A Late Night Discovery

BY JON SHAY / @woolwich_1886

I still remember finding out about Arsenal for the very first time. Growing up in the U.S. in the late 1970s and early ‘80s meant that I lived in a soc—er, football wasteland. Come to think of it, the only sports that really attracted anyone’s attention were baseball and American “football.”

I had been playing the real kind for a few years, but at that point, it felt like a hobby more than a sport. We had no professional league, just an abortive indoor one, and we had no knowledge of or access to international football. I only knew Pele, for example, as a guy who must have been pretty good at one point. I only heard about Maradona’s “hand of God” in a story buried in our newspaper’s sports section days later. Like I said, a wasteland.

At any rate, it was somewhere around 1982 and we had just gotten cable . To that point in my admittedly young life, I had subsisted on the thin gruel known as Duran Duran, not yet knowing that actual music existed. I would stay up into the wee hours to watch Friday Night Video Fights, The Young Ones, and Headbangers' Ball.

Click to read more ...

How To Overturn A Thumping Home Defeat

BY PETE ELDON / @peteeldon

Losing to Bayern this week reminded me that better Arsenal teams than this one have had the capacity to be even more outclassed at home by European opposition.

Back in the long distant past when we were a genuine European force and regularly threatened to win any competition we entered (yeah, I am older then you think), we were paired with Internationale of Milan in the group stages of the Champions League.

The season was 2003/4, the season in which we became ‘Invincibles’, a season like no other in the glorious history of the club. But the Champions league campaign had got off to a far from invincible start with 1 point from the first 3 matches which included a 3-0 home drubbing to Inter.

Click to read more ...

Surviving Paris

BY AHMED YUSSUF / @ahmedyussuf10

Mum was still fast asleep when I woke up, washed my face and put on my uniform. There were still several hours until I was due at school as I turned on my freakishly small television and tuned in to watch Arsenal take on Barcelona in the 2006 Champions League final. 

I was wary of the occasion having been reminded time and again in the build-up of our failures in Europe. This time though, surely things would change? This time, no matter what, we were going to become the first London club to win the continent’s top honour.

The line-up looked strong and our main man Thierry Henry was at the peak of his powers. He’d conquered the Bernabeu, helped himself to another domestic golden boot and was back on his old stomping ground. Having had a patchwork defence throughout the knockout stages even Ashley Cole and Sol Campbell were back in the starting eleven while semi-final hero Jens Lehmann retained his place between the sticks. Things were looking good.

Click to read more ...

An Ode to Freddie

BY MARK CULLEN / @MarkCullen92

Ask any football fan about the Arsenal side that went 49 Premier League Games Unbeaten, or the Invincibles as they are better known, and they will talk about the likes of Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Dennis Bergkamp and Patrick Vieira, which is fair given that these four players each performed excellently during this remarkable run. 

One member of this squad who is a huge fan favorite with all Gooners, but is surprisingly underrated by fans of many other teams, is Swedish Midfielder Freddie Ljungberg. My evidence for this statement is based on a conversation with a Liverpool supporting cousin of mine, who stated that Freddie “wasn't actually that good” as we discussed our respective teams all time Premier League XI’s.

For me though, Freddie has and always will be my favorite Arsenal player. As a kid who didn't become interested in football until the age of eight, my first experience of Arsenal on the television was in a match against Manchester City, at Maine Road in April 2001.

Click to read more ...

An Interview with Granny - The 95-year-old Gooner

BY @SianyMacalarny

I’ve bored on about this long enough, but Arsenal have been in my family for quite some time. My Granny (Cathie) is now 95, and still watches all of our games on television as her knees prevent her being able to enjoy a live game – she does of course still holler and hoot at the telly though. She still lives in Highbury, so I popped round for an Aero and a chat before our last match, against West Ham, to get the views of a girl who could never be labeled a Johnny Come Lately… 

Click to read more ...

An Early Christmas Present

BY PETE ELDON / @peteeldon

Maybe it’s because I’m older and generally more considered in this era of sanitised football, stewards, and seats, but football ain’t what it used to be back in the 70s and 80s when I was a teenage football fan following the Arse all over the country.

Although I still love the North London derbies more than any other game in the season, my recent visits to White Hart Lane have left me largely underwhelmed compared to the Saturday afternoons and occasional midweek blockbusters we used to have back then.

The league cup tie in 1984 when Charlie Nicholas and Tony Woodcock scored in a 2-1 win on their turf will stay with me forever as a night when the atmosphere crackled with hate filled tension that hung over the stadium like an acrid blanket.

Click to read more ...

