The news that Christian Eriksen collapsed yesterday playing for Denmark really should hit home that when people say “it’s only a game”, this is when you say”yep – not worth it”.

It may be Erikson’s livelihood, his job, his identity, but health has to come above everything else, and when you put yourself in his position now, I’d personally have to say he has to surely be hanging up his boots now. It will be a shame for such a talented player, but at 34, he still has a massive part of his life in front of him, and so now I’m sure he’ll be thinking about prioritising his wife, kids and family.

It did make me think about my own stresses this season, though. For some reason, this has felt the most stressful season I can ever remember. I don’t know whether that is because when we won the league last time, I was just 21 and at Uni. I’d started supporting Arsenal around 1990, and so my childhood had been a League title in 91, a double in 93, the Cup Winners Cup in 94, the Premier League title in 98, 02, an FA Cup in 03, followed by that historic Invincibles season. So from the age of eight until 21, I’d pretty much seen us win everything domestically, including one European trophy. When you’re that young, you don’t think about time, about history, you just…well…live it. That’s what I did, and so I never really got that stressed because I always thought that there would be another trophy around the corner soon enough. And yeah, we won those FA Cups in 2014, 2015 and then 2017, but by then it felt like it was merely a light relief for the itch that needed to be scratched. As I got older, as I became more obsessive, writing and podcasting about The Arsenal, my emotional attachment has grown, but running in parallel with that, so has my anxious nature as a fan.

For a few years now, I’d started to think things like “Will I EVER see Arsenal win the Premier League again?” or in the Champions League case, “EVER?” – and that seeps into your footballing experience as a fan. The result of which is that the worry and anxiety build up – especially when you get so close three times in a row – which feels like, from a stress point of view, you’ve kind of built up a bit of a pressure valve in your mind. Well, that’s my experience, anyway. And as a result of this, this season has made it even more stressful. That pressure valve was at maximum, so for it to be released this season in the way it was, felt like a massive weight had been lifted.

The wife tells me it is not healthy for me to live like I had been living; worrying over the results of not just my team, but others too. I have a Fitbit, and it tracks my heart rate – I literally burn more calories when Arsenal are on and during the normal season. All of a sudden now, with the Premier League over, my average heart rate has dropped. I feel at ease. This weekend has even felt like it was a longer one than it was – because I wasn’t worried about The Arsenal.

I think social media has had its part to play in this too. The benefits are that I have basically met all of my Arsenal mates through the likes of Twitter. I have several different people I see at games. I was at a conference a few weeks ago and bumped into one of them, which was amazing to chat and catch up in a non-Arsenal work setting. But equally, for all the good it has done for work connections, it has also increased exposure to fans of rival clubs, as well as a generation of people who video themselves ‘hate watching’ other clubs just to get clicks and hits and monetise other people’s misery. It’s a pretty shameless existence if you’re doing that to weaponise ‘banter’ as they do. And as much as I personally try to avoid it, it always pops up on my social feeds somehow. And because this approach does generate clicks and hits, it bleeds into mainstream media, and platforms idiots like Agbonlahor, Cundy and O’Hara. And because you get exposed to it, because you get tired of having to see it, you (I) end up becoming emotionally invested in it. As soon as we won the Premier League, I looked up all of the ‘banter’ I’d been sent by rival fans over the last year and started ‘cashing in the receipts’. It was fun, I enjoyed sticking it to people who have stuck it to me or us, but in reality, why did I feel the need to do it? I was almost as happy to be sticking two fingers up to people as I was that we’d won the Premier League. And so the next day I said to myself, “focus on the joy, rather than the one-upmanship” – and I’ve been trying to do it ever since (not always succeeding, mind). When you focus on the joy in life, the stress easily melts away.

When people say “It’s only a game”, you think to yourself “, yeah, ok, but you don’t really get it” – and of course, they don’t. But when you hear the news about Erikson, when I think about my own relationship with football as a fan, and when I reflect on what stress it puts me through, I do think to myself that perhaps it would be healthier if I did say that phrase to myself a little more once in a while.

Doesn’t mean I’ll stop – I can’t, because Arsenal is my drug – but at least recognising and being mindful once in a while could be a bit more useful to my overall stress levels.

Catch you all tomorrow.