| We’re all friends here, so we can speak to each other honestly. Which actually sounds like the opposite of what friends do, but it’s a nice thought so let’s stick with it: all of us reading or writing this are poorly and need help. Outside, it’s a beautiful day, while inside, Big Sports Day is on the telly and we’re now experts in synchronised diving, pistol shooting and E. Coli bacteria, educating those around us with the devastating scope and penetrating originality of our insights. Football, though, is a potent sickness, a lifelong affliction easy to contract and almost impossible to shake that has seemingly sane(ish) people gibbering and slavering like heat-struck honey badgers, desperate to scavenge an elusive sense of meaning from the rotting carcass of human existence. Which, of course, brings us to Chido Obi-Martin, who will soon join Manchester United from Arsenal – to the respective ecstasy and agony of both clubs’ famously placid support. Tensions were already edifyingly high following Arsenal’s 2-1 victory in the pre-season game between the sides – internet sages have been exchanging epithets and aphorisms since the corresponding encounter last year, centring on who knacked whose players worse – but things have intensified since, grown adults sharing tantrums or luxuriating in credit for errors or achievements that have nothing whatsoever to do with them. Like Folarin Balogun, James Wilson and Jay Emmanuel-Thomas before him, Obi-Martin has been unfathomably successful at age-group level, so the crowing excitement is understandable: 10 goals against Liverpool’s legendary under-16s, along with 32 goals in 18 games for Arsenal under-18s, can translate to nothing other than a glorious Premier League career. And though it seems strange for an ambitious youngster to depart Mikel Arteta’s unstoppable band of potential winners, it of course makes perfect sense that he joins Manchester United, whose success in nurturing players and personalities has defined the last decade. Consequently, United were able to convince Obi-Martin that, though he is not Dutch and has never previously worked with Erik ten Hag, the better pathway to first-team football lay with them, Arsenal’s phalanx of non-goalscoring centre-forwards offering no apparent opportunity for a burgeoning goal-machine. On the other hand, Ten Hag’s squad represents the perfect incubating environment for a hungry, ambitious talent, boasting two young strikers – Rasmus Højlund and Joshua Zirkzee – bought for colossal money and at least two years shy of being binned off as abject failures. Which, er, brings us back to where we started … | 