Alex Iwobi has revealed his Arsenal first team initiation ceremony went so badly that he was left singing ‘Happy Birthday’ after forgetting the words to his chosen songs.

It’s long been a Gunners tradition that players called up to the first team squad are expected to perform a song in front of their baying teammates. You may remember a video of Granit Xhaka’s excruciating effort in pre-season being leaked by Emiliano Martinez…

Asked about his own initiation, Iwobi reflected on the horror of failing the task at hand when called up for a match at the Hawthorns last season.

“Oh my word. I had to do it twice because the first one was very, very bad,” he recalled. “It was against West Brom away. And I froze, absolutely froze.

“I tried three songs and I forgot them completely. So I ended up singing Happy Birthday to Arsenal on that day, which was so embarrassing.”

Iwobi also touched on the extreme measures he’s had to take to shake off Arsenal’s more avid autograph hunting supporters.

On the crazy attention from fans, he remarked: “Especially after a game, I’m trying to go home and I see fans almost breaking my car just to grab a picture. It’s just crazy.

“There’s been a lot of crazy things. The last home game we played, I was driving for 15 minutes and there was one fan following me and I was getting a bit scared because I was close to my destination.

“I was thinking: ‘Ah, I’m going to have to make a detour just to get to the destination before he finds out where I’m going.’ That was a bit mad.”

…we imagined it looked a bit like this.