Last night. White Hart Lane. Man City. Most important game of the season. Of the decade. Ever. In the entire history of all things. Here’s the scenario.

Massively important game for Man City. Lose, or even draw, and Arsenal become hot favourites to win the league. Win, and they take it all. Assuming of course that Sunday finishes as it probably will.

Then there was Spurs. ‘Just’ out of contention for the league title but vying for ‘that fourth place’, Champions League slot. And all we needed was to beat City, to win on Sunday and for Villa to drop down a hole in Spaghetti Junction and never come out. Or concede 15 goals in their last match whilst we score 27. Some such combination of total fucking impossibles.

Thus, having accepted, as virtually all Spurs fans have, that, yet again, we’ve fucking blown it, we were left with a choice. Like Sophie’s Choice, but much harder because giving away one of your own children is far easier than letting Arsenal win the league. Every mother knows that. Every good mother.

Thus last night’s match became the oddest of odd. Every Arsenal fan in the world was rooting for Spurs. Whilst every Spurs fan was rooting for Man City. (Every Chelsea fan was out, probably being abusive, aggressive, drunk and disorderly).

Because we had all agonised with our inner gods and gurus and some had even undertaken counselling to try and understand this peculiar dilemma. Do we hate Arsenal sufficiently to actually will our own beloved team to lose? Or should we put hearts and souls into a victory which would be as unlikely as it would be productive in achieving our own goals? Well, to those, like our dear manager, Ange, who say ‘you must always want your team to win’, I say, ‘then you don’t know the Arsenal fans I do’. The ‘moral high-grounders’ who feel that to ever wish for anything other than winning football matches is a mortal sin simply don’t get the ‘big picture’, the history between our near-neighbouring clubs. It is NOT about football. It is about… history, its about bragging rights, its about rubbing noses in whatever ‘it’ may be, its about good (us) vs evil (them), right vs wrong, its about the very basics of humanity!!!

So the match went well. Until they scored. Then… not so good. Except we played well. Certainly a lot better than we’ve played in the last totally abysmal 6 weeks. We always up our game for City, but alas it fell short. Had Sonny converted his ‘sure thing’ one on one against whichever keeper was on at the time for City, it might have been different.

Then the denouement. The finale. The coup de gras. Both for our hopes of winning (not that we had any) and of Arsenal’s season. The penalty.

I love a penalty taker who knows exactly what to do and just does it. I fucking hate mis-stepping, stutters, feints and all the other bollocks employed by the majority of those stepping up to the 12 yard spot. I loved Alan Shearer taking a penalty. Ruud Van Nistlerooy, Harry Kane. And… Erling Haaland. Shear class from the spot. ‘I’m going to hit this so hard’, he said to himself, probably in Norwegian, ‘that if you get near it, it will break your fucking hand. But you won’t because it will be so brilliantly placed.’ And that’s what he did. 2-nil, game over.

And that’s it. Job done. Not proud. Just what it is.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx