By Billy “the Dog” McGraw
August: the headlines continue to be dominated by “Arsenal lose out to” in relation to the transfer market. No comparison is made between the amount spent by clubs and their league position. Stories abound in relation to Arsenal trying out “untried rookie” defender / midfielder / winger”.
The media proclaims that Twitter went into meltdown over the fact that Arsenal, for the tenth year running spent less than Manchester City, Manchester Utd and Chelsea in the transfer window.
September: Arsenal’s usual injury crisis is highlighted with no reference to either
a) how many injuries Arsenal actually had in comparison with other clubs in past years
b) how many injuries Arsenal have in comparison with other clubs this year.
c) how many injuries Arsenal sustain by players on “international duty”.
During the international break there is no mention of the corruption of Fifa, the support of Fifa by the FA, the fact that the government has once again not removed it massive tax payers’ grant to the FA despite threatening to do so for the ninth year running, or the fact that the world cup is going to be played in a country whose entire sporting system appears to be focused on drug cheating.
Paul Merson declares that Stewart Robson is right and has always been right.
The media proclaims that Twitter went into meltdown over the fact that Arsenal striker Chuba Akpom has scored fewer goals so far this season than Manchester City.
October: It suddenly becomes apparent that after having brought through Coquelin, Iwobi and Bellerin in the last three years, Arsenal are doing it again, with not one but two home-grown players who become first team regulars. The press greet this development with headlines concerning “Arsenal injury crisis.”
Indeed Arsenal’s “injury crisis” is deemed to be the fault of Arsene Wenger, despite Arsenal being mid-table for injuries so far this season and have half the number of certain other clubs, which cannot be mentioned for legal reasons.
The media proclaims that Twitter went into meltdown over the fact that Arsene Wenger appeared to smile in a TV interview after drawing a match 2-2.
November: A national agreement between newspapers never to mention the cost of Elneny is upheld rigorously after he wins the national Player of the Month award for the second month running. When Mourinho pushes an assistant referee over, his argument that the assistant was waving his flag in an aggressive manner is accepted by the FA and the allegation that Mourinho called the assistant “a two faced blind bat” in Guatemalan dialect is rejected and so no punishment is given. The press agree that justice was not only done but seen to be done, without explaining what they mean by that phrase.
December: The media give mass coverage to the fact that a group of 12 Black Scarf protesters gather at the entrance to the Arsenal AGM claiming that the board are destroying the club, and that although Arsenal are top of the league they would have been far further top of the league if only Lacazette had been signed. The fact that Lacazette has been injured all season is not mentioned.
January: Mourninho drops £600m worth of transferred players from his team in an effort to improve results. The media note that five of Arsenal’s under 9 squad are currently out injured, and banner headlines relating to the injury crisis and it all being Wenger’s fault are to be seen. According to the media Twitter goes into meltdown over the quality of coffee served at the Emirates at half time. For the first time ever Untold Arsenal supports a twitter campaign, only to find that meltdown is caused when five or more people write on the same topic. With Arsenal five points clear at the top of the league the media goes frantic over the lack of signings in the January window. Arsenal beat Man U in the FA Cup but the match is not reported on radio, TV or in the press. It is the first FA Cup match in 78 rounds of the cup in which Man U have not been shown live on TV. The FA demand a replay and warn Arsenal as to their future behaviour.
February: Twitter goes into meltdown (allegedly) after Piers Morgan calls for the sacking of Arsenal Wenger because of the lack of injuries. Arsenal beat Real Madrid 1-0 away in the Champions League after Ronaldo is sent off for digging a hole in the pitch with a bucket and spade. Twitter goes into meltdown and there are demands for Arsenal’s head groundsman to be sacked, despite protests from the club that the incident took place in Spain. Black Scarf organise a protest for the match against Watford. Two banners are spotted. Twitter goes into meltdown.
March: There are protests across football when it is realised that the cost of a lower tier ticket for the League Cup semi-final against Crystal Palace is £10 at the Emirates. Arsenal are denounced for disrespecting the competition and there is general agreement on Sky that all the club has done is make themselves look foolish. There are demands for the price to be quadrupled. Twitter goes into meltdown. Arsenal puts out a team which includes six players that have come up through their ranks and not cost a penny in transfer fees, and are immediately denounced for undermining the economic fabric of English professional football.
April: Tottenham announce that work on their new stadium has been abandoned after it is discovered that the “largest terrace in footballing history” is too heavy for the support structures below it. Their chief scout and head of recruitment resign. Neither story makes the press. Jose Mourinho assaults the referee at half time as the players walk off the pitch, but the FA accept the explanation that he slipped and should therefore not have any punishment save being given a warning to wear shoes with more grippy soles. The Independent announces that the story about Heathrow Airport’s railway connection with London being the most expensive railway line in the UK is indeed about AFC Bournemouth which is why it has been running on their football page for a year.
