banduan
Established Member
A little more than a year before I had never known much about Arsenal's web presence. They had a lousy website with an awful red background. It was rarely updated and some of the info was so dated it looked a joke.
But I can only get my Gunners matches on satellite tv, and info from the papers. I don't subscribe to satellite telly at home, so I always take a trip down to a local dine-out to watch each match wide-screen.
Unfortunately while I can bear watching matches at 1am, 3am is stretching it a bit. Luckily the CL matches get shown on terrestrial.
But getting news on my team was a pain. Papers were just too slow for my requirements. I wanted gossip right on the ball.
So I signed onto a local forum. It was from there that I discovered all the Gooners online. It started with Arsenal-Mania and Gunnerblog. Gunnerblog had links to others and it all went on from there.
Pretty soon I'd become acquainted with all the various blogs. I'd like to list my favourite ones:
Arseblog
Apparently won an award for best Sports Blog. Fairly funny. Typical of many blogs has taken up a fairly vindictive stance against a self-assigned antagonist, in this case Myles Palmer of Arsenal News Review.
I feel Arseblogger's posts are a tad too long sometimes, but its a good site to refer to anyway.
http://www.arseblog.com
Arsenal News Review (ANR)
Myles Palmer's site is controversial among Arsenal fans. Palmer has written forever on the Arse, and his loyalty should not be doubted.
Palmer also gets some amazing info from amazing sources. They are very very interesting. His off-the-cuff theories and comments are also very interesting.
But he is also an enormous jinx. His analysis tends to verge between dodgy to completely wrong, and no-one will forget how badly he underrated Henry.
Again, in typical blogger fashion, he is dogmatic and dislikes Henry and wants Stan Wonky to be our sugar-daddy. His writing is a rambling pub-talk style that's provocative and quite nice to read.
http://www.arsenalnewsreview.co.uk
Goodplaya
Goodplaya is a nicely laid out blog that I like for the playa ratings. The comments are short, spiffy and generally positive. Heck the main criticism would be the saccharine loveliness of it all. But it's all good.
http://www.goodplaya.com
Gunnerblog
Nice and spiffily clean site thats very frequently updated. Gilbertosilver's site may come across as being quite acidic on some fronts, too sugarcoated on others, but the passion's all there mate.
http://www.gunnerblog.com
There's plenty of other sites linked to by those blogs.
The thing about blogs is that they're incredibly tough to maintain. You must have the guts and the passion and the energy to do this. It takes a monster effort to get something as persistent as ANR and Arseblog to continue running.
Now I know what's going on in the Gunner world and can indulge in some of the footballing zeitgeist.
Yes, the analysis may be wonky. Yes, the journalism may be spotty. They make take things too seriously (ala A Cultured Left Foot) or they may not look like they care (ala Arsenal Shorts) but at the end of the day while they continue to write about the Gunners, they become an inescapable source of passion to share among ourselves.
These people care, folks (even if some don't look like it) and it pains me to see so much mud being flinged against them. Criticise their opinions if you must, but respect what they do.
Especially Myles Palmer. No matter how that riles you.
But I can only get my Gunners matches on satellite tv, and info from the papers. I don't subscribe to satellite telly at home, so I always take a trip down to a local dine-out to watch each match wide-screen.
Unfortunately while I can bear watching matches at 1am, 3am is stretching it a bit. Luckily the CL matches get shown on terrestrial.
But getting news on my team was a pain. Papers were just too slow for my requirements. I wanted gossip right on the ball.
So I signed onto a local forum. It was from there that I discovered all the Gooners online. It started with Arsenal-Mania and Gunnerblog. Gunnerblog had links to others and it all went on from there.
Pretty soon I'd become acquainted with all the various blogs. I'd like to list my favourite ones:
Arseblog
Apparently won an award for best Sports Blog. Fairly funny. Typical of many blogs has taken up a fairly vindictive stance against a self-assigned antagonist, in this case Myles Palmer of Arsenal News Review.
I feel Arseblogger's posts are a tad too long sometimes, but its a good site to refer to anyway.
http://www.arseblog.com
Arsenal News Review (ANR)
Myles Palmer's site is controversial among Arsenal fans. Palmer has written forever on the Arse, and his loyalty should not be doubted.
Palmer also gets some amazing info from amazing sources. They are very very interesting. His off-the-cuff theories and comments are also very interesting.
But he is also an enormous jinx. His analysis tends to verge between dodgy to completely wrong, and no-one will forget how badly he underrated Henry.
Again, in typical blogger fashion, he is dogmatic and dislikes Henry and wants Stan Wonky to be our sugar-daddy. His writing is a rambling pub-talk style that's provocative and quite nice to read.
http://www.arsenalnewsreview.co.uk
Goodplaya
Goodplaya is a nicely laid out blog that I like for the playa ratings. The comments are short, spiffy and generally positive. Heck the main criticism would be the saccharine loveliness of it all. But it's all good.
http://www.goodplaya.com
Gunnerblog
Nice and spiffily clean site thats very frequently updated. Gilbertosilver's site may come across as being quite acidic on some fronts, too sugarcoated on others, but the passion's all there mate.
http://www.gunnerblog.com
There's plenty of other sites linked to by those blogs.
The thing about blogs is that they're incredibly tough to maintain. You must have the guts and the passion and the energy to do this. It takes a monster effort to get something as persistent as ANR and Arseblog to continue running.
Now I know what's going on in the Gunner world and can indulge in some of the footballing zeitgeist.
Yes, the analysis may be wonky. Yes, the journalism may be spotty. They make take things too seriously (ala A Cultured Left Foot) or they may not look like they care (ala Arsenal Shorts) but at the end of the day while they continue to write about the Gunners, they become an inescapable source of passion to share among ourselves.
These people care, folks (even if some don't look like it) and it pains me to see so much mud being flinged against them. Criticise their opinions if you must, but respect what they do.
Especially Myles Palmer. No matter how that riles you.