Welcome to the fifth and final part of The Gooner Survey Results for 2013. We’ve looked at what you thought about last season, the squad, the manager, the Board, ticket pricing and all sorts of other stuff in the previous parts, so this section is dedicated to your response to questions about The Gooner and Online Gooner.

We are always keen to receive feedback from readers and the survey is the perfect platform for you to let us have your views.

We started by asking you which was your favourite and least favourite front cover from the ten issues we published last season. I always feel that the result of this question proves the old adage that you can’t please all of the people all of the time because every single cover received votes in both categories.

The narrow winner of the favourite cover with 22% of the vote was issue 232 which featured a composite of who we felt was Arsene’s Ideal Signing – brain of Bergkamp, presence of Vieira, magic of Brady, etc. – and because he hadn’t been able to find anyone who fitted the bill maybe explained why we hadn’t signed anyone in the January transfer market. Perhaps the same applies at the moment?

In second place, just a few votes behind with 21%, was the cover which marked the 25th anniversary since our first issue in 1987. The artwork by Paine Proffitt was very different from anything we had used before, but we were delighted with the response and hope to use more of Paine’s work in the not too distant future.

The least favourite cover was a complete surprise to me, but perhaps that’s because it was my idea to have a Roy Liechtenstein inspired drawing of Arsene Wenger on the front of the last issue of last season. Perhaps the wording of the speech bubble, which was trying to reflect the desire of most (all?) fans for him to spend big this summer, did not quite hit the spot, but it was not intended to be negative as some suggested.

The difficulty we always have when deciding on what to have on the cover is that the issue is likely to be on sale for a period of 4-6 weeks and a lot can change in that time, hence the reason we opted to ignore the lack of signings and Luis Suarez on the front cover of the latest issue as it could make us look a little silly when we’re still selling copies at the Spurs game on 1st September if Arsene has finally splashed the cash. Thanks to everyone who put forward ideas on Twitter when we were struggling; all suggestions are gratefully received.

Our regular features provide the backbone for each issue and it’s therefore pleasing to note that all those listed were positively received by our readers. Kevin’s Talking Reds column sets the tone for each issue and deservedly finished as the most popular article once again. You may not always agree with Kevin’s views, but what you won’t get from him are knee-jerk reactions or ill-thought out opinions. You can also read more of his material on the website and although it may not be after every game as he’s done in previous seasons, he’s committed to post regular columns.

In second spot was the very popular Well Played/Pain in the Arse column which now resides on the inside front cover and, along with Talking Reds, can be read by everyone as part of the preview of each issue through The Gooner App or at www.exacteditions.com. In third place was David O’Brien’s always entertaining In The Away End piece in which he visits the forums of opposing fans on the day we play their teams. His column in the latest issue which reveals the thoughts of Spurs fans on the last day of last season is especially brilliant.

Aside from the columnists responsible for the regular features, we asked who your favourite other Gooner writer was. Simon Rose, who is an ever-present in the fanzine and a regular contributor to the Online Gooner with his That Simon Rose blog, was a clear winner with 28% of the vote, followed by Mark Halfpenny (16%) and Bernard Dowling (13%). I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributes to The Gooner in whatever form it takes and invite anyone who would like to get involved in the future to get in touch. You can submit articles for the website and fanzine here or email us at [email protected].

The Gooner, like most print publications, has suffered a significant fall in sales in recent years and as we reported at the end of last season we are having to give serious consideration as to whether this will be our last season. The response to the next question was therefore both frustrating and encouraging at the same time. Frustrating because it indicated that almost a third of you did not buy a single issue of The Gooner last season, but encouraging because by replying to the survey it shows us that there are plenty of people engaged with The Gooner who we can hopefully persuade to pick up the issue when they attend games or subscribe by mail order or in digital format.

The Online Gooner has been in existence since the late 90s, although it’s fair to say that regular was not a word you could use to describe the appearance of new content for the first few years. However, that’s not the case now and we will generally have three or four new articles a week for you to enjoy… or not as the case may be! Just over a quarter of you are daily visitors to the site, whilst a further 35% visit at least once a week.

Membership of the Gooner2Gooner Forum has been growing in numbers again recently as Gooners want to discuss the important issues affecting our club with fellow fans. There are still disagreements and plenty of heated debate, but in general I think members treat each other with respect now and the moderators will deal with anyone who doesn’t abide by the rules. Only just over one in five people who responded to the survey use it, but if you enjoy the banter you have in the pubs around the ground, then this is your virtual home!

To complete The Gooner experience, we also record a podcast about once a month during the season to discuss whatever is going on at the time with a panel of Gooner contributors and contacts. Unlike most other Arsenal podcasts, we get everyone together in one place which hopefully makes the conversations seem a bit more natural, but on the downside means it is quite difficult to organise and have them as frequently as some have requested. We’re also aware there have been some issues with the sound quality last season (the venue is perhaps not the best for acoustics) and will be hoping to rectify that going forwards. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, we were still pleased to discover that 42% of you listened to at least one of our offerings last season. All being well, we’ll be back with the first podcast of the new season in the week after the Villa game.

The next question we asked was whether you thought The Gooner and Online Gooner were too negative, too positive or about right. Being too negative is a criticism which has been levelled at us for a few seasons now and one which I heard again from one fan when I was selling the fanzine at the Emirates Cup recently. I’ll be honest and say that it’s something which I don’t like hearing and will always defend the fanzine when challenged. Over the last couple of seasons we’ve made a very conscious effort to reduce the content in the fanzine which people may regard as negative. We can still only print what we receive, but we have tried to encourage a more diverse range of topics to avoid people complaining about the same things over and over again. This year, 21% said they felt we were too negative, which is less than last year so we’re heading in the right direction and if you’re one of the people who stopped buying the fanzine as a consequence, perhaps I could ask that you take a look at our latest issue and let me know if you still feel the same way?

Finally, we asked for your ideas on what you’d like to see us do with the fanzine, website and podcast in the future. Thank you to everyone who contributed suggestions – they were many and varied! I’m not quite sure how one critic of the fanzine on Twitter will react when they discover that the most common response was for “more boobs”, but there were plenty of others which have given us food for thought.

We are always asked why we don’t interview current players and the simple answer to that is that we don’t think they will have anything of interest to say – or at least they won’t be allowed to say anything of interest as we discovered when we interviewed Cesc a couple of years ago in issue 204. Ex-players obviously don’t have the same restrictions, but a lot of them are very savvy and still have agents who don’t necessarily appreciate the limited budget a fanzine like The Gooner has to operate within.

We did manage to secure a interview with 80s centre-back (and striker for a few memorable weeks) Chris Whyte last season which everyone can now read online in our free trial issue and we’ll be doing our utmost to feature more former players this season.

Whilst we’ll try to cover some of the other ideas put forward, we are always pleased to receive unsolicited contributions from anyone so if you feel there’s a topic you’d like to see covered in the fanzine or on the website, why not write it yourself and submit it for consideration here? Even if you’re not sure what to write about but would like to get involved we’d be delighted to hear from you and can put you on our list to receive an email shortly before the deadline for each issue suggesting possible themes for articles. Email [email protected].

That wraps up the results for another year then. Thanks to everyone who completed the survey and those of you who have read my analysis of the results over five parts. If you’d like a summary of the results without all my words, then they are available for you to download here.