Arsenal v Fulham: Premier League – live

⚽ Updates from the 5.30pm BST kick-off at the Emirates
⚽ Scores | Premier League table | Read Football Daily

Happiness is an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory. Most of the time, watching our team play football is mostly a miserable, desperate, hard-faced experience – one that is entirely worth it for the moments of euphoria that little else can provide.

Nick Hornby nailed it in Fever Pitch when he remembered his first visit to Highbury.

What impressed me most was just how much most of the men around me hated, really hated, being there. As far as I could tell, nobody seemed to enjoy, in the way that I understood the word, anything that happened during the entire afternoon. Within minutes of the kick-off there was real anger (‘You’re a DISGRACE, Gould. He’s a DISGRACE!’ A hundred quid a week? A HUNDRED QUID A WEEK! They should give that to me for watching you.’); as the game went on, the anger turned into outrage, and then seemed to curdle into sullen, silent discontent… Entertainment as pain was an idea entirely new to me, and it seemed to be something I’d been waiting for. It might not be too fanciful to suggest that it was an idea which shaped my life.

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