in-season – glory – WholeArsed

Although we had tickets for the Champions League match against Porto on Tuesday, what we did not have was tickets for Saturday’s Premier League match against Brentford.

We participated in the ballot, the process by which Arsenal creates a lottery for tickets, without success. We happily noted that Arsenal prioritizes people who participated in the Brentford ballot for tickets that are made available on its official Exchange site for resale.

And for the past three weeks, my husband and I each committed far too many moments of our day logged into the Arsenal ticket exchange, endlessly clicking the button for tickets, shifting from a request for 2 tickets together, to 2 tickets apart, to 1 ticket.

We fully agreed early on that the goal is to be in the stadium. Having a good seat is not a requirement. Being together is not a requirement. Even if only one of us is in the stadium.

I clicked the button while in meetings. I clicked the button while eating. I clicked the button while taking a walk. I clicked the button in the dead of night.

I went nowhere without my credit card, because you know the minute a ticket becomes available, you have to buy it.

About three days into the project, wondering whether it was possible that the web site was broken, a ticket came up as available. I had selected that I only needed one ticket and so I looked a gift horse in the mouth and tried to see if there were two tickets. There was not. And, also, the one ticket that had been available–now gone.

It was two weeks of clicking later before another ticket became available. This time I did exactly as the app told me with no delay: I went to the map to select the ticket. When I arrived at the map, the ticket was already gone.

Last Wednesday, two tickets were shown to me as available and again I went to the map. This time I managed to find one of the tickets on the map. And then the map resized and the ticket could never be found again. I tried fruitlessly to manipulate the map. It was on 20-second delay and just as I would see the ticket, it would again move from my view.

Then both tickets were gone.

On Thursday, one ticket was shown to me as available. I went to the map, I found it, and I clicked on it. It showed a green checkmark. Amazing!

And then….. Well, nothing. I did not have a ticket somehow.

A few days into the exercise, I started looking at commercial ticket resale sites. And I found them to be pretty scary. I looked at all the reviews and it seemed like some people had success and others had none. They lost money and, worse, got no tickets. So, I did nothing more than watch for supply and demand. Over the time I watched, ticket prices rose. More recently, they started to come down. They were still expensive, but looking more and more like we should consider them as an option. Especially as it seemed that actually succeeding on the Arsenal-sanctioned website was seemingly impossible. Even if a ticket came up, we could not actually have it.

By the time we boarded our flight Friday, we still did not have tickets to the match. My husband had no problem with this. But I did have a problem. We were going to be in London in time for the match, but not see the match. When we landed, I tried several more times on the Arsenal ticket exchange with no luck. At the border, I told my husband I wanted to buy a ticket on Stubhub. He encouraged me to go ahead, but had no intention of buying a ticket for himself that way. So I found a ticket, made the offer to buy it, and that set in motion a complicated process to actually have the electronic version loaded to my electronic wallet, as is required to get into the match.

While we were in the train from Heathrow, when we were changing stations, and back on the train, I was working hard with the seller to settle the obstacles we encountered. I started to realize how stupid it was to have tried to buy tickets this way.

Suddenly, I realized how we could accomplish the final step successfully. It worked. I thanked the seller for his help. He responded, “Thanks bro no problem hope you enjoy the game.”

Meanwhile, my husband, the Arsenal rule follower, had found a ticket on the official Arsenal exchange and successfully bought it. By the time we arrived at our hotel, we both had tickets. I had one up high in the West stands. My husband had one at the club level on the East side. In the end, his ticket, a much better ticket than mine, was cheaper to acquire.

Once I had my ticket in my electronic wallet, I tried one more time on the Arsenal exchange. It was 3.5 hours before the match and 2 tickets were available, at last. And I actually could have selected either one and it would have worked to buy them. Probably 2,000 clicks since I first started trying.

We got over to The Emirates after a quick sandwich at Pret a Manger. I was nervous as hell that my ticket might not scan. Or that it was in the Youth Enclosure. Or any number of other problems. But I had made my bed and was going to have to sleep in it. My husband and I found my entrance and I held my breath through the scanner.

