If you’d have offered me a draw against Arsenal yesterday morning, I’d have taken your hand off grabbing it so fast. Spurs playing the Arse is traditionally like England playing Germany. Whatever happens during the 90 minutes is largely irrelevant; the bad guys win in the end.

Manchester United were annihilated in the first 20 minutes of their visit to the Emirates the other week and all other recent attempts to prevent the Gunners from winning league matches lately have failed miserably. Different in the Champions League but we weren’t playing in that tournament; this was a league match. And Manchester City had drawn the early game yesterday so with a win Arsenal would go top. Or, The Doomsday Scenario, as some see such an occurrence.

But who would have known, about 6 weeks ago, when I agreed to attend a rather important Annual General Meeting at 5 o’clock on a Sunday afternoon, that it would end up being November 9th; Arsenal Spurs Day?

So I watched the first half, with my usual anxiety-verging-on-all-out-panic-attack that always accompanies this fixture. Then I had to fucking leave and go out. Unbelievable. I must buy a diary. From the Spurs shop so it has all the fixtures in it and such conflict can be avoided.

The first half was brilliant from a Tottenham perspective. Just wonderful. We bossed them. We ruled. We closed them down. We played a high line. We tackled better, went in harder, shut them down more efficiently and pressed. And in the 32nd minute we scored. Fab goal. Harry Kane; the one and only.

That’s when the panic set in. Is a goal a good thing? Generally, yes. Would it make the Arse angry? Probably. Memories of being 3-0 up and losing 5-3 suddenly sprung to my mind. But this time we stayed solid, kept cool and played out the first half much as it had started, with Spurs on top of everything.

Then I went out.

Fuck shit bollocks.

During the meeting two texts arrived. One from a daughter: “Gibbs just equalised; shit!”, the other from me mate Dom: “C***********************nt!!!!” He’s a man of few words; all of them obscene.

I came home and, knowing the score and result, watched the second half a little more relaxed. They scored their ugly little goal but we were better. We were great. The Arsenal suddenly turned into Arsenal for the last 10 minutes and we foolishly adopted a deeper position. But we were tired. 3 games in 6 days tired. I was exhausted and I hadn’t played in any of them.

It was in fact a brilliant game of football. Exciting. Clean. A moral victory for Spurs. A proper victory would have earned us 2 more points but we’ll take what we can get.

Rather happy Monday

A xxxx