Hello and how are you?

Sunday the 25th of May, will see the Mighty Cannon make its last manoeuvres of the 2024/25 season as we head south to St. Marys and play Southampton FC for the final game of the season. Kick off is at 4.00pm western European time.

For the last assessment this season our chums at Statto HQ have given the Arsenal 69.3% chance of winning and Southampton 12.6 %. 

I’m sure Southampton will be glad to see the back of this season with just two wins and six draws.Of course its even more strange to have a quick butchers at the league table and seeing the Spuds fourth from bottom and ManUre one place above. Yet one of them will have some silverware very soon and their followers will be handing out the banter on that one and not care about the league positions at all?

Same at the top, does anyone care about the final pecking order of merit or just trying to qualifying for the champions league? And Arsènes words of along ago that were so often ridiculed, seem more honest and observant more than ever?

At this moment in the world of football blogging seems to be similar to being a silent film actor trapped in a world of films with sound?  

The vlog has superseded the blog, and so the soft power of passive non-written creativity has won for the moment and the typed word put away on the high shelf at the footballing Sunset Boulevard address, along with the dreck, dust, goalkeepers roll-neck jumpers, rattles and unwanted periodicals and erotic etchings from the 19th C.

Like a lot of my last (bland) articles, I find most Arsenal outlets are merely saying: “it’s raining today, it could be sunny, and it was mixed in the past”? I’m not sure where that leads us, how many outlets do we need, as truthfully relative as they might be, to tell us the same thing; that which we already know or have already thought about? 

Personally I still think there’s a lot of ground to be covered in blogs, for example the whole idea of counter- support structures in an unwanted sense hasn’t been talked about much ( I meant to do it for the Newcastle game, and it completely slipped my mind), but often teams/fans will latch onto another and try to create a rivalry that isn’t there (Newcastle and Stoke come to mind), even if it sounds a bit woo, it does exist, just needs thrashing out a bit and articulated at another time.

I tried this season to write about how supporting Arsenal (and the hope of Arsenal success) weaves its way into our lives, how it affects anniversaries, our dispositions, our insecurities, friendships, our memories, how we are persuaded in an utterly illogically way to be prejudiced. How the process of supporting, holds your hand or drops it even when your loved ones die. How it affects you physically as well as psychologically, day after night after day. Perhaps much of this is delusion, but even so any delusion is concrete and not an illusion?

Supporting is (perhaps) the oddest relationship we can ever have, married, non-adulterous, yet with the same spectrum of emotions, yet its unconsummated and abstract to say the least, no single connection but an ongoing stream of events, and identities that ironically isn’t even separate from anything else?

In a lesser manner has been like that on PA? Witnessing its vintage years and what a intricate, complex and full bodied brew they were, 

Mr.Black each week taking you somewhere new, or to helping you to revisit places you’d partially forgotten. I used to love to wake up on Saturday mornings to see what he’d written, for me his words were as much a part of the matchday as any of the physics and emotions that played out on  the pitch. That probably won’t happen again in my life. If anyone pushed blogging into new pastures it was him, certainly not me, and it was PA that supported such works. And without any kind of support structure any experiment or different perspective collapses and is quickly brushed away.

Of course Stew might have been the Messi of the blog, but he wasn’t he only excellent writer, the list was long and the standard was high for a long time, not just articles but posts too, there are utter gems hidden in the archives, especially when it came to Arsène Wenger apologetics.

Gone now, the raison d’être for the blog, and (most) of the people we ever swapped words with on what was a daily basis. How quickly times change?

It was always interesting how you could get to know people by the tone and feeling in their posts, almost as if you could hear them speaking? People also became their avatars, as you tried to create an idea of who they were, even more sad is that they were part of your life, then that’s it, they’ve gone and the memories of it all becomes a kind of spectre fading into the mist? Where have they gone and what are they doing now?

I hoped I might be able to pull some of them back but I failed on that one, or perhaps a less ego-centric viewpoint might be that the times have just simply changed, as stated before the vlog superseded the blog, plus peoples feelings change towards Arsenal? Plus we all have different ideas of what a blog might be?