I was in.

I think that was the first time I felt relaxed in three weeks. I went up, up the stairs to the top of the stadium and bought a Camden Hells Lager. It tasted like success.

Once I got to my seat I didn’t talk to a single person on either side of me, but I felt like I was with my people. There was group frustration with Brentford’s time wasting, most of it by faking injuries. There were hugs after the first goal, a lovely one by our new guy Declan Rice. There was shock when our goalkeeper, Aaron Ramsdale, made a horrific mistake right before halftime, caught of two minds when he dawdled with the ball under pressure and ended up hitting the ball off of the body of a Brentford player and into his own net. There was a lot of support for Ramsdale when he left the field, which was really nice to see.

And then, because the score was tied again at the beginning of the second half, all that time wasting by Brentford again. It for sure looked like it was going to end in a tie, when at last there was a breakthrough. Ben White put a nice high ball near the front of the goal and our other new guy, Kai Havertz, managed to head it into the roof of the net, possibly off the keeper’s hands.

Lots of hugs in my area, all around.

Then came the only time wasting of the night that we appreciated. Martin Odegaard was subbed off. Because he’s Arsenal’s captain, he has to pass the captain’s armband to another player when he leaves the match. He found the farthest player from him on the field to take the responsibility, Jesus. We loved it.

We had to hang on for what seemed like ages. Another ball went back to Ramsdale near the end (by then he had made a bunch of really nice saves) and he looked a little shaky. After that, I spoke to my seat mate to the left for the first time. I had to apologize for grabbing his arm and wailing when I thought Ramsdale was going to mess it up again. The seat mate was very understanding.

Arsenal ended the night at the top of the league for the first time in a long, long time.

We returned to the hotel and, for the first time, I could appreciate the hotel’s location, right next to the Thames. Perfect night in London.

A new statue for Arsène Wenger has been placed on the grounds of the Emirates since our last visit. After the match we wandered around trying to find it. You know my love for Arsène Wenger. It’s a bit out of the way and the grounds were so thronged with people, we struggled to find it. A nice steward pointed us in the right direction. Many people were lined up to take a picture with the statue and we waited patiently for our turn. Near the statue there were signs like the one above that surely reflected his philosophy. I recalled an article in which he was quoted in which he stated that he only facilitates “beauty in man.” I fell in love with Arsenal because of the beauty he so valued.

But that was at the end of the day and we should start at the beginning. We had breakfast again over near St. Katherine’s Dock, close to where The Big Half marathon was being run by thousands of people. After breakfast, we walked along the route where people were lined up to start and where some had already started and had doubled back to cross the Tower Bridge at around the 7-meter mark of the race. I am that annoying person who claps for every graduate at a graduation, so I am also the person who claps and whoops for runners who happen to be doing something I will not do. When I am giving (in my mind) motivating words to my kids, my family calls it “happy Mom talk.” When I am cheering at graduations and races, it’s “happy Mom cheering.”

I make no apologies. Except (mentally) to the people sitting near me. Sorry your ears hurt. Now start clapping for the graduates, you lazy, selfish beast.

Afterward, we took the Uber boat over toward the Eye and Big Ben just to enjoy the lovely day. It was shaping up to be a warm one.

In keeping with the theme of trying new things, I considered not having Sunday roast in London on this trip. That seemed over the top, so instead, I booked a different restaurant than I normally do, called The Marksman Public House. I found it by consulting an article. How does the article know? I have no idea. I ruled out some locations that seemed too close to Tottenham Hotspur stadium, although I was pretty sure they were not playing there on Sunday, and then focused on those not too far from the Emirates. The match was at 4:30, a little late to have Roast afterward, so we planned to go for lunch.

The Marksman turned out to be awesome. It had a more casual feel from the incumbent favorite roast place, the Princess of Shoreditch. The decor was light and airy, and people were laughing and relaxed. There were many big groups of people sitting near us, suggesting a popular family/friend gathering place. There was significantly less attention on food presentation. Importantly, there was plenty of attention on the taste of the food. We shared a crispy, perfectly seasoned, juicy whole chicken, a cloud-light Yorkshire pudding, deeply caramelized potatoes, and green beans and carrots with minted, crispy breadcrumbs. Perfect.

