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The Christmas gift for the fan with (almost) everything
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By Tony Attwood
A simple and short post, but one that rather makes a point.
- Radio Times, page 53. Chelsea v Arsenal. Ashley Cole will get an earful from the home fans on his return to Arsenal.
- Radio Times, page 61. The Blues have started the season bullishly while the Gunners have be misfiring.
And just to add to the mix, The Guardian web site
- Chelsea form guide Form guide LWWWLW
- Arsenal form guide Form guide WWLWLW
Match pointers:
Arsenal have won none of their last eight away matches, their worst run since 1992
Err Udinese? Marseille?
Of course we can work out what these guys mean, but it is just the sheer sloppy stupidness of it all that gets me. Chelsea lost to QPR, Arsenal have won three of the last four league games, and six out of the last seven. The form guide of both clubs is identical over the last six league matches, and yet they can’t admit it.
I know as well as you that stats and records don’t mean we are going to win or lose, but really… why does the media do this? Goodness knows what they will say next as they come to take in Mr Wenger’s attack on them at the AGM.
- UNTOLD AT THE AGM: What Mr Wenger really said
- UNTOLD AT THE AGM: Silent Stan’s Greatest Joke
- HISTORY: Arsenal after the first world war – Alex Graham
- THE SUPPORT: Let’s fight and support the fight
- Man U 1 Man C 6: The ref can get it right when he tries.
- MEDIA WATCH: From a one man team to a club in crisis!
I have a feeling Wenger is on the verge of silencing his critics.
We have seen a pattern corresponding to our improvement in form, a pattern from questioning the managers mental health etc to the current one man team, and all this sort of stuff you mention now things have picked up again.
If we lose at Chelsea and say Spurs and Liverpool happen to win relatively easy fixtures, the media bashing will probably ramp up to levels seen 6 or so weeks ago.
Whatever this team does, they will be bashed. If, as I predict this season and they finish in a CL spot with some domestic cup type silverware, the media stance will be along the lines of… finally Wenger wins something…. took him a while…. but he cannot rest on his laurels as RVP/ Wilshere / Song / Theo / Ox / Ches / TV / Kos / Gibbs / Frimpong /Coq / Afobe are about to leave. Boardroom fighting will erupt, they will read something into a 6 year old paparazzi holiday snap and Ian Wright / Stewart Robson / Merson / Adams will predict dire times ahead. Fergie would never have allowed it. Wenger has lost the plot. Too much reliance on youth, no British steel. Should have signed Scotty Parker, gawd bless’im. Only Dein can save us. PHW is directly hurting the teams performance. Pat Rice is a yes man. Wengers dithering cost us Eto , Ronaldo, Drogba, Alonso.
You know it is coming, whatever this team do between now and May. Maybe someone should devise an anti Arsenal cliche bingo type game.
Does anybody know why the media mislead the public about us? For example, who the editors/producers of these football columns and shows and who do they support? Or is it just that we are quite a private club (not announcing who we intend to sign, how much money we have etc?) and don’t give them anything to write about?
please use a proper email in future Admin
mandy dodd,
couldnt agree more, we cant do anything right in the eyes of the media.
i so desperately hope that we smash chelsea tomorrow and have a successful season whatever that means these days, even if it is just to ram it down the throats of all the anti arsenal pundits like you mentioned.
i would absolutely love it!!
Tony,
Point taken, but I would hardly read either rag in a search for info on football. As my Gran (who cleans at the Emirates) often says “If you want to be told, log on to Untold”.
@nicky,
i love your gran, she’s the cats whiskers!
@tony,
i feel short changed by the length of the article, paradoxically i also wish the press would follow your brilliant example here and cut out the filler!
befuddled of kampala.
they are agents of the devil ,,they hate good & like evil ,,we will prove them wrong !!
My prediction re the press and Van Persies ‘refusal’ to sign a contract extension.
If Van Persie were to sign a new 5 year contract extension tomorrow far from silencing the press experts, they would then start on the “well of course we all know that contracts are not worth the paper they are written on, look at Fabregas, he had years to run on his but it didn’t stop him leaving”.
@Jamie,
Money, blatantly. Madrid and Barca are conducting a footballing economic experiment to find out if a team of mercenaries can stop a team with a shared ideology and unified sense of purpose combined with above average talent. Meanwhile the Spanish TV rights are basically worthless and 18 teams are essentially bankrupt.
