by Tony Attwood
Although no one has done an analysis on the subject there is quite possibly a link between covid 19 and watching football.
Obviously people get covid 19 by being in close proximity with other people who get covid 19 and by no being vaccinated against the virus.
But there is a lot of evidence around that suggests that certain behavioural patterns may make the vaccine somewhat less effective, and sadly for us football fans these are behavioural patterns directly associated not just with watching football but with supporting Arsenal.
In fact so important are these factors that people are being warned to avoid them in the immediate run up to having the vaccine and in the three weeks after the vaccine.
The instructions you are likely to be given when you are called to go for a vaccine are
Avoid stress
Now this of course is impossible for an Arsenal fan. Stress and supporting Arsenal go together. For even when we have a team that can stay in the top four year after year there will be supporters trying to get rid of the manager and thus stop us being top four. And when they have done that and we become a top six club, they try to get rid of the manager again in order to make us a top 10 club (if lucky).
Of course it is fine if Arsenal take a solid 4-1 lead in a match, but when they gets to 4-2 and the commentators are getting mega excited telling us that any minute now it is going to be 4-3 and then the draw is a certainty, stress is hard to erase.
The stress solution:
Watch on TV with the sound off, don’t listen to any of the pre- or post-match chit chat, avoid the newspapers and blogs. If in doubt close your eyes.
Get plenty of sleep
This is harder than might be imagined. OK it is possible to go to bed before 2am, but what happens if you get to sleep at 11pm and then wake up at 4am? (Or if a teenager, 4pm).
The sleep solution:
One solution is to read the transfer blogs. They are all fantasies, nothing they say will ever come true, and as such they are as boring as hell and will put you to sleep. You can also listen to Radio 5.
Connect with friends and family, to increase feelings of social support
Of course if your friends and family tell you that you are stupid for supporting Arsenal or watching grown men kick a ball, that doesn’t help much. Nor does it if they are supporters of Tiny Totts, Manchester Financial, Manchester Untidy, Lie cester Tackles, and … well pretty much anyone else.
Nor come to that if they are football journalists or virus deniers.
The connection solution:
Choose your friends carefully. Interview them first! Check watch they are reading. Look out for carefully concealed note books, pens or a propensity for dictating notes into the phone on the pretence of speaking to an aged grandmother.
Make sure you are getting enough exercise
Getting out of bed and going to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal and a coffee does not count as exercise.
The exercise solution:
Walk for 30 to 45 minutes a day. That might seem tough but what you can do is choose a pub that is 20 minutes walk away, walk there, find it is closed, come home and then reward yourself with a drink. Except…
Avoid alcohol
You can tell if you are taking in too much alcohol if instead of the headline above appearing to be red as the previous warnings have, this one looks a different colour. If it is a mauve purple type of colour beware.
The alcohol solution (40%)
Before you go to the pub, make sure there is no alcohol in your room. After you have walked to the pub, found it shut, walk back in sullen silence vowing never to listen to yourself again. Try and talk to yourself as you enter the house, but refuse to listen, go to your room, and lock the door. Stay there and vow never to come out.
Your vaccine will now work.
Gaslighting: how refereeing in the Premier League is manipulated, and why the media never speak about it.
- 1: Are the referees and the media really out to get Arsenal, or am I just imagining it?
- 2: How discussions about refereeing are deliberately stifled by the media
- 3: Referees: the odd statistics that are simply never revealed or discussed
- 4: How we have been utterly misled about football: part 4
- 5: Hiding the problem of refereeing is destroying the credibility of the Premier League
- 6: Revealed: PL referees are not 98% accurate but actually just 75% accurate
