Watford 0 Arsenal 3 (17/10/2015)

1. During the week, I had cause to reflect on the way that the world changes and, perhaps, leaves you trailing behind. I heard welcome word of a familiar name from the past, someone whose voice used to bring me essential news of events at Vicarage Road in the early nineties. At that time, I spent my Saturday afternoons in my Brighton bedroom chasing an elusive signal from Capital Gold for its live reports; it was one step up from the unbearable tension of waiting for CEEFAX to tick round to Page 3/3 to see whether anything had changed.

These days, it’s almost impossible to imagine that a game in the second tier of English football could take place in such a near-total vacuum, that it could create so few ripples. That faint signal, that distant voice amid the interference, was my only source of information beyond a scoreline and a league position. It was my sole connection to the club. Without it, I probably wouldn’t be sitting here and writing this.

The Internet changed everything, of course. Money changed it too. It feels as if there’s been a really fundamental shift even since we were last here in 2007: there’s now so much live coverage available that being at the ground feels like being in the eye of the storm, a slightly unnerving lack of continual analysis, explanation and wanton opinionating. It’s the one place where football can still lose itself in the moment, but you’re still acutely aware of the watching eyes of the world, of the live updates and live streams and live betting and live tweeting and live advertising and live image right negotation and live stat processing and live everything else. It’s probably a lot like being in the studio audience for Strictly or something.

2. “Oh look, it’s Arsenal!” you think, in the same way you might if you passed, say, Dermot O’Leary in the street. Except I get the impression that Dermot O’Leary is a reasonably good egg who might not mind if you smiled and said hello*, whereas Arsenal have long since transcended those kind of everyday niceties and would undoubtedly consider any acknowledgement of your existence beneath them. They’re very much, you know, in the cloud. They’re a football club in the same way that U2 at Wembley is a rock’n’roll gig…that is, very much so or not at all, depending on your point of view. (Go on, have a guess.) Except that they aren’t U2, obviously. They’re some b-list stadium atrocity, overwrought and overblown. They’re Muse.

3. There’s something hugely appealing about sticking it up one of these corporate monoliths, of course, even if we’re hardly an independent trader ourselves these days. It’d be lovely if you didn’t have to queue for fifteen minutes in the newsagents, but this is the first of these fixtures and weariness has yet to set in. There’s a certain thrill in the prospect of seeing your team truly tested too, in looking at an opposition line-up with an involuntary intake of breath. In knowing that the chance of doing something truly memorable is balanced by the risk of being completely, and very publicly, embarrassed.

4. For five minutes, maybe ten, the prospects don’t look terribly good. You always hope that you might catch them in one of their introspective moods, weighed down by their own sense of entitlement, but Arsenal start at a quite absurd tempo, pinging the ball around at a pace which we simply haven’t experienced before and cannot remotely live with. No sooner than we’ve managed to win the ball back than we’ve lost it again and we’re chasing again. The gap is not merely in quality but in intent: they’re quicker to everything, faster to make better decisions, stronger in the challenge. We can’t get near them…and even when we do, we can’t get the ball off players used to doing their work in extremely tight spaces. It’s not as if you can just plough them into the advertising hoardings any more; it’s not as if you can opt to play them on a ploughed field either. Their game, their rules. Walcott glances a wasteful header at Gomes, who then has to punch away a curling shot from the irresistible Sanchez. We’re just not in it.

5. When Troy Deeney determinedly bundles an opponent off the ball to win a throw on the halfway line, his efforts are met with a huge ovation from a crowd looking for straws to clutch at. But it’s only a throw on the halfway line, nothing more.

Except it isn’t. That’s where it starts, and what remains of the first hour is a thrilling demonstration of how to knock a team like Arsenal right out of its stride: Deeney’s bullish efforts are quickly reinforced by Capoue and Watson in midfield, by Anya in an advanced position out on the right of the supporting three, by Ighalo up top. We get a foothold in the centre circle (both holding midfielders have magnificent, if very different, games) and start giving it what can only be described as a right go. Deeney smacks in a drive after wrestling himself free of a defender, then Koscielny has to clear to prevent Ighalo from finishing a break after excellent work from Capoue. Vicarage Road explodes in response. Come on.

You’ll see few better goalless halves of football than this one. Goalless because Ramsey somehow scooped a chance over the bar from close range, because Ighalo scuffed wide when sent clear, because Nyom dived in to clear as Sanchez readied himself to score, because any number of nearlies weren’t quite. Beyond the goalmouths, the contest ebbed and flowed beautifully: they’re still Arsenal, with all of their extraordinary riches, but they’re no longer having it all their own way. Crucially, we carry a tangible threat in the final third which prevents them from settling things down for any length of time; we’re direct and quick and aggressive, and they don’t like it up ’em. It just needs a goal. It deserves a goal. It’s bloody brilliant.

6. The second half offers another fifteen minutes of this stirring, inspiring attempt at flying a hang-glider to the moon before reality comes crashing in. Those fifteen minutes are pretty special, though. As the sun sets, the manager’s name echoes around the ground, the chant drifting from end to end as if carried on the wind; mobile phones light up the home stands. There’s something really rather magical about it all, something surreal too. The team rolls towards the Rookery in slow, steady waves which don’t seem to meet with much resistance. It’s as if everyone’s fallen into a dream.

You had to be there. It was lovely. It was us, at our best.

7. We’re rudely awoken by a slap in the face. No room for romance in the Premier League; cut that out, you lot. As we drop off for a crucial second, Arsenal smuggle Ozil behind the lines, Sanchez finishing the job. You know it’s all over as soon as you see the ball hit the net. It shouldn’t be, perhaps, but it is. There’s nothing left: we’ve given it all, not a chance that we can pick ourselves up and go again. Arsenal are far, far too good to let the lead slip and have little pity for our tiring legs. The remaining half hour is painful and tedious and inevitable and not worth bothering with here. I don’t care, you don’t care; let’s leave it for others to pick over, especially if they’re foolish enough to judge a game by its end result.

8. We should be bloody proud of what went before. More than that, we should take it with us: we need that to be more than just a one-off performance in a cup tie, more than valiance in defeat. When I saw us last, against Palace, we looked a side capable of holding our own, compact and competent and yet distinctly uninspiring. Here, there was a real threat, some complete commitment, some belief in ourselves. There is no way of guaranteeing a win against substantially stronger opponents, but there are plenty of games to come in which this kind of sound and fury, this new-found positive spirit, could do some serious damage. In short, we need to be this at it against Stoke and West Ham and Leicester.

* I may be wrong, of course. He might be a complete bastard. Leave me with my dreams intact, though, reader. We all need our little comforts.