What a weekend, what a week, the joy, or even more so, the shared joy of so many. Not like the end of a season with “nearly this”, “nearly that” – where half the support deem it a successful season, while the others don’t, where some see progress and others don’t, and therefore leading to an early summer tit for tat. No!! This was a coming together. It was largely helped too by the way the game panned out. It could have all felt so different had we cruised to the expected victory in a fashion that left the final hour of the game just a formality, but the way it occurred will leave it lodged firmly in our memories. Not a word muttered or mentioned of the “tourist fan”, no matter who you were, where you were, if you were wearing our famous red and white, you were getting, hugged, high fived or beeped at and waved at from random passing cars. A Timeline full of photos of packed pubs and street parties from all over the globe. Amazing. And a Twitter timeline full of delight for days – even more amazing, now that truly is the rarest of sights.
A moan is a moan, regardless, and a whinge is a whinge, end of. Sometimes it’s a unified one, which normally means its right and a wrongdoing has been done, therefore acceptable. But moaning and whinging for whinging sake during these blessed happy few days is beyond me. It’s like been given the keys to the Playboy mansion, told it and its contents are yours for 12 hours, to do as you please, take your pick sunshine, they won’t say no, and complaining that the air conditioner is too cold, or the lights are too bright FFS! Just let go, take the ride for a while, save your whinging for the future. Who knows you may even enjoy yourself.
Of course even in this mass orgy of celebration, a few moans appeared – surprise surprise. Naturally a lot of giving out came before the game with our ticket allocation, and rightly so – pathetic. Yet again the FA showing us just how pre-historically twattish they are, so in that sense that was a perfectly acceptable pre-match/build up moan. But then when Arsenal announced that they were going to do a screening at The Ems in response to the FA’s paltry allocation, immediately I saw the usual suspects come out with the usual – “typical, milking the fans again”, “club will rob money off us any chance they can” shite, before the club had even announced pricing. Of course when they did, I found the pricing to be reasonable, and there was costs in setting the thing up, so let’s be fair to the club, there of course needed to be a small charge, and hell, all the pubs were charging in too. I didn’t see one complaint about it, I say well done Arsenal, why not have everyone together for a party.
Then within seconds of Arsene saying he’s staying, seeing tweets like “why not get rid of the cunt and use that £28m to buy players”, oh for the love of god…. As I say they will moan regardless. Moaning during or after that weekend is like being handed a million quid for nowt, and giving it back as it was too heavy in your pocket. Just now need.
I didn’t have the pleasure of going to either the game, or the screening, but watched from home. I have to say from around 7.30 that night until maybe the rainy Tuesday evening, I didn’t take the grin off my face. I also never saved or downloaded so many photos off the internet in such a short period of time. Iconic moments a plenty. The joy and relief of Arsene Wenger and more so the fact that he let it show. The sheer joy of the players, like Per, Aaron, Jack, well the whole lot really. The playfulness of the bunch and by no means least, all of the above from our fans. Joy, relief, celebration and mischief – loved it, loved it and downfuckingloaded it.
Of course you save a photo; you wanna be able to keep track of them, so you give them names. Nothing too fancy, nice and short or you’d be there all day, and might miss another classic in the meantime. This is where my problems occurred. I then looked back through my photos and realised that if the Police ever suspect me (wrongly) of being a tad naughty, bust in my door and take my computer to search then it won’t look good for me. My computers downloads currently looking like a cross between Freddie Starr’s PC and Rolf Harris’ Blackberry. You see my photos were saved something like this –
Up The Arse
Arse pile up
Champagne Arse
Hands up Arse
Screaming Arse
Debbie does Arse……. (Oh no, with, that’s something else ;))
Arse fist
Arse shots
Arse scores
You see what I mean…… “Wait, wait, I can explain officer……”, “just open them it’ll make sense”…
They’d eventually see the funny side of it, maybe after a few hours interrogation, paying for a lawyer and trying to prove that I can’t play the didgeridoo.
Anyways, onwards and upwards I say. Only a summer of bullshit talk and rumour to get through, endless “Top 10 players Arsenal should buy”, “10 players Arsenal shouldn’t have let go”, “come and get me plea’s” etc, and we’ll be at it all over again. Hopefully we can now push on, and I don’t see why not, because again as was evident only really from last summer, we’ll be adding to this team, not dealing with players leaving, and the ones leaving will be by our own choice (barring Sagna), so we should be optimistic.
It shows after all that winning a trophy, any trophy does so much to a team. Breeds that winning mentality and re-ignites hunger for more. Makes players want to stay and others want to join. But for me, the biggest thing it brings, even if it may turn out to be short-lived, is unity. Unity for the fans. The opportunity to join together and celebrate without the need to split into groups, camps or abbreviations. Just to let it all hang out and enjoy our fucking selves with pride. I think we just needed reminding, as it had been a while, so hopefully that discontent has been put to the back-burner and we’ll join together in search of that feeling again.
And fuck the begrudgers.
#UTA.
I’m a 37 yr old Irish Gunner, and have been for 27-28 years now….
(Really 20, but trapped in a 37 yr olds body)..
Answer to ‘Woody’, as normally when ‘John’ is used, it means I’m in trouble for something..
I took my time deciding, didn’t follow the mainstream, and definitely chose wisely…
I let the club choose me, and didn’t let other people’s views or successes choose my club for me..
Seen the good times, the great times and the bad and really bad…
And strangely, enjoyed all of them, as you can only relish the good and great after you taste the bad…
Thats why I try to keep on the level-headed side of things, when things don’t go our way,
as it’ll make the successes all the sweeter when they arrive…
… and they WILL arrive…
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