Statement on the future of the Gooner Fanzine

Hello, 

We have some good news. 

We are happy to announce we have finally managed to get over the line, and reach our 1,000 subscriber target this month. 

It’s been a gruelling campaign, one in which we’ve lived every moment, so we’re delighted to say a massive, massive thank you to each and every single person who has backed us. 

Quite simply we wouldn’t exist without you, our incredible readers and subscribers.It would be unfair to single out any individuals, suffice to say you all know how incredible you have been in helping our cause, in so many ways, and on so many levels. 

Your amazing support has been so heartening to experience, and has kept us going during our dark nights of the soul, laying there worrying about the future of our humble labour of love. Thank you. 

…….

Mailchimp news

It’s amazing what a bit of persistence can do - well, quite a lot of persistence to be fair. 

Not simply in terms of us all helping to keep the Gooner alive - but persistence also in standing your ground in the face of extortionate charges, for example. 

Regular readers may recall that I was handed a £300+ bill from Mailchimp after I ramped up the number of newsletters to those on our Gooner database last month to help boost our Save the Gooner campaign.

As a customer - and a journalist - I refused to accept this, and made my protestations known, regularly, loudly and often to them. 

To cut a long story short, the upshot of it all, in a bid for a bit of peace and quiet, they decided in their infinite wisdom, to grant us three months worth of free newsletters. 

So, we’ll keep sending newsletters via this format until December. Then we’ll migrate to Substack (which is a free newsletter platform).

I should add-  to the relief of many no doubt - we will only send out a single newsletter every Friday morning (work permitting) for the next three months. 

In the meantime, please feel free to continue to add your emails to Layth’s Take Substack as I will be ramping up that platform once again with my Arsenal witterings from the coalface this weekend onwards, along with random travel, music, dogs and life musings along the way. Hope you’ll enjoy it, cheers. 

………..

The Return of Well Played / Pile of Pony 

Drum roll please. 

One of the things that regular readers have lamented to me while I flog the Gooner on a matchday, is the lack of the long-running Well Played / Pile of Pony series, where we highlight good stuff, and, er, not so good stuff.

When we’re not fighting for our very survival, we do actually listen at Gooner Towers, so, you'll be pleased to learn we have decided to bring the series back for your delectation in our next print issue. 

How does that sound?

Well Played

So, we’ll kick off the return of our popular long-running series with the news that former Gooner Fanzine editor Kevin Whitcher has launched a podcast.  

Well played Kev, hope you can master the technology, look forward to listening to it! 

(Please note Kev’s pod is completely independent of the Gooner Fanzine).

Pile of Pony

It’s amazing the amount of disinformation sloshing about right now, and, well, let’s face it, downright ignorance. 

Someone, or something on Twitter, or X, called MarkPapaSpj made us all at Gooner Towers laugh out loud at its sheer preposterousness, that it simply had to qualify for our first new Pile of Pony.

MarkPapaSpj, he, or it, you can never tell these days, (it had a blue tick - which, to be fair, is enough to set alarm bells ringing) ‘commented’ on the Save the Gooner campaign after it was launched in early August, saying, of our humble fanzine: “I stopped reading it ages ago. Some of the articles were toxic at best. An AFTV look a like”

I stopped reading it ages ago. Some of the articles were toxic at best. An AFTV look a like

— Mark (@MarkPapaSpj) August 5, 2025

Wow. Just wow. 

So, Mr “MarkPapaSpj”, I will happily pay for a copy of our latest issue for you to read, and if you can find one single ‘toxic’ article, then you must donate the £5 cover price to the Willow Foundation - and I’ll throw in £20 of my own hard-earned cash to Willow as well for good measure. 

Welcome back Pile of Pony! 

PS: If you feel like responding to Mr “MarkPapaSpj” please do get in touch, and we’ll run a special letters page in our next issue, outlining exactly why, after nearly 40 years hard work and dedication publishing informed, intelligent, and irreverent Arsenal opinions, we are not, as MarkPapaSpj insists: “An AFTV look a like”. 

……

Willow Foundation

Speaking of the Willow Foundation, I am a man who keeps his promises. 

You might recall I said that if the Gooner Fanzine survived we would start fundraising for the utterly brilliant Willow Foundation once again. 

