Aidan Bennison, a long-time reader of this blog and head writer of Gunner Central, has agreed to join AFCB as a regular contributor.

Aidan is in his first year of Media studies at university in Australia and is well on his way to becoming a sports journalist. He has previously represented the Australian Paralympic Football team at last year’s International Championships in Holland and has a soft spot for Aaron Ramsey.

The best part of Aidan’s previous blog was his insightful player ratings posts that featured shortly after each Arsenal game. He will be bringing those posts with him to AFCB as well as providing some assistance with match previews.

I hope you can welcome Aidan to the team (two people make a team, right!?) and enjoy his contributions to AFCB, starting tomorrow with his player ratings from the Hull game.

Thoughts?

Have your say on Aidan joining the Arsenal FC Blog by leaving a comment.

I asked readers to let me know who their favourite Arsenal player is and explain why they like them so much in less than 25 words and I’m happy to announce that the winners were Mike Urbanski and Ian Jennings.

Mike’s choice was Robin van Persie and reasoned “He bleeds Red & White. No one can question his effort – ever. He re-signed for The Badge when more money was waiting for him elsewhere.”

Meanwhile Ian picked another striker, Nicklas Bendtner and followed it up with “Gung ho and determined. Doesn’t moan even though played out of position. Head never drops and always a chance with him in the box.”

Congratulations to those two for winning (I’ll be in touch with you shortly) and thanks to everyone else who sent in entries (there were over 90!) as well as SoccerPro for giving me the shirts to give away.

Have your say on the Arsenal shirt competition by leaving a comment.

I asked you all to be kind enough to vote for the blog and while I’m sorry to say that it didn’t win the award (that honour went to The Republik of Mancunia with This is Anfield the runner-up) I just wanted to say thanks to everyone who voted. I was truly honoured to get so much support and I think it is testament to the fantastic community on this blog that it was nominated in the first place.

To show you just how much I appreciate your support I’m giving away not one but two FREE Arsenal shirts!

The Arsenal jerseys are compliments of the good people at SoccerPro and all you have to do to be eligible is by emailing me who your favourite Arsenal player is and why (in 25 words or less).

Please send your responses to admin[at]arsenalfcblog[dot]com (replace ‘at’ and ‘dot’ with ‘@’ and ‘.’) and the two best will receive either a free Arsenal jersey. Too easy!

Thanks again for your support and good luck!

Have your say by leaving a comment.

It means a midnight kick-off for the weekend game and a 4.30am starts for midweek one. It means sneaking away from your friends birthday party to watch them at the pub. It means going to the work bleary-eyed and hungover after seeing them throw away another shot at the title.

It also means sharing brilliant nights out with other die-hard Gooners who know exactly how much you have sacrificed for the cause. 

Over the next three games against United, Chelsea and Liverpool, Panda Bear and I will be bringing you a fan’s perspective of following the Arsenal from our home in Brisbane, Australia.

We will have a good mate of ours (a Manchester City fan, bless him!) filming these escapades as we watch all three games from the Pig ‘N’ Whistle Riverside pub. So if you’re an Arsenal fan living or staying in Brisbane then be sure to get down to The Pig tonight, next Sunday and the following Thursday to share in what should be a really good project.

I can’t tell you just yet how it will pan out. What sort of footage we will end up with I just don’t know. But I can assure you that it will be good fun.

I’ll be editing the footage into a short web documentary which will go online as soon as possible after the Liverpool game. I’ve never done any filming or editing before and this is basically a practice before my big Football Nomad trip, so I’ll be just as interested as you as to how it turns out.

Stay tuned!

Have your say on “Three – An Arsenal Web Documentary” by leaving a comment.

I want to say thank-you to absolutely everybody that voted for the Arsenal FC Blog. I sincerely appreciate the support you’ve given to this community as well as all of the kind words that were left in comments and emails thanking me for my work on the blog.

But now it’s been nominated I’m asking you to vote again!

It’s much easier than the initial voting system: simply go to the ‘Best Team Site’ page, select ‘Arsenal FC Blog’ in the online poll and click ‘Vote!’

It will literally take 5 seconds and I would be so grateful if you could help me out again.

