Why so many fans are desperate for Arsenal to lose

 Strange feelings were stirred watching Arsenal lift the Premier League trophy. I have a mild yet longstanding distaste for the club, having lived through peak Wenger years at a south London school which over-indexed for Arsenal fans.

They spent 1998-2002 crowing unbearably about their brilliance and superior brand of football, the sorts of people who could name every player down to reserve U18 goalkeeper level in lieu of having a personality. And what is football fandom other than a series of petty grievances developed more than 20 years ago?

Yet when Eberechi Eze walked towards the trophy plinth and his medal at Selhurst Park last Sunday I felt a lump in my throat then a tear in my eye. In mitigation, he seems a model citizen who put in a heroic stint at my team QPR, and I was jetlagged. It was still unusual to feel touched by Arsenal winning, because the natural position for most fans is aversion. Just as it is for the country’s other most successful teams: Manchester United, Liverpool and Melchester Rovers.

I wonder though if a small emotional space has opened for Arsenal, prompted by the purity of their euphoric celebrations after Manchester City drew at Bournemouth to confirm their title. A grudging “happy for them” sentiment deemed palatable by the fan community as a whole. The Overmars window?

Objectively there are plenty of reasons to be positive about Arsenal winning the league. It is deserved, after years of excellence without reward. You will struggle to find anyone with a bad word to say about Eze, Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice. Their fans have suffered enough, with 22 years since their last league win, multiple near misses, and the ongoing prominence of Piers Morgan. Their fanbase is more representative of their neighbourhood than any other London club. They are not owned by a state, merely lovable American billionaires.

‘It has been insufferable’

For all of this, a significant number of Britons will be behind Paris St-Germain in Saturday’s Champions League final. You would expect anti-Arsenal sentiment from the small number of teams with realistic trophy aspirations, but the hostility persists well beneath that level.

Online discourse has sucked fans of all clubs into the same mindset as those that follow the perennial Champions League participants. They are the dominant voices, with Arsenal’s particularly noisy and engaged. An exhausting majority of media coverage is dedicated to them, the tenor disproportionately focussed on shame.

In parallel, spectacular marketing has made Arsenal inescapable well beyond London. On holiday in Canada, I spotted several red and white replicas on the streets of Ottawa on the day they beat West Ham, then several more in Montreal the night they clinched the league. Being back in London last weekend felt like attending a retro shirt fair, sponsored by JVC. Writer Clive Martin, invoking 2024’s Charli XCX album, called it “Arsenal brat summer”, saying “the club has become some de facto living in London accessory.”

Jess Iszatt is a DJ for Radio 1 and a Spurs fan who has had a predictably trying week. “When you’re in music, you realise that most people, especially the most vocal, are Arsenal fans. It has been insufferable.

“I think Spurs fans are a lot more classy. Arsenal’s have an entitled energy despite not having won a trophy since lockdown, when there was no one there to see it. Their fans are very loud and have to tell everyone how cool they are.”

Such ubiquity is wearing, especially with suspected bandwagon-jumping. Some in their finest throwback Adidas re-issues last weekend were surely not as engaged in the less glamorous times of Unai Emery, the pre-Louis Dunford era, before the world grew tired of “Norf Lahndan f’rever!”. “They’re not originally from north London,” Iszatt says, “But a lot of the fans that have come out of the woodwork probably don’t know that.”

Cordiality will vanish if Arsenal become serial winners

Most football vendettas are built on distaste for individual fans though, and the support of Sir Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn and Zohran Mamdani, the New York mayor, is enough on its own to alienate some. They represent an impression of Arsenal as the club of hipster-ish liberals which conveniently omits years of ownership by old Etonians and other celebrity fans including John Bercow, Priti Patel and, allegedly, Queen Elizabeth II.

Others just do not like Mikel Arteta or his football. “They are a proper club that seem to do things the right way,” Justin Moorhouse, a comedian and Manchester United fan, says. “They’re quite dull though. If you were married to Arsenal you’d never imagine them having an affair with Napoli.

“This team though, it is the worst that’s ever won the Premier League. It’s anti-football, just grinding it out. Where’s your Pires? Where’s your Henry? Where’s your Bergkamp? They’ve got less in common with the Invincibles and more with Joe Royle’s ‘Dogs of War’ at Everton.”

To me, that seemed a necessary compromise to pull nearly men over the line. Just as Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool had to mix heavy metal with some blasts of game-killing easy listening, Arteta tightened control to scale a fearsome peak which had eluded the club for two decades. Now there is a good chance he will lead Arsenal to years of dominance, with Pep Guardiola gone and the future uncertain at Chelsea and Manchester United.

Any slight upturn of goodwill towards the club comes from the end to their season. The strong finish from a seemingly bereft position after defeat at Manchester City in April and a title which breaks the monotony of further Guardiola trophies. Those benevolent vibes will erode quickly if Eze and friends lifting silverware becomes a common sight. Nothing breeds hate like serial winners.