That was the most disgusting 106,000 minutes of my life. I hated every moment of the gut-wrenching, depression-inducing, clusterf*ck of an afternoon… until that final whistle blew, and we had done it:
A glorious 1-0 to the Arsenal at the same stadium where Man City dropped 2 points not too long ago.
There are games in Premier League seasons that become classics, when perhaps they shouldn’t. I’m thinking about Man City vs QPR, which was turned over in the 97th minute by Sergio Agüero. Steven Gerrard slipping over vs Chelsea. The Thierry hat-trick at Highbury against Liverpool.
This game, if all goes to plan, will be one of those games… it will be seared into your memory for all of time. The performance started strongly, the Ben White sub turned into a series of tactical moves for Arteta that was the chef's equivalent of adding more and more mayonnaise to blandify a spicy condiment, the second half felt very Bournemouth… then Martin Odegaard took over. His beautiful play down the right saw him threaded into the box, he danced at danger on his toes, cut inside, then again, and teed up Trossard who placed his shot first time into the bottom corner. The celebration of Martin was just pure cinema. He knew what he’d done in that moment. So did Saliba who booted a spare ball into the crowd. Leo, rampaging at the away fans like a madman.
That was it, we thought. The game rolled on into injury time. One last corner. The ball was looped into the box, Raya came for it, stumbled, it was a melee, but Callum Wilson brutalised a shot through a sea of bodies, it crossed the line, Kavanaugh got the call on his wrist… we had been done at the death. This was it. Over. I was on my knees. The dull thud in your stomach, knowing that we’d been unstuck by a f*cking set piece.
But hold up. Mikel is gesturing with his arm. Is he ok? What has he seen? The players are claiming a foul? Chris K gets a message from Darren England. They start to look at the replay of the goal, and my oh my, Raya had his shirt pulled by Todibo, Pablo was blocking Raya’s jump by clamping over one shoulder, and the cheeky bugger was also holding his f*cking wrist!
