We take this moment to laze back on the couch, picking a bit of tinsel out of a glass of gifted spirit and making a toast at FBTG HQ to a fantastic year. When we make that toast, we extend it to You.

2016 was our dawn and in many ways FBTG experimented to find its feet in its first year. Our writing style and image were set for 2017, when we expanded the horizons and increasingly pushed the boat out (both literally and metaphorically), going further to bring you Football Culture Blogging like never before. The year has seen a mind-numbing amount of highs for us, and we want to take this brief minute to look over some of them.

The first success has been growth. We broke the 10,000 views mark this year and interestingly a lot of this growth has come from readers in countries that contributed little to our traffic in 2016, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, while we continued to see high readership coming from the UK, the USA, Australia and Germany.

We have also been involved in some fantastic guest-writing and collaborations. We want to say thanks to Jub from Kiwi-Tiki Traveller for reaching out to us and helping spread the word. We once again wrote for Outside Write, Football Travel & Culture Blog run by the knowledgeable & insightful Chris. We guest wrote for the first time for Christoph of An Old International, written with a wealth of historical Football knowledge. And we wrote for Mark at The Football Pink, a fantastically written Football blog with a very enjoyable retro feel to it. Cheers guys, keep up the great writing.

If there was to be a single highlight? It was having Royalty read one of our posts. No lie. HRH the Crown Prince of Johor read through our post “New Dog, Old Tricks” before giving us the thumbs up. An absolute honour and something certainly I’m personally still getting my head around. The folks at Johor Darul Ta’zim FC were excellent hosts and treated us very well on our visit.

But more important than that is the fact that you have chosen to take the time to read until this point. Yes, keeping you engaged up to these very words is unquestionably what we are proudest of. FBTG would continue to go to matches and share the story of the fans regardless, but the fact that you join us on the journey makes it all the more enjoyable.

We hope you and yours have had a great festive period doing the things you love with the people you love, and that 2018 brings you success and satisfaction.

fbtg