About Untold

Untold Arsenal is edited by Tony Attwood, who is the Committee Member of Arsenal Independent Supporters Association in charge of the Arsenal History project, a season ticket holder at Arsenal, author of “Making the Arsenal” – the story of Arsenal in 1910, and editor of the Arsenal History Website.  Tony has been an occasional contributor to the Arsenal.com website and was the co-author of the first ever regular history column in the Arsenal official matchday magazine.  You can read more about Tony on  his own personal website.   Just in case you are interested.

We welcome articles from anyone interested in Untold Arsenal and its themes and ideas.  Just email the article as a word file to Tony@schools.co.uk

Untold Arsenal’s mission from the start was

1.  To support the club.

2.  To cover football stories – particularly those with a relevance to Arsenal – which are not covered fully or (in our view) accurately covered elsewhere.  This particularly includes stories on the economics of football, which we see as being central to the state of football at the moment, and about refereeing.

3.  To celebrate the history of Arsenal and of football in general, expanding awareness of that history, and correcting errors in the statement of that history that have been put about by supporters of one other club (which for the moment shall remain nameless), particularly through the History of Arsenal site.

4.  To give complete positive support to the players of Arsenal – including all those presently on the staff.

5.  To expose and report on corruption in football at all levels – from Fifa downwards.

6.  To explore and develop (on occasion) the humour of football.

7.  To cover stories and write in ways that are not covered or used in other publications.  Hence “Untold”.

8.  And to do anything else that which appears to be a good idea at the time.

If you can think of anything else we ought to do and which fits with these ambitions, please do let us know.

The anti-Wenger challenge

In the early days of this site our challenge was to counter the “Fourth is not a trophy” criticism of Mr Wenger by those who suggested that a new manager was needed so that Arsenal would win more trophies.  Neither then runners’ up slot in 2016 nor the three FA Cups of 2014, 2105, and 2017 silenced this movement.  Placards were displayed, and banners flown behind aircraft, while AFTV and the media launched a remorseless attack on Arsenal, its manager and its players.

Untold opposed this, as we the high level of activity in the transfer market, all at one time, and indeed published figures to show how virtually every club that changed managers then suffered a downturn.  Similarly we showed how virtually every club that spent record sums on players at one go, suffered a downturn.

This is what happened.

We still support the club, but we still believe that regular changes of manager and spending ever more sums on transfers is not the way forward.  Some transfers are of course helpful, from Bergkamp to Martinelli this has proven to be the case, but neither changing managers and constantly bringing in more and more expensive players rarely works for clubs.

Arsenal face constant negativity from the media in the way that no other club seems to.  Mr Wenger was brilliant at ignoring this, and the board let him do it his way.  He also found brilliant low-cost players, as Arsenal have done again with Martinelli.  But he was given a stable club.

Now sadly the lessons of stability seem to have gone while those waved the placards appear not to have realised that it was their activities that have undermined the club.  A long term stable management based on the Wenger approach could restore Arsenal’s fortunes, but the ceaseless whinging of  the media and their card carrying allies is certainly making this ever harder to achieve.