Goonerholics Forever

We have now reached our third and final group of ‘Holics who chose to answer TTG’s questions, with the premise that a season like 2025/26 doesn’t come around very often.  These ‘Holics are likewise spread about the globe, and bound to each other and you, dear reader, by the same love of the Arsenal. As with the answers from the first two groups, they cover a lot of the most important issues that came up during this amazing season.

This last time around we have answers from Potsticker, N7 Gooner, Countryman100, ClockEndRider, and Noosa Gooner. Enjoy!

What was the highlight of last season for you?
PS: Winning the league, of course.  If you’re asking what specific games or goals were highlights, it’s all a bit blurry now.  My wife says I have memory loss.  However, I always have TTG’s excellent season reviews to refresh my memory.
N7: Tempted to opt for the Dowman goal – it’s not often you get to watch a teenager announce himself with a drumroll beforehand. But it’s difficult to look beyond the night we won the title. 
Two decades of waiting, hoping, stressing, and occasionally praying to a deity I don’t even believe in, all suddenly and messily collapsed into a carnival of joy that felt like it would never end. A hundred thousand people outside the Emirates without a ball being kicked, old friends lit up by pure delight, strangers hugged by the dozen. City slain, the monkey off our back, the Champs League final still to come and Spurs teetering on the precipice.
It doesn’t get a great deal better than that.
C100: Beating Newcastle at St James’s with a last minute Gabriel winner from a corner
CER: The highlight of last season was the spontaneous descending on the Emirates after C130y had signally failed to beat Bournemouth in May, giving us the league. The sheer numbers, when taken alongside the incredibly joyous, friendly atmosphere, with absolutely no sign of trouble, facilitated by quite excellent light-touch policing, made this evening one almost to put alongside the celebrations after Anfield ’89, about which I have written in the past. For the young people – by which I mean anyone who hadn’t experienced winning the league before- including my son, 21CG- this was their Anfield ’89 moment. And they grasped it with élan. Well played, All!
Noosa: Winning and silencing the naysayers / non-believers and Eze’s hat trick against the Spuds. Brilliant.

When did you believe we were going to win the title?
N7: I fancied us more or less all season, by simple virtue of the fact that I didn’t think this City team were all that good. But the moment I knew in my gut it was our year was full time at the Etihad. A defeat that felt like a victory.
We’d outplayed them on the day, and although we were being all but written off, we didn’t look remotely ready to fold. As Haaland and co celebrated on the pitch the cameras panned to our players and you could see it written on their faces: this isn’t the beginning of the end, it’s the end of the beginning. And, despite everything, it’s still in our hands.
I never thought we’d stumble after that, and I never believed city would get out of Everton and Bournemouth intact. They were an overhyped boogeyman who simply gave up too many chances and rode their luck too hard to be favourites. We were better than them, and we were about to finally prove it.
C100: When we beat West Ham at the London stadium.
CER: This is a tough one. I first believed in October. This was a packed month, which saw consecutive victories against Olympiakos, West Ham, Fulham, Atletico Madrid (a whupping), Crystal Palace and Brighton. We were dispatching teams in some style, some of whom had given us difficulties in the past. It was at this point that our little group decided to buy flights and accommodation for Budapest. 
Noosa: When Citeh drew at Bournemouth.
PS: When I submitted my Predictathon entry.

Who was your player of the season?
C100: Declan Rice.
CER: My player of the season was Declan Rice. Not terribly controversial, but he displayed everything you want from a player of the season. Effort, steely determination, no small amount of skill, the charisma to inspire others and hold the team together during the wobbles which are almost always part of a title winning season. And he did all this while still remaining an approachable, charming human being.The complete player.
Noosa: David Raya – had a few brainfarts but saved us so many points he was critical to winning the title.
PS: I can’t pick out any single player of the season – as has been pointed out by many others, winning the league and getting to the finals of the Champions League was a collective effort.
N7: Two standouts for me, and two contrasting moments that felt like flip sides of the same coin.
Declan Rice at the end of the City defeat, the look on his face, the shake of the head and the immortal declaration: “it’s not over”. A player who had run harder, faster and longer than anyone else and who always felt like he wouldn’t allow us to finish second again. That sheer force of will that we felt all season long, embodied entirely in two seconds that will probably come to be the defining image of his career.
Then, on the other hand, Gabriel. Who spent the season monstering everyone on corners, who seemed to relish every fight he found himself in, and who – while he may lack the sheer class of Saliba – absolutely embodied a defence which very clearly hated to concede goals. 
His face at the end of the PSG game, after the missed penalty, will stay with me for a long time. He didn’t look upset, or chastened. He looked as if, even in that moment of defeat, he was making sure to drink it all in, to use it as fuel for whatever comes next. As if missing that penalty was an essential part of some invisible process that will get him to where he needs to be. He looked focused and hungry. Never seen that in a player after a moment like that before – a mentality well beyond elite.
On balance, I’m going to say Rice, with Gabriel’s time perhaps still to come.

