Up for Grabs Now – My Origin Story
This… this is where it all began.
The ball hung in the air like fate itself waiting to be rewritten, and in that moment — in that most implausible, impossible, incomparable of moments — a love was born. A love so deep, so defiant, it could only be Arsenal.
I was six. A council house in Kent. A living room packed with voices, with hearts, with hands clenched in hope — not all of them Arsenal, but all united against the red machine. Liverpool: imperious, immovable, inevitable. But football, sweet, beautiful football, has never cared much for logic.
And then… Thomas. Charging through the midfield. It wasn’t just a goal. It was deliverance. It was disbelief in boots. And in that singular, staggering instant, the impossible became not just probable, but real.
Even as a child, I understood the arithmetic. We weren’t meant to do it. But we did. And in that tiny body, with its giant beating heart, I felt the roar of something eternal. The joy, the tears, the trembling limbs in the local pub hours later — that wasn’t just celebration. That was communion.
From that moment, Arsenal weren’t just a club. They were mine.
And yet, this love — oh, this most complicated of romances — has not always been kind. It has lifted me to heights I scarcely knew existed. It has carved memories into my soul, bright and blazing. But it has also broken me. Shattered me. Wounded me deeper than any human heart ever could.
Because this is Arsenal. Glory and grief, triumph and trauma. A club that offers you heaven and hell, often in the same breath.
And though nothing — nothing — may ever match the sheer euphoria of that night in ‘89, not even the majestic swagger of the Invincibles, I wouldn’t trade that origin for anything. Not even a decade more of age and understanding.
Because that night was my Genesis. That was when I belonged. When I chose the cannon and it chose me.
And what an extraordinary, eternal beginning that was.
From the embers of ‘89, my journey continued — not with childlike wonder now, but with fire in the veins and icons etched into the soul.
George Graham’s Arsenal. Grit and glory. Structure and steel. And at the centre of my universe, before the posters of Wright adorned every bedroom wall, there stood a colossus of character — David “Rocky” Rocastle. My first true Arsenal hero.
I still remember it: a family friend returning from Highbury with a matchday programme, Rocastle pictured with his wrist strapped in tubigrip. And me? A boy possessed by devotion, cutting up my dad’s old sports sock just to emulate the great man. That wasn’t just fandom — that was faith.
Wrighty, of course, was electric — a man who scored goals like they were going out of fashion, dragging us into the 90s with fire in his boots and mischief in his grin. Cup wins. League Cups. The FA Cup. Even the glorious, once-forgotten Cup Winners’ Cup. These were the breadcrumbs of belief, the trophies that fed a growing hunger.
And then came him. Arsène Wenger. A name that would become scripture. A man who didn’t just change Arsenal — he redefined what English football could be.
And as if destiny hadn’t already made its intentions clear, he signed for Arsenal on my 14th birthday. My 14th birthday.
What are the odds?
The greatest manager in our club’s history, gift-wrapped by the universe. As though the footballing gods themselves whispered, “This club is yours.”
It wasn’t just written in the stars. It was etched in gold.
My adolescence became adulthood under the spell of his philosophy. Football not just played, but composed. Wenger’s Arsenal were not just successful… they were sublime.
They made art with a football.
This wasn’t just admiration from Highbury. It was reverence from across the continent. We had the orchestra — Henry, the blur of beauty. Bergkamp, the ballet dancer with a sniper’s eye. Pires, the elegance. Vieira, the commander.
And I was lucky. Lucky to be young, untethered, and there. Lucky to have coins in my pocket and time on my side — to stand and watch football as it should be played. To feel it. To live it.
But as all dynasties do, that empire faded. The move from the marble halls of Highbury to the glass-and-steel ambition of Ashburton Grove promised much, but exacted a price. We didn’t see it coming. The trophies dried. The magic dimmed.
And for the younger ones — five, ten years my junior — theirs was an Arsenal forged in frustration. They didn’t grow up with Legends. They inherited hope laced with hardship.
But still, even in the drought, we found droplets. An FA Cup here. A cup run there. Because even in our famine, Arsenal still knew how to summon success from the depths. We are a club of moments, even when the eras elude us.
And this… this is what it means.
To belong not merely to a club, but to a cause. Not simply to watch, but to feel. Arsenal — our Arsenal — not just a name stitched in white on red, but a standard, a sentiment, a sovereign state of soul. Others may parade more league titles, bask in glories of bygone decades. The Liverpools, the Uniteds — illustrious names with illustrious pasts. And yes, there are others too, with fleeting flares of European nobility: Forest, Villa, even Chelsea.
But we… we are Arsenal.
A club where only the highest of standards ever dare draw breath. Where the bar is not just set — it is raised, relentlessly. We are not permitted to drift in mediocrity. No. We are Arsenal, and so we are judged. And so we should be.
Because this is a benchmark club. A bellwether. A north star.
I love this club — not with convenience, not with whim — but with a constancy that rivals breath itself. Perhaps only family gets close. It has been with me, beside me, within me. Through joy. Through despair. Through Super Leagues and super flops. Through the civil wars of the latter Wenger years, through the disarray of Emery, through the chaos of a captain’s armband passed around like a burden too heavy to bear.
Yet still, I see only red and white.
This — this is not fandom. It is fraternity. It is family. A tribe united not just by what we support, but by how deeply we care.
And yes, there are enemies.
Tottenham — whose very name arrives like a punchline without a joke. Chelsea — always to me the nouveau riche and devoid of romance. Manchester United — forever tinged with a bitter red rivalry. Those battles etched onto hearts, those scars still faintly pink beneath the skin.
And then, of course, the new money. Manchester City: slick, surgical, state-fuelled. A club that took from us — staff, style, soul — and built their own empire atop it. You cannot buy history, they say. But you can certainly rent the future.
Yet this is not about them.
This — this is about us. About Arsenal. About love. About memory and magic. About the intoxication. It is about the high-wire agony of it all. The escapism. The romance. The sheer, unfiltered life of football.
So this… this will be my diary.
My confessional. My ode.
A place to pour it all out — the wonder, the fury, the moments that made me, the nights that undid me. Whether read by thousands or by no one at all, these pages will be the keeper of my truth. A tangible archive of intangible feeling. A home for the noise in my head and the ache in my heart.
Because I am not alone. I am part of something vast. Something mighty. Something immortal.
We are Arsenal. Always Arsenal. Forever Arsenal.