It was a phone call the following day that informed me of Dennis Bergkamp’s missed penalty and Ryan Giggs’s mazy run in the 1999 FA Cup semi-final replay. Ceefax relayed the news of a championship-ending 2-2 draw at Bolton in 2003. While in 2011, the BBC Sport live blog delivered confirmation that, when it came to Arsenal, 4-0 was the most dangerous lead. Each hurt differently, but absolutely.
So it is disconcerting that Arsenal’s recent calamities — throwing away 2-0 leads in their last two matches to essentially set fire to their title ambitions — have not crushed me. To be clear, this is not evidence of my maturity or personal growth. This is what Man City do.
There have been dominant teams fuelled by wealthy owners in the past. But never to this scale. It’s not the money nor even the rationale for why a state of that nature should wish to spend it on an English football club that bothers me. Not least because lavish transfer fees are no guarantee of success — just ask Man Utd or Everton fans. It’s what City’s robotic greatness has wrought on the rest of the league.
I ought not to be sleeping, ruminating about those final 25 minutes at Anfield or the unfortunate penalty miss from Bukayo Saka at West Ham. But I’m fine. To outlast City in the Premier League requires a team to be practically perfect in every way. Chances must be taken, injuries avoided, VAR decisions yours. Not impossible, but not likely.
The one year in the last five in which Pep Guardiola’s team did not clinch the title, Liverpool achieved a preposterous 99 points. They needed to, given that the previous season their 97 points was good enough only for second place. These numbers are astonishing, not least when you consider there are only a theoretical 114 points on offer.
Point tallies from league winners were rising prior to the City revolution. But in the mid-Nineties, a haul in the region of 75-80 points was regularly enough. Man Utd’s treble winners managed ‘only’ 79 points in 1999. That is because the top clubs were still imperfect. Even the best teams lacked quality cover for each position. Replacement-level players were noticeably, sometimes hilariously (I’m looking at you, Pascal Cygan), inferior. Therefore, if your team played in Europe midweek, it showed on the weekend.
No English club, let alone Arsenal with its relatively parsimonious owners, can financially compete with a Man City that has married money with competent management. The rest can only punch above their weight for so long. Coming second best feels inevitable. Disappointment is priced in.
That Arsenal have thrown away two leads in the space of a week should hurt on a par with those times before. It doesn’t. Instead, I sense a collective shrug of the shoulders, from Gooners and neutrals alike. What did you expect? And it is the absence of emotion — even agony — that ought to disturb us.
Twitter’s blue tick blues
On the day SpaceX’s Starship experienced a “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, users of another Elon Musk service were distracted by something far more explosive: the removal of their blue tick.
The symbol’s change, from verifying that a news organisation or notable person is who they say they are to something that can be bought for just over £8 a month, is self-evidently stupid. But my beef is with the now tickless.
Many have been at pains to signal their insouciance. Yet this unedifying spectacle reminds me of discussions about Oxbridge, which invariably results in alumni finding increasingly tangential ways to reveal that they, you know, went there.
I open myself up to accusations of bitterness — I was never granted verified status. My few followers have long been forced to take on trust that my bad takes and worse puns are my own. But, famous friends: it’s OK to miss your tick.
