Editorial note: apologies for this site going off line for a while in recent days. I’m painfully aware of this, and am doing all I can to get it fixed.
By Sir Hardly Anyone
To me, it is fairly clear that Arteta has been an ideal signing as manager – not just because he knows what he is doing and is good at it, but because the board of the club bought into his policies and allowed him to finish the league in eighth position twice, without any threat of him being sacked.
Then when the media were in a frenzy about Arsenal absolutely needing to get into the Champions League and Arsenal then finished fifth, the club still stayed with him even though the media said he was not good enough.
Arteta’s plan, you will recall included not only bringing in players but getting rid of players wholesale, even if it meant releasing the players with no compensatory transfer payment back to Arsenal. Clearly the owners still bought into his plan, Clearly. there was a unity of approach.
More to the point Arsenal have since then closed the gap on those above and opened a gap on those below.
Lett us consider by way of example Arsenal and the media’s favourites, Tottenham Hotspur of who Postecoglou said “‘Usually in my second season I win things'”
| Pos | Team | F | A | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Arsenal 2024 | 91 | 29 | 62 | 89 |
| 5 | Tottenham Hotspur 2024 | 74 | 61 | 13 | 66 |
Arsenal scored 17 goals more than Tottenham, conceded 32 goals fewer, had GD 49 better and got 23 more points than Tottenham last season.
The season before(2022/23) Arsenal scored 18 more goals conceded 20 fewer and thus had a goal difference 38 better and finished 24 points better off.
Let’s go back again to the season before that: 202021/22. In this season Tottenham finished above Arsenal in the league, scoring eight more goals, and conceding eight fewer, thus having a 16-goal difference better, but despite all that only hada two point lead over Arsenal
Thus Arteta has delivered not only a team challenging for the title but a team doing better than the local rivals.
Now if you have not been supporting Arsenal very long you may not realise that for many a long year the big rivalry was between Arsenal and Manchester United. So let’s do the same comparison again.
This past season Arsenal scored 34 goals more than Manchestser United and conceded 29 fewer. That led to a difference in goal difference of 63 and a points difference of 29.
Of course the media’s favourites are now always Liverpool so let’s consider them as well. This season Arsenal scored five more goals, conceded 12 fewer and thus had a goal difference 17 better off than Liverpool while picking up seven more points.
Go back to 2021/22 and Liverpool, under apparently the greatest manager of all time, scored 33 more goals than Arsenal, conceded 22 fewer goals and thus had a goal difference that was 55 goals better off than Arsenal, with Arsenal getting 33 fewer points than Liverpool. Lasts season Arsenal scored 7 more points and had a goal difference 17 better than Liverpool.
So on all fronts Arsenal has had this dramatic improvement not just on their own record but in terms of rival teams such as Liverpool and Manchester United, who were always previously used as a stick with which to beat Arsenal.
As a result of these improvements, players seem to be very happy to come and improve their trade at Arsenal. The improvement in Havertz form, the evolution of Saliba from youngster to key player, the development of Odegaard, and Arsenal having the best goalkeeper in the league all point to Arsenal being the go-to club.
As a result Arsenal can pick and choose who they want in the transfer window, while clubs like Chelsea are having to explain away their chaos, and Tottenham is having to extol the virtues of the stadium rather than the team.
So the media continue to expect more signings and one suspects that Arteta wants a player, his stock is now so high, the owners will provide the cash (providing FFP doesn’t get in the way). To help with these the youth teams are being turned into farms developing players who can be sold on and thus reduce the issues surrounding the finances.
So there is an expectation that Real Sociedad’s Mikel Merino will sign for Arsenal in the near future. The transfer is said to be “just around the corner” – and indeed maybe even have happened while I was buying a pint of milk. According to those who regularly make this stuff up “Personal terms on a four-year deal are in place.” We shall see and “Confirmation of a total agreement is expected at some stage this week, with widespread reports stating the deal will cost a total of €35m/£29.8m,” according to TeamTalk.
That quite possibly will be that with those craving for Arsenal to have a goal scoring centre forward finally getting to grips with the fact that last season in all the main competitions Saka scored 20, Trossard got 17, Havertz 14 and Odegaard 11. Indeed we could be seeing quite a goal fest this year even without the centre forward demanded by those who don’t seem to realise that Arsenal got 91 goals last season.
The tone in your articles really does you no credit. It is sometimes embarassing to read.
Who cares if the press say good stuff about Liverpool, or Tottenham, or anyone else. Protesting so much about apparent bias, your pieces are often guilty of exactly the obsession that you accuse the media of.
Just write about football…not the media.
Its boring
Rather more boring Mr Banks is that you keep on writing in about our commentaries in the media. I will try to explain to you just one more time but after that I’ll see if we can’t avoid publishing any more of your repetitive comments.
My view is that the way in which many people see football is heavily influenced by the what is and equally important what is not, publsihed on the subject. Both the choices of topics to cover and the bias universarlly found in these articles, innfluences thoe way people see the game.
By pointing this out I hope that in some cases football fans may see the way the media chooses and reports its stories is biaased and serves the prupose of promoting a certain point of view. I feel that many football fans don’t realise how biased much football joujrnalism is and thus extra examples can help.
But the boring bit does come from you, in my opinion, so awhile you are quite welcome to comment in any other way further comments about Untold Arsenal being obsessed etc etc will not be published.
Most publications don’t give a warning to readers in this way, I do because I try to be fair.
I see the media have been pushing “Sterling to Arsenal” stories again during the last 3 days. I can’t see Arsenal being willing to dig Chelsea out of this £80 million PSR financial black hole. I wonder why the media are doing this.
For the last three weeks, I’ve been seeing lots of headlines similar to “Merino to Arsenal deal will be completed in the next hours”. “Next” has been doing some heavy-lifting here, in a similar manner to the clichéed “guru”. I make it over 500 hours and counting. If I had a pound for every time I saw this, I’d be able to afford a decent night in the pub, even at today’s prices.
The Express are struggling with their clickbait again – “Mikel Merino to suffer immediate Arsenal setback after Mikel Arteta’s £32.5m breakthrough”. The “setback” being the unavailability of the number 8 shirt. This headline has also been recycled many times over the last 3 weeks.
And here’s another example of what Tony is talking about regarding how the media, in this case The Sun, still cant resist putting a negative spin on something involving Arsenal. This is their headline:
MAKING MERI DEAL Mikel Merino transfer fee revealed as former Newcastle flop edges closer to shock Arsenal transfer.
Another headline of course could of been:
MAKING MERI DEAL Mikel Merino transfer revealed as Euro Champ edges closer to dream Arsenal transfer.
I mean, both are subjective but hold about equal validity, but one puts a negative spin on it and one a positive, but of course the Sun goes with the negative spin.
And it is this eternal negativity aimed at Arsenal that is just one of the things that Tony, Untold, myself and many other regulars constantly try to highlight because it is not just ‘innocent clickbait journalism’ it is an insidious, relentless attempt to undermine, criticise, and agitate Arsenal football club and their fans.
If certain people cant see that, and the importance of counteracting it, that says more about their ignorance and apathy than it ever does about Untold Arsenal.