Perhaps the greatest thing about football – and, much as we enjoy poking fun at it, its shortlist is damn long – is that, unlike the majority of days in our lives, stuff happens. Stuff of which we could never have previously conceived, that sticks with us forevermore and facilitates the second-greatest thing about football: the ability to behave in a manner deemed unacceptable in any other environment, alongside an incomparable meld of people we love and complete strangers. There is nothing remotely like it.

So, while it seems unlikely that Arsenal end the day as league champions for the first time in two decades – and who would’ve predicted that in May 2004? – as the saying goes, man plans and football laughs.

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