My Beautiful Game is a place for people we like to describe their perfect football match. Our guests get to choose everything that would add up to make their ideal game. Teams, year, ground, players, score, what they’re wearing, who they’re going with, what they’re drinking, where they’re heading afterwards.
For this edition, we’ve invited Mr Arsenal—Tim Stillman of Arseblog—who has spent years travelling up and down the country and beyond covering the Gunners’ men’s and women’s team. No prizes for guessing which team he chose to watch…
Tim Stillman
I’m going to watch…
I have been fortunate to see a few different iterations of the perfect Arsenal game. I have seen us win the league at Old Trafford and White Hart Lane! The one FA Cup Final I haven’t been able to attend in my lifetime was in 2020, the final played behind closed doors due to Covid. Instead, I watched it in a labour ward with my wife. Our daughter was born a few hours after Arsenal lifted the trophy.
However, the most fun I have probably ever had watching Arsenal was the 2011–12 season. Social media was taking off, and the group with whom I travelled to away games expanded. Arsenal started the season terribly with the sales of Fàbregas and Nasri but somehow clawed their way back up the table and finished third, qualifying for the Champions League on the final day and ahead of Spurs to boot. All of this gave the season a weird but exciting sense of jeopardy.
I was old enough that I didn’t have to travel to away games on the club coach to save money anymore, but young enough that my liver was supple enough for the sort of away day boozing that would likely result in a hospital trip nowadays. So, with all that in mind, I am watching Arsenal in 2011–12, which is also the season that I met my wife, and we went to our first game together—a 3–2 away defeat to Swansea. I know how to treat a girl…
