Free So Paddy Got Up - an Arsenal anthology by Andrew Mangan

were people that had never met me in real life, and certainly hadn’t met my friends. I remember meeting one of these extraordinarily generous people in the city to get his season ticket and not quite believing he was happy for me to post it back to him after the game. I tell you what, that was some responsibility – that ticket went back Royal Mail Special Delivery with extra insurance, and no mistake. That story really sums up the Arseblog community for me. Ten years later and I’m proud to say I’m still very much involved.
    That hasn’t been the end though. Twitter and Facebook have come along, both of which have given more fans more direct access to players than ever before. Twitter in particular was something I didn’t see the point of until relatively recently, but I do appreciate the access it gives fans to players, at least theoretically, and to their credit, most footballers have embraced it too, sometimes with unintentionally hilarious consequences. But it’s the web that changed everything when it comes to being a football fan. There are countless blogs, news sources, feeds, forums, chat rooms, and websites dedicated to clubs and players. It really makes no difference where in the world you live – you can be a supporter of whichever team you like. You can be an exile, an expat, and still watch your team. There are kids in China and Africa who have never seen Arsenal play live, and may never do so, that are some of the most passionate supporters out there; and I’m quite sure that like me, some of them are choosing to be Arsenal fans because their friends are Man United or Chelsea fans.
    The clubs and players themselves haven’t been slow to exploit the commercial potential this has brought – there’s no doubt the web has contributed massively to the growth of the ‘superclub’, and players themselves are now global superstars. One or two players have even transcended their sport, David Beckham being the prime example, and while part of this is no doubt down to the general expansion of global media and the ambitions of companies like Sky and the Premier League, I think most of it is directly attributable to the web since it’s made the world that much smaller and more accessible.
    And as Arsenal fans I think we’ve been very lucky indeed that the age of the web-based fan has come along at a time in our history when we’ve been relatively successful and are playing attractive football. There’s no doubt it has benefited the club enormously.
    Here’s to continued evolution.
     
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    Tom Clark is an Arsenal fan exiled in Edinburgh, Scotland. Occasional contributor to Arseblog, and creator of the arses, he looks after the technical side of the site.
     
     
     

7 – HERBERT CHAPMAN - Philippe Auclair
     
     
    Herbert Chapman; eternally plump, eternally anxious, no doubt, to undo a button of his well-filled and perfectly tailored waistcoat; eternally waiting to raise his homburg to a passing lady, does not correspond to the image we have of a football god. Luis-Cesar Menotti is a stronger candidate, long-haired like a doomed dueller, blessed with the kind of beauty men don’t understand until it is too late to join the tango, something you would never have said of the Yorkshire man. Both smoked, but Herbert’s cigarettes look stubbier than Cesar’s on photographs somehow. Herbert didn’t do sexy. But Herbert was a genius, not just the greatest manager Arsenal Football Club has ever had (which seems indisputable to me) but perhaps the greatest of them all; if greatness is ascertained not just in terms of a long intimacy with success, but also of a never-satisfied desire to move forward, innovate and experiment, whilst laying the foundations of traditions which long outlasted one’s tenure at the helm of a club, or clubs, or national team.
    Every Arsenal fan knows, or should know, that had it not been for Henry Norris turning to the man who’d just won two consecutive league titles with