Today’s fanzine of the day is in honour of PL champions Arsenal and comes to you from late summer 1991 with Arsenal having won the Football League under George ‘1-0’ Graham. An Imperfect Match is also an imperfect fanzine as we’ll come to learn. Firstly because it was A4 and secondly they claim to be a magazine despite the usual “views expressed are those of individual contributors” legal rider in fanzines and also because I suspect they didn’t want to be associated with ‘riff-raff’.

The editorial is a hot mess, a length blame x piece lifted imperfectly from Trainspotting, patting themselves on the back for agreeing totally with George Graham and providing references to back issues along that line. There is news of upcoming changes to the format (who cares?!) and finally a bit about how great teams are built expecting Arsenal to become one of a pantheon with Real Madrid and Brazil under George “bungs” Graham. Homeopathy, references to a French thologian, Jesus wept…The Arse would win the league 3 times in 12 years after that…under Arsene Wenger and then not again for 22 years. To add to this hubris this is perhaps the only fanzine we’ve seen that has two addresses, one in London and the other in Paris, silly season indeed.

There are stats including the ubiquitous fanzine own scoring system and all accompanied with some very dull, sanctimonious and quite honestly ridiculous analysis about the season. Not for the last time I’m scratching my head as to whether they are attempting humour with the bit about Adams being sent down and inspiring the team from a prison cell. I don’t think they were, the truth is Liverpool lead for most of the season but lost out on the title due to a slump in form after the shock resignation of Kenny Dalglish in February.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a remarkable achievement to only concede 18 goals all season but this only goes to underline the dull, grinding nature of the team at times. It certainly balances out the ridiculous comparison to the Brazil 1970 world cup winning side..Paul Merson vs Pele anyone? The attendances are interesting, big televised games attracting less than games vs QPR and Coventry and Highbury rarely selling out it’s capacity of 44,397. Like the team though, we’re into dull territory here.

I’m not touching the 9 page season and fanzine edition review (A4 pages remember) because, well, work it out yourself. Tottenham bashing? Of course but only in the form of a nice piece about Chris Waddle and a fatuous hit job on Gazza.

Laughs? Jokes? Well I did find myself laughing at this suggestion for an England team if Arsenal win the European Cup and England make it to the 1992 Euros. Arsenal were knocked out in the 2nd round by Benfica which is probably why this team never represented England. I mean this has to be a joke right? Probably not, it was in a piece that moaned about Brian Glanville, suggested David Platt was wrong in going to Bari (leading to him winning medals for the Italian and UEFA cups with Sampdoria and Juve’) and next to a piece suggesting that you needed extensive knowledge of foreign players in the French league to be a contributor..

Finally we come to Peter Storey’s Book Page. this is another oddity, a series of odd, ill fitting stories from abroad and a ‘joke’ about muzzling Vinny Jones. There is a letter from ‘Offside’ Graham himself to the Scandinavian supporters club which is a reminder of how things were done back then but even this is produced in a ‘fit of pique’ as they claim to have 10 times as many readers (10,000?) and would like to know what GG thinks. Bruce’s verdict is clearly made up and not very well at that, pieces like this are supposed to be funny..

As you know I love almost all fanzines…almost. I might be missing something and bravo to anyone who writes a fanzine but this one misses the mark for me.