For all its faults, social media helps too. It can connect fans of sports, film and anything in between.

To those outside of the online Arsenal community, a minimalist sketch of a walrus may not mean much. To at least 70,000 people who follow him on X, formerly Twitter, they know exactly what to expect when they see Poorly Drawn Arsenal pop up on their timeline.

Jacob Todd, a 33-year-old from Philadelphia, has been sketching Arsenal-related players, managers, animals and mascots since 2016. He has become known across the Arsenal-verse as Poorly Drawn Arsenal for his drawings, animations, podcasts and newsletters but this all started in unexpected circumstances.

“Poorly Drawn Arsenal started as a personal project,” Todd tells The Athletic. “I was dealing with some mental health struggles, waking up to a panic attack every morning for a month straight because of a disorder.

“I needed something to look forward to everyday and that became drawing. Eventually I thought to draw about Arsenal because I was passionate about the team. I gave myself a task to draw something about Arsenal for a year straight. I called it Poorly Drawn Arsenal and released it to the public as a way to say ‘This isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be’. It started as a mental health project and it’s blown up into something ridiculous which I have trouble wrapping my brain around.”

Todd’s first taste of football/soccer was the 1998 World Cup. A young Thierry Henry was the player to ignite Todd’s interest in the sport and without an MLS club in Philadelphia, he decided to follow the Frenchman. That path led to Arsenal within a year and is where the his connection with the club began. Despite having artistic interests as a child, Todd’s teenage and early adult years were more entrenched in improv comedy, where people perform without a script.

Those three interests of Arsenal, art and comedy soon merged. In February 2016, the Poorly Drawn Arsenal journey began with, what Todd calls “A very shakily-drawn Arsene Wenger walking to training.”

Picture courtesy of Poorly Drawn Arsenal

A few months later, the birth of one of his most asked questions was born: ‘Why the walrus as a profile picture?’

“It came when Aaron Ramsey played for Wales against Russia at Euro 2016. The acronym on the scoreboard was ‘WAL-RUS’ so I drew him on a Walrus. I drew him and the walrus while he was still at Arsenal. Ramsey left but the walrus stuck around.

Picture courtesy of Poorly Drawn Arsenal

“Starting the podcast was two-fold,” he says. “The animation side came about because I knew how I wanted to propose to my girlfriend; an animated video of our story. So part of it was, ‘I’m going to do this podcast to figure out animation and do the video to propose’. I’d like to say it was a masterful business plan, but the other side was a notion from improv to ‘Follow the fun’. A lot of Poorly Drawn Arsenal decisions and structuring for the videos are based off the back of improv forums.

“At one point I was trying to separate Poorly Drawn Arsenal and me and then eventually they became the same thing.”

Poorly Drawn Arsenal is not a full-time venture for Todd. He works as a webmaster, responsible for maintaining and managing websites, for schools, but his rise online has been aided by a move to Patreon, a subscription-based platform where content creators can be supported by fans of their work, as well as the formation of email lists, newsletters and sales of his sketches on mugs, shirts, hoodies and the like. Alongside that growth has come opportunities to collaborate with other creators in the Arsenal sphere.

“There was a good moment when Joel Campbell retweeted something of mine and it must have been 3am UK time. I was thinking ‘What are you doing online?’ and then he never played for Arsenal again,” Todd says. “There have been a few times when the club has emailed me and I’ve had to take my dog out for a walk to comprehend what’s happened.”

The first time Arsenal got in touch was in 2021 about Todd appearing on their Twitch account, but that did not materialise. Instead, the moment for collaboration came when they toured America’s east coast in the summer of 2022. There, Todd, Matt Turner, Granit Xhaka and club presenter David Frimpon showed off their respective artistic skills in a competition.

“Anytime the club recognises me is a surreal moment. Matt Turner is from New Jersey, and I’m from Philadelphia so there was a bit of a rivalry going back and forth. When Xhaka came into the room, after a while I understood why people would say those around the club love him so much, and this was before his great season last year. He’s a great guy.”

He made his first visit to Emirates Stadium at the weekend since a 2-1 FA Cup win over Hull City in 2009.

Todd illustrated Dave Seager, co-owner of (Arsenal blog) Gunnerstown.com’s new book, Double-Double to Invincibubble. The Dr Seuss-styled book covers the entire Invincibles season in rhyming couplets with corresponding drawings and the pair held a book-signing inside the Emirates club shop after Arsenal’s 5-0 win over Sheffield United.

“I’m almost came back as a different person,” Todd says. “People wanted photos with me or to talk to me and I’m just a dude who draws. It’s extremely humbling but very surreal.

“It was cool to meet a lot of people that I’ve interacted with online in person. It really was humbling to hear how my drawings have affected people over the years. I feel very lucky to be in my position and to have the opportunities I’ve had over my life.”

(Top photo: Poorly Drawn Arsenal)