALA corner. 


You know, like:

“Where’s Darren?”


“Oh, he was tweeting so much horseshit we had to send him to the LALA corner”


That kind of thing….


Any suggestions for the LALA corner are always welcome, I may use some of them in the future.

Although I am about to leave the pre-season diary behind me, this week is a kind of crossover week. A unique opportunity to demonstrate how quickly the mood can change for the better, worse, or stay the same, or whatever. So, this weeks piece is in two parts, pre-game and post-game………….

Part One – It’s getting hot in here…..



At the time of writing this part, I have no idea what happened on Saturday, as I have started writing it on Wednesday. You may be reading this content and relieved that we started our season off with a convincing win (I say convincing, because I doubt there will be any sense of contentment with an unconvincing one), or the meltiest of all meltdowns may have occurred over the weekend and we have all woken up in some kind of post-apocalyptic haze, wandering around dazed and confused, desperately seeking other survivors, but at the same time wary of making contact with anyone, not knowing if they are human or have become some kind of mutant Twitter beast, feasting on the flesh of anyone who dare utter the words “Well, it was only the first game…” or “The window is still open…

”

Anyway, where did you spend your summer? Come on, admit it, you all took a two month summer break at The Meltdown Hotel, Twittersville, same as me. This particular hotel gets packed full to breaking point over the summer, and the lack of fire escapes make it impossible to escape, and then someone goes and opens a window…..
That’s the thing with the close season these days, especially once that damn window is open, we crave information so much that nobody really knows what’s real and what isn’t, our hopes are raised and dashed in one fell swoop, there are so many bandwagons to jump on it’s sometimes a case of either jumping on the nearest one or being laid out in the crush. I’m pretty sure these bandwagons have even derailed the #GoonerFamilyFollowTrain. Oh well, every cloud and all that. So, we spend a large part of our time on Twitter, and it can be bad for the health it seems. This week has, understandably, been the worst so far in the Arsenal Twitterverse.

We seem to be divided into those who have given up all hope, those who cling to the hope that we can reach the transfer window unscathed and secure the signings that we so desperately need, those who are concerned but still going about their lives, and those who I am convinced are tweeting while sitting in a corner rocking back and forth like Arthur Fowler.


I really do understand the anger and frustration, but honestly, the hysteria can at times reach unbelievable levels, and those who seem to be the most sane of people are reduced to blabbering wrecks. Then there are the idiots, the shit-stirrers and the pricks who resort to the sort of abuse only a big, brave keyboard warrior would resort to. I won’t speak about those people, I can’t be fucked with them to be honest.

Having said that however, I have also experienced the good side of Twitter this week, in that I am looking forward to meeting a few like-minded souls for a few beers before and after the game on Saturday, which to me is still what it’s all about. That’s the good thing about the season starting too, there is less of a need to immerse yourself in that crazy virtual world of bullshit and melodrama, as we can now immerse ourselves in an actual world of bullshit and melodrama known as the football season. Twitter will still be there of course, but the difference is you can watch something with your own eyes and stress over it, rather than stress over something you don’t actually know anything about.

The Season Preview and Big Emotional Speech Bit

First off, this is a non Twitterized preview, like in the old days. I’ve already covered what’s been going on in that nuthouse anyway.


Before I cover the actual football (remember that?) side of things, it is impossible to do so without speaking about what has, or should I say hasn’t happened over the summer. I’m not going over old ground and repeat the last ten weeks though, so don’t worry.
As much as I remain optimistic that we will bring in players before the window closes, it’s almost impossible not to be disappointed that in a summer that began so optimistically, we have failed to add to the squad before the season begins. 
For a start it makes a season preview a bit harder!

I really believe that our current squad is in better shape than it has been for a while, and it would be criminal not to seize upon this opportunity and add the quality needed to challenge for trophies this season. 


However, the fact that remains that there are still a few players we can be “little bit” excited over for this coming season, that hasn’t changed for me.

The thought of Aaron Ramsey continuing where he left off last season, Jack Wilshere having a full season, a sharper and leaner looking Olivier Giroud and the prospect of more to come from Lukas Podolski is still enough to whet my appetite for the season for starters.

I am in no way saying this squad is good or strong enough as it is though, it isn’t, but it’s been done to death over who or what we need, and come 3pm Saturday it’s about who we have now. If we can get off to a good start, get Champions League qualification under our belt, and get the players we need in before this poxy fucking window closes then this could still be a big season for us. 
If we do not do the business on Saturday and in the following games, and if this squad is not given the strengthening it deserves during the last couple of weeks available to us, then we all have the right to feel very aggrieved indeed, given the faith most of us have shown over the last eight years especially. I will reserve my judgement until then, personally.


