Breaking: Football club plays matches in the city where it lives. Rivals outraged.
Gather round, friends, because a crisis is upon us.
Arsenal’s December schedule features a series of games in London, and the internet’s finest minds have noticed. Somewhere, a man with a Tottenham-adjacent username and a profile picture of a lion is typing “FIXTURE LIST IS A JOKE” in all caps, presumably from a train that took four hours.
Let’s examine the scandal. Arsenal, a London club, have been handed games against other London clubs. The audacity. The sheer, brazen proximity.
Fans are calling it “an unfair advantage,” which is a bold claim from people whose own club once got a favourable kickoff time and called it “the process.”
Then there’s the pundit class. “It’s a huge advantage,” they say, in the tone of someone revealing classified documents. “No long coach journeys, no hotel stays.”
Lads, nobody’s ever won a title because the team coach had good lumbar support.
Meanwhile, Arsenal will still have to play actual football, against actual players, who will also be actually sleeping in their own beds, because they actually live in London too.It’s almost as if the advantage cancels out. But please, don’t let logic ruin a perfectly good grievance.
And spare a thought for the opposition’s away fans, who will be forced to endure the unimaginable hardship of a short journey to a stadium with a decent atmosphere and proper pubs nearby. Dreadful scenes.
The truly remarkable part is the selective memory. Every club in the league has had a run of home-heavy fixtures at some point. Every fanbase has muttered about the schedule when results dipped. But when it’s Arsenal, it’s “a conspiracy.” When it’s your lot, it’s “just how the calendar fell.” Funny how that works.
So to everyone clutching their pearls over a December schedule: relax, put the kettle on, and accept that sometimes a fixture list is just a fixture list.
Yes, London is a big place with a lot of football clubs in it. Yes, they will play each other. No, that isn’t a scandal.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to be an Arsenal fan and prepare to spend December finding a way to be anxious about everything.
English by birth, Australian by choice. Traffic Engineer, Arsenal ST Holder, Sun DreamTeam Winner, Writer on @GunnersTown, Depeche Mode, Welcome to my world…
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