After a week of bad news, irritating media and general glumosity I hope you can put that to one side to join in the celebration this morning – Arseblog.com is 6 today.
Much has happened in that time. Far too much for me to recall any of it but in bullet point form:
- More than 2,200 posts
- 2,000,000+ (approx) words written about Arsenal
- 10,000+ emails received and replied to
- 750,000+ comments
- 1,000,000+ forum posts
- 77,000,00+ web pages served
- 100s of Arsenal games
- 100s more goals
- 1,000,000s of visitors
- 3 house moves
- 10+ redesigns
- Some awards
- At least 500 hangovers
- Many friendships made
- Some friends lost along the way but never forgotten
- 2 league titles, 1 double, 3 FA Cups
- 2 finals lost
- Did I mention the hangovers? There were some hangovers
- 65 podcasts produced
- One thing we all have in common – The Arsenal
And there’s probably loads of other stuff too. Of course there’s loads of other stuff, it’s been 6 fucking years. Where the hell did the time go?
What started as a mere experiment on this very day in 2002 has grown into something large and sprawling and time consuming and expensive but fuck me it’s still a lot of fun. All I ever wanted to do was write about something that interested me and the only thing I could think of was Arsenal.
Thankfully you lot seem to have enjoyed reading what I wrote. Well, most of you. There are some people out there who think I’m a cunt, which is absolutely their right. As is my right to think they’re cunts right back. But let us not dwell on the cunts today. Let us think only of the good times, of the last minute winners, not last minute losers, of trophies won, not trophies lost, and of people called cunts who are cunts because they’re not one of us.
Arseblog used to be written A R S E B L O G. Why? Beats the shit out of me, that was just the way the web was back in those days. You know, I remember when all this used to be fields. It’s true. You could leave your backdoor open, your bike unlocked and a pie cooling on the window sill and there’d be no problems. Not like that these days. You can’t turn around without another Arsenal blog filled tower-block going up in next to no time.
How the internet community has grown. From a couple of websites like Arseweb (which appears to have been stricken down like a common Robin van Persie) and Arsenal World (Chris+ still going strong) we now have dozens of the fuckers. From the very good to the very bad to the somewhere in the middle. Still, it’s not a bad thing. The more the merrier, there’s always something for everyone, and all that.
And the future, what does that hold for Arseblog? Good question. Perhaps there may be some changes in the future, you can’t stand still in this business, can you? Oh no. The high-powered, lowly paid world of Arsenal blogging has no room for slackers and those who laze around. You don’t make the kind of no money I make by simply being an indolent sloth for most of the day. Seriously though, there may be some things on the horizon which I’ll tell you about in more detail when I have more detail but rest assured the daily muck will be fertilised in the bowels of my Macintosh and spewed forth like a baby’s diarrhea onto your screens every morning, come what may.
I would, on this very special day, like to say a big thank you to all of you for visits, your emails, your comments, your suggestions, your name calling, your stalking, your not listening when the police tell you stay 500 feet away from me, your ability to bypass my state of the art security systems and to sit in my chair and be waiting for me when I get home and most of all your frontal lobotomy that means all Arsenal bloggers are now safe. Without you lot Arseblog would be just one Irish cunt spouting off every morning … erm … well, you know what I mean.
We have a great community, clichéd as that sounds, both online and off. I might provide the eggs and the flour and the baking soda and possibly the creamy bit in the middle but you lot are the icing on the cake that is Arseblog. I should also thank Tom for his sterling fill-in work and behind the scenes tech knowledge and to the regular contributors to the Arsecast who give their time so generously and, best of all, freely. And I don’t mean free like easy.
Cheers to you all and I hope you’ll join me in raising a pint glass (yes, I know it’s early but it’s a party, you’re allowed!) to the website that has probably cost employers millions in terms of work not completed due to people skiving off on here. I think that’s something we can all be proud of.
To Arseblog. Cheers.
In other more Arsenaly news, Emmanuel Adebayor says he’s going to score in the Champions League some time. Some time really soon. Any day now, in fact. Next Tuesday would be a good day to make up for his lack of CL goals with 8 against Milan. Just saying. Oh, like you wouldn’t want to see it?
Cesc says the critics who wrote Arsenal off pre-season proved an inspiration to the team. Hopefully the critics writing us off after the Birmingham will prove to be similarly inspiring. The cunts.
The Sun says Mathieu Flamini had agreed a 5 year deal worth £50,000 a week but is now stalling, for some reason, with the club afraid he has been made an offer by another club. I say ‘How do they know?’. Sign up, please, Matty.
The Mirror tries to keep the Gallas thing going saying it took the intervention of teammates to calm him down. They say some of them questioned his leadership, I say ‘How do they know?’. Maybe in the Chelsea dressing room where the egos feed stories to their journalist mates they might have some insight but I call foul on this one. Not on the calming bit, on the questioning bit.
More proof the disciplinary system is a joke. Jeremie Aliadiere will serve a longer ban for lightly, almost sensually, brushing his fingers against Javier Mascherano’s face, than Martin Taylor who broke Eduardo’s leg. Martin Samuel writes a decent article in The Times.
And that’s about that. So off we go into our 7th year together. 7 is a lucky number, isn’t it? Perhaps the power of Arseblog’s 7th, Brady, Pires and the great and holy Vivas will see us through to the end of the season. We can but hope.
More tomorrow, Arsechums.
