[mantralux]

We aim to be the ultimate place for Arsenal supporters interested in football tactics and the inner workings of the club. The idea is to get away from the common ‘daily observations’ type Arsenal blog format, and instead present statistics and facts to better describe what actually happens during a match, with as little subjectivity as possible.

In the beginning we’ll only cover Premier League fixtures, but we’ll move on to Champions League and domestic cup fixtures as soon as we feel good about our Premier League content.

Opta Sports
All our statistics and facts originates from Opta, which is easily the most comprehensive and accurate sports statistics tracker in the world. We aren’t directly connected to Opta, but use several outlets that are powered by Opta, including the Guardian Chalkboards and ESPN Game Cast, to present our articles. If you’re missing some information in an article, just send us an e-mail and we can probably provide you with it.

Features
One of our many original features on Arsenal Report is that all tactical reviews consists of two separate articles; the main section and then a section we call ‘Second Opinion’. The authors won’t see each others work until they’re finished. This way you’ll always get a broader span of information than from a lone blogger, and you won’t have to look around the web to get a balanced report.

In addition to in-depth tactical analysis of individual matches, we also have a comprehensive statistics database of single games and individual players, and also a weekly series of articles explaining how the current Arsenal tactical system, pairings and formation works.

Every article will use an original feature we call ‘Interactive Pitch’, which gives you the average positions of every player in the starting line-ups + Arsenal substitutes. It has detailed information about individual player statistics for that match, and even has a goal action component that will give you an overview of positions and movement leading up to the goals in the match. This module will be extended throughout 2011, and coming features include player runs, passing statistics, zonal information, passing matrixes, etc.

To keep up with the future of Arsenal Report, take a look at our Labs section, which contains details about all upcoming features for the site.

Hope you like it!

www.arsenalreport.com

[Dr Naysay]

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Every hour you code a website means 7 hours of making it work in Internet Explorer. We have much better things to do than to cater to Microsoft’s ongoing incompetence, and as a result of this incompetence, you aren’t allowed to view Arsenal Report.

I almost cried.

[Millie]

Er, why would you deliberately block off a large part of your potential audience? The site clearly has a lot of potential - don't be petty.

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We aim to be the ultimate place for Arsenal supporters interested in football tactics and the inner workings of the club. The idea is to get away from the common ‘daily observations’ type Arsenal blog format, and instead present statistics and facts to better describe what actually happens during a match, with as little subjectivity as possible.

Ah, more of the scientific proof shtick. Surely the subjectivity in football is most of the fun?

Still, it's good to see another site taking another angle. There's definitely a place for it, and I hope it goes well for you. But please, the main word of advice would be: don't be so abrasive.

[mantralux]

Millie, on 10 February 2011 - 10:17 AM, said:

Er, why would you deliberately block off a large part of your potential audience? The site clearly has a lot of potential - don't be petty.

Well, it's not me being petty. Arsenal Report is using too many future web standards, and will use even more in the near future, for it to ever work in IE8 or below. I did have a look at the site in IE9 yesterday though, and as soon as I've fixed a couple of errors, I'll open up the site for IE9 users later today.

Thing is, there's just no way I'm going to spend double the amount of time to code the website from scratch again so that the very small IE8-and-below user base can access the site. It's not being petty, it's about not bending over and taking it from Microsoft, a company that in 2011, with a brand new browser, still haven't been able to get it to render websites correctly. It's embarrassing, and I can spend that time improving the site instead.

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Ah, more of the scientific proof shtick. Surely the subjectivity in football is most of the fun?

If that's what you like, there are thousands of blogs out there with the typical 'fan's view' type daily observations. I read them all the time. But we thought we'd approach it differently. But as it's an Arsenal fansite written by Arsenal supporters, of course you'll get subjectivity in there. No one is 100% objective.

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But please, the main word of advice would be: don't be so abrasive.

What are you referring to?