Oh and just for the record I’m up against The Republik of Mancunia (United blog), This is Anfield (Liverpool blog), Barca Loco (Barcelona blog) and another Gunners blog, Arsenal Mania.

Thanks again for your support and I promise I’ll share some bubbly if I win.

Vote for the Arsenal FC Blog in the 2009 Soccerlens Awards by clicking here.

Nominations for the award close today at midnight (GMT) so if you could help support the blog by voting before then I would really appreciate it.

Click here to vote for the Arsenal FC Blog.

I don’t normally worry too much about blogging awards but the Soccerlens awards certainly have some prestige about them and it would be a great to win one as a reward for three-and-a-half years of hard work.

The nominations for the awards are based completely on the number of votes that the public give so I would dearly love it if you could help out. Think of the children!

How to vote for Arsenal FC Blog in the 2009 Soccerlens Awards

There are 17 categories for the Soccerlens awards:

• Best Writer
• Best Podcast
• Best Community
• Best News Site
• Best Team Site
• Best Competition Site
• Best Team Writer
• The Expert
• Best Gossip Site
• Funniest Site
• Best Mobile Application
• Best Online Game
• Best Babe Site
• Best Betting Site
• Best Online Store
• Best Videos Site
• Best Online Store

To vote, what you need to do is copy/paste the categories above into an email, list the blogs/sites that you feel are the best in each category (or just some if you’re short on time) and send the email to awards@soccerlens.com.

I’ve highlighted the categories that I feel the Arsenal FC Blog could be voted and I would be so grateful if you could do that for me. Only if you actually think it’s the best, mind you!

And for the record for those that don’t know – my name is Andrew Weber (not Spanish Fry anymore!) and this is the Arsenal FC Blog.

My votes

Just for the record these are the sites I will be voting for (I don’t have one for every category):

• Best Writer – Sid Lowe (The Guardian)
• Best Podcast – Football Weekly (The Guardian)
• Best Community – Arsenal FC Blog (seriously, I love you guys)
• Best News Site – NewsNow
• Best Team Site – Arsenal FC Blog (if I don’t vote for me, who else will?)
• Best Team Writer – Tony Attwood (Untold Arsenal)
• The Expert – Kickette (she knows what she’s doing!)
• Best Gossip Site – Argh! I hate gossip sites!
• Funniest Site - Studs Up
• Best Videos Site – 101 Great Goals

Go check out some of those sites if you get the chance to – they’re very, very good.

That’s really it. If you need any further information on the Soccerlens awards click here.

As I said before I’d really appreciate it if you could vote for my blog in these awards and hopefully your support will be enough to get a nomination (if not win one).

Cheers in advance for your support.

Sincerely,
Andrew

It’s been a brilliant year for the blog if not a perfect year for the Gunners and I hope things will only get bigger and better from here.

Enjoy the time with your family and friends and hopefully the Arsenal boys can give us a late Christmas present with a win over Aston Villa on the weekend.

Kind regards,
Andy

The entire design of the blog has been revamped from the front page to the actual posts, comments now come with avatars and the About page has had a significant redo. In my opinion it is cleaner, easier to follow and shows off the content on the blog better than ever.

The new Arsenal FC Blog logo is a representation of Arsenal’s past, present and future. It features the club’s modern crest and the iconic red and white colours as its major focus while the maroon colour used in the first years of Highbury and the bright yellow and blue made famous by Arsenal’s 1979 FA Cup win completes the design.

The flags grouped on the top of the banner have been included to recognise the contribution of the biggest Arsenal FC Blog communities around the world. While most of the readers of the blog come from the English-speaking nations of the UK, the US and my native Australia there is also a huge readership in places like France, Spain, Germany and Italy as well as Nigeria and Kenya in Africa and Malaysia.

I wanted to recognise that and including the flags of those nations is my way of saying thank-you for all the readers in those communities for their support and input.

Let us know what you think of the new design in the comments below – praise or constructive criticism are equally welcome.

Have your say on the Arsenal FC Blog’s relaunch by leaving a comment.

The good news is that I’ve gone on a mini-holiday to Hamilton Island with the family and won’t be back until Friday.

The bad news is that I have very little internet access and as such, won’t be able to post until I return.

And that’s that really, other than that I can tell you I will have something VERY special for you when I get back.

With love,
Andy