Ten years.

That’s the millstone still hanging about our neck, denoting the last time Arsenal won the league title, and it’s a statistic I know we’re all keen to address.

But is it an outcome which is a prerequisite to us enjoying the season?

On this week’s Daily Cannon podcast, Paul Williams and I mused on the value or futility of following the successes and failures of the clubs around us. In hindsight, it may have been a touch strong to suggest that the very best weekend of the season was that of the FA Cup 4th Round, when United drew away at Cambridge, Chelsea surrendered a two goal lead to go down 4-2 at home to Bradford, Tottenham also gave away a lead at home and were eliminated by Leicester, and Middlesbrough came away from the Etihad with two unanswered goals and a place in the hat for the next round.

It was still bloody good though.

It seems to me that there is almost as much enjoyment to be had from our rivals’ shortcomings as from our own success. Almost. Just as we rejoiced in the arrival of Petr Cech, so it’s also funny to watch the sagas which have surrounded the likes of Ramos, Pedro and Falcao, not to mention the hilarity of seeing Spurs start the season without securing a second first team striker.

We think we have it bad!

There’s a famous saying by Gore Vidal which just about sums up this level of schadenfreude: “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.” While we can all claim we’re standing on the higher ground and, as the old football cliché goes, focusing only on ourselves, it’s simply not true. Or if it is, then as Paul rightly remarked on Tuesday: “You’re doing football wrong.”

The Transfer Trophy

Over the last few years, you’d have been forgiven for thinking the season is won and lost between the end of May and the start of September, such is the level of interest in the transfer window. Of course, it’s important to make the right moves, and again in January, to ensure you are able to compete for titles come May. (Note I didn’t say “compete for trophies come February…”)

But that doesn’t mean spending money for the sake of it, as Liverpool have been doing, or purchasing players to appease the fan base and sponsors, as United’s signing of Di Maria appears, is the right route if real silverware is your goal.

The scousers have purchased many more players than us this summer, but where we have strengthened one of our weakest positions, this weekend’s opponents are probably weaker than the start of the 2014/15 season, and certainly than the year before that.

The trouble is that in a world where Jim White is treated like a deity, it feels like bragging rights from winning a title barely last a couple of weeks into the transfer window. You probably get more mileage from having a “successful” summer than by filling the trophy cabinet, and while part of football is in enjoying your team’s success, there’s no doubting that this enjoyment is enhanced, if not caused, by defeating your rivals in the process.

Cosmic balance

Then there’s the most poignant part – no matter your measure of success, if your club has been deemed to fail by that yardstick then you will be the target for merciless and unending ribbing. For all we celebrated the arrival of Petr Cech, how do you think Chelsea fans reacted on seeing Match of the Day on the opening weekend of the season? Let’s put it this way: I doubt they were feeling sorry for poor Petr.

One good turn deserves another so it’s only right and fair that when they then got annihilated by Manchester City we were able to laugh long and loud.

Likewise, I had to put up with a lot of attempted (and failed) sincerity at home after the opening day defeat as the other half tried to hide his glee that we were in the relegation zone. It was only reasonable that I then tried (and failed) to sympathise with him when Spurs meekly handed over a 2-0 lead, and with it two points, at home to Stoke.

If we didn’t take these opportunities to revel in the failures of other sides, then football would be a lot less exciting, and the universe a bit less balanced. West Ham fans aren’t everyone’s cup of tea but one thing they tend to be excellent at is giving and taking it in equal measure. They have a special kind of gallows humour at their own plight which is genuinely hilarious.

While our meltdown at the very outset of the Premier League season was disappointing and perhaps the biggest anti-climax since the 2011 League Cup final, I would almost have taken it to see Jose Mourinho nil for two and spitting his dummy out at every Tom, Dick and Eva who crosses his path.

I said almost!

Keeping sight of the goal

I don’t propose to gloss over the importance of earning tangible, shiny pots to grace the shelves of the Emirates trophy cabinet. Clearly I’ll be over the moon when we do the quadruple this year and I’ll thoroughly enjoy being a small part of a bigger whole. However, a significant part of that enjoyment will come in knowing I can bore others into submission for a longer period than usual on Arsenal’s superiority.

It’s possible this rivalry is particularly enhanced for me because I live with a supporter of a rival club, certainly it means that your perceptions tend to become slightly less balanced when the comparative performance of your teams forms the backbone of dinner-table conversation.

But as Paul said, football reduces us to a bunch of eight-year-olds and isn’t that the point?

The actual mechanics of booting a ball around 10,000 square metres of grass can get a touch boring – just ask Chelsea fans – but that extra dimension is what keeps us coming back time and again.

And we wouldn’t have it any other way.