[poseidoN.]

i will give your website a look, but i hope for your website's sake that it isnt saying stuff that is blatently biased to your club etc. because i know that a lot of club fansites ran by clubs do that. why else do you think i love it here. a universial site where there are numerous supporters of numerous clubs.

[mantralux]

poseidoN., on 10 February 2011 - 01:29 PM, said:

i will give your website a look, but i hope for your website's sake that it isnt saying stuff that is blatently biased to your club etc. because i know that a lot of club fansites ran by clubs do that. why else do you think i love it here. a universial site where there are numerous supporters of numerous clubs.

It's an Arsenal fansite, written by Arsenal supporters.

And if you think there is such a thing as non-bias, think again.

Even established news outlets like The Guardian or CNN are biased. This site is biased. Everything is biased, you'll never get away from that. If there is an opinion, there is bias.

[Millie]

mantralux, on 10 February 2011 - 01:22 PM, said:

Well, it's not me being petty. Arsenal Report is using too many future web standards, and will use even more in the near future, for it to ever work in IE8 or below. I did have a look at the site in IE9 yesterday though, and as soon as I've fixed a couple of errors, I'll open up the site for IE9 users later today.

Thing is, there's just no way I'm going to spend double the amount of time to code the website from scratch again so that the very small IE8-and-below user base can access the site. It's not being petty, it's about not bending over and taking it from Microsoft, a company that in 2011, with a brand new browser, still haven't been able to get it to render websites correctly. It's embarrassing, and I can spend that time improving the site instead.

I think a page with "we're sorry, but this site isn't designed for IE8 - enter at your peril" is much more inviting than "you're a n00b who still uses M$, piss off" which is how it comes across.

It's your prerogative to do that, I just don't think it sets a very good image. But it's not my image to worry about, and it's up to you how you present it. It's a constructive criticism, but one (like all) that you are free to disregard.

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If that's what you like, there are thousands of blogs out there with the typical 'fan's view' type daily observations. I read them all the time. But we thought we'd approach it differently. But as it's an Arsenal fansite written by Arsenal supporters, of course you'll get subjectivity in there. No one is 100% objective.

Absolutely, which is why it's a good thing you're doing this, as I said in my initial reply. I wish you well, and it will certainly offer a different and much-needed take on things.

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What are you referring to?

Specifically? The IE thing.

For the record, I've looked around the site and I think it's pretty good. No complaints on that score. If you can point me to the RSS feed, I'll put it into my Thunderbird straight away.

[mantralux]

Millie, on 10 February 2011 - 02:13 PM, said:

I think a page with "we're sorry, but this site isn't designed for IE8 - enter at your peril" is much more inviting than "you're a n00b who still uses M$, piss off" which is how it comes across.

If you'd seen the site in IE8, you wouldn't let people in either. Even at their own peril.

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It's your prerogative to do that, I just don't think it sets a very good image. But it's not my image to worry about, and it's up to you how you present it. It's a constructive criticism, but one (like all) that you are free to disregard.

Yeah I'm not too worried about having a politically correct image, I do things my way and that's it basically. I'm not doing the site to make money, or to attarct as many viewers as possible....I just do it because I think it's fun. We're not officially representing Arsenal FC, or any other company, so we don't have to have a clean cut image that everyone is happy with.

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For the record, I've looked around the site and I think it's pretty good. No complaints on that score. If you can point me to the RSS feed, I'll put it into my Thunderbird straight away.

I'm currently formatting the RSS feed to work as intended. Right now it includes the Interactive Pitch module on all articles, and as the Interactive Pitch is made of HTML+CSS (not flash), it screws up any formatting that doesn't take CSS into account. Another good example of how I can spend my time more wisely, instead of trying to make it work in IE.

You can grab the feed (http://www.arsenalreport.com/feed/), but it looks odd at the moment. A proper RSS button will be put up as soon as the feed looks correct.

[Millie]

I look forward to it.

[mantralux]

Site is now open to IE9 users.

