The last time I went on a football special was 1979 when I went up to see Arsenal play Forest. Cue sentimental antithetical reminiscences: then - trains full of drunken fans, being frogmarched to the ground with Forest fans threatening to dump us into the River Trent. Now – first class travel (that’s all that was left) with a full breakfast thrown in and a day in Glasgow which included a visit to the museum of modern art and all its slightly surreal paintings and lunch at a tapas restaurant. How football has changed. Or perhaps I have.

Anyway, to the match. The view was pretty disappointing from the away end, with the restrictive view (and the ‘generous’ £2 deduction in match ticket) meaning that the pillar supporting the TV stanchion effectively blocked our sight of the goal in the first half. So, when the ball diverted from Gallas’ back into the net, there was a fraction of a second pause before we realised it was a goal followed by manic celebrations.

It felt to me as if we bossed the first half, with Song particularly impressive and Vermaelen aggressively prominent, but we did not really create an awful lot of clearcut chances. Conversely, our snappy tackling meant that Celtic did not do so either and so we were left to admire sleek passing from Arsenal with no real end product. A bit like the work I’d viewed at the modern art gallery earlier that day – pretty pictures but signifying nothing beyond a pleasing aesthetic image.

Visibility for the second half was slightly better and the move for the second goal was typical Arsenal – Diaby winning the ball and charging through the midfield (now where have I heard that before?), easing the ball into Clichy’s path, whose excellent probing cross into the box meant that Caldwell could only tuck it past Boric in the Celtic goal. 2-0 to the Arsenal and more wild celebrations.

Favourite moments: the new Arshavin song, the jeering ‘Where’s your famous atmosphere?’, the ‘is there a fire drill?’ as the Celtic fans slunk out and ‘that’s why you’re SPL’ being raucously bellowed by the Arsenal fans to the subdued green and white masses. There is something special and disturbingly territorial about being a victorious away fan at a football match and I wouldn’t want to analyse it too closely!

This is the first away match I’ve been to for sometime and I remembered what football was like for me in the 70s when being an Arsenal fan meant something! Passion, singing for the team, no one booing, moaning or jeering. Remind me why the E******s can’t be more like this?