Writing for this blog, since we formed it in January 2020, has largely been a joy and a privilege as we attempt to follow the principles and good sense of the late, great Dave Faber in writing honestly and proudly about our great club.
Today that task feels very tough after a quite dispiriting 2-1 defeat by Bournemouth. I will follow the usual approach after a bad defeat by not regurgitating all the details of a depressing match but rather, will try to find some sense and reason in what was, in all honesty, a truly shocking display.
The match details were as follows: we started with White and MLS at fullback, Havertz playing in the hole behind Gyökeres and had Madueke and Martinelli out wide.
Bournemouth took the lead, quite deservedly, in the 17th minute through Kroupi after Truffert had broken onto a pass through a square defence and his cross was deflected to Kroupi at the far post. We equalised in the 37th minute from the penalty spot through Gyökeres following a clear handball by Christie and went in level at the break.
Most of those around me were concerned about the leniency and inconsistency of Michael Oliver’s refereeing especially in ignoring the rough treatment of Madueke by Truffert, the Bournemouth left back. Many Arsenal players were having a shocker with Havertz probably the worst performer but several players tried to rival him in acquiring that accolade.
Bournemouth started the second half much the better team as Arsenal could not impose themselves on the game at all. About fifteen minutes in, Arteta made a triple substitution, bringing on Eze, Trossard and Dowman for Havertz, Martinelli and Madueke but signally failed to get the ball forward, often putting Raya under pressure, with back passes, which he dealt with, sometimes in extraordinary fashion, almost committing horrendous faux pas on several occasions. Alex Scott won the game for Bournemouth in the 75th minute pouncing on an Evanilson flick and steering the ball into the left-hand corner.
Cue a whole load of anti-Arteta feeling including an idiot behind me who wanted him fired on the spot. Arsenal huffed and puffed, forcing a few late corners, but their attacking performance wasn’t incisive enough to trouble a well- organised, if cynical, Bournemouth side. We might well look at their right back Jimenez for next season as he was particularly impressive. The game ended in funereal silence as Arsenal supporters endured another Groundhog Day experience.
So a few questions remain:
Firstly, why were we so bad? Arsenal looked both gassed and bereft of confidence. Iraiola produced a very well-organised press from a team who have played around fifteen games less than us this season and who were not involved in a draining Champions League tie in midweek.
Some Arsenal players had shocking games. Havertz was awful, Zubimendi looks worn out and his usually excellent distribution was poor. Ben White looks a shadow of his former self and MLS has understandably lost confidence through having played so little. Even Raya did some extraordinary things (and not in a good way), several times almost gifting possession to Bournemouth.
Some of our very best players and the most reliable – Timber, Hincapié, Calafiori, Saka and Ødegaard were missing and Bournemouth are a very decent side with a great eye for an emerging player .
I think there are two central reasons other than the pressure of a title race which explain our decline. Our high intensity football is very tiring and progressively causes wear and tear injuries. The recent preponderance of Arsenal players withdrawing from the interlull matches was not a crafty ploy to rest tired Gooner legs but an admissionthat we are running on a mixture of fumes and injured limbs.
Secondly, we did not construct quite as good a squad as we hoped in the summer – Kepa and Nørgaard are not of the requisite quality (although, second keeper is a hard position to fill), White appears to be on a steep decline, MLS is struggling and all three of Martinelli, Jesús and Trossard might be upgraded while Havertz has suffered a year of serious injuries and is much less influential than he was, notwithstanding Tuesday. In retrospect, we might have done well to retain Nwaneri who would have had plenty of football since Christmas.
The Premier League is an ultra-marathon as we are finding to our cost. I still believe firmly in Arteta but failure this season will hurt us all enormously. Dare we hope that there are still positive twists in the story, this season, to lift our hearts? At this stage, I’m struggling to see them!
At the Emirates on Saturday lunchtime, Arsenal have a golden opportunity to improve their recent record against South Coast opposition when Bournemouth pay a visit in the Gunners’ first Premier League game after a hiatus of nearly a month (which featured a two-week international break bracketed by disappointing Carabao and FA Cup defeats to Manchester City and Southampton, respectively). After the Gunners’ satisfying Champions League midweek jaunt to the Portuguese capital brought them their first victory during that month, they will be in a brighter mood which should be a boost as the pointed end of the season gets still pointier.
