ARSENAL vs Manchester United has provided so many memories for me and my dad.

My first game in this fixture that the world once stopped to watch — and will again on Sunday — was back in May 1983, at long-lost Highbury.

The football world was different then. I still recall vividly clutching my dad’s hand, when we went in the art-deco East Stand, as he had a bad leg. The crowd was 16,000. Yes, you read that right. For a league game between these two giants of the game.

There was fighting that day, as there mostly was in the early 1980s, with hooliganism running rife. As the underachieving team led by Terry Neil — the first of eight managers I’ve watched Arsenal under, or at least ten if you include two caretaker bosses — beat Ron Atkinson’s United 3-0. It was hollow comfort to end a season that saw the Red Devils beat my underwhelming heroes in the semi-finals of both domestic cup competitions.

In May 1986, I recall breathlessly telling my dad that George Graham had been appointed Arsenal manager. “Ah Stroller Graham,” dad replied, knowingly, having watched the Gunners legend under Bertie Mee in the early 1970s, when my father first came to this country to make a new life after escaping from troubled Iraq.

The first game of Graham’s reign saw Charlie Nicholas grab a late winner as Arsenal beat United. I had graduated to the Junior Gunners enclosure by then, and took great delight in telling my dad about the day, even if I left off the bit about fans chanting and fighting during the minute’s silence for Sir Stanley Rous before kick-off.

Graham’s glorious Gunners eventually overhauled top dogs Liverpool, years before new United boss Alex Ferguson was lauded for knocking The Reds off their perch.

In the meantime I relished attending every Arsenal vs United home and away through the 1980s as I grew — I won’t say matured — as a teenager, not least in dad and son matters, when growing up on the border of inner-city London provided many challenges to the son of a first-generation immigrant. With a brown skin and different accent, dad faced his own virulent racism, yet I was too obsessed with teenage things to notice, while dad was too proud and too dignified to share stories about the awful abuse, outright racism and institutional racism he would endure.

From Rocky Rocastle and Ian Wright to Bryan Robson and Norman Whiteside Highbury winners, to the battle of Old Trafford, to Eric Cantona free-kicks — and everything in between, I shared stories of my trips to N5 and MCR with dad. Marvellous, he would say with a knowing smile as I regaled my tales of this mesmerising fixture.  

May 1991. After somehow passing my A Levels — much to the delight of my dad — I had a weekend job at Sainsbury’s before heading to Newcastle University that September. I managed to wrangle — as I somehow did for every Arsenal game — time off to attend the Gunners never-to-be-forgotten title-winning match against United. A 3-1 victory, that saw me roll in blind drunk. For once, my dad turned a blind eye, knowing how much it meant to me, and him.

September 1996. Arsene Wenger arrived. My dad loved him, absolutely loved him. March 1998 saw me and pals have a riotous weekend in Manchester based around Arsenal’s seminal 1-0 victory over United at Old Trafford that month, that saw the tide turn on the way to winning the Premier League for the first time. Or as dad used to ask: “Have they forgotten about Arsenal’s first 10 league titles?”

Dad was a big fan of flair players, and had a soft spot for wingers, including the scorer of the winner that day, Marc Overmars. As for Dutch footballers, well, the way my beloved father spoke about Dennis Bergkamp convinced you he was the only Dutch master in his art, with Rembrandt and his Renaissance contemporaries mere understudies to his DB10’s incomparably glorious flair.

How I loved those times, young, strong, free and full of wonder, thirsty for Wenger’s revolution every week up and down the country. The rivalry between Arsenal and United was at its peak. And how we savoured it. How dad relished the Patrick Vieira and Roy Keane clashes, though it was always important to him to underline to his son the respect that pair of footballing warriors had for each other, even if, for me, it was hard to see back then. But that was dad, he’d always look beyond the headlines. 

In fact, the only arguments we would ever have in his later years as a gentle doting grandparent after the arrival of my three kids in the noughties, was the fact that he would never accept the great Frenchman’s powers were waning. While reading everything I’d write in print as the Arsenal reporter for the local north London newspaper in the 2010s.

