Arsenal can make our Champions League dreams happen

Arsenal, Champions League, Munich: It’s all I can think about says passionate Gooner Henry Waddon

My God, I love this football club.

I love everything it gives to us, and I love how much it affects me.

Despite every objective detail pointing to the very unavoidable truth that nothing about our current footballing predicament has any genuine, real-world consequential heft, I love that I simply cannot direct my waking attention to anything of real-world importance due to its preoccupation with whether or not Arsenal can win by two clear goals in Paris on Wednesday night.

Arsenal Football Club, the Champions League, Munich. It’s all I can think about

If any game truly does matter, the one lying ahead of us more than merits that buzz. 

A Champions League semi-final Second Leg. The Arsenal are playing in a Champions League Semi-Final Second Leg.

Win by one and stay on. Win by two and push on. This is a Game For Your Life. 

And in the swirl of a timeline that’s been largely doom and gloom for the past few days, I feel some responsibility in injecting some well-earned positivity, hope and optimism.

We are (more than) in the room for a second leg tie, the result of which could see us catapulted to heights we’ve not reached in nineteen years, and could see us on our way to the singular most important moment in the history of this football club.

And this night of nights has not arrived in isolation.

This club has stood up and faced down the most bizarre circus of adversity this season.

In the process, we’ve roundly stepped on and embarrassed the last two European champions at the Emirates this season, creating nights that sit at the zenith of the very best experiences we've lived through during the Arteta era. 

We are not entitled to these nights, and these opportunities. They aren’t promised to us. Who knows when we’ll be here again. Look at Chelsea, and City, and Spurs, and United.

We are so, so, so, so lucky to have this team, and this manager.

Don’t let the algorithm-amplified doom-mongers on the timeline let you believe anything else.

These past few years have been the happiest, most plentiful and most meaningful in memory. Football lives and dies in cycles, and Lord knows the past few years, despite not yet delivering the highest accolades, have been a high watermark. Never forget where you’ve been; remember to stop and look at where you are. 

So bring your shinpads. Our side needs and deserves our support, and our belief. Form is temporary, culture is permanent; don’t tell me you haven’t been ready to run through walls for our boys and our manager at times this season. I know I have. We have to be ready to do so once again. They've earned that from us.

Wednesday night, and what lies beyond, might just serve as the culmination of the many hundred steps forward we’ve taken since the night we beat Palace away at Selhurst Park in that gone-too-soon pink strip, and we suddenly realised we were looking at contenders, not laughing-stocks or irrelevances. 

We are more than in this tie, and we have more than enough to get the result we so desperately covet.

Lord, deliver us to Munich. I believe in You, and I believe in the Arsenal. Take us there. 

Believe.