Mikel Arteta said yesterday, quite rightly of course, that Arsenal and their fans have a big day in front of them on Saturday, and conjured some food-related imagery in his pre-match remarks to the media: “The closer we get, the relevance and importance of the match increases obviously, and tomorrow is a big day for us. The players know it, our supporters know it. It’s an early kick-off, so get up early, have an early breakfast, bring your lunch, bring your dinner, and let’s go all together for it.”
As Bournemouth showed in their 3-2 loss to the Gunners on the South Coast in January, in which our opponents scored the first and last goals of the game, if you are brave enough to put Arsenal under pressure, they can be vulnerable. Cherries’ head coach Andoni Iraola was at St. Mary’s last weekend to scout their hosts, and may have spotted a vulnerability or two that his team will try to exploit. Manchester City attacked Arsenal at Wembley three weeks ago and provoked defensive errors to emerge victorious by 2-0. Last Saturday, it was Southampton’s turn and, on Tuesday Sporting may have missed an opportunity to attack Arsenal as often as they should have in the Champions League quarter-final first leg in Lisbon.
Southampton were seen by some as a relatively easy route to the semi-finals for the Gunners, but proved to be a very difficult opponent and we should expect to see more of the same from Bournemouth. Last May in this fixture the Cherries inflicted one of the more disappointing defeats of the Gunners’ season when they scored the last two goals of the game and came away with a 2-1 win.
The Opposition
Arsenal will have to be defensively strong and savvy, especially on Bournemouth’s set pieces considering that our opponents have scored on us that way two years running. Arteta commented: “We need to learn that lesson… We conceded a set-piece goal the year before as well. So it’s an area where they are really strong, and we certainly have to improve to create the margin and the game context that we want.”
Bournemouth no longer have two of the Premier League’s more formidable goal scoring threats after Solanke left for Tottenham (where he promptly stopped scoring), and Semenyo left in January for Manchester City (where he promptly didn’t). But the 13th-placed Cherries still have Evanilson who scored the winning goal in this fixture last season, and they have scored 46 goals with a respectable goal difference of -2. In their most recent seven Premier League matches, Bournemouth have drawn six of them and defeated Everton in the other one. If the Cherries’ form holds it would be far from a good thing for Arsenal who need by all means to win this game, NOT (Please, God!) draw it.
Arsenal Team News
Mikel Arteta announced in his Friday presser that Eberechi Eze, who last played in the 2-0 win against Bayer Leverkusen nearly a month ago, will be available for this match. If he plays it will be his first game since returning from injury so he is most likely to begin on the bench. The boss said: “(Eze’s) recovery, the will that he’s shown from day one to get back as quick as possible, how he’s pushed the medical staff and himself to be there tomorrow, it’s just great to watch.”
Arteta also hinted that there could be more than one returnee from our contingent of walking wounded, a list that has recently included Saka, Eze, Hincapié, and Timber, and reading between the lines here, specifically seemed to suggest that Hincapié could be available.
Given those hints from the honorable jefe, and the team that brought home the Champions League goods in midweek, the Gunners may field a team like this one:
Raya White Saliba Gabriel Calafiori Ødegaard Zubimendi Rice Madueke Gyökeres Martinelli
We should be pleasantly surprised if Timber, Hincapié or Eze are deemed fit enough to start the match but I have a feeling we might see the faces of all three at some point.
The ‘Holics Pound
Seeing as one of my hunches suddently occurred as I was finishing this preview, you should seriously consider going out and putting your hard-earned on 2-0 to the Arsenal with Zubimendi and Gyökeres providing the winning goals. Those recent bouts of defensive frailty will be completely healed, if all goes according to plan. It sounds perfectly straightforward but unfortunately may not prove to be quite so simple. You can thank me later (or not) for letting you know everything will turn out the way we wanted in the end. Never mind the result, just enjoy the watch, ‘holics, but if we do win I promiose we will be that much closer to our goal so there’s plenty on this game.
We got out of Lisbon with an extremely handy one-nil to the Arsenal thanks to a late bit of quality from Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz, the substitutes combining to find us an injury time winner that we probably deserved on the balance of play but that did not look like coming right up until it did.
It was not a classic by any means, but we got the result we wanted and that was all that mattered ahead of a huge game in the PL on the weekend.
Our lineup looked good, and we began with some possession in defence, just to draw the sting from the early whistles of a crowd who were well up for this one. And well might they be. The match was barely five minutes old when Sporting’s Irish centre-back O’ Diomande played the best pass I have seen all season. With the outside of his right foot, he knocked it through our whole team, bending it between Saliba and White, with the perfect pace to slow up in time for the onrushing Araujo to take it on and smash a shot that looked to be heading in until a fingertip from Raya took it onto the bar. Great save, but the through ball was sensational. It was Sporting’s magic moment, but they failed to capitalise. When ours came at the other end of the ninety, we nailed it. Fine margins.
