ArseWeb Mentions

Observer. 8th August 2004

The Arsenal section of their Premiership preview is provided by Arseweb

Observer. 12th January 2003

Arseweb's opposition to Arsenal's (alleged) interest in Lee Bowyer mentioned in article on the player (following his move from Leeds to West Ham). See full article (with relevant links)

What The Papers Say Awards 2001. 22nd December 2001

On the BBC2 programme, Arseweb got a mention as Piers Morgan's favourite website, as the Mirror editor was picking up the award for best newspaper (well done Piers). See also 17th Jan 2000 entry below.

France Football. 20th November 2001

Another publication picks up on our ironic Gooner Bin Laden coverage.
"le site Arseweb s'est ironiquement réjoui : 'Nous aimons à penser que cela diminuera les chances du nord de Londres de devenir une cible.' "

Mirror, 19th November 2001

In the light-hearted "Judas" column in their "Mania" Monday football section, the Mirror refer to our newsreel coverage of Robert Pires' fluffy toy kangaroo present for Arsène Wenger (but without Football365's insinuation that we made it up).

Telegraph, 17th November 2001

In an article about Osmam Bin Laden's alleged Goonerdom, Giles Smith quotes our newsreel piece and once again (see below) refers to the Celebrity Gooners list. Nice to have a fan! :-)

Revolution magazine May 2001

Damien Hinds, VP Ecommerce at Bass Hotels, chose ArseWeb as one of his 3 fave websites in their "Come Surfing With.." feature.

Gateway PC magazine, September 2000

Issue 1 of the PC manufacturer's publication, given away free in BT shops and elsewhere, had quite a good 2-page colour spread on "Football on the Internet". ArseWeb featured as one of a handful of sites specfically mentioned, both the only Arsenal site and the only unofficial club site.

Match of the Day magazine, August 2000

In "The Form Book" (their pre-season guide), ArseWeb provided most of their Arsenal content (the rest being comment from Trevor Brooking), with help from hundreds of ArseWeb readers.

What Mobile, August 2000

An article about ArseWeb's fledgling efforts at a wap site, as an aid to webmasters wanting to get started with wap (written by me).

The Bookseller, July 2000

Bit of an obscure one this, thanks to Brian Dawes for spotting it. In the bookshop trade paper, Horace Dent's column starts...

"If ever a bookshop deserved a signing session, it is Ottakar's in Enfield. The manager, Janine Cook, has written to Christian Lewis of Orion to request a signing with Arsenal and England goalkeeper David Seaman, author of the forthcoming Safe Hands (September). She is most persuasive. "Deep in the heart of North London," she writes, "is a bookshop whose customers are desperate, demanding people, with an untreatable addiction . . . these people are Arsenal supporters. And they are dangerous. If they don't get what they want . . . they may rampage through our gardening section and cause untold amounts of damage to the 'Ground Force' books. So great is their thirst for the godlike goalie that 151 of them have signed our petition for an event with him, and I enclose it as evidence." She proves herself to be well-versed in David Seaman trivia ("Who can forget the time he won 'Celebrity Ready, Steady Cook' against John Virgo?"), and has ambitious promotion plans, including advertising on Arsenal Websites "such as the fabulously named 'Arseweb'". Go on, Christian: say yes."

Don't worry Janine, you get the signing and we'll plug it.
(...and we did, see newsreel)

Match of the Day Magazine, May 2000

Inside back cover - an article about me (Rupe). Strange...

Daily Telegraph 8th April 2000: article about celebs

Giles Smith's column was mostly about our Celebrity Gooners page. Read it here.

Match of the Day magazine, March 2000

Interview with Alan Davies, p32. Question: "On the Arsenal website, Arseweb, where they include King Olaf of Norway (deceased) in their list of celeb fans, they describe you as an Actor and Comedian (actually it says, and said, "comedian and actor"). What would you call yourself?" Answer: "I see myself as a comic but the acting helps sell tickets for gigs."

The Guardian, Monday January 17th 2000

Piers Morgan (editor of The Mirror) reveals ArseWeb as his fave web site in their "My life on the net" column (Media section, p6). In fact, just about all he talks about is ArseWeb (see Guardian website for full article or our archive of it in case they delete theirs). Well played that man! (see also celebs page for a great Piers-Morgan-being-a-Gooner story).
And in the same supplement (p9) media editor Maggie Brown starts her regular diary column by covering the Alan Davies/NOTW story, with reference to ArseWeb's coverage

The Mirror, Friday November 12th 1999

The previous Friday, Des Kelly's column had a piece about famous football turncoats: celebrity football fans who've switched allegiance. He didn't have Hoey though, so we wrote to let him know and so on the 12th she got the national treatment again, and ArseWeb got a nice plug. Here's the text, thanks to Olly for sending it...

"MY requests for football turncoats - fans who have switched allegiances - has taken a very important twist. It seems this conspiracy goes all the way to the top.
Minister for Sport, Kate Hoey, is an avid Arsenal fan... but it wasn't always that way. Take a look at this extract from The Gunners magazine, dated October 1994.
And I quote: "Kate was born in Northern Ireland and fell in love with football as she stood on her stool cheering George Best from the terraces of Windsor Park.
"Living in London, she had ample opportunity to watch Arsenal, but retained her childhood support for Manchester United." Well how unfortunate. Ms Hoey has stood on more than her "stool" in her attempt to win votes in the capital, but my thanks go to Rupert Ward's Arsenal website (the delightfully-named Arseweb) for alerting us all to this.
This column hopes Ms Hoey will refute any allegation she is as consistent in her football loyalties as the reviled David M*ll*r."

