This transfer window, not yet closed, presents to us the emotional extremes of sports, and dedicated fandom.
First, pessimism and despair. Amidst all the potential changes (and ongoing flux) of the squad our team looks hideous at Swansea. Inept, ill-deployed, confused. The game reminds us that we support a team with recent, tangible successes, yet it is also a team where the present feels stagnant, whose future feels distant.
Second, just a few hours later: optimism and hope – news trickling in teasingly about big names on their way to the Emirates, at first without confirmation and thus a fantasy but then…real!
Third, once this news settles in: simple, reductive excitement. Saturday! A new beginning! A game in front of the home crowd with exciting, skillful, fresh players who have been on our minds for years. And now they play for the Arsenal. They are ours. We feel impatient, anticipatory, and – yes – happy. A different team will be on the pitch, and while the future may not be wholly different from yesterday’s past we at least daydream about what it might be.
We hope that the fourth phase isn’t a return to that first one, with a lineup of old faces starting against Everton, while the new blood is given a slow introduction to the current environment at the home ground.
So play them all, Arsene. Play them all. We almost don’t care in what formation.
Let us stay hopeful.
At least for a little while.