Forgive me if I’m being little bit over optimistic for some of you, but this is just the way I go into any season, it’s why I’m a football fan, why I’m an Arsenal supporter. For me, that optimism and excitement for a new season is one of the best things about loving this game as much as I do, and come Saturday I will be doing the same thing I have always done, supporting The Arsenal in the only way I know – hoping that we will win. It is not rocket science, it is the basis of what supporting a team is formed upon. This is the way I choose to support my team, I am not telling you how you should do so yourself, that is your choice. But in my opinion, if you go into a
ny game other than wanting The Arsenal to win, you are part of the problem, regardless of your opinion on what the solution is.

Now, Arsene, Ivan et al, it’s down to you to repay that faith….

Right, it is now Friday night, this laptop is going off until Sunday afternoon, after the first game of the 2013-14 season, at home to Aston Villa……….

Part Two – What a difference a day makes…..

Well, fuck me. Fuck me good and proper. Just when you think Arsenal never make things easy for you, they make something very easy for you. What Arsenal made easy for me after that shambles yesterday is to highlight exactly how feelings can change over the season at the drop of a hat. My feelings have changed immensely since that emotional speech bollocks you’ve just read. Ok, that’s a little OTT, but still….


If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen that immediately after the game yesterday, I said my tipping point had been reached. I sat there after Villa’s second goal went in, a very dodgy penalty which I will go into in a bit, and even my déjà vu was getting déjà vu. I am sick to the back teeth of watching the same thing unfold seemingly year after year. We all know we need signings, not least Arsene Wenger. I admire Arsene sticking to his principles, I really do, and I as much as anyone else would love those principles to bring us the silverware they so richly deserve. But the fact of the matter is you can’t stick to those principles when the money is now sitting in the bank for us to spend. As I said yesterday, at the moment I can’t find it in myself to give Arsene my backing. I will very gladly be proved wrong and, let’s be fair, there is still time for that to happen. The thing that troubles me the most is the déjà vu I felt so painfully yesterday came more from what happened on the pitch than what has or hasn’t happened off of it. It’s looking increasingly like the manager cannot get the best out of the players he has at his disposal. But we need to at least be measured in our criticism of the boss. To hear some idiot suggest on the way out of the ground that Paolo Di Canio would be a viable alternative to Arsene Wenger just shows you how skewed peoples view on reality has become. And how many c*nts there are in the world….


Anyway, there was another factor that assisted our downfall yesterday, and not for the first time it came in the form of a twat of a referee. Make no mistake, Anthony Taylor woke up this morning, in bed naked next to his Mum, feeling very proud of himself. The c*nt. I heard a few people say he lost control of the game, but I would suggest he actually took control of it. So much so that you could see exactly what decisions he was going to make before he made them. Play an advantage or give the penalty, don’t do both. As for the second penalty, he seemed positively delighted to give it, make of that what you will.  I honestly can’t be arsed to analyse his performance in detail, look at it for yourself, it doesn’t take much working out to see this prick was out to make himself famous. I’m in no way blaming this defeat entirely on the referee though, I think I’ve made that clear already, but it would be foolish to ignore the impact he had on the game. With that in mind, I’ve decided to help Mr Taylor out in his quest for notoriety, and make him the first inductee into the LALA corner….

Let’s All Laugh At…… Anthony Taylor

Just look at this dickhead. 
After a quick search of Wikipedia, I can give you an insight into the life of Anthony Taylor. 
From the moment the careers advisor at his secondary school asked him what his preferred choice of career would be upon leaving school and he gave the reply “Gimp”, it was clear that Anthony would end up being a Premier League referee.
Anthony was last year banned from the website uniformdating.com after a number of women complained about being forced to sniff his armpits, wearing his Grandmother’s Salvation Army uniform whilst he masturbated slowly to the tune of Cliff Richards “Bachelor Boy”. In Wetherspoons.

When not “refereeing”, Anthony likes to spend his spare time filming in Britain’s most notorious dogging hotspots, in Nan’s Sally Army uniform. His hero is Steve McFadden out of Eastenders.

Thanks for bearing with me this week, it’s been a longer blog than usual, but I think it needed to be due to the “crossover” thing and all that.


Until next week then, and fingers crossed we have something to smile about by then…

Darren Berry

Islington born and bred, Arsenal through and through.

Published author.

Is Yours Gold? The Arsenal Invincibles Twentieth Anniversary – available now,

Over Land and Sea (and Lockdown), Arsenal 20/21 – The Corona Diaires – released 2021.

Clickbait: Life as a Modern Football Fan – released 2019