Dad loved to hear my stories of going to games, even after I decided to travel the world for a spell. My dad, whose struggles always made him aware there was more to life than mere sport, yet, equally, knew how much sport, and football and The Arsenal, meant to me — and so many others — was pleased I wanted to see the world. But dad, like Wenger, knew. “How will you cope without Arsenal?” was his first question after I’d booked a round the world ticket.

And so it was that in May, 2002, after Arsenal beat United 1-0 to win the Premier League that I found myself deliriously drunk in Central America, in deepest Nicaragua, celebrating the Gunners triumph. With no mobile phones back then, I tracked down a dusty internet cafe in the early hours and penned an excitable email to my mum, dad being completely technophobic. “That’s nice,” came the loving, but invariably understated reply from my mum the next day, adding: “Dad says ‘well done’, he’s so happy for you.”

That was dad, always thinking of others. As it was when he went to put his neighbours’ bins out on the shortest day of the year, just before Christmas 2022. Unfortunately he fell and broke his hip.

It was a day of ambulance strikes, which resulted in dad lying prone and in great pain on the ground outside their bungalow all that dreadful midwinter’s afternoon, before mercifully, they arrived to administer morphine.

I have to emphasise, my family and I bear no resentment, ill will or bitterness to anyone in the emergency services, certainly not the ambulance workers, nor NHS staff — including all the hard-pressed, overworked and underpaid nurses and junior doctors, for they behaved with utter professionalism and with such care and kindness. Dad was certainly always on their side. I was always so proud of his acute sense of social justice.

To see my dad, who’d always been so strong and so full of life, struggle on his deathbed, full of tubes, pumped full of painkillers and struggling to breathe, was something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. Not that Dad had any enemies, for he was a remarkably positive man full of bonhomie and an engagingly gregarious nature.

My family and myself, including my mum and my wonderful partner Faye, mostly spent the following 12 days at my dad’s side in hospital. I did manage to get to Arsenal’s stirring 4-2 victory at Brighton on New Year’s Eve before racing back to the hospital the next morning.

Dad loved Arsenal’s resurgence under Mikel Arteta. I was at Arteta’s first press conference back in December 2019 and speaking to my dad that night he enthused about the Gunners’ new manager. “He’s the right man. He’s an Arsenal man,” my dad said perceptively.

My dad was an Arsenal man too. One of the last conversations we had was when he asked me about my trip to Brighton, and praised Arteta.

Yet, despite a criminally underfunded NHS doing its best to save him, despite shockingly understaffed departments caused by scandalously insufficient budgets, the ward was staffed by true heroes who deserved far more than the banging of pots and pans.

However, despite battling bravely through the festive period dad also contracted pneumonia. And, despite the care and dignity the NHS gave him, my beloved father sadly passed away at 4.50am on Monday, January 2.

He fought so hard, but it wasn’t to be.

Having seen him in such distressing pain on New Year’s Day, to see his lifeless body was almost a relief. All the pain now disappeared, he was in peace. It must have been a trick of the light in the room he died in, but his colour almost looked it had returned. It was a strangely comforting sight, albeit one that will never leave me.

The following weeks went by in a blur of sad and sometimes impenetrable death admin. What I can say is never will Blue Monday ever feel so bad again.

Looking back, I was simply existing in a form of numbed shock. I recall trying to buy a parking ticket on a cold morning and simply stood staring blankly at the impenetrable machine, as if it were a visitor from outer space.

The point of this piece is to honour the memory of my much-loved and much-missed dad — and to thank every single person who has shown such kindness to my family and myself. 

Sport, football, and the Arsenal, meant a lot to dad. Attending a few games has helped me in the process of restoring a semblance of normality — whatever that means anymore. 

The rhythms of football mean there is always another game. And this weekend brings the enticing prospect of first vs third in the Premier League. 

I am sure Sunday’s eagerly-awaited fixture will provide many new talking points – and, in time, memories. 

I’ll certainly treasure all those happy memories of my dad.