Who would you most like us to buy?
CER: Morgan Rogers. He can strengthen the left wing position, while also providing excellent central attacking midfield cover. After the unnecessarily long World Cup, we are going to need cover for Rice, Zubimendi and Ødegaard. We also need to beef up the wide left options. Another Swiss Army Knife of a player. Right up Arteta’s straße.
Noosa: Whoever Mikel thinks will improve us.
PS: I don’t follow other teams unless they are playing Arsenal.  I can tell Messi and Mbappe apart, but otherwise if they don’t play for Arsenal, I haven’t much of a clue about other players.
N7: The absolute dream signing would be Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. Quite probably the best player on the planet right now, certainly the highest score in a game of Scrabble, and he plays in the spot where the first XI could most obviously be upgraded. 
Perhaps more realistically, I do like the look of Kroupi, not least for his part in unleashing ecstasy in North London. An Arsenal legend before he even wears the shirt.
C100: Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (won’t happen though).

Do you believe we had fair media coverage last season in general?
Noosa: The only media coverage I regularly read is that in the online Guardian where some correspondents are favourable and some not so much. I don’t really bother with much else other than Goonerholic and the commentators and various links therein.
Beyond that, as long as we win, who cares?
PS: I mainly get my football news from here, Arseblog, the Guardian, and the Athletic, and whatever links are posted in the drinks.  The Guardian and The Athletic are OK.  As for other media, and the wider internet, I don’t follow them or care what they say about Arsenal.  From some of the drinks I gather that other media are biased against Arsenal, but I don’t really know. 
N7: God no. One idiot after another talking nonsense about the team, inventing controversies and attempting to load pressure onto the players. If anything this was the season where it became clear that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you – the season when even level headed fans of other clubs started to ask why the media seems to loathe us so much. Why scoring from corners should suddenly have become an affront.
But, let’s be honest, it made the victory all the sweeter, didn’t it? All those morons, choking on their daft opinions in the face of the apparently invincible Guardiola being felled, one of the better sides we’ve seen in the Champions League being taken all the way to the wire and a million Gooners lining the streets in celebration. Come back and chat more shit next season, we’ll make you look foolish again if you like.
Oh, and special mention here for Gary “our biggest supporter” Neville. The moron’s moron, who spent the season blighting our commentary by simple virtue of the fact that he cannot distinguish what is actually happening from what he would like to happen.
C100: Some were fair and balanced (e.g. Alan Shearer, Wayne Rooney, Jonathan Liew). Most were not. A low point was when Alan Pardew said if we won the league we should have an asterisk attached to it. Utter cockwomble. Martin Samuel in The Times was a total anti-Arsenal bandwagon. He’s a well balanced man with a chip on each shoulder. 
CER: Our media coverage was quite frankly bizarre. In a world where flagrant breaches of financial rules are well known and publicised – breaches which have given other clubs unfair leverage in forcing their way to the top and winning honours – we were unreasonably attacked for scoring goals from set pieces. Because after all, this is an evil which must be stopped. The usual exercises in whataboutery and lookoverthereism were brought out by organisations which are not staffed by fools. It was plain and simple bias. The ways in which both TV and print media toadied around the offending clubs while creating non-existent causes to whip up their ever-supine, compliant viewer/readerships were quite simply nauseating to me.