May: Arsenal conclude a satisfactory season by winning the double. Black Scarf announce that their protests against Wenger will continue as success can only mean winning the Champions League. Twitter goes into meltdown as the Telegraph refuses to print the results of the Fair Play League table for the second season running. The Guardian does a review of how Arsenal blogs have reacted to the season, but fails to include Untold. Man U complain that the FA Cup is their’s by right, and the FA uphold the appeal, awarding them the trophy in absentia.
- Sick of waiting all season to switch out your expensive fantasy football stars?
- Gabriel injury news as total number of players noted as coming to Arsenal reaches 98.
- PGMO Pre-season Updates
- THE BRICKFIELDS GUNNERS ‘ LIFE’S LESSONS 101 FOR ‘them’
Untold Arsenal has published five books on Arsenal – all are available as paperback and three are now available on Kindle. The books are
- The Arsenal Yankee by Danny Karbassiyoon with a foreword by Arsene Wenger.
- Arsenal: the long sleep 1953 – 1970; a view from the terrace. By John Sowman with an introduction by Bob Wilson.
- Woolwich Arsenal: The club that changed football. By Tony Attwood, Andy Kelly and Mark Andrews.
- Making the Arsenal: a novel by Tony Attwood.
- The Crowd at Woolwich Arsenal by Mark Andrews.
You can find details of all five on our new Arsenal Books page
Many a true word is spoken in jest.
Billy,
going into a meltdown…so much cliché and robotic writing….I find ‘breaking into a full bedlam’ much more classy….I believe Shakespeare has invented that word. Guess few know where it comes from.
Yet, you could use it….!
Had fun reading your piece. Nice change from the ‘robotic-moronic-stupidity-world-cup’ winning crap we get to read on the net
Chelsea
C heating
H elps
E very
L oser
S addle
E xtra
A dvantage.
One none-sporting article that you may not notice;
May;
Mike Riley becomes the proud grandfather of twins Alex and Jose.
Twins run in his family. Hi own twins sons are Alex and Ferguson, and daughters Cantona and Beckham.
Good job Billy! You do not need to wait until April for the Tottenham part though! Paul Mitchell, their head of recruitment, has already resigned effective after summer transfer window.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/09/tottenham-head-of-recruitment-paul-mitchell-quits-nightmare
@Tony, curious what’s happening with the weekly betting website articles by “Jacko Jones” popping up in between on Untold? Is Untold getting hacked again?
I have been reading one of the BBC’s football pages whee I read this
‘We want to know which new Premier League manager will have the best impact this season.’
Is this the BBC actually admitting it doesn’t know something about football.
Or
If the BBC wants this information does this mean they are trying to find out so that their ‘all knowing pundits can tell us’?
The next sentence is this:
‘Last year none of you would have said Claudio Ranieri and you’d all be wrong.’
None of their experts or pundits said that Leicester would win the league.
But the BBC turns it round and says ‘the fans were wrong’. Not the BBC.
The unwary swallow this line of thought and the media and all users of this technique get away with their at best misleading at worst lies.
This is an age old trick. The company makes a mistake and blames it on its employees.
Some Football clubs will take the credit when it all goes right but when it goes wrong blame the fans.
Hillsborough was a horrible example of this.
We will finish in the top 2 😉
Hmm, terrible anti-Arsenal stories out there in the media. But let Arsenal not worry. Let AFC allow the media to continue to write their anti-AFC articles. Arsenal will prevail over them all at the end of this coming season as they will not only win the Barclays Premier League title this season, but they’ll also win 2 other titles as well in addition to their winning the title.
On the transfer front, I don’t know if the Boss will still be interested to sign the said to be injured Alexandre Lacazette this window after haven his initial bid to buy him turned down by Lion his parent club. But if the Boss has dropped his interest in Lacazette, I want him to consider the signing of Pierre-Americk Aubameyang instead. Auba 27 may not tick all the 4 boxes the Boss has stated. But he has certainty ticked 3 out the 4. Auba can make up for his not been a younger player of 23-24 years old who could give Arsenal 8-9 years long service. But the 3-4 years prolific service Auba could give Arsenal if he’s signed this summer will more than compensate for the loss of the extra 4 years a younger player would have given Arsenal. Auba is the 5th ranked forward in the World behind Rinaldo, Messi, Suarez and Neymar in striking in goals by my own reckoning.
