I fell in love with football through Tony Adams and Arsene Wenger’s arsenal as a 10 year old, but being an Arsenal fan has been one complicated relationship all through my adult life.

We had TV but didn’t have cable when I first started watching a little bit of football after the 1998 world cup. For a 12-year-old there was no other club more interesting than Arsenal At the time. I barely got to see the matches, but by around 14-15 I had figured out the ways to listen to the Arsenal games by rigging homemade antennas on shortwave radio, in a little village in Eastern Nepal.

We were good. We were great. Then we became legendary. We reached to highest of highs and then fell down the cliff, to the lowest of lows, like Icarus who maybe chased the sun too soon. It’s okay, We knew this was coming. Arsene told us to expect this, we just couldn’t compete with Chelsea while building a new stadium. For someone who believed the club was named after him for the better part of my childhood, Arsene was everything. We never stopped fighting, knocking on the top spot sometimes during those early years. We should have won that Champions league in the perfect world. Should we have held on to Henry for a little more? or Fabregas later? In Arsene, I trusted.

And we also had a left-footed “god’ in Van Persie who could do things on the football field even Messi couldn’t do. Remember that 5-2 comeback against Spuds? That hat trick against Chelsea in that 5-3 game in 2011. There have been some low moments with this team, but RVP leaving, letting him leave was probably the saddest moment as a Gunner. I remember going on a Twitter tirade I am not particularly proud of now. After that, we went from challenging the title every year to fighting to stay in the top four.  Sure, there were moments to be proud of, like that 7-5 comeback win against Redding. The FA cup trophies we managed to make habit of winning. However, winning the premier league was never a possibility. What I could never understand was, with all the debts settled why we weren’t buying more players and more importantly properly keeping or offloading our squad year after year.

We always didn’t make signings. Remember Koscielny, BFG, Ozil, Sanchez, Song, Santi even Aubameyang? They were amazing many times, but somehow, we always bottled the big games. There were ritualistic thrashings by Bayern every season like clockwork. That 8-2 loss against united still gives me nightmares. Not winning against Chelsea and City. Bottling up a four-goal lead against Newcastle. Those 4 goals from Messi in a champions league disaster. None so more painful than finishing the season below spuds. Not even not playing the Champions League for the first time in my goonner life counts as bad. I have two confessions to make here, I have not and will not watch any Arsenal Matches in the Europa. And secondly, after years of seeing my beloved team settle into mediocrity, I also joined the #ArseneOut squad in 2016. Things just went south hill after that, didn’t they? I am sorry, boss, for all you have done for the club you deserved a whole lot more respect than what you got from us.

There were questionable signings, and even more questionable hirings in between. Because honestly while Edu did make some questionable decisions during these years. Thankfully signing Arteta wasn’t one of those. I am one of the people who believed in giving in more time, even during the slump last year or the fights that should have been avoided with Ozil and Abuyameng. But what do I know about football?

At the start of this season, I thought we would be challenging the title at best, and maybe realistically be a title contender next season if we could buy more players during the offseason. I have been so used to us faltering in December-January and then again in February to continue the slump throughout the end of the season for the better part of the past decade, what Arteta and his bunch of Gunners” have done feels unreal, surreal. Yet here we are 5 points and 12 games between us and the first title in 19 years.

I have been a little conservative with my expectations, it’s been true for many of us. We have been used to being average for so long, winning feels almost surreal. Being at the top of the league is a whole other level of that. That win yesterday tells me all about the belief Arteta has installed in this group of players. For the best part of the last decade, there was never a chance for Arsenal to come back like that. But this is not the Arsenal I am used to; they don’t know how to give up. Never in doubt. Saka is Awesome, and so are Martinelli and Ødegaard, and the back Five: I don’t think we would be here without Zinchenko. But do you see how good has Partey been for us this season? Do any of you Nincompoop feel like Xhaka has vindicated enough?

There are 12 more games in the season, and things are going to change. Yesterday’s win truly made me believe that we can do this. I hope we do; it doesn’t matter if we don’t. What this team has achieved is already beyond my wildest dreams. It doesn’t matter, we will come back even stronger. Being an Arsenal fan wasn’t easy, being constantly chided by other fans for being average, owning the fourth spot and so much more, didn’t make things easier either. There were times when I questioned my support for the team too, but this is the club that made me fall in love with football. This is the team I have spent my adult life cheering, cursing, crying, and celebrating like a madman.

None more loudly than yesterday, that Nelson’s goal is the proudest I have felt as a fan of this club in all 23 years of my complicated journey as a Gooner, probably fittingly. It was not an easy journey, but we are here finally, just 12 games left to hold on to.