Has Mikel Arteta done enough to warrant a statue at the Emirates yet?
PS: I’m not a big statue fan and if a statue is absolutely necessary, I prefer the subject to be dead first.  George Graham won more silverware for Arsenal but has baggage – is he up for statuehood?  Arteta may end up being a saint, but it’s too early for a discussion of statues.
N7: Not yet. He’ll have to settle for the one in my back garden for now.
C100: Not yet but he will!
CER: I am not one for putting up statues, frankly, until the recipients have died. Arteta is clearly a great manager, who has turned round the club 180 degrees from chaos of the latter Wenger and Emery years and should be held in the highest regard. Quite apart from a, to my mind, healthy disrespect for this modernist desire to stauarise too much, it doesn’t allow for the perspective which the passage of time brings. Arteta is a young man. Who knows what else he can do. Or where his career will take him. The Roman Emperors used to be very fond of putting up their statues while alive. Evidence is plentiful to show that many of these statues, as well as coins and other representations were defaced on death, a process known as Damnatio Memoriae- the condemnation of the memory.  I’m not suggesting that Arteta is a modern day Caligula or Caracalla. But I believe public representations need to be few in number and large in significance. And all great men are flawed. Often the flaws are only made visible when they are no longer around.
Noosa: Yes – but obviously this should not happen until his tenure at the club has finished and his service can be fully appreciated. Current managers/players should not be immortalized until after they’ve left.

Is this the start of a golden era for the club or will our rivals catch us up very quickly?
N7: It was certainly a golden fortnight. I don’t remember many happier spells in my decades following Arsenal than the run from winning the second leg against Atletico to parade day. A rolling party that reminded English football what it should mean to win a title, and what a bloodless, low fat substitute we’ve been lumbered with during these City years.
Is it the start of a golden era? The head says wait and see, football rarely works out as you imagine it will. The heart says what are you talking about, we’re going to absolutely smash everyone next season. Heart wins.
C100: Golden era incoming.
CER: I very much hope it is the former.   With the manager and his team in place – and these need to be locked down – and with an ownership which seems to be committed to putting the necessary foundations and underpinnings in place, from the medical team to improvements at the academy as well as significant strengthening in terms of senior management,  it is quite possible that we may be witnessing the next great movement of our club – from a great, storied club, into a super-club.  We have a way to go yet.
Noosa: There’s a handful of clubs each season who have a chance of the title including the usual suspects and often a couple of outsiders. I’m not convinced that we are yet far enough ahead to comfortably look over our shoulders at who is chasing in what may be more photo finishes. But, strengthen the squad where needs must and we may yet see Mikel continue to add trophies for some years to come.
PS: Arsenal are in a good position to build on this season and go on a trophy run.  Still waiting for the hammer to drop on C115y.  Haha.

Are you concerned about the attractiveness of Arsenal’s football ?
C100: Not one bit. I watched George Graham’s teams!
CER: I believe that Arteta’s core style of play is attacking and exciting. He played this way for the 3 years in which we finished second. I think what we witnessed last season was a pragmatic replacement of this, sublimating his natural style in order to ensure we converted our overall play into a major trophy. Lest we forget, we had significant injuries and time out impacting 4 of our attacking players – Saka, Ødegaard, Havertz and Merino – and yet we still ended up 2nd top scorers.  I hope to see some ceiling-raising attacking players added (Morgan Rogers, please!) in the close season. This, along with an improvement in injuries will go a long way to seeing our play return from what at times was a real grind back to the broad, sunlit uplands of exciting, attacking football.
Noosa: I loved the golden years of peak Wengerball, who didn’t, but that didn’t always mean we won.
I loved winning under George Graham even though some of the football was often hard to watch.
I would rather the pragmatic approach usually taken by MA if it means we always win.
Winning has its own compensations and I prefer winning sometimes ugly to losing attractively.
PS: Nah, as long as Arsenal wins trophies.  That said, I don’t think Arsenal played unattractive football. 
N7: Concerned probably isn’t the right word. There’s a certain joy to triumphing while playing this style, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that there were moments I fantasised about winning the Champs League final purely via goals from corners, simply for the glorious boiling of piss in industrial quantities such a turn of events would inevitably provoke.
But – and this is the important bit – like most of us, I remain a child of the Wenger years. Football should be more art than science, and there’s at least some obligation to shoot for grace and beauty, isn’t there? To lift fan from seat and send you home babbling about the magic you just witnessed.
There were spells in the season where it felt as if we treated games as a horrible formality to be endured, rather than an opportunity to express our talents, and I’d like to see that trend reversed next term. Play quicker, take more risks and don’t be so afraid of a football match breaking out.
Unless it’s PSG again, in which case the corners thing still absolutely stands.

