"I wasn’t even young," Matt Doherty told The Guardian when asked about his old tweets professing eternal love for Arsenal.
"I wasn’t even, like, 12 so I can’t even say: 'Ah, well, I was only 12 so I didn’t know what I was saying.' So, yeah, it was a bit embarrassing."
The full-back joined Tottenham in late August, and his announcement video saw him delete his social media posts from 2013
While it was certainly an interesting take on trying to take authority over a potentially explosive situation, the unveiling video generated some cuckoo signs from football fans for its sheer awkwardness.
Doherty says the legendary Non-Flying Dutchman Dennis Bergkamp was the man who inspired him to play football — and that's why he started supporting the Gunners when he was a child.
"My mam is Dutch and Dennis Bergkamp is Dutch and that link got me interested in the game and watching him going forward. So it’s an unusual link [to Arsenal] but that’s what it was," he added.
There is an interesting argument to be made that Arsene Wenger's diverse squad with players coming from very different countries has influenced a lot of current footballers.
This is certainly true when speaking about William Saliba, who wore a Thierry Henry shirt back in his childhood, and perhaps many other French kids who were growing up in the era of Wenger's Foreign Legion. Maybe Houssem Aouar too.
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