How? 

Well, for starters, I said I would run a half marathon next spring to raise funds for the much-loved charity that helps seriously ill young adults make precious memories. 

Anyone who knows me will know I absolutely hate running, and hate running training even more. Especially on those dark winter evenings.

But a promise is a promise, and, to be fair, it’ll help me avoid eating a tub of lard every night over the winter. So, it’s a win-win situation…

Once I get back from covering Arsenal in Bilbao, I will contact Willow to see if they have a place in the London Landmarks Half Marathon next spring, and will start training in early October. Not to mention fundraising for them. Can’t say fairer than that. 

Islington Foodbank

Speaking of fundraising, I have to say a massive well done to one of our sellers, Chris, who helped raise £152 for Islington Foodbank by selling issues of the Gooner Fanzine at Arsenal Women vs LCL at their kiosk last weekend. 

Such a selfless act makes our team, and myself, so proud to say we are giving a little something back, because that’s what the Gooner Fanzine is about as much as anything.

We plan to donate copies of the Gooner Fanzine to the foodbank kiosk for every men’s and women’s game this season in a bid to raise a few quid for such a worthy cause.(Actually that piece of good news could also go in the return of our Well Played section…!)

…….

Subscriber Feedback

I am a firm believer in learning from feedback. 

Our team puts in plenty of hard work (outside our own work hours) and we think our humble publication is a decent effort considering it’s done on a voluntary basis - but I’m a firm believer that myself and my team can always improve. 

In an ideal world we wouldn't lose any existing subscribers over the coming nine months, but for some reason, we always seem to over the course of a long season - so could I please ask, if you decide not to renew your subscription, to kindly contact me in the first instance.

I’m happy to have a polite discussion over email, or an extremely cordial chat over the phone, as I would like to understand why you are thinking of leaving, and would encourage your feedback, as to how we can improve, as well as what we could do differently to keep you on board. 

Not to mention finding out what you love and like, and equally, what doesn’t really float your boat. 

(We hope the return of our Letters Pages, and now, the imminent return of Well Played / Pile of Pony will also help…)

That way, we hope we won’t be in for such a shock when it comes to next spring and early summer, when we take an in-depth look at our numbers.

….. 

So please do get in touch if you have anything you’d like to see included. 

We are attempting to streamline our admin, so please can we ask everyone to use the email i[email protected] as our sole point of contact for our readers and subscribers. 

Thanks again for helping to Save the Gooner Fanzine.

See you at The Arsenal! 

Layth and the Gooner team 

………

Plans for the future 

It’s always been a bugbear that we have to fight tooth and nail to reach our most basic target, when there are supposed to be 100M+ Arsenal fans worldwide. 

It shouldn’t be this difficult - or gruelling - to find a fraction of wonderful people to help our cause, and keep alive our humble publication, which is also a reassuring matchday staple for many. 

So, over the course of the autumn and winter we will be analysing just how we can somehow secure the long-term future of the printed Gooner Fanzine, and intend to study the models of other football fanzines, sports magazines, and printed publications over the coming months - with a view to perhaps altering our subscription models next spring - as we can’t simply keep going to the well every summer and hoping for the best from our amazing readership, in a bid to simply survive for another year. 

Not least because I’m absolutely shattered, as well as being unfair on my family in terms of the time I spend devoted to helping to keep the Gooner alive, when there are so many other things I would rather be doing during my working day, and evenings. 

There has to be an easier - and far less stressful - way of securing our long-term future. I hope so anyway. 

But for now, let’s just simply rejoice in the fact that the Gooner Fanzine has survived, and will live to fight for another season. 

Today, that is something worth celebrating - because myself, along with 1,000 of you wonderful people, are passionate believers that the Gooner is definitely worth saving. 

One day I hope it will flourish too. But that’s a fight for another day. 

For now, I would just like to say a heartfelt thank you to each and every single person who has kept us alive. 

You’re all wonderful, and we love you to bits. 

Thank you. Thank you so much. 

PS: Please feel free to redeem a free hug, kiss, or firm handshake from me before Arsenal vs Forest tomorrow. (Or all three…)

Come on you Gunners! 

Layth, and the entire Gooner Fanzine team.