We slowly took control of the first half, having a lot of the ball, playing lots of passes in their half, but not creating a huge amount (I should have this sentence saved to speed-dial). Madueke hit the bar from a corner, but I think European VAR might have disallowed it for a slight push from Gabriel on their keeper.
As the game trundled on, I considered that I don’t much enjoy playing Portuguese teams because they whinge about everything. I don’t enjoy watching them foul our players and then make the diving gesture. I don’t much enjoy listening to their fans cry for a foul any time two players make any type of contact. There was plenty of that tonight, and I look forward to the return leg where our fans will be making the noise (although not complaining when the ref gives the opposition free kicks that we can all see are justified!)
We came closest in the thirteenth minute when an Odegaard free kick from wide looked to be on its way only for Diomande to get a head to it. The ball bounced down and out for a corner, but the big defender will have been relieved it didn’t hit the net. It could have gone anywhere.
Apropos of nothing much, although it was one of my standout first-half observations, Trincao has good hair and a dashing moustache. He looks like he’d make a fine swordsman as well as a tidy midfielder. Needless to say, the actual football was not thrilling. Unfortunately, this continued into the second half.
Ben ‘Jammin’ White gave us a mixed bag, mixing some good actions with some moments when he looked either off the pace or, at least, out of sync with his teammates. Still, I assume that he will get more match fit and then every little thing is gonna be alright. Similar from Odegaard, but the minutes will have done him some good, unless it turns out that he picked up an injury. He went down briefly and came off soon after but took his place on the bench and seemed okay. Fingers crossed, as we need him so much to knit our game together.
Trossard was rusty. Rice full of running and duel winning but not at his best going forward. Zubi looked like some rest has helped, but we need to keep him as fresh as possible as he’s so important. We had the ball in the net in the 64th minute after he crafted lovely finish, but it was ruled out because Gyokeres was clearly offside in the buildup on what was an underwhelming return to a ground where he has scored 4,139 goals.
Madueke had an interesting battle with Araujo, which probably ended about even. I don’t know how the defender avoided a yellow for a long series of fouls, but Sporting fans seemed to think Calafiori was given too much leeway, so maybe that ended up even. (Although the ref was good overall). Noni went on the outside too often, and his last action of the night was to finally cut inside and whip a dangerous ball past Trossard at the back post before they were both subbed with fifteen minutes remaining for Martinelli and Dowman.
We had spells where our press was effective, but we did not turn it into an advantage. We were the better side, but they were in the game and what actual chances there were fell pretty evenly. It looked like it was going to peter out goalless but Sporting wanted to find a winner. Luis Suarez showed some neat skill to get past Calafiori and put a good cross in, but Raya made an excellent save down low from Geny’s header. He made another double save when he blocked a low shot that squirmed out to the feet of some lad but our Spanish stopper made himself big, blocked the shot and gathered it in.
At that point, it did not look like we were the side more likely to get a winner, but that’s what happened and we will take it all day long. Martinelli dribbled around two players, chipped a curling cross into the box where the intelligent Havertz had ghosted into space, and the German took the ball down immaculately in front of him and finished exactly how we wish he’d finish all the time. It was easily our best piece of play all night and deserved to win us the game.
So… we kept a clean sheet, got the win to take back to the Emirates, and got a look at a side who we should be beating at home next week to go through to a second consecutive semifinal. All good.
After Consul Decimus Junius Brutus Callaicus obtained the alliance of Olisipo in his campaign to take control over the Iberian peninsula and Lusitania, integrated this ancient settlement into the westward expanding Roman empire, and granted the local populace a degree of self-governing rights and yet at the same time Roman citizenship, the ancient forefathers of the current Lisboans – sounds better than Lisbonians, though neither is used; rather the people of Lisbon tend to be known as Alfacinhas – then ended up playing a pivotal role in the prosperity of the empire, including being a key trading center for the flourishing business with another Roman province, Britannia. There must be at least one living authentic expert about the Londinium-Olisipo sea routes in the first century AD. If they happen to be a part of the Goonerholics family, I hope they would fill in the details of the rest of this imaginary journey in the comments. (I recommend not asking your favorite Language Model, ancient history is particularly prone to being hallucinated upon, given the diversity of opinions out there in what is called the corpus nowadays).
