The pain of being an Arsenal fan: It’s the hope that kills…

It’s the hope that killed

I woke up this morning and my heart still hurts. Sunday night felt very disappointing, and after what I thought was such a tough season last season, this season seems to hurt a bit more. We are getting closer and closer to picking up that Premier League title. Although I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved this season, it does feel like we let ourselves down with games we should have won. Watching City lift the title for the 4^th season in a row hurt.

As I sat with the Arsenal vs Everton game on my TV and the City game running on my laptop, I was fingernail biting nervous waiting for the games to start. I didn’t want to be deluded and expect City to drop points to West Ham, a team they haven’t lost to at home in years, but I had a bit of hope and just kept thinking, what if?

The games started and my eyes were going from one screen to another, just praying that West Ham could so something special for us and pull off a miracle, but it didn’t take long for my heart to sink when only 2 minutes into the game, Phil Foden managed to score and put City in front. Even from all the way across the world, watching on the TV, you could feel the life being sucked out of The Emirates as everyone got the notifications on their phone and we all as a collective knew this could be a very long day but of course there was still hope.

Arsenal was struggling to get past Everton’s defence and although we have chance after chance, we just could seem to score. Then my heart sunk again, Phil Foden had managed to put City 2-0 up in the first 20 minutes of the game and it looked and felt like the day was over from there, City are a hard team to beat and considering West Ham have had a rough season, my hope was lost that they’d manage to get anything back.

Then Everton scored from a freekick, and the Emirates fell silent for a minute in shock, heads were in hands and all I could think was, are we really going to bottle this? Luckily only a few minutes later we managed to get back on equal terms with a rocket of a goal from Tomiyasu and you could feel everyone take a big breath and the belief began to kick back in. Only minutes later West Ham managed to bag a goal back with a unreal overhead kick from Kudus and the hope was fully back, could we really do this?

Going into half time, I was thinking, anything can happen from here, we just needed both us and West Ham to find another goal but again my heart sank as I watched Rodri bag City’s 3^rd goal and from then, all hope was lost.

Watching Havertz score the late winner was great and we needed that, but it all feels like it was so close, yet so far and again, it’s the hope that kills in football. Hopefully we can come back stronger next season and finally lift some silverware.