Hello! I hope you’re doing well, that you’ve had your fill of the international week(s) and are ready for club football again? Sunday, September 15th (at 2.00pm western European time) sees the mighty Cannon hauled down the Seven Sisters road for the first of our two run-ins of the 2024/5 season with our best mates from the Tottenham Marshes and so like Jimmy Smith, we find ourselves back at the Chicken Shack!

Its quite an daunting task to write about such a big game; the years of history between us, the classic matches, classic goals, miserable defeats, winning the league there (twice), Rocky’s goal in that semi, and the tension during the game that seldom lets off until our Guns have blasted in enough goals to ensure that we can wipe the sweat off of our brows…

 Its one of those fixtures that if we lose, it sits with you, niggling and irritating, coughing like nanny goats for a long time afterwards. To be honest is there anything anyone can say about such a fixture without falling into some well trodden clichéd circuitous path? Perhaps the search for the new doesn’t lead us to anything new, so forgive me for not coming up with something utterly original (if that even possible)…

At the heart of this fixture is no love lost, its a game of entrenched prejudice, of fear and hatred and of desperation to be superior, but it really is a deep well of both pride and prejudice. By prejudice I mean: “an unfavourable opinions based on; suspicion, dislike, intolerance and inflexible generalisations (fear)” etc.

This is something that always worried me a lot. Of course all humans have prejudice in them in some form or other, from the utterly innocuous to the malignant, but this is all rooted in flux and depends on how we control our reactions and emotions as to where we find ourselves on this spectrum as it bubbles up in frothing fears. Luckily(!) I didn’t grown up in a malignant family, but there were other prejudice’s, most of which I rebelled against but developed others for myself. But its tough to have a deep-seated dislike for Tottenham; its irrational, I mean what have they done to me? Winning? Existing? Duh! That’s the object of the game and the competition as a whole, as I’ve rattled on and on about in the past, many sides I don’t begrudge them wins against us at all, but with Them its something else.

My first derby game was at Highbury in the 80/81 season, fighting kept breaking all over the stadium, and being a little a kid I was really, really scared. Grown men having pitch battles (armed with various tools and missiles), and anyone could observe the endless stream of humans being led away on gurneys or being held up under-arm whilst being led to a safer place to receive medical aid. I nearly started bawling watching the St.Johns ambulance men helping. Why? Because I’m a fkn kitty. But also because the StJa are the sort of organisation that ‘cool/hard’ people laugh at and ridicule, and yet as life shows us time and time again, compassion and kindness is needed in times of distress etc. It takes real strength of mind to show goodwill towards others, let alone people who’ve brought physical ill-health upon themselves? Much of the experiences I witnessed that day, like a lot of human life seems to be such a waste of time and energy(I’m part of this too), but for some reason or other in our minds, certain aspects get certain priories?

Meanwhile back at Highbury: some Spudney (A.J Ayer?) gave me a bollocking as we sat down to resume our seats after HT, in his expansive and aggressive rant he explained to me how Tottenham were going to win and that I should take my seat and observe. Thanks. I was just a kid. Not even a teenager. Of course I’ve soaked up much, much worse verbal and physical abuse in life ( I’m going to write about some of those experiences in another preview), but there was something that struck me at how utterly pathetic that bloke was, bollocking a kid. He didn’t see me, he saw only that which he thought I represented. But what do I/did I represent? All life is changing, a stream, but not an isolated stream but the vast expanse of all the universe creating and destroying; it isn’t ‘out there’ we are it, part of it. What do we represent as a baby, as a kid, as a teenager, and through the stages of adulthood? Where is this unchanging representation located? It seems real, but its not really real? He couldn’t see me. He saw an enemy.

Anyway, back at Highbury, planet earth, David Price scored to make it 1-0 ( I don’t recall it though) but I do recall Franky Stapleton’s goal and magical it was.

I came away from the game with a fear, deep seated and deep rooted. Of course this was later compounded by being mates with loads of other Arsenal kids who hated Tottenham etc. Around that time my mum ran off with a Tottenham fan and the old man stirred that one up a bit in his insecurity, he didn’t need to do it and even then I thought it was unnecessary, but people get desperate and they say and do less than mature things than they might have wanted to.

So suddenly in my little life at a little age I found myself: full of both pride (for The Mighty Cannon) and prejudice (for Tottenham); irrational, full of fear and after all they are the enemy. Says who? And why? What happens to me if I don’t agree? This was all made worse by the fallow period Arsenal had entered into after 1980 and observing, green-eyed, the meadow of joy bloody Tottenham frolicked in. Grrr! As anyone who remembers that period, it was horrible, and stemming from jealousy comes a plethora of difficult thought processes. Oh brother!

Of course I’ve got friends who are Tottenham fans and with whom I’ve been long-term acquainted with, but there’s always that barrier. Its utterly pathetic yet its the same for them! No matter how sublime (their words) they found the first Wenger period, no matter how jealous the were of the period afterwards when we were matching Barcelona for pure skill and vision, we were still Arsenal. The Scum. Them. Something to loathe. The enemy. The Woolwich imposters. Something to enjoy hating.

The only way these sets of attitudes could be over come in unison would be some terrible catastrophe which affected both clubs. I hope that doesn’t happen, so it looks like we’re stuck with prejudice, for all its enormous, unwieldy will to win, its verbal and physical violence, its dance of the irrational tied up in perverted forms of logic. How strange that prejudice can also be a driving force in life to achieve that which people want? It doesn’t seem right, and surely there are other systems that can drive us to victory? 

I do recall once our old friend Gf60 saying that as much as he hated the Spuds he wouldn’t have it any other way, that he didn’t want them relegated, as playing them twice a year was always exciting and an important part of life as an Arsenal supporter. 

I mentioned it before on Shotta and George’s vlog, so apologies for the repetition, but I had a friend at school who had been in the Arsenal supporters club since he was three months old.  And he went to the Coop just after they had built a new stand( the game was sometime in 1983) and we got walloped 5-0. So on Monday at school we all asked him what it was like, expecting him to tell us how utterly horrible and miserable the experience was, but he just said, “it was magic”. He considered even whilst being humiliated at the Coop, to watch Arsenal was still an electrifying, privileged experience. I’m not sure many of the talking heads I waste my life watching would ever consider that? But it stuck with me, even stayed with me as a seed that might grow one day into something more decent than my prejudiced, puerile perspective.

Ok, enough of that crap, our overall record versus Them is: 87 wins, 55 draws and 67 losses. Ange Postecoglou win rate is 53.3%, but it was higher at Celtic (around 73%) and he got those Bhoys playing extremely well and fished out some great talent from pools upon which the gazing eye of transfer originality had neglected to spy, most of whom have now left Celtic Park. In many respects we were blessed to face Brighton without Matt O’Reily.

 Postecoglou won the London manager of the year award last time around, perhaps they felt sorry for the Spuds not ever winning much? I’m sure St. Totteringham would agree.

Well that’s it, lots of bits and pieces of jackasnorey that you already knew. Even so, here’s to a great game for us and lucky horses! 

COYG and keep on keepin’ on!

Mills