We both selected for dessert a thing called a brown butter tart. When it came, I was disappointed. It had sounded so glorious and looked so plain. Big lesson here. With the first bite I understood why no one bothered to make it look good. What would be the point? I’ve never tasted anything as delicious in my life.

We took the bus to the stadium and, because we were newbies to the new check-in procedure, went right in. Like all of the teams, Arsenal appear to be cracking down on the secondary market for ticket sales. In the past we would be sent a pdf of our tickets and would print it out to be scanned; this year, Arsenal require you to download their app and use the wallet feature of your phone for the ticket. A screen shot is not sufficient. As participants in the lottery, we would have been eligible to sell our tickets on Arsenal’s exchange, but we would not be permitted to transfer the ticket to other parties at will.

There is so little chance we will ever part with these precious tickets.

The check-in process went smoothly and we walked up a great many stairs to the novel location of our seats, high, high in the Clock End. I was shocked to realize that from our new seats I was not even able to see our old seats because there is a dip in the roof that conceals parts of the stadium. It had never occurred to me from our old location that most people in the stadium are unable to see all of the seats. We had a fine view of the field and the stadium was rocking when we got there. Literally. The chanting was deafening from the moment we walked through the turnstile until pretty much half time.

At the Clock End, you are very close to the opposition fans, and it became very clear what our role was to be: drown them out, counter their nonsense, and remind them they are guests, very unwelcome ones at that. It seemed the Man United fans were more organized than many who show their faces at the Emirates, but I’ve only once before sat this near the opposition. We had to endure their happiness when Man United scored the first goal, very much counter to play. We rubbed it in their faces when Arsenal scored our first goal about a minute later.

What to say about the match? In the stadium it felt like Arsenal had the upper hand and Manchester United’s only idea was to slow things down as much as possible and break our rhythm, hope for a counterattack. They executed their tedious plan well.

Arsenal had a call for a penalty that was overturned by VAR and Man United had a goal that was ruled offside by VAR. It looked like we were headed for a 1:1 draw well into the very substantial 8 minutes of stoppage time due to Man United’s time wasting and the time spent on VAR reviews.

The noise was more intermittent as the match wore on, but the fans got behind Man United’s substitution that brought Harry Maguire onto the field. Even the Arsenal fans–especially the Arsenal fans–were chanting his name. If you’re struggling to score a goal, there are not too many defenders a team would be more delighted to take a chance against. That is until Man United introduced Jonny Evans as a another substitute defender. I couldn’t believe he was still playing. In his day, he was probably one of the better defenders in the league. He played for Manchester United years ago and more recently played for Leicester City, who was relegated last year. So although nothing much was happening for Arsenal, you had to feel optimistic. And, like the sign said, you had to keep “Believing in Beauty.”

At least 5 minutes into the 8 minutes of added time, our captain Martin Ødegaard hit a hard shot that deflected off of a Man U defender for a corner kick. Saka put it into play and while Jonny Evans got distracted by Gabriel Magalhaes’ antics in front of the goal, the ball bounced off the face of our new boy, Declan Rice. He had a million years to take aim at the bouncing ball and tag it off Jonny Evan’s leg into the goal. The Emirates went insane. When Declan Rice ran to the corner flag to celebrate with the fans the fans in that corner rose in a wave from their seats to join him.

With the subs and celebrations, we had no idea how much time was left and we all stood and sang with great nervousness waiting for the final whistle.

Instead of the whistle, the ball came loose in Arsenal’s half and our sub, Fabio Viera (a far better choice than Jonny Evans or Harry Maguire), put a beautiful through ball exactly where our other sub, Gabriel Jesus, could run onto it, feint to draw the last Manchester United defender into a fruitless slide, and slot it calmly into the corner of the net.

Bedlam. Joy. Unbelievable relief.

And now we are hoping the match never ends.