Colin Sheridan: how a childhood sweetheart of a team can still somehow make us happy

Relationships change but love can endure.

Arsenal midfielder Reiss Nelson celebrates after scoring a late winner versus Bournemouth. Picture: GLYN KIRK/AFP via Getty Images)

A week ago, a prominent columnist at the English Times went on the solo runs of all solo runs in a piece titled “My husband used to be hot - If I met my partner now, would I fancy him?”. The appropriately named Molly Gunn took aim at civil convention and fired off tracer round after tracer round in the type of rant you’d expect was conceived in a late-night taxi after she’d received one too many “Where are you now?” texts. Whatever Gunn’s motive or logic, she asked awkward, (justifiably) taboo questions about commitment and attraction, none of which - conveniently - need to be listed here as they’re pretty much all inferred in the article's headline.

What happened next will be taught on journalism master's programs for decades. Social media outrage followed by writers' defence, memeification rolling into parliamentary questions, prompting an ill-advised writer's retort, which elicited further social media outrage (repeat cycle). An uncomfortable couple of weeks for the Gunns, no doubt, but one which did at least birth one of the first great urban dictionary babies of the year; to “mollygunn” something; that is, to prosecute one's love of a person or thing (and write an article in a national newspaper about it).