Those that know me know I am rarely lost for words. As I attempt to write this on the evening of Arsenal beating West Ham, I just don’t know where to start. I don’t even know if I can string a sentence together.
I could just wait until tomorrow. But then I’d lose the emotion factor.
I had a feeling Brentford would get something against City yesterday. They didn’t. That made the last 24 hours particularly nervous for me. I believe in patterns, so when I saw the previous results of the day were 2-2, 2-2, 1-1, I had a bad feeling the Arsenal game would also end 1-1. Luckily my feeling was wrong… just about.
My sister and her family are West Ham season ticket holders so I don’t really want West Ham relegated – especially because I would much rather Sp*rs go down. But from the beginning of the season I had a feeling about this fixture and asked to take one of their tickets, even though it would mean sitting on the West Ham end. I thought this would be the game Arsenal win the league. We didn’t. My gut feeling is losing its credibility. So, a couple of weeks ago I decided not to go to this game because the thought of it made me feel sick. And had I been at the stadium today – I would probably have followed through on that!
Onto the game. We started well but the ball just wasn’t going into the back of the net. Which, you know, is kind of the whole point of this game. So that sucked. The injury to Ben White took away that momentum. I don’t know what Arteta was smoking but moving Rice to right-back was a rather odd decision. And bringing on Zubimendi wasn’t the best move here. But there’s a reason Arsenal FC didn’t make me manager of their club – I’m yet to win a EPL game let alone sit on top of the table, so who am I to complain?
Anyway, the last 10ish minutes is where all the action was. Raya makes a crucial save – our player of the season? Trossard decided it was time to score for the first time in 25 games, which was handy. There’s some tabloid stuff going round about him splitting up with his wife but I’m not going to pay too much attention to that, apart from saying if true, it would go some way to explaining why he hasn’t been himself on the pitch.
At this point I was following the game on Arseblog’s liveblog as my stream was about a minute behind. We looked like we may hold on to the lead… until IT happened. Corner to West Ham. I had a bad feeling. Scramble – shot – ball crosses the line. To say I swore is an understatement. I was watching the game with my brother and teenage nephew, and when the OddDaughter came to see why I sounded like I had been shot in the ass, I sent her away. Much to her dismay. I felt bad. But I didn’t want her to see me that way. Or hear the french I was speaking.
But the drama didn’t end there. It went to VAR and was disallowed – cue lot’s of celebration. Talk about mood swings. I’m hearing all sorts about how the goal should have been given, and to those comments I respectfully say “fuck off”. Raya would have caught the ball if he wasn’t being held. It’s a foul – and therefore it’s not a goal. I’m not going to suddenly become VAR’s best friend, but I would consider maybe becoming strangers that nod to each other never to see each other again.
Phew. What a relief. Will Arsenal win the league? I said we would if we won this game. But I’m completely in one game at a time territory.
So, here I am now. I’m exhilarated. I’m tired. I’m happy. I’m exhausted. I’m dreaming. I’m traumatised. I don’t really know what to feel.
But, if there’s one thing we can learn from today – it’s not to trust my gut feeling.
