Being an Arsenaloholic « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
Don McMahon
Being an Arsenaloholic
Season after season, week after week, month after month, Cup after Cup, run-in after run-in I stay glued to the TV or computer alternately surmounted by euphoria or equally often pummeled into an abyss of despair. Where does this Gooner addiction come from and what are its consequences?
Take right now for example…I can’t decide whether Clichy sauntering over to our Northern reserve club for a mere 7M sterling , is a good thing or a bad thing. Is it possible that its both? I mean everything about the Arsenal lately is ambiguous, debatable, uncertain, fluid, like quicksand. With this dichotomy comes a certain instability and loss of focus….I am losing touch with the Arsenal reality and like a bi-polar individual, feeling moments of etheral bliss and the next moment plumbing depths even the most ardent Gloomy-doomy Gooners fail to reach.
Let me give you a perfect example; watching the Arsenal overcome a clearly superior Barcelona team at the Emirates last season was the equivalent of a perfect hit for a meth addict or better still, like a night out with Pamela Anderson with no holds barred(if you’re reading this and are a female Gooner-choose your dream date or gender) but watching the Barcodes, with the able assistance of the referee, come back in a game they should have been out of after 45 minutes, was the equivalent of swallowing a gallon of petrol , shoving a lit match up your nose and sneezing (please do NOT try this at home)!
I have come to the forlorn conclusion that I am an Arsenaloholic, the definition of which is as follows. A deluded and often shambolic individual, of either gender and undefined age (but must be over 6months ), with minimal ambition (other than AFC winning silverware), no fixed address (since I troll from pub to my mates’ sofas and am rarely home), little to recommend him or her other than a new Gunners kit every year and a pathetic, ceaseless hope that the light at the end of the tunnel (the one leading to the Emirates) isn’t another runaway train!
I can’t get enough of the Club, the history, the potential glory, the moments of sheer delirium like our humbling of Real and AC Milan and the aforementioned finger we gave Barca, the killing ground that most blogs have become, the elegance of everything Arsenal, the media scum dissing our Club everywhere and anywhere they can, the three-ring circus that is the Barca-Cesc saga every year, the groans coming from La Cantera (Barca) as we sweep another under 17 talent from their doorstep, the divine one-touch Football, the Spuds Derbies, the MOTD morons, and so on.
This dependence on my Arsenal fix, currently being met by pseudo-intelligent rumours and spurious speculations of summer madness, like Methadone supposedly alleviates a coke addict’s need, is maintaining my mental equilibrium just marginally. THANK God that in an other week I’ll get to see the boys in Red & White amble onto the steppes and rice paddies of Asia to confront their hosts best 11. Frankly I’d be satisfied if they toured Cheltenham wearing busker costumes and kicking a recently decapitated Spuds skull around against a pickup team of retired Aussie cricketers….cricketers, what a dreadful thought!
My spouse, who long ago abandoned any hope of a cure for my affliction, has (perhaps sarcastically?) suggested that I find a real hobby like gardening, swimming and/or lawn-bowling. I did once try all of these but the lifeguard wouldn’t let me take my trowel and bowls into the pool.
Such is life, but on a brighter note, my shrink tells me that her husband is a Spuds fan and that, with significant medication, regular shock treatments and the employment of elephant sized suppositories, she has been able to, on occasion, actually recognize his speech as English and increase his IQ to match his age (45)! There but for the grace of Wenger and Gazidis, go I!
Thankfully and mercifully I have joined a self-help group sponsored by the EPL and the Septic Blatter Foundation for severely disturbed Football fans where we watch videos of Platini and Jack Warner performing unspeakable acts on wax figures of our current FA Board-members, all the while screaming out phrases like Fairplay and Corruption…what Corruption? This therapy, commonly known as bizarre rehabilitation and turgid supplication (BRATS) seems to be having some effect. My wife tells me, in my few moments of lucidity, that I now no longer wake up screaming ¨Buy,Buy you French fop¨ or ¨ Oh Foot ,oh Ball I hear thy call¨ and that at work, my mates have noticed a marked decline in my tendency to wear an arsenal shirt with a tie.
There is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel, now if I could only figure out how I got into this tunnel in the first place?????
Don McMahon
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