2 April 2020 – Day 11
I wanted to talk about my 2nd ever Arsenal match but I have a confession to make: I can’t remember it. I remember taking Avie’s mom while she was pregnant with Avie, that I bought her a pink hat because of the sunshine, and that the opposition were a team I didn’t like much, but so much about the match and the trip escapes me. I wasn’t blogging at the time, so I don’t have a record of the match on here and I don’t even have any photos of the trip, none that I can find.
I had to do some sleuthing (I looked at my old passport) and it turns out that a lot of the facts above were just plain wrong. The one about Melissa being pregnant, specifically. I have a stamp in my passport for 1 March 2007. That puts us at the Reading match, that Arsenal won 2-1. I also have a passport stamp for 9 Feb 2008. Which means that I took Melissa to London when she was 6 months pregnant with Avie!
That Reading match, though.. man, it escapes me. I do remember the end of the match being a bit of a mad scramble. I can’t remember how but they scored to make the match 2-1 (Fabregas OG) and in the final minute I think there was a save off Sidwell or Kitson (some redhead, it was Sidwell) and then we left and went to have dinner or something. Probably a lot of drinking.
In completing my forensic investigation I read Richard Clarke’s match report on Arsenal.com. He does such a great job and it’s worth a read just for the history of Arsenal – what some of us supporters suffered through (team-wise) well before the Emery era. This paragraph in particulr was harrowing:
“It was a patched-up, makeshift kind of side but with the current injury list – Emmanuel Adebayor, Eboue, Kolo Toure (all suspended), Thierry Henry (foot), Tomas Rosicky (groin), Justin Hoyte (hamstring), Mathieu Flamini (foot) and Robin van Persie (foot) – there were precious few options.”
The starting lineup that day saw Djourou play right back with Gilberto and Gallas center backs. Ljungberg started but doesn’t even warrant a mention in the match report and I don’t remember a single minute of him on the pitch – even though he was one of my all-time favorite players. The CMs were Fabregas and Denilson and the starting forwards were Julio Baptista and Theo Walcott.
Arsenal signed Baptista on loan from Real Madrid in a player swapped for Reyes in the 2006/07 season. It took him until this match to score in the Premier League, I believe.I can’t be certain. I am a wholly unreliable narrator here.
I must have spent thousands of dollars to got to this match. I flew halfway around the world, stayed at a “bed and breakfast” in London, went to the museums, probably paid a tout hundreds of dollars for our tickets, and I don’t even remember this match other than the fact that the sun was annoying, and I think I sat extremely close while Dave Kitson took a corner.
What I am constantly surprised about is how little I remember from the first 10 years of watching Arsenal. Those years between 2000 and 2010 were Arsenal’s best football and yet, I’ve lost almost all of the matches other than a few major highlights (winning at Old Trafford and White Hart Lane, my first match) and lowlights (losing to Leeds… twice, Taylor breaking Eduardo’s leg).
So much is gone. So much that I don’t even know if it was there in the first place.
Qq
