Points or Performance?

United we stand, divided we smash and grab a goal anyway :)

Welcome to the 25/26 season here at Arsenal Wonderland. Welcome to all the new subscribers and all the Wonderlanders who’ve been here for a while :)

I’m especially looking forward to this season from an AW point of view. I’ll be coming out with a weekly post about the matches and about one a month I’ll do a longer more in-depth post (a bit like the ones I did at the beginning of AW).

This season I’ll be adding a Buy Me A Coffee button for readers who want to support my work. Writing Arsenal Wonderland is an enormous pleasure but it also takes a huge amount of time. I’d love it if you’d help me by offering a small donation toward my work.

If you can’t afford to donate then please enjoy my work, no problem at all. If you can afford to then just click on the Buy Me A Coffee button. Thanks :)

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Credit: Arsenal.com

A few week’s ago I went to funeral. I saw folks I hadn’t seen for a long time and I felt myself strangely regressing to how we all were back in the day. You know the feeling. Family reunions can bring out the worst in anyone. No matter how much you’ve grown from all the experiences you’ve had, family can drag you back in time like nothing else. I had to have a word with myself. Chill dude, you’re a mature, competent adult.

That’s why Arsenal fans hate going to Old Trafford. It’s like going to a funeral. No matter how much we’ve changed, how much we’ve improved, how dominant we should be, United carry the uncanny power of a withering look from an Aunt, or a bullying putdown from a cousin. Even though Ruben Amorin would swap today’s teams in a flash, Arsenal still seem to get overly nervous and insecure in the face of patently inferior opposition. It’s strange. And it isn’t.

I never look forward to playing United, I just hope to get through it without getting into a fight or drunkenly reminiscing about the good old days with someone I never liked in the first place.

Plus of course there’s the PGMOL’s patented Rose Coloured Man U Glasses that transforms all 50/50 encounters into Arsenal hooliganism and all United’s hooliganism into “boy’s just being boys.”

So, waltzing out of Old Trafford with 3 shiny points to the sound of United fans indignantly wandering down memory lane is a rare and delightful feeling. There’s nothing better than heading down South to fist waving United fans shouting, “who the fuck do you think you are anyway?!”

Credit: Arsenal.com

Of course there’s been plenty of internet chitter about how United were the better team. But considering the “Funeral Phenomena”, and considering United put on their best suit to impress the congregation, it’s worth giving credit to Arsenal who managed to walk off with the three points having mostly held their heads up high.

The narrative of the Gunfight at OT Corral never really materialised either, with neither Gyökeres nor Sesko having had time to bed into their teams. But even though there was a lot to like about Gyökeres debut there are still crystal balls being thrown out of prams as commentators and You Tubers attempt to smash through the present and grab the future's "I Told You So!" Trophy. But pay no heed, I know Gyökeres, and we should be excited, not worried.

OK, I don’t literally know him, but I live in his home town and I recognise his way, his saunter, his seemingly nervous confidence, his almost psycho-killer ambivalence, like a rabbit in the headlights with a machine gun in its hand. Gyökeres has a certain Stockholm suburb vibe, a kinda Friday night in town cool that's never quite at ease but comes back every Friday nonetheless.

Gyökeres is never gonna be a media darling. He's never going to give sophisticated interviews, but on the pitch he’s going to give everything and keep banging his head against that frozen ice wall until he breaks. He has no choice because that's who he is. Think of the frozen, cold-and-dark-for-months frozen North where you have no choice but endure. That's where Gyökeres comes from, so I've got my krona on him becoming a goal machine because I've seen his type before, determined, enduring and relentless and you can’t judge him from a Funeral Match at Chez United where he got no service and there’s so much dysfunction even a clearly superior Arsenal team wander about in a Funeral Funk.

This was a Points Or Performance game. In the past we’ve had the performances and United have slithered away with the points. Well, we’ve buried that nonsense 6 feet under. Time to start living our best life. We’ve got a difficult run of games coming up, and there are many who’d have taken a draw here, so we’re ahead already!

So there you go, a short and sweet first post this season, hopefully every post will be this easy and we’ll put an end to the tedious “WHEN, WHEN, WHEN?” Next week I’ll have a thing or two to say about football and the internet…

Until next week, don’t let anyone tell you who you are, you’re the only one who knows that!

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Writing Arsenal Wonderland is an enormous pleasure but it also takes time and a lot of effort. I’d love it if you’d help me by offering a small donation toward my work.

If you can’t afford to donate then please enjoy my work, no problem at all. If you can afford to then just click on the button below. Thanks :)

Credit: Arsenal.com