We leave such a journey from the fertile past to our imaginations, and focus mostly on the relatively prosaic future of Arsenal men’s team taking on one of the Três Grandes of Portuguese football. Unlike Max Ophüls’s all-knowing, all-ironic narrator in La Ronde – who prefers the past because the present is mostly unhappy and the future is uncertain, quoting from memory – we Arsenal supporters have all the reasons to look forward to the future. Well, at least one very specific football match in the very near future. Yes, it is good to be specific. The Future with the dreaded capital F is, indeed, uncertain.
But before we get into the familiar business of football, while reading the introductory paragraph above, dear reader, I hope your curiosity was piqued a little bit about the moniker Alfacinha, the one people of Lisbon are known by. Let me elaborate (if you already know, please feel free to jump over three paragraphs): the word alfacinhas (al-fa-seen-yahs) literally means “little lettuces”. It is a recent term. Well, a very, very recent term for the second oldest of all current cities in the western world, after Athens; likely a trading post of the Phoenicians. For those who like to imagine the past, think of a Phoenician merchant ship 1000 BC (give or take a few hundred years) leaving the port of Byblos, moving along the southern Mediterranean, passing through the Strait of Gibraltar, sailing gently on the Atlantic, hugging the Iberian coastline, then arriving at Olisipo through the Tagus estuary: what did they imagine/think/hope looking at the sun setting in the limitless body of water to their west? Maybe a respite from these ceaseless movements and the endless business assignments, these battles of wits and perseverance in a world full of fright, fight and splendor? Edge of the universe or a mythical paradise?
Apparently, the term alfacinhas gained popularity in the 19th century through a book by Almeida Garrett – “Viagens na Minha Terra” , i.e., “Travels in my Land” – where the author celebrates the verdant beauty of the city by naming its citizens thus. Supposedly. I haven’t read the book. But the above facts do withstand scrutiny, and in any case they are not obtained from Bayesian prediction machines. Neither Jose Saramago nor Fernando Pessoa (or his many heteronyms) I remember have ever used the term. My Portuguese literature exposure extends only to those two greats, so others with a keener knowledge of the language or the culture should correct me if I have inadvertently spent a few minutes of my time (and yours, if I may add, apologetically) on a completely unimportant word.
I must say I do like the knowing wink of the history – the history of longue durée, slow and permanent formation of mankind and societies – embedded in the etymology of alfacinhas, its Arabic roots. We have been formed, shaped, defined, sculpted, made worthy of ourselves by our movements, and the gifts of interchanges those movements have brought. From the dawn of prehistory to now.
Well, back to the present. Sporting Lisbon – or, as they are known in Portugal, Sporting CP for “Sporting Clube de Portugal” – stands between the mighty Gunners and our second consecutive semifinal appearance in the Champions League, this most prestigious of the European club competitions. Sporting – or as they are sometimes called Leões , or Verde e Brancos (looking at the Sporting crest or home jersey will solve the puzzle) – is one of the big three of Portuguese football, along with Benfica and Porto. In terms of trophy count, they are just behind the other two. And while they have been a consistent presence in European football – especially in UEFA Cup/Europa league, where they are the most participated team, though their only European trophy came in 1963/64 Cup Winners’ Cup — they have never won the Champions League (or its previous incarnations). Well, neither have we.
However, they are the reigning champions of the Liga Portugal, which they topped in the season before as well. The player who was instrumental in their domestic success exhibiting an extraordinary goalscoring prowess – 97 goals in 102 matches, and in the last season 54 goals in 52 matches – is, however, now in our ranks, and one hopes the familiar sights of the Estádio José Alvalade will inspire Viktor Gyökeres to emulate his efficacy in the penalty box in Arsenal red-and-white. Viktor’s absence may have not been felt too keenly by Sporting, who are chasing Porto in the league, 5 points behind with a game in hand. Their last five domestic matches are W, W, D, W, W. This is a team in form, with Viktor’s replacement the Colombian Luis Suárez –no relation to the Uruguayan Luis Suarez as far as I can tell, without doing any research in their genealogy whatsoever – scoring for fun with 24 goals in 25 matches.
The managerial architect of Sporting’s current resurgence is of course the familiar figure of Ruben Amorim. We will leave him respectfully be, especially given that he is no longer managing one of the arch-enemies.
Rui Borges took over the managerial reins in December 2024. His record at Sporting is a respectable 51-14-9, which is a 68% win ratio. Before Sporting, he managed a series of relatively smaller clubs in different divisions of the Portuguese domestic leagues. His playing career was mostly restricted to a respectable, but unspectacular, winger role in the second and third divisions of Portuguese football, with a year or two in between in the top division.
