Win and help Spurs, or lose and help Liverpool.
That’s where we find ourselves as Arsenal fans with a team still struggling to find itself. It’s like choosing between a shit sandwich or a pee smoothie. Both are disgusting but there’s only one option you can actually swallow.
One of the worst things I can imagine is having to listen to gloating Liverpool fans when they finally get around to winning their first ever Premier League title, but spare a thought for the alternative – happy Spurs fans.
Ahead of Arsenal’s trip to Anfield, my job here is to big up the Gunners and try to get a rise out of Liverpool fans. That’s hard to do that when you’re sh*tting yourself about how embarrassing the result could be.
Like many Gooners, I thought the days of being afraid of another top six humiliation left the club along with Wenger and co., but I can’t shake the feeling Arsenal are in for a world of pain on Saturday.
Once upon a time before Sky Sports invented football, Arsenal travelled to Anfield needing to win by two clear goals to snatch the title from Liverpool’s grasp. It was a Herculean task. The Reds had the stingiest defence in the division and Arsenal needed to breach it twice without reply to take home the title.
Saturday’s ask is even bigger for the Gunners.
Unai Emery is doing a grand job but that 22-game unbeaten streak has blinded many Arsenal fans, so often the bastion of rationality and reasonable expectations, to the size of the task Emery was handed when he arrived only a few months ago.
Many have forgotten, myself included, that this season was supposed to be a bit of a gimme for Arsenal.
They were expected to do little. What they have managed has impressed more than we were prepared for.
But beneath the shine of the stats, Arsenal’s performances have been laboured and there’s only so many times you can pick up the points if you insist on only getting serious about things for the second 45.
I can point to a defensive crisis but a few injuries are not the reason Arsenal are struggling in defence. That’s an institutional problem, a legacy from the time chief scout Steve Rowley opted not to sign Virgil van Dijk because he thought he was ‘too nonchalant’.
Mo Salah, who only cheated a little bit against Newcastle but not enough to be banned for this game, must be drooling at the thought of running at the Arsenal backline.
I had grand plans at the start of this article, of talking about 1989 and the bitterness Liverpool are still infused with to this day because of it.
I couldn’t do it, though. I heard myself and realised I sounded just like one of those unbearable Liverpool fans, stuck in the past, dreaming of a time when clinching titles and not arsecheeks was the order of the day for Arsenal.
But as Jurgen Klopp’s men chase down the title it is Arsenal fans who are left looking back at past glories and wondering when they will return.
Sadly, the smart ones know full well they’ve more chance of returning to 1989 in a time machine than they have of getting anything at Anfield on Saturday.
Still, at least it’s not Tottenham eh?
Liverpool – 4/9 | Draw – 7/2 | Arsenal – 6/1