I Was A Teenage Doombag Baby

While Yogi’s away Steww will play …

When Yogi told a few of us under which plant pot he’d hidden the key to ACLF Towers during his absence, we thought, well – put the cat out feed the fish – as long as we don’t get those two in any way muddled up we’ll be laughing. But there was a note pinned to the stuffed bear at the bottom of the big staircase in the main entrance hall which read ‘Oh and while you’re at it stick up some blog entries for me will you’. Daunted but not entirely loose of bowel I thought to myself, OK I can do this. And then I read the post script. ‘Stew how about a season preview, you know predictions for Arsenal 2010/11′ and after a while I realised the high pitched keening building to a terrifying crescendo was coming from me.

Allow me, if you will, to take you back in time. You’ll have to do the noises and imagine the picture going all wavy yourself. The year is 1978, it’s a Friday evening in May and I am in the little room beneath Redfield Road Methodist chapel playing something called shinty in an improbably small space with a group of other boys all dressed appropriately for an evening in the Scouts. Scouting for boys was big in Midsomer Norton in the seventies and even though I was only a year away from fags, spliffs booze and booze, and girls and booze, an evenings entertainment still involved more simple and innocent pursuits. This evening sticks in my mind for one reason only. The next day was the FA Cup Final, and The FA Cup was a massive event in those days.  Broadcast simultaneously on both (yes both) channels, the coverage started at about 9am with Cup Final It’s a Knockout and became more ridiculous as the day went on, but it was the only live televised game we got.

My earliest football memories involve David Webb scoring against Leeds in a replay at Old Trafford in 1970. However, Chelsea weren’t the team for me, despite Peter Osgood’s sideburns. When the little cardboard league ladder came out that autumn with it’s cut out tabs for each team to be raised and lowered as the season progressed, it was Arsenal who interested me. Hey I had just turned seven, I make no claims to understand why Bertie Mee’s men chose me but they did. Maybe it was Charlie George’s hair and sideburns in combination. Of course my first season as an Arsenal fan saw us win the double, culminating in that drawn out Cup Final and Charlie’s wonder goal. This football lark was going to be nothing but fun. Simple; you cheer for the team you like and they win everything. Joy. Until the next year. Dumped out of the final by the hated Leeds United and then nothing. Not one trophy, not one more cup final appearance throughout those miserable six years. I was a teenage doomer.

Until that Friday night scout hall in May 1978. The subject turned to the cup final and I laughed scornfully at the suggestion that lowly Ipswich Town with their little known manager Bobby something or other would cause us much trouble tomorrow. We wouldn’t just win, we would, in the words of David Pleat , give them a footballing masterclass. Not only did we have Jennings, Pat Rice and David O’Leary in defence, England star Malcolm ‘Supermac’ MacDonald up front but we had the worlds single greatest talent, the man for whom this very site is named, yes we had Liam Brady. I boasted, I bragged I put every last scout and scout master and parents coming to collect scouts in their place. We will win. It’s only a matter of how many we score. I was all too happy to believe that six long years (and boy are they long when you’re in your teens) were about to come to an end in front of a world wide audiance of gazillions.

This was to be my last ever public prediction of success for Arsenal.

I am not a superstitious man, and, touch wood, it’s never done me any harm. However, where football is concerned I have my, shall we say foibles. If I lost us that dreadful match and brought down all that pain on me and my team then it was a simple mistake to rectify; never again tell anyone that we are going to win anything. Ever.

This policy has had mixed success since that fateful Saturday. The feelings of despair which I experienced at the tender age of fifteen are just as intense and the hope, whilst not publicly expressed, burns just as fiercely.’Hang on though Stew’, I hear you cry, ‘you’re always on ACLF banging on about being positive and having belief’. Ah yes but here we reach the nub, the rub if you will. You see this place is like a haven of pro Arsenal positivity and it rubs off on one after a couple of seasons. It’s one of the reasons I love it and keep coming back for more. And if occasionally I let slip that I think we can win the league, well it’s only entre nous is it not? You won’t go telling anyone what I said will you? Because here’s the thing, (that wasn’t the thing back there that was a nub or rub, I forget which, this is definitely the thing) backed into a corner as I am by YW, I have to say what I think the season holds for us. It goes against my instincts, against decades of strict abstinence, but you see, last season, this old dog learned a few new tricks.

There was a regular poster with whom many of you are familiar. Frank never shirked or shrank from a fight. Forthright, scourge of the doom and gloom brigade, 100% Arsenal through to his marrow, he said that we would win by a country mile. And I got swept along with him as did many others. I believed it, I said it to myself, a country mile. ‘Ah ha – but Frank was wrong’ I hear you cry, ‘ you must feel as big and stupid  and as much of a jinx now as you did in 1978.’  Well, no actually. So what if the prediction didn’t come true? It actually enhanced an already exciting season, made me feel part of something good and positive and above all supportive. It gave me belief which kept the fire burning on the darkest days. And you know what? Frank was right to believe we could win by a mile. There was no reason we couldn’t have run away with it. So it didn’t work out that time but sport isn’t maths, things sometimes don’t add up. Arsene predicted the Invincibles one season early didn’t he?

This season I think we find ourselves uniquely placed among our peers with young players nurtured and brought up playing together the Arsenal way. The culmination of years of hard work has blessed us with this squad of staggeringly talented players and a manager who could walk into any boardroom in the world and be offered a job. To be here now at this moment in our club’s history and to witness the fruition of all those years work; well, why wouldn’t you feel proud, why wouldn’t you feel positive?

I don’t know if Frank will ever come back so I’ll say it for him. A country mile folks, that’s my prediction. And until it’s mathematically impossible to win I’ll believe we will win. When you watched the first half on Sunday as we  majestically passed Liverpool off the pitch, at Anfield, on their managers début you just knew this team could go anywhere and do anything. And even when they contrived to somehow lose a goal the determination, and yes grit, that they showed whilst never losing their cool was wonderful. The two match changing substitutes, one in the autumn of his career the other still in his early spring encapsulate all that is great about our club and that blend of youth, experience, never say die and our unique brand of Wengerball is as good as anything out there and on it’s day, better.

A country mile.

Just don’t tell anyone I said it will you?