Quite a good Easter Sunday.
The best bit was Arteta’s goal and the crowd celebration.
When Arteta fired a deadly thunderbolt that flew just inside Joe Hart’s post in 86 minutes, everyone jumped up and went wild.
Some Arsenal fans turned their backs to the pitch, to take the piss out of the Manchester City supporters, and when other areas of the stadium saw this celebration, they did the same, and we did it as well and everybody was laughing their heads off.
City picked up that celebration from a crowd in Poznan and brought it back to Manchester .
Arteta’s goal lit up a stupendously dull afternoon and provided one of the few spontaneous stadium-rocking moments that I’ve witnessed in seven years at the Emirates.
A sensational winning goal, a madly different celebration, everybody happy.
I’d been chatting, off and on, to a little sixtysomething bloke and when the goal went in he punched me in the chest. His knuckles were quite hard. Then he punched me again, so I glared at him. But, before we had all sat down, this nutter punched me in the body again. Maybe this is how he expresses himself. Or maybe it was payback for what I’d said in the previous 85 minutes.
At least it was something different. I’ll never understand football fans.
When City took off on a counter-attack late in the second half, just before Arteta’s super-strike, Balotelli didn’t bother to join. That move had almost reached the penalty area by the time Mad Mario had just about crossed the halfway line.
I said, “Balotelli’s the worst footballer I’ve ever seen.”
Ten minutes later he was sent off for a dangerous challenge on Sagna.
Second best part of the day was the Piccadilly tube southwards and with a bunch of happy sixtysomething geezers.
They were all grinning, yakking and buzzing, so that was nice. It\’s always fun to be with people who’re in a good mood.
Third best was coming home to a roast lamb dinner en famille, all four of us.
The kids said : We thought you would have left before the goal. That you\’d have been so disgusted by the game that you would\’ve walked out five minutes before the goal.
Wrong! I\’ll remember that moment for a long time.
BTW, I was wrong to write that this was a good time to play Manchester City.
It was a great time to play Man City.
They were stodgy, ponderous, pedestrian and shabby. And damaged by Manchester United\’s 2-0 victory over QPR at lunchtime.
Vincent Kompany was colossal.
Best player on the pitch by a country kilometre.