I enjoy writing. I always have. It’s kind of my hobby. It’s why I work in Marketing – I enjoy writing content and I get to do it (less so these days as I run a team that does most of it) in my job talking about the industry I work in.

It’s why I started this blog – I enjoy jotting down my thoughts and having them committed to (online) print; a bit of a diary, if you will. I love that people interact with it and read my ramblings – even when sentence structure isn’t always coherent, or there are spelling errors. I don’t care about that – like I say, it’s a bit of a diary about my biggest passion in life – The Arsenal.

But some days I just don’t ‘feel it’ – this is one of those days.

I think it’s probably because the realisation has set in properly now – it’s not going to be our season. I have been saying it for weeks on the Same Old Arsenal Podcast I do with James and Amanda; I thought that we weren’t winning the league, that the Brighton and Villa results pretty much did us in given Liverpool’s form, that the shafting of injuries, PGMOL and red cards had all led us down this probability that it wasn’t to be our season. But here’s the thing: I still kinda had some hope buried deep down within my psyche. I projected externally that it wasn’t going to happen, that we had too much to do, that we didn’t take advantage of situations when Liverpool slipped up, but that was a bit of a self-preservation defence mechanism. It was me trying to appease the footballing gods.

Look at this Arsenal mortal – he is being loud about his belief – let us appease him by doing the opposite of what he is saying.

I know it’s silly. In every walk of my life I see superstition as a load of old nonsense. Stepping on three drains, lucky rabbits foot, walking under ladders – all a load of old tosh. But in footballing terms I’d wear lucky pants, socks, I’d make the same journey to the ground and trad on exactly the same footsteps I made last week, if I thought it would impact us.

And so to today, in which I usually sit down and write a post mortem after we’ve lost a game that we really shouldn’t have lost. Well, I say that, but we did deserve to lose it yesterday. I could tell within 15 minutes when Odegaard Nwaneri and Saliba had all misplaced relatively simple passes. Sometimes you can just tell, you know? I don’t know if you get the same feeling as me, but sometimes I just feel it inside my bones, that “we’re gonna have problems today” kind of feeling. And that’s exactly what transpired. Nearly all the players were off it. Raya with overhit passes, Calafiori not closing down Wan Bissaka, Gabriel, Saliba and Rice all not really noticing Bowen ghosting in in the middle of the six yard box, Nwaneri quiet, the slow, lethargic, boring horseshoe of death and too many touches of every player to slow the game down. It was all there on display to see against A West Ham who applied the Newcastle blueprint: Just go a goal ahead against this Arsenal team and then sit back – they won’t challenge you with that front line.

And that’s exactly what happened.

And as the realisation crept in that even that tiny bit of hope and belief that I have deep within me was ebbing away, I started thinking about having to write this blog this morning and then jumping on the pod with James at 9.30am. And I was a bit ‘meh’ about it all. Because that last little bit of hope had gone. I will even admit to thinking on more than one occasion yesterday “I can’t be f*cking arsed with this poxy season any more – everything seems to have gone wrong”. That’s really bad, I know, because football is not just about trophies. It’s about the experience, it’s about going to the game and meeting your mates beforehand. It’s about celebrating two North London Derby wins, a smashing of Man City, of going on long unbeaten runs, as many have already said before me – the Journey. But right now, how I feel this morning, I’m pretty low and I am not thinking about those things. I will do in 24 hours time. We’ll have Forest to worry about on Wednesday and at the end of the season I’ll still reflect on some of the good stuff that has happened this season (as well as the bad), but right now I just want to put down my phone, stay off social media, focus on the other good things I have in my life (and I have a lot), then enjoy a football-free remainder of my weekend. I did it straight after the game yesterday – fired off a couple of WhatsApp’s to friends to say I didn’t want to engage in any football chat, switched off any of the notifications on my social media feeds, then spent the rest of the evening with the wife watching a movie and cooking a nice steak and chips for us both.

LIfe is short, football is sh/t sometimes, so you just have to accept it and do other things that make you happy.

So that’s my recommendation to you today if you’re reading this blog – go do something else. I’m going to start another Lego set that I got for Christmas – bit of mindfulness on a Sunday.

Well, after James and I have sat each other through 30 – 40 minutes of the Same Old Arsenal podcast, that is – going live this morning at 9.30am here. Join us if you fancy it. If I was in your shoes I probably wouldn’t bother (LOL – not great at marketing given it’s my job, eh? 😉 ) for all of the aforementioned reasons. But if you do decide to then I’ll still welcome you with open arms my friend.

Back tomorrow.