If Arsenal can activate Vardy’s release clause of £20m who is already 29 years old and his resale value years is shorter than that of Auba. Save for the money that could be a little bit on the high side, I don’t see why the Boss should not bid to buy Auba this summer as Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Ateletico Madrid, Man Utd, Man City and Juventus have all shown no interest to buy him as they have already exorbitantly bought a player or players which had eaten too deep into their transfer kitties. Hence, I think they can’t buy more players this window so as to avoid not to flout the FFP rules.
I think Arsenal should not allow this golden opportunity to sign Auba pass them by but seize it with both hands to sign a productive big forward who goals scoring finishing is very high. How much will Dortmund sell him to Arsenal if Arsenal press them to submission to sell him to us? I don’t want to speculate but it shouldn’t be for one of those outrageous fee which Arsenal cannot afford to splash. I believed the fee will be reasonable moderate for Arsenal to buy him if at all they are interested in buying him.
Hmm, terrible anti-Arsenal stories out there in the media. But let Arsenal not worry. Let AFC allow the media to continue to write their anti-AFC articles. Arsenal will prevail over them all at the end of this coming season as they will not only win the Barclays Premier League title this season, but they’ll also win 2 other titles as well in addition to their winning the title.
On the transfer front, I don’t know if the Boss will still be interested to sign the said to be injured Alexandre Lacazette this window after haven his initial bid to buy him turned down by Lion his parent club. But if the Boss has dropped his interest in Lacazette, I want him to consider the signing of Pierre-Americk Aubameyang instead. Auba 27 may not tick all the 4 boxes the Boss has stated. But he has certainty ticked 3 out the 4. Auba can make up for his not been a younger player of 23-24 years old who could give Arsenal 8-9 years long service. But the 3-4 years prolific service Auba could give Arsenal if he’s signed this summer will more than compensate for the loss of the extra 4 years a younger player would have given Arsenal. Auba is the 5th ranked forward in the World behind Rinaldo, Messi, Suarez and Neymar in striking in goals by my own reckoning.
If Arsenal can activate Vardy’s release clause of £20m who is already 29 years old and his resale value years is shorter than that of Auba. Save for the money that could be a little bit on the high side, I don’t see why the Boss should not bid to buy Auba this summer as Real Madrid, Barcelona, PSG, Ateletico Madrid, Man Utd, Man City and Juventus have all shown no interest to buy him as they have already exorbitantly bought a player or players which had eaten too deep into their transfer kitties. Hence, I think they can’t buy more players this window so as to avoid not to flout the FFP rules.
I think Arsenal should not allow this golden opportunity to sign Auba pass them by but seize it with both hands to sign a productive big forward whose goals scoring finishing is very high. How much will Dortmund sell him to Arsenal if Arsenal press them to submission to sell him to us? I don’t want to speculate but it shouldn’t be for one of those outrageous fee which Arsenal cannot afford to splash. I believed the fee will be reasonably moderate for Arsenal to buy him if at all they are interested in buying him.
Just posted this on an older thread but thought it worth sharing again.
In light of recent comments, it’s interesting to see an article on the FA website written by Mike Riley saying how wonderful referees are. It gets better. Aside from a picture of Riley himself (get me a bucket) there is also a picture of one player. I bet you can’t guess which of Mike’s favourite Salford based clubs the player was from?!!!!!
Going camping with my boys for until Saturday… that’s what summer’s for…not whining about possible transfers!
Goonermikey, my 1st guess is Wayne ‘sweary’ Rooney.
A rare positive piece for Arsenal.
http://worldsoccertalk.com/2016/08/09/mohamed-elneny-proving-absolute-steal-arsenal/
Got to love this comments:
‘In a time when the regular going rate for a top quality central midfielder is around £30 million, Arsenal have somehow hit the jackpot when they pried Mohamed Elneny from Basel for just £6 million.’
And some of our fanbase need to recognize this:
‘Adding Mesut Özil, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, and Alex Iwobi to the aforementioned sextet, and the Gunners now possess one of the top overall midfields in the Premier League.’
Look at all the Alex under AW
Alexis, Alex Oxlade, Alex Iwobi, Alex Song, and Alex Hleb,
polo, gone are the days when every footballer was called Kevin, Trevor or Gary 😀
A signal for the next signing to be Alexander Lacazette maybe lol
Andy, lol true.
Let start a guessing game of which player whose name start with Alex that AW could sign in the future. So far Arsenal has an Alex from Chile, an Alex from England, and an Alex from Nigeria. He is looking at an Alex from France. I wonder how many other players out there named Alex?
Sorry off topic, but what has become of Jambug, Proudkev and Bootoomee. Have they gone for good or just taking a summer break before the action starts. Or have they got fed up with the proliferation of ‘Ruperts’ now infesting the site and given up?
I suspect you are close on the reason Proudkev and Bootoomee are gone. I think Jambug is gone because Tony seldom acknowledged his arguments.
