Five years ago today, EPL Talk launched out of nowhere. There was zero marketing budget. All it was could be summed one in one word: passion. From that day until now, all I did was write about the sport and league that has given me so much joy and that I’ve been passionate about all my life. Hopefully that has found its way to you through my words.

But, really, my passion is your passion. When I came up with the idea for EPL Talk in 2005, I was fortunate that the Premier League would rise in popularity to unbelievable proportions at the same time that I was writing about it. And at the same time millions of people were gravitating to the game thanks to the meteoric rise in the coverage of the Premier League both online and on television.

Over the years, EPL Talk changed significantly. It began as a blog in November 2005, then added an online magazine in February 2006, launched a weekly podcast in April 2006 and, since then, has evolved and grown at a rapid pace. Since the 2005 launch, we’ve posted 5,879 articles, 74,539 comments and 226 pages on the site.

During the 2010 World Cup, the site had more than 500,000 unique visitors. And the site has been mentioned in or on The Guardian, BBC World Football Phone-In, USA Today, NPR, BBC Five Live, Yahoo Sports and other media organizations.

A big thank you needs to go to you, the readers, for making it part of your day. And to the bloggers and podcasters of EPL Talk who have spent many late night writing or recording episodes to share with you, the die-hard soccer fan.

During November, we’ll be celebrating our five year anniversary by featuring articles suggested by you, the reader. So if you haven’t had a chance to post a suggestion, please do so now. Originally I was going to allow the readers to vote on which articles should be covered during EPL Talk’s Readers Choice Month. But the suggestions have been so good thus far that I’ll end up writing posts about almost all of the articles.

Thanks to five wonderful years of EPL Talk. And here’s to five more!