An Ending, Of Sorts...

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

A new year is always a time for reflection, for taking stock and for looking at where you need to make changes. It may be that ultimately you decide not to do anything, that things are just dandy, but sometimes you need to tweak, shift or even radically alter something.

I’ve always been a lover of a list, I like goals and deadlines and structure, and so for me, New Year brings the joy of being able to do just that. To list and plan and think what I want more of, what I want less of.

Without sharing my whole list, this year I want to watch more classic films, I want to travel, meet more of my online friends in the flesh. I want to read more, get more tattoos and do some things that are just for me, that don’t need sharing.

This doesn’t necessarily mean something has to give, if you’re doing things you enjoy you’re simply increasing that joy, but that’s where we hit a stumbling block. What about the things that no longer bring you joy?

Regrettably and with a heavy heart, TWUTAB falls into that category. What once was the highlight of my week has become a something I can always feel, nagging away at me in the background.

I still get signs ups regularly and I stress myself out that I’m not giving them any content, forgetting of course that I sign up to newsletters all the time and haven’t once wondered where the next edition is.

What I once loved doing, I no longer love. The collapse of Twitter hasn’t helped, although really things started going down the drain when you could no longer embed tweets into Substack. A minor thing perhaps, but one which made writing this an incredible chore, so reliant have I always been on Twitter content; screenshotting and uploading the images is a real ballache. And the gradual, and then sudden collapse meant the content became worse and worse until I was scrabbling for things to include.

Perhaps more importantly though, the enthusiasm for football which carried me through May 2021 to, if I’m being honest, sometime mid last season, has fallen off so dramatically every newsletter feels like a chore, even if I’m giddy off the back of a weekend of good results (which is rare, but can still happen!)

It’s tempting to think if Arsenal were having a better season I’d still have some of that enthusiasm, but in truth it’s everything. It’s teams who still resolutely play abusers, it’s FIFA and Infantino, it’s the Super Copa being played in Saudi, it’s abuse of players’ partners, of players, of fans in and away from grounds; it’s stodgy football that rarely thrills anymore (specifically Arsenal, but in general too), it’s the obsession with VAR and referees, it’s money above all else with outrage and clickbait not far behind.

I always wanted to offer an alternative to that and for the most part I think I did a pretty good job, bringing lightness, fun, silliness, horniness and joy to the world of football content. I’m not going to be modest here, I never thought in a million years I’d get 1250+ subscribers and yet that’s what I end with. I’ve been lucky enough to have some higher profile (i.e. people with large and beloved Twitter followings) support my work but not only did I have the subscribers, I regularly had a 50% ish open rate, which I’ve been advised is excellent. As I said, I’m not going to be modest, I believe I gave people a good read once a week, even with, or maybe because of, my unashamed biases.

So this is where it ends. Probably. Never say never again. Indulge me for a moment and allow me to say thank you to everyone who signed up, to everyone who ever read an edition, to those who enthusiastically shared my work, who liked and commented on particular issues, often sending really lovely messages and mostly to all my friends in football without whom I doubt I’d have even bothered starting this and certainly woudn’’t have continued for so long. You’re all wonderful.

I’ll leave you with my absolute favourite momemt from the near four years of writing TWUTAB. It is, of course, the immediate aftermath of Reiss Nelson’s 90+7 winner against Bournemouth. All 11 players from our team in shot. SCENES.

Goodbye then, I hope your team has a good season, not yours though, nor those guys, and fuck them, I hope they go down. Otherwise, trophies, cups and vases all round.

Emily✨