I’m on the boat, baby

“In the religious world, it is said that God created man. I allow others to express what they have in them. I have not created anything, I am only a guide. I am a facilitator of what is beautiful in man.” - Arsene Wenger

It feels counterintuitive to open this piece with an Arsene Wenger quote, because this piece is going to be about Mikel Arteta, this beautiful team and how they’ve inspired me to finally start writing about Arsenal. There are, however, good reasons for starting this way. Firstly, it is my favourite quote ever. So much so I actually made a meme about it. Secondly, I am a child of the early Emirates Stadium era, and those teams made me the fan I am today. I can’t not pay tribute to Arsene Wenger.

I became interested in football relatively late, aged twelve. I wasn’t a boy-ish boy. I didn’t like playing sports and I didn’t like watching sports. I liked playing my gameboy. My knowledge about football was nonexistent, but I knew I was an Arsenal fan thanks to my uncles. Whenever I was asked who I supported, I would say ‘Arsenal’, more to have an answer to the question than anything else. Any ribbing relating to my answer flew over my head. The 2004 Invincibles passed me by entirely.

It was playing FIFA on the original Xbox that finally gave me the bug. It gave me a rudimentary understanding of formations, positions and who was good. That was enough investment to get me to actually watch football matches and care about Arsenal earnestly. I’m still not a proper, masculine man who likes football. I just love Arsenal. To this day, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about any sport other than that.

In Ireland, we have a derogatory phrase for people around my age: ‘Celtic Tiger Cubs’. It refers to people who were children between 1995 and 2007 during the unprecedented, reckless and gloriously indulgent economic growth Ireland underwent in that period. We had it too easy. We never experienced the hardships of our parents and grandparents. My family was poor, so the moniker doesn’t really apply to me, but I mention it because there is an inverse comparison to make between Celtic Tiger Cubs and Arsenal fans my age.

Emirates Stadium Cubs did not have it easy. We had all the hardship. Previous generations got to enjoy the periods of success we could only hear about or watch on YouTube. We got to enjoy the seemingly endless Banter Era. We saw Arsenal failing to compete season after season in increasingly excruciating circumstances as our heroes left one by one and the rot gradually set in. What does that make us? Beaten, malnourished cubs?

My first experience of watching Arsenal was the run to the 2006 Champions League final. We couldn’t afford Sky and didn’t yet have a computer but RTE, the state broadcaster, showed Champions League games and I watched every one. I used to joke that my formative experience of seeing us lose the Champions League final was ideal preparation for Arsenal fandom, because it prepared me for a lifetime of disappointment. I stopped making that joke because it stopped being funny and being an Arsenal fan became crushingly, unrelentingly sad. It wasn’t a joke anymore.

You don’t need to be a fan my age to understand this - that’s what makes what’s happening now so special. So special that I’ve titled my blog after an early Mikel Arteta quote pertaining to the absolute bum that is Matteo Guendouzi. 

"All the players that are here, I'm counting on them. If they want to jump on the boat they are more than welcome. That's always my mindset - I'm here to help all of them to improve individually and collectively, and that is my job."

The ‘on the boat’ thing stuck with me, probably because it’s one of a few nautical analogies Arteta has come out with. I think it took all of us a while to get on the boat. Heading into the 2023-2024 season, we’re all a bit loved up and we consider ourselves capable of challenging for major honours. We’ve spent the last year utterly besotted with these players and Mikel Arteta. It wasn’t always this way, though.

I’m an obsessive fan. Since I started watching every game in 2006, I have only ever missed four Arsenal games, and it wasn’t for the want of trying. I have watched every minute of every Arsenal game I can devotedly, apart from during the 2020 - 2021 season. At the time, I pretty much had the games on in the background. The pandemic circumstances certainly contributed to my apathy, footballing and otherwise, but watching Arsenal had become nothing but a demoralising experience for me.

I would scroll on my phone or play video games, only looking up if it seemed like something was about to happen in the match. Normally, I consider such behaviour sacreligious, but I was dead inside when it came to Arsenal. I distinctly remember giving up on us ever being good again. The collapse of the Wenger empire and the Emery reign had taken their toll, and it looked like Mikel Arteta wasn’t capable of cleaning up the resulting mess, or that the mess was too big for anybody to clean up. I couldn’t see a route back towards the Champions League. I resigned myself to mid table mediocrity.

But then, on September 11 2021, new signings Aaron Ramsdale and Takehiro Tomiyasu were thrown in from the start against Norwhich at home and we won 1 - 0 to secure our first points of the season. Then, Aaron Ramsdale dazzled in goal as we actually managed to cobble together 30 minutes of coherent football which was enough to beat Leicester 2 - 0. Then, we went toe-to-toe with Manchester City on New Year’s day and although we lost frustratingly, I started to believe again. The All Or Nothing documentary has ensured that season is etched into our minds forever, but I would have remembered it fondly anyway. 

I remember beating Wolves at the death thanks to an own goal that spiritually belongs to Alexandre Lacazette. I remember telling everyone I met we wouldn’t beat Chelsea before Eddie Nketiah and Emile Smith-Rowe fired us towards a 4-2 win in that rather silly game at Stamford Bridge. I remember making a bizarre grunting sound when Granit Xhaka spanked one in against Manchester United to secure a 3 - 1 home win. I remember being too blissfully drunk to be nervous about our close 2 - 1 away win at West Ham and I remember how it all fell apart as well. In spite of our failure to qualify for the Champions League, that was a special season. It was the genesis of the team that challenged for the title last year and it roused the Arsenal fanbase from its downtrodden stupor.

To be honest, I wish I started this blog before the beginning of last season when I initially considered it. I’ve never experienced such joy following this club, not even close. What we went through as a fanbase was a surreal outpouring of gratitude, relief even, that Arsenal were back. The journey made me love Arsenal in ways I haven’t since I was a teenager. I used to wear my Arsenal top to watch every game. I stopped that, because I don’t actually like how sporty clothes feel, but I went to the Emirates Cup against Sevilla, bought the beautiful black away kit, and now I wear my kit to watch the games again. I also used to plead at the TV when we were a goal down, properly - hands clasped, chanting, ‘please, please, please’. That one came back as we were chasing a fourth goal against Southampton. We may not have won the league, but that was my favourite season by far.

I’ve always toyed with the idea of starting my own Arsenal blog, trying to be one of those guys. I’ve been reticent, though, because I prefer to remain aloof to the toxicity of a gargantuan and frankly insane online fanbase. I disengaged myself from the online Arsenal fanbase when I was about seventeen, and from social media entirely when I was about 22. However, seeing the fanbase as it is now - probably as united and celebratory as it’s ever going to be, has brought me out of the darkness. If I’m ever going to write about Arsenal, if I’m ever going to get involved with the community, it has to be now. I think this iteration of Arsenal might just be the team of my lifetime, and I don’t want to look back and think that I didn’t make the most of that.

I’m on the boat, baby, and I don’t ever want to get off. 

Next
Next

Test