Pantomime aside, if you go to the theatre you get what you are given. You are not expected nor encouraged to engage with the actors. It is a largely passive affair. Romeo will not pop out for a pizza instead of drinking poison if you shout out that Juliet is merely sleeping.
Seats for a football match can be comparable in price to the West End, but you are rewarded with more than a show. You are part of it. You, yes you, can rile the opposition goalkeeper, sing witty songs about Marc Cucurella eating paella and having f***ing big hair, and jump up and down facing the wrong way if you fancy it.
Above all else, you can leave the stadium with a warm fuzzy feeling in your bones knowing that you were part of a spirited fightback. You may experience a tingle at the memory of how, when seeing your team concede, you roared your encouragement, let the players know you had faith and then saw the team grow an inch taller and find the energy to equalise.
Arsenal fans have seen their side finish runners-up three seasons in a row
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And if you are fortunate enough to support a club bidding to win a title then you may acknowledge that even if that equaliser never came, you let the team know you have faith that next time, they will prevail. That you are all in this together.
If there has been a missing ingredient at the Emirates over the past three seasons then it is likely to have been self-belief. Three times Arsenal have finished runners-up and three times they might have finished at the summit had the stadium possessed the passion of certainty.
I heard it and felt it at Highbury, but the Emirates is a curiously cynical place. Fans leave a little sooner than they do at other stadiums when a game is drifting to an unsatisfactory denouement but, even when full, the response to a setback is a mixture of peevishness and nerves. Some grounds grumble, some grounds heckle, but at Arsenal a miasma of doubt seeps from the stands, drifts on to the pitch and then sinks into the players’ hearts.
Only the fans who booed at the final whistle after Manchester United had scored a late winner on Sunday know why they booed. They may argue they were jeering the outcome not the players, the perceived injustice not the manager. But all the team heard was the booing. That hardly makes for a great atmosphere in the dressing room and definitely does not offer an upbeat platform for the next training session.
The upshot is that every hiccup in the slog towards the trophy feels more damaging than it actually is. Dropping three points in a season when all teams are dropping points does not spell the end of the challenge — except the fans make it feel as if it does.
In a warped sort of way, Arsenal fans regularly offer hope to the supporters of Manchester City and Aston Villa. Their insecurities, worries and tendency to catastrophise are not funny; they are damaging. The thing Arsenal fans fear most — another second-place finish — is what they are in danger of engineering all by themselves.