Written by kelsey

The Internet has seen an explosion of football sites in a comparatively short space of time, and at the last count I see there are  a hundred or more just dedicated to The Arsenal.

This got me thinking, as I am of an age when if one grew up in and around North London, one either followed Arsenal or Spurs. Many families were, and are still divided in their loyalty to one club or the other. There was practically no televised football,  let alone endless replays, multitudes of pundits, video technology or mobile phones and generally one had to attend games. In the main there was honest banter between the two sets of fans and no real hatred. One could sit in a pub and discuss football in a civil manner.

With the arrival of the Internet and the domination of Sky TV over the last twenty years things have changed dramatically, and I put it to you, not always for the better.

On the plus side it has opened up a way for fans from all over the world to log on and express their views about all things (in our case) Arsenal. We all have our favorite blogs, and in most there is a hard core of faithful bloggers who post on a daily basis.

Some sites are welcoming to anyone, whilst others use expletives when one first steps in and tell you in no uncertain way to get lost if your view opposes that of the site.

Others (which is a real pet hate of mine) scream abuse at our players and fairly frequently at our manager when things don’t pan out as expected,or we lose a game,yet when we invariably bounce back with a resounding win,these people magically disappear.

If one was really honest with oneself, would you give some of the posters two minutes of your life if you actually met them face to face? I doubt you would. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but some people try to justify their standpoint by suggesting that they are more intelligent than others, and therefore they are the “Football Managers” and the rest of us are complete idiots.

When you get sixty thousand people together in an environment one will always get differing cultures and different view points and reading some sites it gets rather racist or political that one forgets that the principal purpose is forgotten, that is to see the pros and cons of the team discussed on any given match day, but most importantly to support the club through thick and thin.

Of course it is a free world and everyone can do as they please. Many will disagree with me, but there are just too many Arsenal sites which are not carefully monitored and are only interested in the number of hits they receive.

Quality of post will always outweigh quantity.

This is my own opinion and does not represent everyone else’s feeling on this site.