First things first, welcome to the newly rebooted SpursStatMan blog. Thank you for taking the time to pay us a very much-appreciated visit.
After around a month of frantic planning and organising, we’re really pleased to finally be able to take the project live on Friday 22/03/13, and I feel it’s only necessary to take you all behind the curtain a little, and let you know what we’ve been doing, and what we’re planning to do from here on in.
As alluded to, around a month ago myself and founder Jack had a short discussion about what we felt was within our limits if we were to try and expand the ambitions of the existing blog. We soon decided that on the back of the overwhelming success of the twitter account, and the written work that had been produced already, it would be a missed opportunity to not attempt to put our heads together and produce the best possible product we could.
Concentrating our efforts on making tweaks to the site and recruiting the best possible writing team available, everything was soon beginning to fall in to place. Weeks of exchanging endless Twitter direct messages, texts and emails were beginning to pay off, and before long we had a real project on our hands. A special mention must be reserved for one Charlotte ‘Peachy’ Hamilton too, who has become my ‘go to’ girl on any graphic design needs, and she will be giving the site a much needed facelift by redesigning all of our logo’s and artwork.
To reiterate what I’ve already described in the ‘About Us’ section of the site, we’re not shy in sharing our ambition with you, and in time we want to build on our existing audience and become one of the largest – if not the largest – independent Tottenham site in existence. Obviously that’s something much easier said than it is done, but we’re not worried about putting the work in.
Currently, the club specific football blogging landscape comes in two easily distinguishable guises; there’s the autonomous one-man enterprise and then adversely there’s the community venture too. Both have their merits, but unfortunately they also have their own fair share of limitations too.
The approach we’ve chosen to take is slightly different to that, operating from a model that’s often utilised by much larger, full-time and professional publications. The thinking behind it being that if the mainstream journalists we complain about misrepresenting our club can’t take full advantage of the tools at their disposal, then why can’t we?
The real jewels in our proverbial crown, however, are the writers we’ve managed to assemble together for the site, cherry-picking the best journalists and bloggers from our favourite places on the internet and getting them to regularly concentrate their considerable powers on producing the best possible copy on Tottenham Hotspur available. They’ve all got their own small introduction in the ‘Writers’ section of the site, but I’d like to take the time to fully explain the reasons behind why each man was chosen.
The man behind the twitter account and founder Jack Pettiford will be continuing on doing what he does best for us and using the EPL Index to provide the best Tottenham-centric statistical tweets and articles possible. Expect plenty of player comparisons and in-depth statistical analysis…all the things you know and love him for.
In truth, the first person I contacted was Jack Hussey, or ‘TehTrunk’ to you and me. Not only an experienced and published writer, lifelong Tottenham fan and good friend, Jack’s invaluable experience of high-volume online enterprises was always going to be an asset. For the site, he’ll be giving us regular reaction pieces, opinion articles and features – starting with his excellent Fulham post-mortem and call to arms.
Ben McAleer soon followed. On the verge of becoming the next Henry Winter, Ben agreed to take the mantle of feature writer up for us, and will be initially concentrating on regularly providing a Squad Analysis series. Having this level of journalist on board echoes the ambition of the site, having written for the likes of Goal, Eurosport and FourFourTwo, Ben demonstrates the calibre of output we’ll be looking to achieve.
Completing our double header of Benjamin’s, Ben Alfrey wasn’t far behind. While continuing to run his highly successful blog InsideN17, Ben will be dropping in regular opinion pieces and features, channelling the passion and love for the club that sees him follow Tottenham home and away, over land and sea. A rare type of blogger, in that his knowledge of football and the club will often see him promote the bigger picture and long-termism of projects, you won’t catch him not seeing the wood for the trees.
In a bid to dispel any notion of website wide bias, Rob Brown is the only non-Tottenham writer on the site. In truth, Rob doesn’t actually support anyone, but that’s a discussion for another day. He’ll be the site’s very own Head of Oppositional Scouting, because anything good enough for AVB is good enough for us. He’ll be providing tactical game previews and scout reports of up coming opponents, his lack of allegiances perfect for unbiased assessments of our chances in up-coming matches.
Steve Jennings was the last writer to join the team, but coincidentally he’s our second Huddersfield born Yorkshireman. He’ll be using his extensive knowledge of the betting markets to preview forthcoming Tottenham games and European wide football as well, sending across regular tips and shouts for us to gamble our hard earned money on. And before you ask, refunds aren’t available.
Unlike the rest of our writers, Chris ‘Windy’ Miller won’t be contributing on that regular of a basis, but we’re very pleased to have him on board in any capacity. Famous for his expert youth team and loan updates on the excellent Fighting Cock podcast, as well as his written work for the likes of Betfair, The Daily Mirror and his own blog WindyCOYS.com, he’ll be leaving us the odd report on Tottenham’s youth system when he has the time, keeping us in check with the future of Tottenham’s playing staff.
As for myself, Raj Bains, I’ll be editing the site and all written work, as well as completing my own features and articles about the club as and when I can. I’ll be the one you need to contact should you feel there’s been a mistake on the site, or if you think you’ve got a feature in mind you’d like to pitch to us and have published on the site. As a general rule, we’re not open to contributions, but we will take anyone under consideration if we believe they can regularly provide something to benefit the site.
That, as they say, should be that. Again, welcome to the SpursStatMan site, and thanks for taking the time to have a look at the blog – we look forward to showing you what we’ve got in store this Friday. Please always feel free to comment on the articles we produce, on behalf of all involved, feedback is genuinely always appreciated, positive or negative. Should you ever feel the need to want to contact one of us, there’s a special page for that too.
Ta’ra for now – and as always, Come On You Spurs.
Author Profile
Name – Raj Bains
Twitter - @BainsXIII
Back Catalogue - http://spursstatman.com/category/raj-bains/
Do you have any strikers in that expensive line up?
Well done guys. Looking forward to the future articles.
Good to see you have some Yorkshire men on board too….a staple ingredient of any successful Spurs team
welcome to the spursosphere. hope it goes well for you.
1226 words; and 40% vowels. Nice. Let’s do this stats thang!!