The origins of Arsenal chants: ‘I posted it and the next day people were singing it in the pub’

By
James BAOUCH
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Arsenal fan Dan Gunning was watching clips of darts on YouTube from his bed when he was struck by the idea for an Arsenal chant. As he heard the darts fans singing along to the tune of Chase The Sun by Italian electronic music outfit Planet Funk, he knew it could catch on at the Emirates Stadium.

“I couldn’t get the song out of my head,” says Gunning. “I posted it in the group chat and said, ‘We need to get a chant going for this song’. A few of the lads wrote back and said they couldn’t get anything to fit, so I said, ‘Leave it with me’. An hour later I sent in the Odegaard chant and they all said, ‘That’s the one’.”

Gunning put together a video, with clips of Odegaard and the lyrics for his new chant: “Been dreaming all day, ’bout our No 8, Martin Odegaard.”

“I posted it on the Saturday morning,” says Gunning. “It just went everywhere. The next day, by the time we got to Goodison Park, people were singing it in the pub.

“It started with three of us singing it, but as the pub got busier it was kicking off. By the time we got into the actual ground, other groups of lads were singing it. It literally happened in the space of a day.”

Over the past couple of years, Arsenal supporters have penned an entirely new songbook. The success of the team, and the use of social media, have allowed chants to proliferate faster than ever before.

Authorship of football songs is always a murky area, but The Athletic has managed to track down some of the fans who have helped create and spread these chants — the composers behind the new soundtrack to the Emirates Stadium.

For Ben Bennett, known as @clockendben30 on X, improving the atmosphere among Arsenal fans has been a personal mission.

“There was a little thing that happened in the Champions League semi-final in 2009,” explains Bennett. “A lot of people left with half an hour to go and it really bugged me.

“Whenever I went to a game or watched on telly it was the same old songs. It was like a broken record, over and over again.

“I was a bit disillusioned with the direction of the club and going through a difficult time in my personal life. As a distraction, I began thinking: how could we make the Emirates Stadium atmosphere better?”

Bennett began to be more active on social media, identifying and sharing chants he felt had the potential to take off among the Arsenal fans. Shortly before the coronavirus pandemic interrupted live football, Bennett discovered fan group Ashburton Army had been singing a version of “Allez Allez Allez”, a chant made famous in England by Liverpool supporters.

“They had a version of it they’d sung up at Newcastle,” explains Bennett. “I thought it was good, but with some different lyrics, we could make it about our history, where we’ve won the league and that. I sent the revised version to the Ashburton Army, they got it out just before Covid, started singing it in the Clock End, and it just got bigger and bigger.”

Liverpool fans are quick to point out they adopted the tune first, but Bennett never let that bother him. “For me, it’s not Liverpool’s,” he argues. “It was abroad, it was in Scotland, it was everywhere before they had it.”

Allez Allez Allez has now become an anthem for Arsenal, at home and away.

“It’s just crazy,” marvels Bennett. “You get a buzz, obviously. It’s exactly what I’ve wanted the Emirates to be. It’s grown on a lot of people. Look what it’s done to the ground, everybody’s involved. One of the bigger buzzes for me was Spurs away last season, it really went off. If you hit it at Spurs away, you know it’s worked!

“All I wanted to do is help the team and the stadium. We needed to make the ground better, be more atmospheric and drive the team on.

“But over the last few years, it’s also been a really great distraction through a difficult period of life. It’s helped me massively. I’ve met some great people along the way and they’ve become mates I have a beer with at the ground.”

Bennett has used his growing social media profile to help kickstart several others from this new generation of Arsenal chants.

He was also one of the loudest voices pushing for the introduction of Louis Dunford’s The Angel (North London Forever) as a pre-match anthem. “It helped how the team starts matches, everybody’s on the ball,” he says. “It gets fans into their seats quicker, too. A few years ago, people would still be arriving five or 10 minutes into the game. Now everyone’s there in good time because they want to see the anthem. It’s brilliant to see.”

Over the past couple of years, the street artist known only as NorthBanksy has gained notoriety for his Arsenal-themed murals appearing across north London. His talents, however, extend beyond the visual arts — he’s also created a chant.

“I remember going to the last few games under Unai Emery,” Northbanksy says. “It was an expensive duty — something you felt you had to do, like going to church.”

But with the relationship between the team and supporters reinvigorated, Northbanksy was inspired. In July 2022, he came up with the lyrics for Arsenal’s Gabriel Jesus chant. It was set to the tune of My Old Man’s A Dustman — a song he describes as “so old-fashioned that it’ll never go out of fashion”.

“I made it up on the walk up Aubert Park after our Emirates Cup game against Sevilla, where we thrashed them,” says Northbanksy. “I wanted to make the song a story, about Mikel Arteta persuading Jesus to join.

“I was torn between the lyric, ‘I’m collecting Gabis and I’m gonna make you mine’, or ‘I’m looking for a striker and you’re gonna lead the line’. In the end I kept the more esoteric Arsenal one.