Forever, who knows?
Yes, there are too many that just come here to be shit disturbers. They care less about football, than even the PGMO staff do (which is close to zero).
Jerry, no we are not hacked. Although everyone who works on Untold does it for free, and we do make a little income from the display adverts around the side, the cost of having the site on its own server, highly protected and with paid IT support means we do need money to keep going. An occasional paid post helps.
Here’s a clue: there is a book of mine about Arsenal which is a novel set in 1910 – called Making the Arsenal. And the hero of that story is…
Gord – I do try and limit my contributions on comments – I have the luxury of writing articles, so I think people have enough of my thoughts. I try only to drop in when the conversation is light hearted or I think it is really important to clarify a bit.
But do remember, only about 2% of the people who read Untold actually write comments.
And GoingGoingGooner – I agree, it is good not to whine about anything.
Is there any truth in the report that we’ve bid £35 millions for Mahrez? Seems like an opening bid if it’s true.
Mick/Gord
I am still around, but I must say you are very perceptive.
Yes, the Ruperts of this World are annoying. I came to this site because I enjoy talking to like minded people with a fundamental pro Wenger/Arsenal stance.
With so many alternative platforms to air there dislike for Wenger/Arsenal I fail to see why they feel compelled to come here? Perhaps they think they can lure us over to the dark side?
So yes, they severely impact on my enjoyment I get from the site.
And yes, I was/am extremely disappointed with Tony’s response, or lack of, to my posts, particularly regarding long term ‘megga’ spending.
I challenged his conclusions on this many times, with lots and lots of statistics, just as he constantly asks for, and that took me a long time to collate, and not a Dicky Bird.
Not only is this rude but frankly hypocritical.
As for Proudkev, I think it relates to an article he wrote about 4/5 Months ago in which he got a few statistics mixed up. Something I’ve done several times. It happens. I just put my hands up and address my mistake.
As I have not seen Proudkev since then perhaps he was simply ’embarrassed’. Shame. Such a great poster.
As for Bootoomee, I’m sure he posted many months ago that due to a change in his personal life he would be able to read, but seldom able to comment. Another shame because I always enjoyed his posts.
Ongoing, unless things change I can only see myself in a similar situation to Boo, reading but rarely engaging, it is just too frustrating.
Anyway, thanks for asking,
Glad Gord lured you on though Jambug,it much better here when youre around. Also Bootoome,not been the same since he went,I miss his passion.But Im glad if youre both reading at least you might post occasionally.
Urm…
…do any of you think that someone at AFC might have imagined that Gnabbers could play as some kind of forward when they snapped him up amidst all that negligence and dithering? In fact given that we know of he staggering levels of NEGLIGENCE & DITHERING, did I mention dithering or am I still dithering about the dithering? As I was saying amidst all that higher and dither how did AFC sign up young German forward who scores goals (and didn’t cost one hundred million dollars, or fifty mill in Sterling geddit boom boom it’s the Arsenal artillery firing) how did they do it?
What in the blazing saddles is going on here?
What do Arsenal think they are? Some kind of football club? And not a tanning salon in Glasgow! The chutzpah!! The delusion!!!
All this dithering is making me downright dizzy.
Problem is Finsbury if we don’t play him he’ll be off soon according to the german coach
Perhaps his coach Jogi Lowe was lying when he said that after being given a chance by the arsenal that Gnabry was on the fringes of his WC 2014 squad!?
No.
That can’t be right. Lowe must have been DITHERING.
I wasn’t trying to lure anybody. I just wrote what I thought was happening. And since my head is screwy compared to most people on emotional issues, I can easily be wrong.
On engineering issues, my head works just fine.
I am glad you are still around Jambug but it’s a shame that you do not post much anymore. Of all the comments I enjoyed yours the most: well thought out observations supported by carefully collated evidence, presented in an easy to read manner. Fantastic.
Enjoy the new season Jambug and don’t let the buggers get you down.
Jambug
Welcome back to UA.
Now dont go away.Already missing Proudkev badly.
.
Just a phrase, thats all Gord- anyway it was Mick who asked about Jambug–I was reading the comments bottom to top and missed what Mick wrote.
And agree with your 10.21pm post Mick.
Thanks lads for your kind words.
In many countries the term ….. ” that justice was not only done but seen to be done , ” is often written thus ….” that justice was only not done , but seen to be gone in .”
You know , somewhat along the lines of …..” the courts , where justice is dispensed with .”
The Brickfields Gunners Blog predicts that its knot going to be a good year for the Black Scarf Movement again . Nor for ‘them’
Sorry , just noticed the error .” ….but seen to be done in .”
I hope we finish top4. In Wenger we trust..