The Beautiful Groan

Welcome to the Beautiful Groan!

After a little over a year of life over at the old site, welcome to the relaunch of The Beautiful Groan here at thebeautifulgroan.com. The site is now ready, feel free to take a look around. All articles will now be posted here rather than at the old site, which will point here in due course.

Expect more pages and features to be added to the site in the coming weeks, but for now, thanks for reading, and if you have any feedback, don’t hesitate to contact me via the Contact page, above.

Thanks.

One year ago today this site was born, at the point when Arsenal were crashing out of every competition in the most disappointing season in years. Who would’ve thought one year on that the same club would be top of the league, defying the many doubters?

I’ve taken a look back at some of the stuff I’ve written and many of it, while seeming right at the time, turned out to be anything but. Who thought Flamini would not only stay but shine? Who thought Gallas would eventually win us over? Who thought Aliadiere would leave? Oh, okay, I got that one.

Anyway, Groan is getting a very nice first birthday present, and that is a brand spanking new site, which is very close to completion and will be up in the next couple of days - I’ll point you in the direction of the site and its feeds once it’s ready.

I’d like to thank you (yes, all two of you) for reading, and hope you’ll join me in the second chapter which begins next week. Until then, I’m off to the slightly more advanced 30th birthday of my brother. Groan has a long way to go.

Here’s to year two. Thanks for reading.

It is deadline day, but for all the papers trying to hype it up, very little is happening for the top clubs, with only the lower end Premiership teams trying desperately to make some quick fix signings.

It looks like Benjani might be playing against us for City at the weekend, a surprising move given that Pompey are quite cash-rich, but then rumours are that Defoe might be moving back to the south coast to replace him. Meanwhile, Kieran Gibbs has joined Norwich on loan.

Despite wins for United and Chelsea last night, it has been another good week for us, our 3-0 victory over Newcastle pushing us closer in goal difference to United and reducing the time Chelsea have left to catch us.

This weekend could be interesting, with all three playing away to decent opposition, with us perhaps in the best position playing a City side short of form. Elsewhere, we’re hoping for Spurs and Pompey to pull something out of the bag.

In site news, Groan’s move is now pretty imminent, but I’ll let you know when it happens. The new site is so much nicer, believe me.

And that’s about it. I’m off to feign some interest in the transfer window.

After another few days of being unable to access to admin pages for this site, my New Year’s Resolution is the easiest I’ve ever had to make:

Get the new site running asap

The hosting is sorted, the site is sorted, I just need to work on the theme and republish each of the articles. With every passing day, that task gets bigger as I keep writing, but sooner or later you’ll see a whole new site, and believe me, it’ll be a step up from this slow ugly thing you see before you today.

Anyway, its a Happy Christmas for Arsenal who sit on top of the tree for the first time in four years, after a somewhat fortunate win over Spurs.

Arsenal 2 (Adebayor 47, Bendtner 76) Spurs 1(Berbatov 66)

There is so little to say about the first half that I will barely bother, other than to mention that my early prediction of Van Persie shining was ruined by a thigh strain in training, so it was the same eleven that faced Chelsea. And in the opening 45 minutes, practically nothing happened, with lunchtime kickoffs looking forlorn once again.

But two minutes into the second half, Cesc sprang to life, and showing more energy than he had in the whole first half, burst forward, played a clever one two with Rosicky, before backheeling into Adebayor’s path. The Togo frontman then scored his sixth in five against Spurs in clinical style.

He could’ve had a second moments later, but slowly the play regressed, and Keane hit the bar when unmarked at the back post - Sagna had drifted in and Eboue had failed to track back.

A minute later the game was level, Berbatov lashing a shot that was going across the face of goal until it struck an Arsenal heel and flew over Almunia. There was nothing the keeper could do despite every analyst blaming him.

When Toure lunged in and brought Berbatov down with fifteen to play, I feared that this would be the day our unbeaten record against them came to an end. Toure had won the ball, but the tackle was clumsy and a 2-1 deficit looked inevitable. But Almunia superbly saved the penalty, and minutes later, we were back in front.

Bendtner, on seconds earlier, went in for a corner, making a clever run past Gallas from the back of the area. Huddlestone tried to follow him, but couldn’t get his enormous frame around Gallas and Bendtner jumped well to power home.

So there we have it - a poor performance, but a win regardless. The sign of champions?

Merry Christmas!

[Note:  This post is now obsolete as we have moved!]

Finally we have life.

Apologies for the lack of updates, and the fact that the whole site was down for much of the weekend. Every single site hosted by 123-reg was down at some point, some for longer than others, and even when the site has been up for the last six days, I have been unable to access it to write anything.

So the news is that The Beautiful Groan will shortly be moving hosts. I’m not normally one to criticise companies but the way 123-reg are run is absolutely shocking. They are unreliable, uncaring, and their customer support is beyond a joke. Expect to wait at least six weeks for a reply to any email.

A word of advice folks - avoid them at all costs. I can recommend this site for examples of exactly why.

Why the move matters

I will post again before making the final move, but with it, the site will have a complete overhaul. It will be moving to WordPress, and so any RSS feeds will need updating. I am also expecting an improvement in performance - this site currently takes ages to load, and for that I apologise.

The domain itself will remain unchanged.

Bear with me - life after the move should be a vast improvement.

Until later.

Welcome, one and all.

New day, new month, new season (if you count Spring starting on March 1, like I do), seems like a good day to jump on the bandwagon and start something new, and here it is.

But what is it, exactly? Well, the clue is in the title, it’s a place for me to ramble, vent, ask rhetorical questions and generally spout out everything I have to say on the wonderful world we call football.

I am an Arsenal fan, so clearly that’s where most of the material lies, but the net casts a little wider than that, as I’ll be making commentary on various issues around the sport, as I see fit. As you’ll come to see, various things in the game wind me up, and they’re not always connected to the Emirates.

So that’s a quick overview of what this place is intended for (whether it’ll end up like that I have no idea), but what isn’t it?

Quite simply, it’s not a newsreel. There are plenty of sites around that provide every single bit of Arsenal news you’ll ever need (along with opinions) - some of the particularly excellent ones you’ll find in the links - I get a large chunk of my news from them, so I’m not going to start taking what I read and planting it here. That would be churlish.

This is more for my opinions. You may agree, you may disagree, you may think I’ve nailed a point, or that I’m just a biased blind fool. Any way is fine. Opinion is good, especially backed up.

Incidentally, this site is bound to change and expand quite rapidly, it’s merely a framework as present.

Onward.