The fight for Wengers art (in German art means ‘way or style’) even at a much-needed group therapy level has gone and here we are a couple of mangers down the line, grappling with new dilemmas, new thought’s and reactions. All systems (possibly) are conservative at heart and that always causes a problem as all life is changing. How to deal with that?

At the time of writing this we can still achieve second and reaching the CL semi was no mean feat, but something still felt like it was missing this season? Of course the Real Madrid game will stay with us till that which we call the end, so for all the feeling on having not really challenged in the league, who knows if this season might be the springboard for something a bit more glorious in the next? Hopes spring eternal?

Its ok, I’m not a conservative or republican for many reasons but one reason is that at the most basic level all life is change, certainly not in the way wanted, as life remains unfair and unjust to say the least, but to go against flux is a going against nature? But I do feel sentimental.

More practical, materialistic-minded people I’m sure would feel critical of me and see it as a weakness (and in many cases I would agree with them) and that’s fine, it might be a flaw but there’s also an element of compassion and agape that’s coupled with it? I miss how it was on PA. All those faces and names, some you become acquainted with and others, friends and here we are in the perhaps in the twilight of the blog.

“who do you think you are Uncle Monty?”

In 1947 Jack Lewis’s brother Warnie wrote in his diary how ‘nobody turned up’ which spelt the end of the Thursday night Inklings meetings that witnessed( whether they are to you taste or not) some critical evaluation of works that both added and changed the world of literature/human lives, that’s where we are now at PA, or close to it?

 A blog isn’t only about the articles, those are introductions, but really its about its forum?

I want to personally thank Ian and Ed for being our backbone and being a perfect foil to my bits and pieces and keeping it all in check with football analytics. You guys have a vast knowledge of football and its been great when you’ve shared your recollections and times spent with the Mighty Cannon. And thank you for the support you gave me this season. You’ve kept the blog alive week after week, not me.

Words we could perceive through one lens are either black or white magic, some may curse and destroy, but others support and nurture and I was really grateful to everyone who said kind things, and also many thanks to Stew and Heady for their words of support and encouragement , especially as I tried to stretch the blog into other directions earlier in the season and your thoughts and presence have been much missed as the season progressed.

And thanks to all those at statto HQ for your % ratings, to Archibald Leitch for popping up time and time again and to Gee, Markyb, Arsenal Andrew, and all apologies to anyone I forgotten, and to all the people who clicked like on the blog but don’t comment, including those who were probably were bots. Merci!

Of course none of this is possible without George, who kindly tolerated me and the things I wrote, some of which maybe stretched things a bit far, but I’m not writer and trying to scratch together (sometimes) three pieces a week I found almost impossible, I’m just not that skilled. I only meant to write previews for the first three matches or so just to get things going.

Plus writing about that which you guys already know is insulting…which means scrabbling for another angle that’s hopefully interesting, isn’t easy at all. I’ve forgotten lots too, often recalling being at matches but nothing of the game itself, but of being in pubs before and afterwards, which isn’t a help to anyone.

I know I failed many times, but its ok to, failure rises with success maybe the place to aim for is beyond those two, and that’s closer to that where I was trying to get to.

After the ManUre cup game, George kindly stepped in without a complaint or word of criticism to me and held the torch, as he has done for this place since its inception. THANK YOU GEORGE! For this season and all the others and for your support and encouragement, and of course for PA.

Well that’s it. I don’t how we can keep the blog going next season I’m not sure I have much left in the artillery room. Perhaps we could get our heads together and work something out before the end of July when the Arsenal are back in action against AC Milan? 

If that’s it and we can’t go any further, then know this, it was my pleasure to be acquainted/friends with you, and I will miss having somewhere to go and swap perspectives on the Mighty Cannon and sometimes more and enjoying reading that which you’ve written.

Its been a real Dance to the Music of Arsenal Time both this season and all the others that we’ve witnessed together, to sometimes talk about wider connected fields; all those teams, all those matches, misunderstandings, understandings, all those emotions, all those hopes.All those draws. 

I’m ready for my close up now Mr DeMille…

Take care of yourselves,

Mills

COYG!