It’s a muggy ol’ day in London today, I can tell you that much and having gone for a run early this morning as I’m off in to the office for the day, I am feeling it for sure.

I wonder what the players do on days like today? probably just shorts and a t shirt I’d imagine, but any time I do any kind of exercise in this kind of weather, I always feel a little ‘bleugh’ – and I haven’t even been drinking to use that as an excuse. I keep mopping my brow whilst deliberating whether I need to buy one of those portable fans to have trained to my head whilst I’m on the tube.

All of this preamble is, of course, because we are in a footballing ‘No Man’s Land’ right now. We’ve had all of the friendlies; they’re all done and dusted. Plus we aren’t close enough to the weekend to start getting wind of team news or an Arteta press conference in sight. So instead we wait. And wait. Remember that old Guiness advert from the 90s? You know the one, where it starts off “he waits…That’s what he does…” from the book Moby Dick? Yeah, that feels like right now.

I wait. That’s what I do.

I wait for this weekend.

Tick is most definitely following tock. I’m starving out here folks. I need my drug, my addiction. I need it returned to me. They gave me some synthetic stuff over the summer in the shape of the Euro’s and the Arsenal friendlies, but it doesn’t quite hit as hard. It doesn’t give the same buzz. It also doesn’t provide that ‘come down’ in the same way and by the end of nine months of it I am usually at the point in which I need a bit of time away from it, but now it is at its fever pitch worst. I am eating, sleeping and dreaming of it. Last night The Management and I were sitting in the garden and she asked me “are you excited?” and I have her a 12 minute monologue of our chances this season, the signings, the 115 Charges FC situation, the league as a whole and the fact that I don’t regret telling my brother that despite him and his family coming over to stay with us for the first time in five years, I won’t be back until 6pm at the earliest because it’s the first game of the season. He understands. He’s football obsessed too, albeit as a West Ham fan (I’m the ‘black sheep of the family’ as most of my Dad’s side are Hammers – I’ll explain why I got in to The Arsenal another day), so I didn’t need to do too much justification. But on the eve of a new football season, I needed to just re-iterate the fact too.

And I think because we are so close – within touching distance – the news is super quiet today. Everyone is preparing for Saturday. For me that’s about WhatsApping mates who I haven’t seen for a few months, arranging arrival times at the pub, the excitement as you start to get in to the line up discussions, a quick check in on what some of the lads have been doing over the summer. Sure, we all talk regularly, sure we all vaguely know what we’ve been doing, but there’s something of ceremony and ritual about that first beer and re-connection face-to-face that brings so much excitement.

And I think back to that last day of the season. There was a group of us in the Vineyard on Upper Street, just down the road from Highbury & Islington tube station. It was a sombre affair. We all sat around a circular table, we all chatted, but it almost felt like a wake. There were people just generally a little bit down. You could tell it in the atmosphere. We all kept brave faces on but we’d come so close to what we thought could be history, but what ended up as another near miss. The words of Odegaard saying he just wanted to get back in to training when he spoke to the crowd post the Everton game felt a little hollow at the time, but now, on the eve of a new season, they feel like they mean something.

They HAVE to mean something. The fire needs to be in the bellies of those Arsenal players. They need their game faces on right now. They have certainly looked like it in the last two pre season matches I’ve seen here in London, but friendlies always come with the ‘it’s only a friendly’ caveat; this weekend is the real stuff.

This weekend I get nervous. This weekend I take my place in Block Five and stand waiting patiently with kick off. Much like the friends in the pub, the friends around my seat I need to connect with again. To see what they have been up to. This weekend I don’t get a good night sleep on Friday because I’m waiting for when Saturday comes. This weekend I get on the tube and I am glued to my social media accounts, posting messages of thoughts, reading messages of those I follow, interacting with every single last drop of content I can get my hands on. This weekend I read match previews from ‘neutrals’ and journos. This weekend I see how many of those in the media think we might win the league. This weekend I scoff at rival fans who say we might bottle it again. This weekend I listen to as many podcasts as I can on The Arsenal. This weekend I wear my colours. This weekend The Management doesn’t even ask me if I am leaving early to get to Highbury – she knows I am. This weekend I spend the morning with Sky Sports on in every room.

This weekend is The Arsenal.

I can’t wait.