Leaving aside the Liga Portugal – while highly competitive between the top three clubs, there is a wide gulf of quality especially in comparison with the clubs in the bottom half, and hence not easy to transpose the form or tactics in the context of a Champions League match – Sporting this season has played 10 matches in the CL, won 6, lost three, draw 1. In the group stage they performed well enough to finish in the top eight – they had finished 7th with a 5-1-2 record – and so have qualified for the second round directly. After losing away at Bodø/Glimt 3-0, they famously defeated the Norwegian team 5-0 at home. Their home form in Europe has been impressive this season, reverse chronologically: 5-0 against Bodø/Glimt, 2-1 against PSG, 3-0 against Club Brugge, 2-1 against Marseille, and 4-1 against Kairat.
As the blogger mentions succinctly, “alvalade (the Sporting stadium) has been our fortress.”
Across the two European competitions, we have faced Sporting five times: twice in double-headers in the Europa league in 2018-19 and 2022-23, and of course in last season’s group stage away at Sporting where we put on a fine all-round display to win 5-1. Interestingly, both of our wins against Sporting – the other three are draws – came away at their ground, the previous one in October 2018.
So, while we must absolutely respect the opposition, the impact of the home atmosphere and the crowd etc., we should also be confident to play to our strengths, with cool heads, tactical discipline and complete commitment to controlling possession and space. Given the traveling squad, my preferred starting eleven would be:
Raya
White – Saliba – Gabriel – Calafiori
Ødegaard – Zubimendi – Rice
Madueke – Gyökeres – Martinelli
There would be temptations to start Max Dowman after his eye-catching performance last weekend, but I feel it would best serve our cause to bring him in with thirty minutes left on the clock and let him simply play his natural game, covering for his obvious immaturity around defensive workrate etc. Sporting will sense an opportunity to impose themselves early – especially given what is widely being advertised as an Arsenal squad under pressure, though I don’t really buy at all into any psychological problems with the team – and if they throw themselves into the attack, Martinelli can then become the trigger to launch rapid counter-attacks. However, I suspect Arteta may prefer Leo to impose more control. I like the Calafiori-Martinelli combination, and would hope to see that working fluently. This would also be a good match for Madueke to bring back the scintillating performance against Brugge, a team of just a little less quality but similarly front-footed attitude in front of their home crowd.
Let us start strong, quieten the crowd, control the tempo and possession and we should create enough chances to score a couple of goals towards a 2-0 away win.
SOUTHAMPTON, ENGLAND – APRIL 04: Max Dowman of Arsenal is fouled by Caspar Jander of Southampton during the Emirates FA Cup Quarter Final match between Southampton and Arsenal at St Mary’s Stadium on April 04, 2026 in Southampton, England. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
As the subject of this match review, it was tempting to choose from so many proverbs and witticisms around the failure and its, often paradoxical, implications. “There is no success like failure, but failure is no success at all.” “Success has a thousand parents, but failure is an orphan”. “Failure is success in progress.” “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor”. Etc.
But I don’t think we need to reach for too much of an insight from a loss in a football match. It’s a charmingly/bewilderingly/notoriously unpredictable sport, and this was neither the first time nor would it be the last time that Arsenal would lose an FA cup match against a lower league opposition. Cliched as it may sound, the “magic of the FA cup” has always been an endearing footballing reality, and once we can shake off the initial disappointment of the result (and the sub-par performance), it is best to simply congratulate Southampton and acknowledge that they were more efficient in both penalty boxes, and beyond all the analysis, statistics, theorizing – all of which have their rightful place, naturally – the fate of a match is often decided by this very simple fact.
I have chosen to put together some impressionistic thoughts – and not terribly structured or even thematically consistent – about Arsenal’s quarter final loss to Southampton F.C. away at the English seaside, avoiding the annoyance of recalling the performance and the manner of loss, and hopefully saving you from the displeasure of reliving what couldn’t have been a particularly enjoyable couple of hours.
This was the first time in the season we lost in two consecutive matches. The fact that they were both cup matches, and punctuated by a two week long international break in between, doesn’t make us realize how singularly good we have become in overcoming disappointments and bouncing back quickly from losses. It is a trait worth remembering, by players and supporters alike.