[Dr Naysay]

mantralux, on 10 February 2011 - 10:17 PM, said:

Site is now open to IE9 users.

Yaaaaayyyyy nice one bud!

[mantralux]

We'll have a Barcelona preview available on Wednesday afternoon, written by Joss (the better half of the site) for STV, with graphics provided by Arsenal Report. And then a post-match tactical review on Thursday.

[mantralux]

Oh, and the site now has an updated IE error page, to offer more options for IE8 users and below, and to not offend anyone (as requested by popular demand).

http://www.arsenalre...ernet-explorer/

[Psycorp603]

mantralux, on 10 February 2011 - 01:22 PM, said:

Thing is, there's just no way I'm going to spend double the amount of time to code the website from scratch again so that the very small IE8-and-below user base can access the site.

I take it you've done comprehensive research into your target audience?

I run a website that's aimed at industry professionals, the sort that you wouldn't expect to be running IE8 or similar shit.

But my site's IE8 compatible.

Why?

Because over a quarter of my visitors are running IE. And when we break it down further...



That's well over 500 people I'd have told to fuck off, just since January 1st.

Do some research before you come out with bollocks like "very few people run IE8." There's 38 people on that chart who've got the laptop in their cave running IE6 FFS.

[mantralux]

Psycorp603, on 12 February 2011 - 09:49 AM, said:

I take it you've done comprehensive research into your target audience?

Yes.

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Because over a quarter of my visitors are running IE. And when we break it down further...



That's well over 500 people I'd have told to fuck off, just since January 1st.

Do some research before you come out with bollocks like "very few people run IE8." There's 38 people on that chart who've got the laptop in their cave running IE6 FFS.

First of all, it's not bollocks. I didn't say "very few people run IE8", so don't put made up stuff within quotes if you want to be taken seriously. What I said was I didn't find any reason to cater to the very small user base of IE8 and below, as in very small for my sites. I run several websites, in different areas, and none of them come even close to a 10% IE user base. Some of my sites work in IE8, some don't. With Arsenal Report, I decided I didn't want to put double the time into making it work for ONE browser, when it works perfectly fine in all other major browsers.

Secondly, one of the reasons we're not optimising for IE8 is simply because it's not worth it. It might be worth it to you and your site, but not to us. There's no reason to get personally offended by our decision, your hostility is pointless. I'm not excluding IE8 users out of spite.

[mantralux]

And just for argument's sake: our stats over the last 7 days.

 stats.png (21.09K)
Number of downloads: 14

Several days worth of work to cater to 0.8% isn't really my idea of efficiency.

[Millie]

Is the reason you're getting so few IE viewers because you're not letting them in? Genuine question.

[mantralux]

Millie, on 12 February 2011 - 11:32 AM, said:

Is the reason you're getting so few IE viewers because you're not letting them in? Genuine question.

No, they would still register as a hit, as they still reach the site in some capacity. Another example, these are the stats for mantralux.com (FM site), where I get roughly 20k visits per month, 13k of them absolute unique, and this site is open to Internet Explorer users:

 stats2.jpg (79.75K)
Number of downloads: 10

As you can see, IE isn't even 5% of the user base. These kind of numbers are common on all sites I manage, so that's one of the reasons why I've opted out of supporting IE. The second, more important, reason is that I'm using future web standards like CSS3 to display stuff, like the navigation bar for example - the glossy look, fades and colouring is all CSS, no images whatsoever. Of course I could have an image fallback, but then I could have just gone for images to begin with, and fallbacks would only mean double the work.

I wish IE8 and below would render websites properly, it would mean the evolution of the web would have been much quicker. But unfortunately web developers still put tons of time into making their sites work in IE, which in turn only validates people using the browsers. If developers would stop supporting flawed browsers, users would have to select a better alternative, and everyone would be happy.

[mantralux]

We'll do a test run today with our live blog feature, if anyone is interested. Might be a little buggy, so if anything looks weird, let me know. =)

[juvehero]

I run IE8

I feel dirty and worthless