What other comments do you have on last season ?
CER: None.
Noosa: We should have had a penalty for the foul on Madueke and Big Ears was ours to add to the title – assuming that Eze didn’t subsequently take the spotty.
Up The Arse.
PS: N/A.
N7: It was a strange one. I don’t remember there being so much pain and worry in any other season where we ended up winning the title; the sense of quite so much riding on it. The question coming round and round again; but are we actually any good?
Without the balm of pretty football the end result becomes a bit of a raw need, doesn’t it. The paths between victory and defeat bisect at sharper angles, every game becomes a mini referendum on style and the overriding sense becomes of watching a formula one car race endlessly along a cliff edge.
The season, taken as a whole, felt like one of those narrow victories you watch from behind the sofa. But which, when screened again the following morning, knowing the result, all the jeopardy removed, take on a different complexion. Never really in doubt, always under control. 
With the fear gone, the moments come back to you. Martinelli against City, Gabriel against Newcastle. The Spurs games. Eze against Leverkeusen. Dowman every time he touched the ball. The period in the late Autumn where it felt like we might never concede again. Ødegaard coming on against West Ham and deciding the game. Hincapie’s shorts coming down, You can actually enjoy it all to the full, without that big “what if” hanging overhead.
So that’s what I wish for next season. More of those magic moments, with the team and support liberated from The Fear. Nothing left to prove to anyone, a great side free to express itself properly, the weight of history lifted. Second season Eze, post-GCSEs Dowman, and Gabriel to score the winner in the Champs League final. Mikel Arteta’s army, Arsenal through and through. COYG.
C100: With the exception of Wolves and the CC cup final, the 17 away games I went to were huge fun. The never-ending singing of our away fans lifts the spirit and must hugely encourage the team. The atmosphere at home has also been terrific.
The emergence of Max Dowman has been hugely exciting. That goal against Everton, right in front of us on the North Bank, will live forever in the memories. 

I love it when we score from corners!

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Annnnnnd, we have one last Gooner to provide answers. Due to an email snafu, we missed Depressed Gooner’s responses, which should have been included in one of these three review posts. So, to make up for that, they get a special section here.

What was (were) your favourite moment(s) of last season?
DG: Gabrielle Martinelli lobbing the city keeper for what looked to be an unlikely last gasp equaliser has to be up there with but nothing will beat Max Dowman and his wonder goal moment, a true superstar in the making announced himself magnificently.

Who was your player of the season?
DG: Declan Rice without doubt, you could go for almost anybody in the team but his “its not over yet” to Martin Ødegaard turned out to be a decisive moment in the season, he never stopped believing and I think that belief transmitted itself throughout the team.

Are you concerned about the attractiveness of Arsenal’s football?
DG: Justified but understandable as playing pretty football for the previous seasons had not reaped rewards but I really would not want to see that every week again next season, when we cut loose we could be just as devastating while still holding that near impregnable defence back line to their impressively high standards.

When did you believe we were going to win the title?
DG: Being depressive is a bloody curse, I never believed it until it happened, truthfully it is still hard to believe, but a bloody good reason to smile every day.

Do you envisage that this is the start of a golden era in Arsenal history or will our rivals soon catch up?
DG: If we start strongly and don’t do a Liverpool then I believe it could be a new golden era for Arsenal, I still think Mikel is learning on the job even now and hopefully will take some of that don’t concede even if it means not scoring another approach off the table more often as that did lead to some wobbles at times.

Has Mikel Arteta done enough to warrant a statue at the Emirates yet?
DG: Not yet, rinse and repeat and not yet becomes hell yes.

Who would you most like us to sign next season?
DG: A world class striker, we still miss that magic ingredient, maybe we could tempt Haaland away now Pep’s gone but would we want that egotistical nightmare.

Have you any other thoughts or comments about where Arsenal is at the moment?
DG: I’m certainly big enough to admit when I’m wrong, still not sold on Madueke or Gyökeres completely but consider me on board the last carriage of the Mikel train, he only went and bloody well did it, as mentioned above there were times last season when we showed nervousness in games we should have been comfortable in as we decided not to go for a second goal and it cost us, but I’m hopeful that he has learnt from that and it was just cautious pragmatism to get us over the line and will be seen a lot less next season.

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And that’s that. We hope you enjoyed reading the answers as much as those who submitted them enjoyed doing so. We’ve got some upcoming pieces from GSD, Bathgooner, and CER to look forward to, so be sure to check back regularly…