Untold Arsenal: football news from an Arsenal perspective

The media against the Arsenal 

We are publishing a series of articles on the link between the Arsenal club, its supporters and the media through the ages.  While we may think of disputes between fans and the club, and indeed the club and the media, as being a recent phenomenon such differences of opinion go back to the very formation of Woolwich Arsenal.

Indeed Norris openly criticised the FA in the club programme, Chapman was very outspoken in criticising Arsenal fans for booing their own players, and the Arsenal board in the 1970s had strong words to say about the way Arsenal was treated by the media.  Parts one and two are now published….

1: Supporters and the media against The Arsenal. How it all started.

2: The fans and the media against the Arsenal: “Nothing is ever good enough for this crowd”

3: The crowd and the media against the Arsenal part 3

4: The crowd and the media against the Arsenal part 4: modern times.

This daily blog was started in January 2008, and as the name is intended to suggest we try to cover issues that do not get fulsome coverage in other blogs or publications, and where we are covering the same ground as others, try to do so from a different perspective. A list of the most recent articles is given on the right under “Recent posts”.

We are currently considering The Edu Revolution and as noted above, looking at the issue of how the media has constantly taken a more negative view of Arsenal than any other club.

Among the many campaigns and research projects we have run across the years I’d probably pick out these as being of interest…

160 games analysed – in which three researchers analysed the first 160 games of one PL season from the point of view of referee errors, and presented the evidence in videos.  It is a project that has, as far as we know, never been attempted or replicated anywhere else.  However it was picked up by the BBC and their report is included in this page on Corruption.

The Untold Banner: a group of readers of Untold who supported what we are doing, liaised with Arsenal FC, and raised funding, so that a banner of our choosing could be erected at the Clock End of the ground.  The video of Match of the Day focussing on our banner is now shown on that page.

 The 25 player rule and the drive to allow fewer foreigners into the Premier League has long been the agenda of the FA.  But we undertook the research to see if countries that have done well on the international stage have followed the FA’s desired approach of banning foreigners, or whether there was another factor at play.  It turn out that there was indeed another factor involved.  The fairly simple research that established this was first published in Untold in 2010 and has since been republished (without acknowledgement) in the Daily Telegraph in August 2013.  The Guardian has also picked up on the theme.

We are not the most injured club revelations.  For many years it was asserted in the mainstream media that Arsenal under Mr Wenger suffered more injuries than any other club in the Premier League.  It was a tale often repeated, but without any serious evidence.  So we undertake the investigation that no one else seemed to want to do.

Be careful in wishing for new owners

The Emirates Statues.   Tony Attwood (publisher of Untold) had a meeting with Ivan Gazidis at Arsenal soon after the Emirates Stadium was opened, and was asked what could be done by the club to make the ground feel more like home to the Arsenal fans.  I suggested that erecting a set of statues of famous players, along with one of Herbert Chapman, outside the ground.  That Chapman statue, I said, should be facing the ground with Chapman looking up at the stadium as if to say, “I created this.”

Arsenal’s history.   This part of the blog became so huge it had to be moved to a site of its own.  The Arsenal History Society site now has around 2500 articles, many arranged into sequences to tell the full story of different aspects of Arsenal’s development – many of these pieces including original research that has not been published before.

Untold Social.   This is a series of articles on issues that are outside of football, but which writers for Untold found interesting.  They include articles on how to avoid paying parking fines, how to lose weight without cost, how to get every job interview you want, and ways to help your children discover their talents.

Untold Dylan

A blog daily review of Bob Dylan songs, his concerts and the sources that he uses