During the summer, I woke up here in the United States one morning and read the news from the other side of the Atlantic, as I usually do. I could not finish my breakfast; never had I tasted anything so horrible in my life. I still remember my lemonade tasting like pee as I took another sip from the glass in front of me.

Yes, I am speaking of the sale of Thierry  Henry to Barcelona; for the next few weeks my symptoms would get worse as the whole of 'bloody England' predicted the fall of my glorious Arsenal.

My company had just hired a new director; changes were ringing from every corner of the planet as we sought to adjust to new management. I was on the Arsenal official site every 30 minutes to check if we had bought a world-class replacement for Henry.

'A win on Sunday would be the first this season against one of the title contenders; it will establish our credentials as the leaders of the pack'


To my dismay, the days turned to weeks, and the only name on the site was Eduardo Da Silva, a striker of unproven quality in a top league. True to his tradition and philosophy, Arsene Wenger was the only one who believed his team could compete for the title this year. To sum up my summer, I had a mental breakdown from worrying about Arsenal and the amount of work I had to do at the office.

Naturally, I was ashamed to tell my wife that most of this mental breakdown was due to all the darkness and gloom that surrounded my beloved club. A trip to the doctor confirmed I was severely stressed and needed to be put on medication for a month. I think during this period the Arsenal official site got 40 million hits - I truly believe I was singularly responsible for at least a million of them.

Finally, the season started and to everyone’s surprise the Gunners embarked on a roll. Not only are we playing the best football on the planet, we are actually scoring; the days of King Henry are long behind us. When I think of my summer madness, I am not sure why I was so stressed after all. We are one point ahead of the pack; yes, we stumbled at Boro, but I would have jumped on this opportunity had it been presented to me during those sleepless nights when I was worried about the Gunners.