I don’t follow much of the incessant conversations about football in general and Arsenal in particular in the media outlets – including in the social media “discussions” – and as a result, I am (thankfully) spared much of the noise that some of the contributors in this blog (rightly) lament about. Football and Arsenal are important to me, but I try my best to refuse to let the inevitable ups and downs of the team’s fortunes dictate the tone of my relationship with my own self and the world. And understanding rather too well how the content machine works, profiting at the expense of others’ valuable time and invaluable emotional wellbeing, I try my best to not fall into the traps. It is not easy, but it has become easier over the years as one learns more about oneself and others.
So, I have been able to avoid most of the discussions about quadruples and trebles etc. And whenever I have heard those mentioned – typically in the commentary while watching the matches – I felt that anyone who brings that up doesn’t have Arsenal’s best interest in mind. Even when we were playing very well in the late summer and early Autumn, it seemed to me that we are well set-up to really fight for PL and CL, and hopefully win at least one of them to build the habit and confidence in this squad, but we should rotate more and give academy players more chance in the domestic cup competitions. To have started following Arsenal since the early Wenger days, I could never really take the League cup seriously – the League cup may turn around and say that she/he/they/it also never takes Arsenal seriously – and while our unique history of success in the FA cup and the romance associated with this oldest football competition in the world means that I always enjoy a long run in this competition, I didn’t think that we are a squad that can seriously fight for all three competitions until the very end. We need to get a PL and/or a CL trophy over the line first, and subsequently make some more fine tuning to both our personnel and playing styles, before we can become the kind of all-conquering team that can go on and win the three most important trophies in the season.
Our league position this season has been built on the basis of defensive solidity, a methodical control of games, greater efficiency in both boxes, tactical and psychological dominance in key passages of play, and a rugged willingness to leave no stones unturned in search of a result. And I loved it. It has been instructive, and despite the many nerve-wracking days, enjoyable in its own strange ways – demonstrating the values of those innate human qualities that never fail to inspire.
That said, we also must not delude ourselves into thinking that we have shown the kind of inventiveness, insouciance, originality, sharpness in our attacking play that can see out bad days in office against well-drilled oppositions by the sheer verve of football. This is not a criticism of the players or the manager or the coaching team, but just a simple observation. There may be many reasons for that – a lot of new players settling in, injuries to many key players, individual losses of form, opposition teams mostly choosing to defend deep – but I have no problem accepting the reality that this season we haven’t really sparkled in attack. The fact that we still have scored so many goals in PL and CL, and topped the group in CL, speaks eloquently about how extraordinarily good we have been in all other areas of the game.
But there would be days when not all of these other qualities of the team would shine, not all the moving pieces that work meticulously together will connect, the defense will make the kind of mistakes on long balls over the top that have become extinct from the Arsenal form book and hence all the more jarring when they reappear, and that missing sparkle in the attack will mean we will find it very difficult to simply overpower the opposition and score more goals that they do. Keeping those days to a very minimum should give us an excellent chance of winning the league, but the very possibility of those days mean that our cup runs would require us to be more or less flawless in exhibiting the core strengths of the team in every single match.
Today was not one such day. That really I think is all there is to say about it. Hopefully we will avoid a relapse in CL, and I continue to retain my optimism for our CL run. I have my reasons, but all of those center around the hope that we would be able to play the game we want to play in each of our remaining CL matches, starting with Sporting Lisbon away in a few days, and put on the kind of flawless efficiency that I think is the defining character of this team of their best days.
The PL would obviously be a mighty grind. We Arsenal fans will all probably go through quite a few days where the gap between catharsis and despair would hinge on a VAR call, a last-ditch tackle, a sublime finish out of nowhere, a last minute corner kick that would concentrate all of our breaths into one single hopeful outcome. I have no illusion that the next couple of months would be a challenge to our nerves. But if we are to simply rationally look at the possibilities, and expect that the team would continue to do very well the things that they have mostly been excellent at, we would still be able to remember all these frantic days with a fondness and joy that binds us all together for life. Millions of people world over – across all the divides this divisive species of ours had dreamt of in its short sojourn on this planet – would feel connected over a shared experience of achievement, maybe for a short moment most of us would be reminded that we are all so very similar.
Maybe it would be a Max Dowman goal that would confirm the league win for us? If there was one player today who deserved to win, it was him. He was the best player, by far, across both the teams. His technical skills have already been noticed by all, but his strength and conviction today were impressive. No one can know what the future will bring for him, but we as Arsenal fans should feel privileged to witness the emergence of a special talent through our ranks.
Southampton 2 (Stewart 35’, Charles 85’) – Arsenal 1 (Gyökeres 68’)