It's About Beating Spurs

BY STEVEN PYE / @1980sSportsBlog

It's about beating Spurs. So said Tony Adams on this Sky Premier League promo back in 1996. Some of us already knew this though, way before the summer in which football apparently "came home". From an early age, my Dad had subtlety told me in no uncertain terms that Arsenal were to be my team, and that if we were to win only two matches in a season, then the derby games against our North London friends were the ones to win. He wasn't aggressive about it, he didn't teach me any abusive songs about that lot - I would discover enough of those myself - but he insisted that at no cost could we afford to lose any matches against them.

The problem was, he told me all of this in 1983, a period in the history of the club often referred to as the dark ages. If you think Arsenal 2012 are bad enough then you simply had to be around in the early to mid-eighties to appreciate just how mediocre we could be. Terry Neill's reign had begun to unravel after the high profile departures of Brady and Stapleton, and by the time the 1983/84 season started, time was running out for the Irishman.

The summer signing of Charlie Nicholas had sparked a fresh wave of optimism amongst the Arsenal faithful, and after a brace against a poor Wolves side in just his second game, the press went into overdrive. "Wolves became the first English victims of the 21-year-old Scot's talents - and they won't be the last," declared Dave Horridge in The Mirror, with John Wragg in the Express boldly predicting that Nicholas "...threatens to dominate the First Division...". Naturally the honeymoon period couldn't last, and by November the same hacks were already questioning Nicholas and pondering if Arsenal's star man was about to be dropped.

Click to read more ...

Arsene's Generation

BY MATT KING / @King_G_O

I could tell you I remember the football played on April 1st 1995. But in truth everything that day was just about Highbury Stadium. Being there was a dream. I can still recall experiencing so many startling revelations that day: the grass was so green; the whole place so vast; where was the commentary? Did they not play the voice over the tanoy for the crowd like on television? How would I know which player had the ball? The early Arsenal goals were so much louder than on Match of The Day, and so unexpected. I usually knew the score before Saturday night – but this really was…live! I was only 6, if that all seems a bit dim witted.

Just looking around I was fascinated. We were so high in the North Bank upper. The views to the East were rows of rooftops, to the South the Clock End and nestled in behind blocks of flats, to the West there was an empty wasteland immediately but beyond that you could see across Holloway and North London for miles.

But then their fans (who I did not know would be there) were celebrating. I found the rather muffled delirium confusing, at such odds with the tuts and sighs at our end of the ground. I hated that moment, seeing them happy at my expense whilst I was trying to enjoy myself. I’m told that I spent much of the rest of my first game at Highbury almost entirely hidden beneath my coat, peeping out to check there was no chance of having to go through that terrible experience of conceding a goal unexpectedly again.

Click to read more ...

Back From The Dead

BY SANDEEP / @Sandeep725

It hadn’t been a fun few weeks as a Gooner. Demolished in Milan, hopelessly outplayed in the North, and for the first time since the beginning of football, we'd gone through the build-up to a North London Derby as underdogs.

I'm not usually one for idle chitchat on my way to matches. Football means different things to different people. For some it's a social occasion to see their friends, for others it's a sanctuary from the daily grind and a chance for a bit of enjoyment.

On this day I felt compelled to break my usual habit when I saw a grown man, seemingly on the verge of a breakdown, walking side by side with me, praying. A grown man praying before a football match. After I finished judging him, I suddenly realised that I too needed a fresh set of boxers.

Click to read more ...

Hooked By An Henry Backheel

BY AHMED YUSSUF / @ahmedyussuf10

It was the 2^nd of October 2004; I was a smug 10-year-old bossing around people half my age. I was in a surreal venue in Kenya, Garissa to be precise. There was this mood. I couldn’t really grasp it at the time. Everyone just wanted to sit and watch the Arsenal play, and paid good money to do so. And I made sure they did, standing in front of the ‘Brothers Centre’ asking for 10 shillings for each person who entered.

Everyone took their seats and then it was silent. The whistle had blown, Arsenal had begun to play. Sounds of “oh and uh” echoed through the shabby shed, my uncle tapped my shoulder and smiled. He hadn’t supported Arsenal - he was a Leeds fan who suffered the heartbreak of relegation a season earlier- but, it didn’t matter, true football excellence was on display. I was asking to whoever would listen, who’s this player and what’s that and how’s he’d do this. It was a memorable moment. A passion had been born something I knew that would last a lifetime.

One player I recognised had been simply magnificent, even though I didn’t know the sport, was Thierry Henry. There was this sequence, he’d be juggling the ball and the defenders couldn’t contain him, and as the saying goes he was just “unplayable.”

Click to read more ...