Rarely has a football mural attracted as much attention as the one that popped up on Hornsey Road on the approach to the Emirates last week.
Pictures of a monochrome Nicolas Jover, the world’s most famous set-piece coach who has helped transform Arsenal into the Premier League‘s corner kick kings, flooded social media prompting delight and scorn in equal measure.
English football has witnessed a street art boom in recent years, with previously nondescript facades transformed into colourful, creative tributes of the game’s great and good.
But such reverence doesn’t often extend to backroom staff. The Jover one, which depicts him beaming alongside a corner quadrant, is an unusual outlier hence why it has become such a talking point.
It has generally been well received by most Arsenal fans – you’ll never please everyone – with many posing for photos alongside it before recent home matches, basking in the club’s strange new reputation as the Premier League’s aerial monsters.
Rival supporters have been less enthusiastic, declaring the tribute to be a classic case of Arsenal fans getting carried away before their team has won anything. Such public acclaim of a set-piece coach naturally provoked the “game’s gone” brigade.
Northbansky, the man behind the murals, expected opinion to be split but was unprepared for the virality of one of his newest sketches. The polarisation has made it one of his favourite pieces.
He has doubled down by adding an accompanying street sign which reads “Jover’s corner”.
“I was surprised by how much it blew up but also how it was misunderstood,” he tells The i Paper.
“There are 23 murals there [in the Hornsey Road tunnel], it’s not like Jover is the only one.
“People say about the Jover one ‘he’s not a legend’ and ‘we’ve not won anything yet,’ but it’s not about that, it’s about the here and now and is something fun and nice for the matchgoing supporters to identify with.”
Inspiration for it came after Arsenal’s 2-0 win over Manchester United earlier this month when defenders Jurrien Timber and William Saliba both scored from corners. In total, the Gunners have scored 23 set-piece goals since the start of last season, more than any other Premier League club.
The mural aims to recognise Arsenal’s excellence from dead balls but is also an act of defiance against Gary Neville, who labelled Jover the “most annoying bloke in football” during a watchalong of the game on his Stick To Football YouTube series.
“For me, it was about us scoring a lot of corners and he has done well but the reason that I did it wasn’t because this set-piece genius needs one, it was because we were getting criticised for being good at corners!” he explains.
“Gary Neville was a little bit harsh given all Jover has done is his job and making Arsenal good at corners. Neville didn’t like that because we scored two against Manchester United!
“This was kind of a reaction to that over-the-top reaction and then it generated an even more over-the-top reaction. I felt like Arsenal fans could see that it was tongue in cheek.”
It was not the first time that Northbanksy has drawn inspiration from a Sky Sports pundit.
An image of Martin Odegaard clutching a camera went up earlier this year after the Arsenal captain was criticised by Jamie Carragher for celebrating too exuberantly after a win over Liverpool.
Odegaard had taken a picture of the club’s long-serving photographer Stuart MacFarlane on the Emirates pitch after borrowing his equipment, prompting the former Liverpool defender to advise him to “get down the tunnel”.
“You can see things that might be good but often it’s looking at photographs afterwards and finding angles of things,” he says of his process.
“[William] Saliba is quite a good one to do as he pulls these ridiculous faces when he’s scored a goal. Sometimes it can be things that are in-jokes where if you’re Arsenal you’ll appreciate it and if you’re not you probably won’t. That’s definitely what’s happened with the Jover one.
“It’s contemporary and they are little snapshots of the season that are memorable and humorous for us, like Odegaard with his camera and the mascot who was pushing Tottenham mascots around.”
Northbanksy is a portmanteau of North Bank, one of the stands at the Emirates and previously Highbury, and Banksy, the UK’s most renowned and notorious street artist.
He is a TV producer and investigative journalist by trade but has been creating Arsenal-inspired art since 2019.
“The first two things that I did weren’t creative at all, it was football politics in an Arsenal sense really,” he says.
“There was ‘AFTV [Arsenal Fan TV] Out’ and also ‘[Stan] Kroenke out’.
“We were very big on the protests at that time and I felt that street slogans were kind of galvanising people at that time.”
Northbanksy got in trouble with the authorities for spray painting “Kroenke Out” on the wall at Drayton Park near the big concrete letters that spell out ARSENAL in the foreground of the Emirates.
“When I came out of the police station at Tolpuddle Street [in Islington] a friend called me and said ‘hello Northbanksy’. I said ‘what’s Northbanksy?’ and he said “that’s you, everyone is calling you that all over the internet” and the tag stuck.”
Nowadays, his stunts are more nuanced and send out a more positive message.
Over the past year, he has transformed a dull and dreary tunnel at Hornsey Road into a bold and striking urban art installation. Numerous figures from the club’s past and present adorn both walls, all presented in the same slick, minimalist design.
The aim is to create a gallery encapsulating the Arsenal fan experience, capturing both memorable and memeable moments.
“It’s not supposed to be just a wall of legends which is why I think some people got pissed off with the Jover thing.”
Despite his anonymity, Northbanksy’s reputation has soared to the point that he now has 17,500 Instagram followers and almost 14,000 on X. An Instagram account – @minibrickarchitecture – has even recreated his work using LEGO bricks.
It has captured the attention of Arsenal’s management and squad, too. When told about the Jover mural Arteta said he was “so happy” for his colleague and insisted that “he fully deserves” the attention that he is getting. Players, past and present, have posted Northbanksy’s work on their social media accounts.
“[Bukayo] Saka used five pictures from his career to say goodbye to Emile Smith Rowe on social media which is how these guys talk to the world and one of them was the mural of those two,” he says.
Displaying the art on Hornsey Road was a deliberate move geared towards attracting the attention of Arsenal’s players who drive through the tunnel on their way to and from the Emirates.
“The idea is to encourage the players and show the team that we’re behind them,” he says. “You never know if things like that make a difference.”
What started as a hobby has morphed into a fledgling and potentially lucrative project. There is an online shop selling framed works, canvas prints, and street signs ranging from £40 to £1,1000.
“I’m not working in current affairs and I haven’t for about a year,” he says.
“I’d done a lot of high-pressure films and I thought I’d take a step back.
“At the moment, I’m trying to see if this can be a job by doing commissions for people. I’ve booked myself a studio not too far away and I’ve got a website and I’ll see whether I can develop it.”
Northbanksy is going nowhere and, for the time being at least, neither is the Jover mural.
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