He then sent the chant on to Bennett, whom he had met online. “Ben goes around the Arsenal pubs with a boisterous group of mates — and he goes to away games. It was a video of them slurring their way through the chant in The Gunners pub garden that first went viral. It just took off from there! It’s cool to have created something that’s gone into Arsenal folklore.”

The vast majority of chants are first aired in WhatsApp groups among like-minded match-going fans.

“These things just get into your head, and you end up sharing them with your mates,” explains Arsenal fan Alex. “And they’re normally roundly rejected!”

The beloved “Saka and Emile Smith Rowe” chant, to the tune of Rockin’ All Over the World, was one such idea.

“This was one of those,” says Alex. “It was during Covid when they broke into the team. It’s very rare that you get a totally original tune that comes up — I think Rangers had a song to this tune. They used to sing, ‘Gerrard stopped 10 in a row’.

“I remember putting it in a WhatsApp group and them saying, ‘Yeah it’s alright, but I don’t think we’ll ever hear that again!’”

But when Alex and his friends started singing it at the Bank of Friendship pub before the first home game of the 2021-22 season against Chelsea, it proved a hit.

“Originally, the lyrics had a bit more story to them,” he admits. “Instead of ‘Here we go-o, Saka and Emile Smith Rowe!’, it was ‘Hale End’s on a ro-oll, Saka and Emile Smith Rowe!’ But it got a bit lost in translation. It gets sung in the pubs, does the rounds on Twitter, and by that point, it’s beyond your control!”

It’s striking that none of these fans are particularly eager to claim credit. “Sometimes you zoom out and you think, ‘I’m a 30-year-old man making up songs about 21-year-olds’,” says Alex.

“You need friends to be a sounding board for ideas, and then you need people to join in to get it going. It’s all well and good me just shouting like an idiot at the back of the away end, but it doesn’t matter if other people don’t join in. They’re everybody’s songs, really.”

The Saka and Smith Rowe chant came to symbolise the burgeoning connection between players and supporters. “I think people just missed live football so much during Covid,” says Alex. “It’s breathed new life into it.”

The return of fans to stadiums does appear to have been a turning point.

“I was up at Manchester City just after Covid,” adds Bennett. “We lost 5-0, had a man sent off, and quite a few fans left.

“But after the game, all the players came over and applauded the fans that had stayed behind. And I just thought, ‘Something’s changed. Something’s clicked. Something could happen here’.”

Some chants, however, take a little longer to get going.

In recent months, centre-back Gabriel has earned himself a new chant, with a tune derived from German hip-hop duo SXTN’s So High. Although it’s new to the terraces, the song was actually first suggested as far back as November 2021.

“Man United sang it about Edinson Cavani, but I hadn’t heard it anywhere else,” explains Jay Felms. “And he wasn’t a mainstay at United; he sort of came and went. So I thought: ‘We’ve got big Gabi, he’s here to stay — no one really knows that song, so I’ll pinch it’.”

The song found its way to chant curator Bennett. “I just tweaked a couple of lines, adding them from another Gabriel chant I’d made up,” says Bennett. “I’d put it up on Twitter a couple of times over three years, and it got reasonable feedback, but it just never took off.”

With Gabriel in outstanding form this season, however, there was suddenly an appetite for a new chant.

“Ben and I were having a chat just before the Burnley game, and I sent a voice note of me singing it into the WhatsApp group of some like-minded Arsenal lads,” says Kieran Barry.

“The lads were asking if they could share it, and I said, ‘No, don’t do that!’ But it made its way out there.

“What really got the Gabriel one a bit of traction is we were singing it on a boozy train home from Burnley, and it ended up on social media.”

 

Arsenal’s overhaul of their songsheet is not yet complete. “Ben White needs a new one, something that’s not regurgitated,” says Gunning. White currently uses an inherited Ian Wright chant.

“I don’t like re-using songs that have been used for players before,” agrees Bennett. “It’s a bit lazy and basic. For example, Fabio Vieira having Patrick Vieira’s song. For me, that is a unique song that should be kept for Patrick. I’m very picky like that, so I like to look at different options — tunes we’ve never used, or something a bit different.”

“We’ve been talking about a new one for Declan Rice — there are a few around,” says Barry. “There’s a good one to the tune of the Only Fools and Horses theme. It’s funny but it’s long, I don’t think it’ll catch on.”

Not every idea is successful. “I remember one of my mates, Dan, out in Lens, filming himself yelling some adaptation of Zombie by the Cranberries for Gabriel,” recalls Alex. “As far as I could tell it was just him screaming ‘Gabriel!!!’ over and over again.”

But they’ll keep plugging away.

“I’ve said this to the lads quite a few times,” says Barry. “It’ll be a shame if we don’t actually achieve anything in terms of trophies this season. But last season and this season, I think what Arteta can be very, very proud of — and is in itself a massive achievement — is that he put soul back into Arsenal.”

Inspired by their resurgent team, the Arsenal fans will continue improving their ever-expanding songsheet.

(Top photo: David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)



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