Redstory, backstory
I am writing yet another Arsenal blog. This is why.
Dear friends,
I was at a family thing during the Villa game this weekend, so I haven’t watched it in full yet - I’m catching up on that tonight. Instead, I thought I’d publish this ramble I jotted down last week. It’s a bunch of context around my decision to commit to a weekly column that will make me, a professional writer, no money whatsoever. I should probably stop reminding myself of that.
For those who aren’t following my work from SCOUTED, I guess this works as a means of introduction. See you in a few days for a proper Redstory. ‘Til then.
This summer, I covered England for . I loved it. Other people liked it too, which I know because some of them told me.
For the first time in my career, I felt like a proper sportswriter. I should explain.
Content warning: this explanation contains a sickly amount of naval-gazing. If you’re here for the football, maybe skip this one. I wrote it mostly to clear my head, but there’s no reason it should clutter yours.
I founded when I was 18. I was in school and figuring out how to break into an industry which was, I was constantly told, both dying and totally opaque. So I figured I’d just do it myself. I somehow attracted a brilliant, talented group of young people to join me and together we built something people cared about.
But my interest in scouting football players, I soon realised, was just a phase. That kind of fickleness defined my teenage years; I jumped between interests in that common, youthful desperation to figure out who the hell I was. I began to struggle with ’s direction as my passion for it waned. Thankfully, those brilliant people I’d accidentally pulled into my orbit picked up the torch. Their passion was real and unwavering and they understood what the publication was and where it should go. And they took it there.
Over time, I rediscovered where my particular sensibilities fit with the collective. We launched our print magazine during the final year of my degree, and I offered my services as Editor. My colleague and friend Stephen accepted, thankfully - as long as I agreed to use my flat as a sorting office and post our magazine across the world. It was an okay deal.
Ever since, I’ve been quietly guiding ’s written efforts.
In my early twenties, I escaped that frazzled period of self-discovery and figured out, finally, what would stick. I love writing, I realised, and all the other stuff was just an excuse to do more of this. I love language and how people use it. I love…sentences. The rhythm of sentences, the music of sentences, the feeling a stitching together of phonetic signifiers in a particular order can evoke…I love narrative and narrative journalism. I love people, and talking to people, and learning what moves them. Most of all I love stories. I love drama and tension and learning and empathy and that little space between two people that is impossible to bridge and I love the lengths we’ll go to try and bridge it anyway because that’s the only pursuit worth attempting in this life. If there’s any magic in the world, a line from one of my favourite movies goes, it must be in that attempt.
Obviously, someone this annoying and pretentious has no place working at a very serious football analytics magazine, you’re thinking right now. I used to agree. But I’ve come to realise that tension is interesting to me. Bringing the artsy-fartsy into the self-serious world of football analytics has been, and continues to be, a fun challenge. I can only push so far before people get sick of me, but carefully walking that line has resulted in some good work. I think so, anyway. It’s certainly improved me as a writer and editor. You need someone to tell you when you’re doing too much - thousands of someones is better.
Why am I dumping all this on you? Well, as a roundabout means of explanation. My sensibilities as a writer have never particularly fit, not at my own publication nor in the industry at large. I have written essays for big publications and worked at content mills; I have written for ; I have never, anywhere, felt entirely confident I could write exactly how I liked. Some of this is the perfectly natural push-and-pull of writer and editor, author and audience - no writer should be let entirely loose. Most of it is self-deprecating nonsense and a symptom of a lack of confidence (I’ve come to really despise this as I think it’s self-obsessive but hey, here I am, still doing it). But some of it, at least a little, is that football discourse has become a competitive sport of its own.
Any of us who engage with football punditry are entering a crucible of ideas - we’re all competing to be smartest. Who has the biggest brain? Who most understands tactics? We can be most prescient about a player? Literally all of my friends in the industry engage with this, and power to them. But I have come to understand I don’t care. I don’t think about football so much as I prefer to feel it. That sentence feels disgusting but it’s true. It’s why I’m not and could never be a good analyst. It’s all vibes here, man. The rest I find quite exhausting.
So: over the summer, I wrote a regular column on England, which went down well, and for the first time in ten years I felt confident my writing could be of value to people. But could not be home for it long term; our readers might forgive it for a month, but it’s just not what they’ve come to expect from us. I feel it would dilute our brand, or whatever. That stuff is important when you’re trying to make a living.
I spent a long time figuring out my love and obsession for writing. I have never once questioned the other great passion of my life. So, when I was trying to decide what I should write about, week over week, there was only one answer: Arsenal.
And thus, we finally arrive, to this blog.
Redstory is a column from me, Tom, a writer from London. It will be weekly, or as close as I can get to it. It will be free, for now. It will contain all the bullshit I feel doesn’t fit at my other publication. I will be an outlet for my creative frustrations. It will be vibes-based and barely analytical. But I hope it will contain feeling, or a simulacra of it, my best efforts at translation, at bridging that little gap between.
Because when I think about my football club I don’t think about formations, tactics or statistics. I think about packed trains and butterfly nerves. Scarves and programmes and the wave of red that gradually grows as you travel north through the city. I think about my childhood, and crying because I wasn’t allowed to stay up for the Champions League final; I think about my adolescence, and driving home from a shift at the coffee shop and breaking the speed limit because the radio’s just announced we’re 2-0 down to Hull in an FA Cup final and Cazorlaaaaaaaaaaa; I think about the bit in-between, waking up with no voice because the German champions came to town with their flags and flares and we had to out-sing them, we had to, because we were fifteen and stupid and convinced all that stuff mattered. (It does.)
Arsenal is a fragmented collection of memories that make up the person I am today. I know anyone reading this with feel the same, whether about my club or your own. We are all so atomised, so alone, so convinced we’re all individuals and the world revolves around our specific desires - but our football clubs disavow us of such self-obsession. You cannot detach a club from its people. Football is one of the few truly collective endeavours left. Our clubs make us feel a tiny part of something huge and beautiful; they’re a reminder of our connection to others. You’re a speck in a crowd, and isn’t that freedom?
Though analysis of what happens on the pitch may be of fleeting interest to me, I will always - always - feel strongly about football, what it has meant to me, and what it does for us all.
It’s this I hope to capture in Redstory: the feeling of following a football club in 2024. But specifically following this football club, in this moment, and how it is built on all that came before. I hope to tell the story of this team in my own way, because this team is special, and it makes me feel like that 18-year-old again, desperate to put words to paper, bursting with the beauty of it all. And also I hope to write something people like to read - the kind of football writing I wished would drop into my inbox every week. There must be more than one of me, surely?
And yes, sometimes I will pontificate about what’s happening on the pitch because I can’t help myself, and sometimes I will suggest playing Jurrien Timber in midfield, because his press-resistance and power could be of use there, and sometimes I will write a 2000-word essay on Kai Havertz’s ‘aura’ as a vaguely concealed gesture at my enormous crush on him. I can do that now! It’s my blog! I have escaped the oppression of the editors!
And if you want smart analysis,
exists. So what’s even the point in trying.Thank you, so much, for reading this, if you did. I hope this blog, over time, becomes something of value to its readers. For now I’ll keep typing and figuring it out.
Up the fucking Arsenal,
T