OLIVER HOLT: Anxious Arsenal supporters are hurting their team right when they need them most – this is what they should learn from Liverpool fans to make the difference in title race

In the Jurgen Klopp era, when Liverpool were resurgent and challenging for the title, locked in ferocious battles with Manchester City at the top of the table, the atmosphere around Anfield on matchdays towards the end of the season was febrile.

A couple of hours before each game in the run-in, thousands and thousands of fans lined the route of the team bus along Anfield Road, from the King Harry pub, past Taggy’s bar and beer garden, perched on walls, gathered precariously atop the red LFC TV studios, shimmying up lampposts.

The roar and the yells of encouragement when the coach passed, and the sight of the players gazing out from inside at this incredible passion play they had unleashed, this desire, this fervour, this desperation for success, this will to spur the team on, was spine-tingling, whether you supported the club or not.

I didn’t see a lot of that in evidence at the Emirates Stadium on Saturday before, during or after Arsenal played Bournemouth. It didn’t help that it was an early kick-off. It never does. But when I walked up the slope from the Piccadilly Line platform at Arsenal Tube station out onto Gillespie Road, all I could sense in that tunnel was apprehension and foreboding.

Some might argue that that was merely perceptive: the Arsenal fans knew what was coming. But it also felt like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Mikel Arteta, the Arsenal manager, had issued a stirring call to arms to the supporters before the match but the fans could not quite respond to it in the way he must have hoped for.

Maybe they are just too scarred by past disappointments to have much optimism left. Maybe the spectre of City and the knowledge of their capacity to save their best for the end of the season has robbed many Arsenal fans of their capacity to enjoy this moment, seize it and try to drive the team forward.

But the truth was that on Holloway Road and the other streets around the Emirates, the build-up to this match on which so much depended, which felt pivotal in the title race, felt like the build-up to any other game. There was excitement, of course, and anticipation, but nothing special. And it should have been special.

From the moment in the early stages of the game when Martin Zubimendi played a routine pass out to Ben White on the right flank and White was caught flat-footed and the ball rolled into touch, the air went out of the match. It was flat. Excitement was replaced by fear, on and off the pitch.

And when the final whistle confirmed Bournemouth’s deserved 2-1 win, there were boos for Arsenal. Think about that. Your team is nine points clear at the top of the table. It has got the fight of its life on its hands to keep City at bay and the players are being booed by their supporters.

Fans of other clubs will nod when they read this kind of thing and say that the reason they are so desperate for Arsenal to fail in the pursuit of their first league title for 22 years is because of the entitlement of their supporters and a perception of arrogance about the club.

I don’t see that. I see more humility than arrogance at Arsenal, among the staff and the players and the supporters and the manager. The fans aren’t arrogant. Pessimism is not the friend of arrogance. Arteta is desperate to win and his intensity can be scary, but that isn’t arrogance. That is just single-mindedness.

But there is something else at work here. In common with a lot of other Premier League clubs, the fervour of the fanbase, particularly for home matches, has been diluted by a ticketing policy that has started to favour tourists and day-trippers over regular matchgoing fans.

One of my best friends is an Arsenal fan. He has had two season tickets for more than 30 years but he has stopped going to home games because the atmosphere has become so negative and anodyne. He goes to all the away games instead, because he says it is with those supporters that the soul of the club still lies.

It is a trend that the fans of more and more clubs will recognise. It is one of the reasons why Liverpool supporters are mounting their campaign against more ticket price rises at Anfield and why fans of so many other clubs will be right behind them.

English football used to be known for its rousing atmospheres across the league. Only a few outposts of that remain, at places like St James’ Park, Elland Road and Selhurst Park. Elsewhere, the Premier League seem intent on ruining what was once their unique selling point.

Arsenal seem to have suffered more than most. Their season-ticket prices have long been among the highest in the league, which doesn’t help. Negativity and worry and angst have become baked into the club psyche.

I left the stadium an hour or so after the game on Saturday afternoon and walked back to Arsenal Tube station, past the statue of Tony Adams, his arms outstretched in that gesture of joy and wonder and celebration that used to embody Arsenal, not too long ago.

There was a large crowd gathered around its base and at its centre was Robbie Lyle, the founder of AFTV, debating with supporters about what they had just seen unfold. I could hear raised voices. I saw fingers being jabbed. I walked on.

AFTV have become part of what the club is known for. Its identity now is mixed up with complaint and misery. The attraction of AFTV is watching the club’s fans go into meltdown when a result goes against them. People tune in to enjoy their pain and their anger. That is when they get their biggest audiences.

Nick Hornby was writing about the agonies of the football fan, particularly the Arsenal fan, more than 30 years ago, but things have turned more sour in the decades since Fever Pitch was released.

It almost seems to have been forgotten amid the outpouring of doom that Arsenal still have the league title in their own hands. If only they could shift all that negative energy and turn it into something positive. If only they could harness it and transmit at least some of it to their players, who are starting to look beleaguered and beaten.

The players need them. They need their support. If only they could get out on the streets, starting with their Champions League quarter-final second leg against Sporting Lisbon on Wednesday, and turn their corner of north London into a scene of fervour and mania and roaring, screaming, wild-eyed support, and then repeat it for the visit of Newcastle a fortnight hence, then being top of the league might actually be something to savour.

Woods or McIlroy? I know which one I’d rather watch 

Tiger Woods changed the face of golf and widened its appeal and transformed its television viewing figures. But Rory McIlroy is a more compelling entertainer than Woods ever was.

He turned the four days of the Masters into one of the greatest sporting spectacles we will see this year, a switchback journey of utter brilliance and wild unpredictability. In the space of a long weekend, he took Augusta National’s patrons and all the millions glued to their television screens across the world on a journey where he seemed sure to win, possibly by a record margin, then sure to lose, after yet another meltdown, to a second successive incredible triumph.

There was a time, during his major drought, when I thought he might not do his genius justice but the last two Masters triumphs have changed that. He is, incontrovertibly, one of golf’s greats.

He is, incontrovertibly, one of the greatest sportsmen Europe has ever produced.