Arseblog

About Arseblog

Arseblog is the independent Arsenal FC news site, blog and podcast network founded by Irish writer Andrew Mangan, running continuously since 2002. What began as a personal exercise in web design has grown into one of the most influential fan-media operations in world football: a seven-day-a-week news site, two weekly podcasts, live events and a global community of readers, described by the Irish Independent as "the most-consumed football fan content in world football." With a daily blog that has never missed a day in more than two decades, award-winning writing and podcasts that pioneered club-specific football audio, Arseblog set the template for the modern fan publisher.

Origins in Barcelona

Arseblog began in 2002 in Barcelona, Spain, where Andrew Mangan was then living. He had a small web design business that was going nowhere, and decided to teach himself to design websites properly — and needed a subject to practise on. Football sprang to mind, a topic with the frequency and regularity a daily site demands, and Arsenal, the club he supported, was the obvious choice. He called it Arseblog, because, as he later put it, what else would you call a blog about Arsenal? The exercise in web design turned into something else entirely: as Mangan discovered, he was much better at writing than at designing, and the blog quickly found an audience of its own.

Andrew Mangan

Andrew Declan Mangan, born in 1971 in Croydon, London, is an Irish writer, blogger and voiceover artist. His parents are from Drimnagh in Dublin, and the family moved back to Ireland when he was ten. Before Arseblog consumed his working life, Mangan's first job was on pirate radio at sixteen; he went on to study broadcasting and journalism and worked in internet tech support before moving to Spain. The grounding in journalism and broadcasting served him well when the site expanded into audio. Alongside Arseblog, he has worked professionally as a voiceover artist and has written for ESPN, The Guardian and The Irish Times.

A blog every day

The defining discipline of Arseblog is its daily blog: Mangan has published a blog post every single day since 2002, a run of well over two decades without interruption. Over the years the site has grown arms, legs and more around that core — blogs, news, match reports, press conference reactions, statistics, player ratings, columnists, video and audio. The site covers pretty much everything to do with Arsenal, but with an explicit editorial philosophy of quality over quantity: no clickbait, no listicles, no nonsensical transfer gossip. The aim, in Mangan's phrase, is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and that commitment to responsible, valuable journalism has been central to the site's longevity and credibility.

The Arsecast podcast

In 2006 Mangan launched Arsecast, the first club-specific football podcast — a genuine innovation at a time when podcasting itself was in its infancy. The show brought the blog's voice to audio: match discussion, news analysis and the humour that had made the written site distinctive, delivered with professional production standards rooted in Mangan's broadcasting background. By 2022 more than 650 episodes had been released, making it one of the longest-running football podcasts in existence and the flagship of a small audio empire.

Arsecast Extra

A second podcast, Arsecast Extra, launched in 2014 as a weekly show with Mangan joined by James McNicholas, a writer and sports journalist for The Athletic. The show passed 544 episodes by September 2023 and became a fixture of the Arsenal week: a regular, conversational deep-dive into the club's fortunes, combining a fan's passion with a journalist's balance. Together the two podcasts give Arseblog a presence in supporters' ears to match its presence on their screens, and both have won multiple awards for their written and audio content.

Awards and recognition

Arseblog's trophy cabinet is substantial. The blog won Best Sports Blog at the Bloggies — the long-running international weblog awards — in 2007, and took Best Sports Blog at the Irish Blog Awards in 2008, 2010 and 2011. The recognition reflected the site's standing as a pioneer of sports blogging: it was doing daily, personality-driven football writing years before most clubs had meaningful digital presences of their own. The Irish Independent's description of it as the most-consumed football fan content in world football captures a reputation that extends well beyond Arsenal's own support.

Read by players and journalists

One measure of Arseblog's influence is its audience within the game itself: the site is read by footballers and sports journalists, and has occasionally scooped professional reporters on Arsenal stories. That credibility was hard-won. Mangan has been diligent about protecting the site's integrity and value, steering clear of the clickbait stories that might generate short-term traffic but would corrode trust, and insisting on responsible journalism even when writing as a fan. The result is a fan publication that professionals take seriously — a rare achievement in supporter media.

Community and live events

Beyond the screen and the headphones, Arseblog has built a genuine community. The site runs live events for its audience and its match liveblogs are communal experiences, with supporters around the world following games together through Mangan's commentary. That sense of shared experience is part of what turned a one-man blog into a global phenomenon receiving millions of visitors every month. The humour of the early years — the rants, the jokes, the distinctive voice — remains, but it now sits within a mature media operation.

Voice and humour

A large part of Arseblog's appeal has always been its voice: funny, forthright and unmistakably personal. Readers who discovered the site in its early years recall coming for the post-match report and staying for the jokes — the good-natured rants, the running gags, the willingness to say what supporters were thinking in language the mainstream press would never use. That humour was there from the start, when Mangan was writing in the small hours in Barcelona, and it has survived the site's professionalisation. Even as the operation grew, the writing never became corporate or bland; it remained the work of one identifiable person with opinions, loyalties and a sense of the absurd, and that authenticity is something readers can detect instantly.

From hobby to livelihood

The arc of Arseblog's story is the arc of the independent web itself. What started as a design exercise became, through daily effort over years, an audience large enough to attract advertisers — and eventually Mangan's full-time job. There were twists and turns along the way, but the through-line is consistency: a blog every day, podcasts every week, and an unchanging editorial standard. In an era when fan media is big business and every club has its own constellation of YouTubers and podcasters, Arseblog stands as the original — the proof that a single voice, writing honestly about the club it loves, can build something that endures.

Independence and the fan-media landscape

Arseblog's independence is fundamental to its identity. It is not affiliated with Arsenal Football Club, and it has never sought to be — its value lies precisely in being of the supporters rather than of the institution. That independence has allowed it to criticise the club when criticism was due, to report uncomfortable stories, and to maintain the trust of readers who know the site answers to them and to no one else. In the modern fan-media landscape, where many supporter channels depend on access, hospitality and the club's goodwill, Arseblog's model of reader-supported independence looks increasingly like the exception that proves the rule. Two decades on, it remains the benchmark against which every other fan publisher is measured.

Visit the official Arseblog website