Is it happening again?
Handbrake Off: The Athletic FC's Arsenal show
The Athletic
4.6 • 731 Ratings
🗓️ 19 February 2026
⏱️ 41 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
James McNicholas and Adrian Clarke join Ian Stone to discuss Arsenal’s 2-2 draw away to Wolves on Wednesday night.
The panel reflect on the fear felt throughout the club, Arsenal’s lack of attacking endeavour as the game went on, the lack of chemistry in attack, if Arteta’s football is too controlled, lack of game changers in the squad, the equalising goal, and whether this squad has a mental fragility exacerbated by pressure.
Plus, they look ahead to the North London Derby on Sunday, discuss safe standing coming to the Emirates Stadium and we hear from Brett in Gillingham for this week’s instalment of ‘Up Your Arsenal’.
If you like the panel’s song choices, check out the ‘Now that’s what I call Handbrake’ playlist on Spotify and listen to them all here:
Producer: Robby Williams
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC. |
| 0:07.1 | The only way to score is, of course, to play with a handbreak-off. |
| 0:14.7 | Hello, I'm Ian Stone. This is Hand-Brek-off, the Arsenal podcast, brought to you by The Athletic. |
| 0:20.2 | Today, we're somehow going to talk about Arsenal's 2-2-draw away to |
| 0:25.9 | walls last night, and we've got the small matter of a North London Derby on Sunday to talk |
| 0:31.5 | about. |
| 0:31.8 | I'm joined by Adrian Clark and James McNicholas. |
| 0:34.8 | Morning, is it? |
| 0:36.6 | I didn't say good. There was good was written it? I didn't say good. |
| 0:38.4 | There was good was written here. |
| 0:39.8 | I didn't say good. |
| 0:40.4 | Morning with a you, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. Mm. Yeah. Bloody hell. Listen, that was a tough watch, right? Second half, particular, me. Robbie, our producer's written all these things, especially the second off. |
| 0:54.4 | I thought the first off was a tough watch as well, to be honest with it anyway. |
| 0:58.0 | Would you? So you can't do anything? So you said you put your music on? Well, I do after, yeah. After, right? Which let me tell you, if Amy had to listen to that, that would depress her even more. But let's just say that you put your music on and it just sort of calms you down a little bit. Anything but the phone in, anything but the radio, anything that sort of distracts me from what happened really. Yeah, I mean, look, is that winning goal went in i not winning goal the equalizing |
| 1:29.2 | goal it felt like a winner didn't it yeah nearly nearly threw my sort of headphones off |
| 1:33.6 | i was really i was really i had to stop myself from swearing so it was um yeah not good but yeah |
| 1:40.1 | in general i try to just go to a different place but've got to be honest last night on the way home. |
| 1:46.2 | Yeah, I was absolutely miserable. |
| 1:49.1 | And I don't feel a lot better right now. |
| 1:51.9 | No, quite. |
| 1:52.9 | I'm glad that we didn't have to do the podcast. |
| 1:56.8 | And it's say we'd chosen that one as one we're going to do directly after the game. |
... |
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