The cameras zoomed out above the Emirates, looking down on the road that led to Arsenal tube station. Dozens of Arsenal fans were trudging along, looking to get a jump on everyone else for their journey home.

You can’t blame them. Those Underground journeys can be hellish with 60,000 people trying to get on, and Arsenal had just gone 2-1 down to Manchester United, back in September, after Alejandro Garnacho scored in the 88th minute.

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They will have been pretty confused, therefore, to find out later that the game had ended 3-1 to Arsenal, Garnacho’s goal having been ruled out, and Arsenal having scored in the 96th and 111th minutes.

The same would be true of any Liverpool fans who, perhaps keen to get on with some early Christmas shopping, decided to give the last few minutes of their game against Fulham at Anfield yesterday a miss.

The visitors were 3-2 up with three minutes of normal time remaining, after all, so where was the harm? Final score: Liverpool 4-3 Fulham.

But that’s the peril of leaving a game before the end: you never know when you’re going to miss something big.

We all know the story of George Best, who supposedly was so distraught at the prospect of Manchester United losing the 1999 Champions League final that he left early and was in a taxi when Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored the winner.

But what about the United fan who, after Teddy Sheringham scored the equaliser, decided he couldn’t miss any of the extra time that was about to ensue, so nipped off to the toilet to beat the rush. He heard a roar while completing his business, but when he returned to his seat didn’t want to believe what that roar was for.

Maybe the Manchester City fans who, with Jamie Mackie and QPR seemingly crushing their dreams of winning the Premier League on the final day of the 2011-12 season, couldn’t bear to watch City lose 2-1 and United win the title, so departed.

Like Selina Travis, for example, who went to her first City game in 1994 and thus suffered years of increasingly dispiriting calamities. So when it felt like the dream was going to be snatched away, right at the last minute, she couldn’t stay and watch it happen.

“I just couldn’t stand it,” she says. “Especially with it being United we would lose to. I said to my dad, ‘Look, I don’t feel like we should completely leave, but let’s get out of our seats now and to the concourse’. Dad nipped to the toilet, and when he was gone I just slumped down against the wall and started to have a cry.”

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Then Edin Dzeko equalised, which Travis heard but still didn’t think anything would change. When Sergio Aguero scored, she was still on the concourse but her dad was nowhere to be seen.

“I rang him and he sounded like he had been crying too. I said, ‘Why are you upset? We’ve won!’. And he was like, ‘Don’t be stupid’.”

Travis Snr had emerged from the toilet and, not immediately spotting his daughter because she was hunched on the floor, deep in a pit of despair, assumed she had left. So he did too.

“The thing about missing the goals,” she says, “it’s become such a fun story that it’s almost become part of the mythology of the day for me. To the point that I don’t really regret it — the only thing is that I’ve been going to City with dad since 1994 and we missed that moment together.”

Travis and her dad were also at the 1999 Division Two (now League One) play-off final when City went 2-0 down in the 87th minute to Gillingham, but they stuck around that day to see City come back to equalise in added time before winning on penalties.

However, hundreds of City fans did leave Wembley that day before the late drama, including Noel Gallagher, so the story goes. But anyone who did so would surely learn their lesson 13 years later, right?

Well, not quite. Simon Hudson was one of those who departed in 1999 and when it all looked like it was going wrong in 2012, he couldn’t cope.

“I thought, ‘I can’t bear this, we’re not going to get back, I’ve seen it all before’. I just had to get out of there,” he told the Manchester Evening News in 2021.

“I went to get a drink. If we were going to lose the league I didn’t want to be inside the ground. I came out of the ground and there were quite a few leaving. I went to the first pub, Mary D’s. I remember it must have been the 90th minute and it was absolutely packed.

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“I remember getting in, got to the bar and there was uproar for the equaliser. I was in disbelief thinking it was too late again. I got a drink in and just as I turned around they went mad again. It was one of those moments where it’s gone in and it’s hit me.

“It’s that sickening feeling of, ‘What have I just done?’.”

Newcastle coming from 4-0 down against Arsenal in 2011 to draw 4-4 might not be the same as City’s win in terms of stakes, but as far as unlikely comebacks go that sublime, almost slow-motion volley from the late Cheick Tiote completing the Arsenal nightmare in the 87th minute is hard to beat.

The St James’ Park stands were not as heaving as they could have been for the big moment though, and while you probably can’t blame someone for doing one when their team is four behind after just 26 minutes, those who did leave are full of regrets.

“I felt worse at full time than I did at half-time,” Mike Harrison told The Times back then, after admitting to leaving at the break and to being on the train home as Tiote swung his boot. “I’m ashamed of myself. I will never doubt the Toon spirit again.”

Still, at least he was in good company: Newcastle hero Malcolm Macdonald also decided that it was all too much to bear. Having left his seat at half-time to get a cup of tea, he just kept walking and was in his car as the comeback unfolded.

Even when all seems lost, you never know when you’re going to see something extraordinary.

Take Tottenham’s Champions League group game against Inter in 2010. Inter opened the scoring after two minutes, Spurs goalkeeper Heurelho Gomes was sent off in the eighth minute and the Italians added three more goals before half-time. The 45 minutes ahead therefore were not an appealing prospect, particularly for Spurs fan Jamie Griffith, who departed at the break and headed back towards Milan city centre.

