Why I'm a Gooner Who's Not on Arsenalfc.social

In my early-mid teens I read and fell in love with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The amusing reference to Arsenal very early in the book prompted me to write to Douglas Adams' agency and ask if he was an Arsenal fan. I got a reply confirming that he was. I figured "if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for me" and started following Arsenal from then on. What cemented my love for Arsenal as a football team was the Wenger, Bergkamp, Henry era. To this day Bergkamp remains my favourite Arsenal player ever, in my mind capturing perfectly the spirit of "the beautiful game" - unlike his teammate who for me forever tainted his legacy with his infamous "bite me/FU" style response to his handball for France against Ireland.

Because I have never been (and will never be) in a position to see any games live, and have seldom been able to watch games on TV, a special focus of my interest in Arsenal has been Arsenal in culture. As a teen, Douglas Adams' perfect summary of the weary long-suffering melancholy familiar to Gooners really resonated with me. It reflected a way of thinking that I could relate to. Decades later as an adult, I reacted similarly to Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. Hornby's description of his journey from a child for whom Arsenal was everything to an adult for whom Arsenal was part of his life was so beautifully written and such a nice parallel on a much larger scale of my own journey. The movie wasn't bad either (I haven't watched the US remake)

A congenital disability means that I've never been the slightest bit sporty or athletic, and it is in fact testament to how much Arsenal means to me that while I won't pay for a subscription to ESPN or similar sports-broadcast/streamers, I would pay for an Arsenal streaming service, especially if it were pay-per-view. Until then, I remain particularly interested in looking out for representations of Arsenal in arts and literature. George Clooney's Oceans series of films of course - it may have been a marketing opportunity, but it was still a lot of fun to see Arsenal on screen like that. My primary leisure activity is reading, so of course I read The Arsenal Stadium Mystery which sadly didn't connect with me. However, Scorsese himself highly rates the movie version, so watching that is on my agenda. And one of my all-time favourite Korean dramas is built around two misfits who connect initially and primarily because of both being Gooners - seeing two leads in a K Drama watching Arsenal on TV together was awesome.

A look back through the history of Arsenal's connection with arts and literature shows that it is a club with much to be proud of in terms of the artists,  actors and writers who have been club supporters - being introduced to Dido through Roswell and then reading her love of Arsenal in CD cover notes was a delight (did I mention I'm old?). I am not a fan of the frankly infantile sort of fan banter that plagues Twitter. "Small club" and other puerile putdowns annoy me, as do the sort of zero-perspective act now shouts and screams - whether that is "X is a God, buy him NOW, whatever it costs" or "the manager is a moron, sack him NOW". I'm older than Seaman, and so I like my Arsenal discussions to be thoughtful, reasoned and grown-up. So far, Arsenalfc.social is nailing the hat trick, well done!😃

I am actually a returning Gooner. I lost interest in football for several years out of disgust when Real Madrid, at the very height of the Global Financial Crisis, became the first football team to spend €1 billion on players. Football is a GAME, it's not life, and for a football team to do that in a country which was financially on its knees and whose unemployment rate at the time was between 25-30% sickened me. The fact that Putin's genuinely frightening psychopathic mate Usmanov was still on the Arsenal board at the time didn't help, either. So I stopped following football almost completely, except for keeping up with Arsenal's fading fortunes as Wenger stayed on longer than he should have done.

What really revived my interest back to almost "Invincibles" level was seeing the club now being run by his protégés. Seeing the names of SO MANY players I remember from back when football was fun for me now actively involved in managing the club and building its next generation has lifted my spirits, and made me once again proud to be a Gooner. My hope is that Arsenal will continue its on-the-pitch recovery without abandoning its commitment to playing football that is beautiful to watch and that reflects values I can feel comfortable with, as far as possible in the extremely commercial world of modern football. Because I don't actually know that much about football (although I'm learning) and because Arsenal is only a small-but-significant part of who I am, I'm staying on mas.to so as not to bore much more devout and knowledgeable Gooners with irrelevances. Victoria Concordia Crescit, kia kaha!

(P.S. I'm old, but I prefer the 'new' cannon)