By Shane
August 6 2021

I've had a lot of different types of cancer, even before the age of 20. Lung. Penile. Testicular. Throat. You name it, I've probably had it at one time or another. Well, I thought I did. In fact I was certain I did, but it turns out that my mind was just playing tricks on me, as the mind will do if you don't look after it. I'd find something wrong with me - a symptom - and I'd Google it, only to then convince myself that I was terminally ill.

As insane and dramatic as this might sound, I know what it feels like to know you're dying because even an official diagnosis would not have convinced me more than I'd already convinced myself. That's the power of the mind for you.

This isn't quite hypochondria because I would never actually go to a doctor. Instead, these episodes would only last a few hours and usually end with bursting into tears - mainly out of relief, because I now convinced myself I’m fine, but also out of shame because I know that although your physical health is okay, your mental health is FUBAR (Yes I had to think about that one, so in recognition of the fact this is a family site I suggest fluffed up beyond all recognition. ED).

And I bring this up to illustrate that I respect mental health and its importance. Absolutely. I respect how detrimental anxiety can be. I respect how suicide is endemic. What I don't like is the fact that Arsenal's last pre-season friendly of the summer is against Tottenham on Sunday and you just have to accept that it's okay, just because it's in aid of a mental health charity.

Don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant cause and the organisation is going to make a lot of money, which can't be a bad thing but, by the same token, it sort of depreciates the one fixture that a lot of Arsenal fans - myself included - care about.

We don't have Champions League football this season. We don't have Europa League football. We don't have any reason to expect we're going to challenge Liverpool and Manchester City for the Premier League title, or even Chelsea or Manchester United for the top four.

All we have is Tottenham home and Tottenham away - and even that event now has to be saturated for the sake of making money.

And listen, we all know with reasonable certainty that despite promising to dedicate the proceeds to Mind, Arsenal and Tottenham will benefit in some way. Obviously neither club is going to welch on the agreement to give the money to charity, but at the same time, there's something in it for both clubs. There has to be. When did two clubs who tried to join a European Super League for the promise of financial gain grow a conscience and decide that they cared about mental health?

And if this isn't the selfless gesture that it's billed as, which it isn't, then it's yet another example of elite football in England selling its soul because there ought to be something sacred about this fixture, something you can't turn into a parade float no matter what the cause. If somebody tried to remake Goodfellas and promised to donate every cent of the takings to KWF [kids without faces] he should be strangled with a guitar string and hung from a meat hook in the back of a van with a built-in freezer.

There are some things that you just need to leave alone and this fixture, for me, is one of them, irrespective of the cause.

Thankfully it has been many, many years since I thought I was dying. These days, the only cancer in my life is Arsenal and it's becoming harder and harder to convince myself that this one, like so many others, is all in my head.