Why odious Arsenal need to win it: A conflicted Manchester United fan explains

I hate Arsenal more than I hate just about anything in life. And yet now, somehow, I want them to win. It feels treacherous to even write those words, a betrayal of my deepest impulses. But here we are. It’s all appallingly strange.

I’m not a Spurs fan, but I bow to no one in the purity of my Arsenal loathing. Why the beef? Well, how long have you got?

It’s the self-satisfaction that has always maddened me. That slick-haired, slick-passing, “We’re-the-Barcelona-of-Islington” smugness. Those faux-Gallic pretensions. Their insistence on putting “the” before Arsenal every time they say the club’s name, because it makes them feel special. “The Arsenal” with their silly yellow ribbons and tedious va-va-voom.

Growing up as a teenage Manchester United supporter in north London in the 2000s, I wanted Arsenal to lose almost as much as I wanted to get laid. Sometimes more. My entire friendship group was Arsenal, which meant that each time we played them was totemic. I could barely go to school on the Mondays after we lost. I could barely wait to go to school if we’d won.

This was the apogee of the greatest rivalry ever seen in English football. The battle of the buffet. Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane in the tunnel. The treble. The Invincibles. Ruud van Nistelrooy’s missed penalty. Van Nistelrooy’s scored penalty. When Gary Neville kicked Jose Antonio Reyes off the pitch and out of the Premier League.

God those were exciting times. God how we hated them. Buccaneering, brutal, British Man United, with our Fergie time and our golden balls, against the impossibly stylish Frenchmen of Arsenal, with their Wengerian genius and the absurdly perfect cheekbones of Thierry Henry. And like Wellington against Napoleon, we just about had the better of it.

I beat someone up with a snooker cue once and it was over Arsenal, that’s how visceral it all was. Admittedly the “someone” in question was a wooden chair, but still, I smashed the thing to bits. It was 2003 and they’d just knocked United out of the FA Cup, 2-0, bloody Sylvain Wiltord with the clinching goal.

My delightful pals drove past the house in a convoy of black Volkswagen Polos, hooting with glee, until my dad told them to politely f*** off. I went upstairs and broke the chair. So yes, Arsenal bad. Very bad. But despite it all, I want them to triumph this year. And anyone who calls themselves a football fan - and doesn’t support Etihad FC - should also be hoping that they can outrun Guardiola’s automatons. And if I can do it, you can too.

It’s a simple moral choice. A simple footballing choice. Manchester City are hollow princelings: charmless, dreary, endlessly effective. They do everything so boringly well. But did anyone actually enjoy watching Erling Haaland put five past RB Leipzig the other night? Do any neutrals actually tune in to watch this parade of plutocratic perfection?

Arsenal, on the other hand, are flawed, gutsy and performing at the outer limit of their abilities. They are pushing at the edge of the possible. Their emblem isn’t a turbo-viking who plays like he was developed in a footballing laboratory, but the plucky wizardry of Bukayo Saka. It’s Rocky v Drago, and no one supports Drago.

Yes OK, Arsenal are owned by an American billionaire and play in a palatial Emirati stadium. They are hardly down at heel, hardly Leicester City in 2016. But by the standards of today’s Premier League, on the relative scale of how dubious your owner’s wealth is and how obnoxiously you spend it, they are simply miles ahead of Citeh. They are doing this the right way, giving us all hope that clever tactics and team spirit and the thrilling momentum of an unexpected title run still mean something in an increasingly unlikable game.

Perhaps I’m biased, you may wonder, given that I belong to the red half of Manchester. Well, I’m not. As a Londoner (Mancunian dad, before you start) usually all I care about is Arsenal’s pain.

But not this season. This season, and really this season only, I’m a reluctant Gooner.

I will no doubt regret this instantly if they do prevail, and immediately host a week-long festival of Highbury smugness. I will loathe them again the moment they win and their mockney crowing begins. Until then though, much as I hate myself for it, I’m backing the Arsenal.

- The Times