In the company of an Arsenal diehard at Emirates Stadium

With no affinity to the north London club, I thought it was a good time to watch them in the company of a diehard.

Mesut Ozil showed more emotion after the whistle against Brighton than over the previous 90 minutes. Picture: Getty Images

I got to my friend’s office in Palmers Green, north London, around six on Thursday evening.

Costas Avraam is an accountant and things get busy for him at the end of the year. It was close to seven when we drove to nearby Oakwood station and caught a Piccadilly Line train to Holloway Road.

This was something we’d promised ourselves for a while. Costas has been an Arsenal season ticket-holder since 1994 and as you will come to understand, his relationship with the club is complicated.

With no affinity to the north London club, I thought it was a good time to watch them in the company of a diehard. What right-thinking man wouldn’t want a ringside seat at a crisis?

Alex, Cos’s son, used to be his regular companion at games but he’s away at university now. He’d been taking Alex for eight years when his son asked if he could have a word, in the same way a manager pulls a player he’s dropping from the starting XI.

Alex was 17 at the time. “Dad,” he said, “I know that you enjoy the two of us going to the Arsenal, the bonding thing, the time we spend together. That’s why I go now. It’s because of what it means to you, not because I want to watch ­Arsenal.”

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Cos could have asked about loyalty, enduring the bad days to better enjoy the good times.

Instead he stayed quiet, accepting it was just his boy growing up, deciding what he liked and didn’t like.

Cos knows it’s himself he should worry about. Why does he still do this? Go to a stadium to watch a team he doesn’t like, to support a club that takes his money without being too bothered by what it gives in return.

Simon Leach, a fellow sufferer in a seat close to Cos’s, says they keep turning up for the same reason people go to church. It’s something you’re born into.

So we stand on the train and Cos talks about all that he dislikes about the club and team.

The train stops at Southgate, Arnos Grove, Bounds Green, Wood Green, Turnpike Lane, Manor House, Finsbury Park and Arsenal. Cos never pauses.

In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Molly Bloom delivers a 4391-word sentence in her soliloquy. Cos beat that the other evening.

The lack of leadership. The lack of direction. The lack of quality. The lack of heart. The damaging fallout from Arsene Wenger buying into the club’s corporate dream and then staying on so long that Unai Emery inherited a broken club.

“I get on this train to go to the Arsenal and all I feel is resignation,” he said.

“That’s before the game. I know what we’re going to get this evening won’t be anything different to what we’ve been getting for years. I don’t get angry any more because we’re all conditioned to expect the worst.

“Talk to any Arsenal fan, you won’t hear anything different. We’ve been conditioned to expect less.

“Mikael Silvestre, Danny Welbeck, Petr Cech, David Luiz, players our rivals were happy to sell to us because they were no longer good enough for them.

“We have talented young players at our club who come in, do well, get a false sense of having achieved something. After a short time they lose form, then confidence, and they are discarded. No senior players to set the right ­example.

“We’ve got a young Brazilian, (Gabriel) Martinelli, who is hungry and has talent. He’s 18 and if he goes the right way, we’ll be begging him to stay because he won’t want to.

“Why did we let Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain go to Liverpool? Basically he was desperate to get away. He is exactly the kind of player we need.”

Cos pays £2800 ($5400) for two season tickets. If there are games he can’t get to, he tells the club and they re-sell his tickets. Checking his phone, he got £130 back last season.

From Holloway Road, we’ve got a short walk to the Emirates. It’s an impressive stadium but that’s not how Cos sees it.

“The opening of this place marked the moment we stopped being a football club and became a business,” he says.

We queue for coffees. He takes a first sip. “I don’t know,” he says, “if it’s the coffee that’s bitter or if it’s my bitterness giving the coffee a bad taste. They (the club) know they’ve got me. They know I’m going to continue parting with my money and they don’t give a f … With the Hill-Woods (Samuel, Denis and Peter, former Arsenal chairmen) we used to have class. Now we have Stan Kroenke.”

I ask if there’s anything about the current team that he likes. He says Lucas Torreira, Matteo Guendouzi and Alexandre Lacazette fight for the team but would prefer to talk about Mesut Ozil.

“Tonight you watch him because the sole purpose of his game now is to avoid physical contact,” says Cos.

“The ball comes to him and he will get rid it of every time rather than expose himself to the possibility of being tackled. Pretty much every pass will be backwards or sideways.

“He gives us nothing. Some time ago I decided I never again wanted to see him in the shirt. He’s now back in the team and my view hasn’t changed.”

The Emirates is about two-thirds full for the Brighton game. Only at the away end are fans tightly packed. Everyone talks about the toxic atmosphere inside the stadium but the Arsenal fans are ready to support their team.

Midway through the first half, the home team’s defensive wall blocks a Pascal Gross free kick and that simple act unleashes thunderous chanting from the home fans. Their encouragement falls on deaf ears. Ozil plays exactly as Cos said he would.

The rest of the players go tamely through the motions. One-nil down at halftime, they raise their level for the first 15 minutes of the second half and equalise, but whether it is satisfaction at the likely draw or a lack of fitness, Arsenal fade to nothingness.

Brighton play really well and get only what they deserve, a 2-1 victory. I ask Cos’s friends, Barry and Simon Leach, why they still come. “If I’m being honest,” says Barry, “it’s the pint and pie and the conversation we have before the game.”

At the end, Cos tells me to look at Ozil, who is waving his arms as he flounces from the pitch, expressing disappointment. Does he appreciate he is part of this team and central to its problems?

What is sure is that he showed more emotion in the moment after the final whistle than he had over the previous 90 minutes.

The following day, Cos goes through Arsenal’s latest accounts. Revenue is down, £20 million less on the balance sheet, but overall the club’s finances are not in a bad state.

He says that for the people who own the club, this is all that ­matters.

THE SUNDAY TIMES