Things have been very quiet on The Gooner front lately. Aside from there being no football to write about, frankly, I haven’t really been able to get my head around sitting down and dedicating time to the fanzine or the website due to external events and not being able to focus properly on much anything at all. I often don’t even check emails for a couple of days and have a raft of unread ones. So my apologies, but I am sure there are others out there who have gone through a similar experience. The lack of football is an indicator that things aren’t quite right, and ultimately, the real concerns are for far more fundamental matters than sport.

I am writing this as I am going to make an attempt to get back on the horse, so to speak, and try and get the wheels turning on The Gooner front once more. So let’s deal with some unsurprising changes.

1 – The final issue of The Gooner for the 2019/20 season.
Issue 283 was due to go to press this weekend, and go on sale when Arsenal were scheduled to play at home to Norwich on Saturday 4^th April, with UK-based subscribers getting their issues by the morning of the game (Royal Mail efficiency allowing). The production of the issue has now been delayed, partly because we want to reflect what happens in terms of the decision on how to complete the season, as well as the experience of the first matches that are played after the re-start, if indeed there is one. The other reason is the possibility that the matches might actually be played in front of a crowd (granted, this is highly dependent on things we cannot predict), which would at least allow us to make some matchday sales. We sell far more copies to subscribers than we do at the games these days, but the matchday sales do make a significant difference to the bottom line. One scenario is that the matches are played behind closed doors, in which case, the issue will be mailed to subscribers and available on mail order for those who normally buy it at the ground (and next season from sellers when things do return to normal, in the event that we are successful with. Although, who really knows, it's a lottery. Speaking of which, why not try your hand at an online casino to see if you can win the money for next season's subscription, with Roulette77 games 

2 – The campaign to keep The Gooner going next season
The original deadline to raise the required 1,000 subscribers for this was the end of tomorrow (Saturday 28^th March), which was timed with the production of the final issue of this season. The thinking being we would either announce we would be around next season or say goodbye in said issue so people knew it was the last ever. However, with the delay on producing that issue, we’ve suspended the deadline for the time being. We’re approx. two thirds of the way to our target and normally, we’d have had a huge push over the last 10 days, including chasing up existing subscribers by email to remind them to renew as well as a barrage on social media. However, no-one’s in the mood for that now, including this side. Next week, I aim to start the process of emailing so that we can get the numbers up a bit before the final push. We all want life to return to some semblance of how it was before, and hopefully The Gooner reflecting on events next season will be a part of that.

3 – The website
In all honesty we don’t get too many external submissions for the website – generally our more established writers prefer their material to appear in the printed fanzine. So the majority of articles are either match previews or editorials written by my good self reflecting on games. When there are no matches, that obviously grinds to a halt. Anyway, with regard to the earlier stated intention to get things rolling once more, I’m aiming to try and get something (either written by myself or others) on the site at least every other day over the coming weeks, and that will include the reproduction of some retro articles that appeared way back in the fanzine if I can get my optical character recognition app on my iPhone happening again. A reminder though that if there are any budding writers out there who want to get a bit of exposure for their talents, it’s an open church here at The Gooner – send something in, and assuming it’s up to scratch, it’ll be read by a decent number of people and you can start developing a reputation that might be trickier should you start a fresh blog.

4 – So that’s the story
Following this, later today, I’ll get another post up, written by one of our top writers when it comes to reflecting on times gone by, David Fensome. Aside from that, hopefully everyone is getting through these difficult times and we can provide a bit of diversion going forward. If you haven’t bought the current issue (282) which went on sale at the Newcastle home game last month, one can be posted to you if you order it here - http://tinyurl.com/goonerissue. If you wish to commit to subscribing to The Gooner for the 2020/21 season (£30 UK, £42 overseas), the page to do that is here - http://tinyurl.com/SaveGooner. In time we’ll start ramping up the campaign again with the aim of reaching our target and being around a while longer yet. Take care and let’s hope that we can watch football together again in the not too distant future.