Private Eye, issue 985. Friday 17th September 1999

The satirical magazine Private Eye was good enough to publish the revelations (first revealed by Warren Swaine of Up The Arse! and reported here on ArseWeb) about Kate Hoey's past as a Man Utd fan. We sent them the story as a follow-up to their own revelations about how Ms Hoey had changed her mind on the "Irish question" to fall in line with New Labour. They described both UTA! and Arseweb (accurately, of course) as "fine investigative organs".

Match of the Day magazine, August 1999

ArseWeb, including many of our readers, helped the magazine out with their (excellent) guide to the new season. They picked us as "the best unofficial website about Arsenal" (quite right too) and thus fulfilled something of an ambition of mine - to share a punditry page with messrs Hansen, Brooking, and Lawrenson.
See the results here

DETR press release on Wembley, 29th July 1999

To coincide with the publication of the plans for the new Wembley Stadium, the Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions put out this press release about their plan to regenerate the area. They wanted a quote about how Arsenal fans would support such a move and so I gave them one. If there are any Arsenal fans out there who would prefer to see the Wembley area stay the dump it is now, or who enjoy the long wait & crush for the tube after matches, I apologise for my presumption. The Tottenham voice they got was an official one (their "finance director") so I'm afraid he gave them a more polished and professional piece of bullshit than I. Sorry ;->

NewsNow. 13th July 1999

started using us as a source.

British Soccer (Oz paper). July 1999.

They reviewed 3 sites for each of the top 4 clubs (from 1998-99). AFCi got a good rating of 8/10 and was described as "Lavish, futuristic and funky site design. Definitely the coolest official site on the web. Stacked with player profiles, trivia and information on the club and facilities". But ArseWeb did just as well (also 8), with the comment "Highly regarded [by us] for information and analysis on the Gunners and its consistency over the years remains undiminished." The third site chosen was Ian Sealy's page on following Arsenal matches live on the net.

Radio 5 live. May 11th 1999

In the build-up to the tragic Leeds match, they wanted to interview a celebrity Gooner. So they wanted a list of them. So Eleanor Oldroyd provided the ArseWeb Celebs list and they read out some of the more interesting entries before ringing Melvyn Bragg for a chat. He revealed that although he had to be in the House of Lords for a vote, there were a few Arsenal supporting Lords and they had a plan to sneak out and watch it.

The Guardian/Observer web site. November 12th 1998

They've followed up their continuing recommendations in print, with the ultimate electronic recommendation. We're their "FUN partner" site (see FUN page)

The Guardian. Monday August 10th 1997

Once again, the Guardian's team-by-team season guide picked ArseWeb as their recommended unofficial Arsenal site.

Rough Guide to European Football Published 1997

A useful tome for the travelling fan, with help on buying tickets, chaep hotels, areas of the grounds to avoid, etc. There's a section on the book in the Rough Guides website. Here's what they say about Arsenal web sites... "The official web site cuts no corners and resides at www.---. You'll find superb graphics, GUNformation and a stats database which has to be seen to be believed. Arsenal can even act as your ISP through AFCi Connect. As an antidote to all this slickness, try the unofficial Arseweb site at ---. It's fun, witty and irreverent - all the things, in fact, which Arsenal and their fans are not supposed to be."

The Guardian. Monday August 4th 1997

In their guide to the season, called The Season, the Guardian writers selected ArseWeb as their recommended unofficial website.

Granada TV. Wednesday July 18th 1997

Wanting an Arsenal fan to react to the rumoured sale of Ian Wright and purchase of Jerome Bonnissel (see ANR for the 16th July), and having see his ArseWeb column in the Highbury & Islington Express, Granada rang ANR writer Ian Grant, giving him 20 minutes warning.
After listening to some tosh from the Spurs fans representative, Ian went on and took the sensible line: Wright NOT for sale, Bonnissel may be foreign but if we did get him he'd be good value (compared to over-priced victims like Le Saux). He also took the opportunity to correct the inevitable mistakes made by the previous speaker.

Mac User magazine. December 1996

A feature on online sports. They mention CarlingNet as an essential first stop and then the official Newcastle site. ArseWeb gets the third & final mention (and the only unofficial site) with "The award for the site with the best sense of humour goes to Arsenal's official home page (sic)..." they go on to mention the sofa-induced broken bones. Maybe we wouldn't have got the mention if they'd known we weren't an official site. Sorry AFCi, we did always try to make it clear on the home page. Some people just don't look.

The Guardian. December 5th 1996

In Guardian Online...

"Web site of the year: the appalingly named but wonderfully informative Arseweb, the site for fans of Arsenal Football Club... it carries up-to-date commentary on all Gunners matters as covered in the national media. The site is truly unmissable for long-suffering fans of this turbulent team."

Internet magazine. September 1996

An "essential viewing" feature on Premiership clubs websites. AFCi wasn't running yet so they came back to ArseWeb (see below) to represent the Arsenal. We got 4/5 for content, 3/5 for design, and 5/5 for "on the ball" whatever that means. Sunderland's official site won the prize with Villa 2nd and ArseWeb third (in terms of total stars awarded). Comments on ArseWeb: "crammed full of features.... depite its name (sic) ArseWeb is an intelligent and creative site crammed full of Gooner goodies.

Internet magazine. July 1995

Back in the days when ArseWeb was called "The Arsenal Supporters WWW site", we got a full-page feature, following a phone call from the magazine's reporter. I managed to plug my job at Guy's Hospital as well as explaining about Football on the WWW and the mailing list and, I hope, not appearing too much of an anorak. ArseWeb's services were well plugged. Rioch hadn't been appointed yet and the talk was of the possibility of prying Bobby Robson from Porto!

GLR breakfast show 1994/95 (???)

So long ago I don't remember when it was, I was asked onto GLR's breakfast programme to talk about footy and the Internet. There's actually a rather amusing story associated with this which I'll try to find the time to write up and insert here.