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“I’d just had a few too many drinks so was a bit fed up,” he says. “I was also seated in a mixed section of the stadium and an Inter fan who was sitting near me had had a go at me for standing up and then proceeded to show his great enjoyment at Inter being 4-0 up.

“Probably that, mixed with tiredness from an early flight and train from Bologna meant I’d just had enough. We were 4-0 down to the European champions and down to 10 men, so I didn’t feel like I’d miss anything by leaving.”

Alas, he did miss something: one of the most extraordinary individual performances for an English club in Champions League history, as Gareth Bale went turbo and scored an astonishing hat-trick, which Maicon presumably still has flashbacks about to this day.

A defining Gareth Bale moment 11 years ago today! 🤩#UCL | @SpursOfficial

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) October 20, 2021

“I am obviously disappointed that I missed the hat-trick but I often remind people that we still lost,” says Jamie.

“I still maintain to this day that if I was in the same scenario again I reckon I’d do the same. And the fact that I wasn’t the only Spurs fan on the metro at that time made me feel a little better.”

A more recent slice of Spurs drama came at the King Power Stadium in January 2022, when Leicester were leading Tottenham 2-1 as the clock ticked over to 95 minutes. Then Steven Bergwijn equalised and two minutes later, implausibly, scored the winner in one of the few genuinely joyful moments of the Antonio Conte era. Not that Dan Greasby saw or experienced any of that, having left just before the 90 minutes were up.

“It makes for a good story now if I’m honest,” he says, “although it isn’t fun being reminded every away game by our mates. We no longer leave games early, however my dad was on holiday so missed the comeback win over Sheffield United.”

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That game was in September, when Spurs once again won with two injury-time goals, Richarlison equalising in the 98th minute before Dejan Kulusevski won it in the 100th. Perhaps more baffling than leaving early was the fan The Athletic was told about, who left after the first of those goals. The theory presumably being, ‘I’ve seen a goal in the 98th minute — that’s enough excitement for me, surely nothing else dramatic is going to happen.’

These things can also have longer-term consequences. “When I was seven I went to see Leicester vs Arsenal with my huge Leicester fan dad,” says Luka Murgatroyd. “Dennis Bergkamp scored that hat-trick and my dad had us leave the stadium before Steve Walsh equalised. I’ve been an Arsenal fan ever since. And my dad very much regretted his decision. A few years later he put Arsenal wallpaper up in my room and cried.”

There is always the question of embarrassment. You must feel a little sheepish if someone who knew you were at a game asks what it was like to be there for such an amazing moment, and you have to tell them that you were already in the car by that point.

You could just lie — “Yeah, what a moment, never forget it” — or you could blame whoever you were with. Even if they’re 10 years old.

“I was at Old Trafford for the famous 4-3 derby (in 2009) and missed Michael Owen’s winner,” says Dom Law.

“My dad famously leaves on the stroke of full time every game. We saw Craig Bellamy equalise late on and he went, ‘Right, that’s us’. We were on the railway footbridge behind the Stretford End when the winner went in. We got to the pub and he told his mates I wanted to go early; a 10-year-old at the derby!”

Sometimes though, there’s a guardian angel — someone with better judgment who saves us from our worst instincts. Nicky Allt is a writer and Liverpool fan who was at the 2005 Champions League final and would go on to write the play One Night In Istanbul, which would later be turned into a film. That didn’t look especially likely when Hernan Crespo dinked home Kaka’s sublime pass to put AC Milan 3-0 up.

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“When we were 3-0 down, I tried to get out of the ground,“ Allt told The 42 a few years ago, “but a big Turkish steward pushed me back in and I probably owe him a load of money because I’ve gone on to write the play and the movie since.”

A fan leaving early is one thing, but a player’s relative is another. Such as Manuel Almunia’s wife Ana, who in the closing stages of that astonishingly dramatic play-off semi-final between Watford and Leicester in 2013… simply couldn’t cope.

“When the referee gave the penalty, my wife… she left,” Almunia told The Athletic in 2019. “She had come to watch the game with the Arsenal player liaison Paul Irwin who was an old friend of ours from my time at the club. She told Paul, ‘I don’t want to watch’. So they went to the players’ lounge in the stands.”

As you may recall, Almunia saved Anthony Knockaert’s spot kick, Watford streamed forward and Troy Deeney slammed home the most dramatic goal in the club’s history.

“They got to the lounge as I saved the penalty and they started running back into the stadium to see the goal, the celebrations and the party — they couldn’t believe it.”

Still another thing is the manager missing something big. Any Nottingham Forest fans who left a drab game against Luton Town on a grim New Year’s Day 1992, thus missing the only goal Des Walker ever scored in his 700-plus game professional career, may find solace in the knowledge that manager Brian Clough did too.

“I watched 89 minutes of garbage and missed the one jewel to come out of the whole match,” Clough said afterwards.

We’re not here to tell you how to be a football fan. If you feel like you have to get out early to beat the traffic, or save yourself the trauma of watching a depressing defeat, you do you.

But maybe just think about what you might miss before you go.

(Top photo: Xabi Alonso scoring for Liverpool in the Champions League final in 2005; Mike Hewitt via Getty Images)