If you see the total economic value of the EPL, you’ll see that big clubs are supposed to spunk huge amounts of cash buying the ‘best’ players from smaller clubs and small clubs are there to make up the numbers and groom superstars before their big money move. Short term pain for long term gain just doesn’t fit the template.
Ooh yeah, and wait for sky sports, the commentary and the analysis, you see we made a a pretty number of enemies with the incincibles and since then, it’s been us against the FA, media, Does it surprise any one that no young foreign player seems to be able to get a special talent work permit at Arsenal?
Well if you are after good football coverage … don’t read the Guardian. It is mainly for luvvies and lefties.
Have a look at this article BTW. This is some ‘Top team of the season’ collection put together.
http://www.teamtalk.com/columns/7270810/TT-s-top-Premier-League-performers
Even in that, in a positive article, the editor finds a way to take a dig at Arsenal. Everyone else – only positive. Arsenal? Take a dig.
Why knock Arsenal? It has puzzled me for years, and it was only in doing the research for the new book: (“Woolwich Arsenal: the club that changed football” – out early next year) that I finally found the answer.
It has to do with our name, our perceived arrogance, our insistence on doing things properly…
I’ll write a whole piece on it shortly, but meanwhile it is also worth bearing in mind that knocking a team without doing research is the simplest and cheapest form of media, and we all know that the journalists don’t do their research. (Did you catch that dumbo who kept calling Aldershot “Torquay” the other night).
More on the theme later (although you might like to know that in the very early days of the club we had a massive support across the country, but no trophies. We lost it when we started winning things).
As for The Guardian’s coverage of the Arsenal Holdings AGM, it was more than somewhat out-of-kilter. It would seem to me that Lawrence and Hytner are employed to fulfil the Equal Opportunities Quota at The Guardian.
Lawrence has to rely on the likes of Arsenal Times “quislings” and Hytner has no knowledge of commercial dealings. He added up the sales and deducted the purchases and is ignorant of VAT and Agents’ fees incurred in those transactions.
Thank you Anne for pointing out the editing of the BBC, who like The Guardian have betrayed their original ethos, unlike The Arsenal!
Take your point about our away results in Europe-but you cannot deny the facts about our poor start this season especially away from home in the EPL. Your complaints about Guardian journalists are exaggerated-but are not without some foundation-but overall luvvies and lefties are more sympathetic to the Arsene approach than the people who write in the right wing rags that Chris from Cambridge reads.They have not written the club off because they don’t have a free spending Oligarch running them. I have listened as well as read a number of Amy Lawrence’s pieces during the last few years and I think her views concord with the mainstream of Arsenal supporters-and she is by no means excessively skeptical. She like the rest of Arsenal fans (except perhaps the hard core of pro Wengerites on this site), need to start believing success is possible again -and that will happen when the team starts wining away games in the EPL again. That with any luck will be soon.
goonergerry,
Your recall of Guardian coverage this season is completely wrong. To set the record straight, this season, it is only WHEN Amy Lawrence was assigned the Arsenal beat that she filed mainstream Arsenal pieces with balance. That is, up until two weeks ago, the Arsene Out drumbeat was on full tilt and that was carried by David Hytner, and two others as you might recall from multiple articles on this website. To say that Untold Media has been off track and exaggerated on Guardian coverage is complete bollocks, misinformation, or you were asleep.
I heard the BBC World Service sports round up on Friday 25. Nov 2011 at 15.05 GMT. ‘
It began: ‘Its back to the domestic programme for English clubs after defeat in Europe’
The speaker then spoke of Man C plight with comments form Mancini. Then spoke of Manure with comments from SAF. Chelsea and their plight were then reviewed. There followed comments about the impending Liver – Newcastle match plus an expected win for Totty.
The report ended (and I kid you not): ‘Arsenal who made it into Europe and play Fulham on Saturday, should not under estimate their opponents.’
That puts Arsenal in its place! So little does it know about football that it has to be warned by the all knowing BBC.
As if AW, the coaches and the players would under estimate their opponents when the team are on a winning run and showing the determination that only winners have.
I suppose Arsenal and its fans should be grateful that the BBC did acknowledge that Arsenal is in the next round of the champions League,
Regarding the qualification, BBC ran an article with the headline “Wenger shocked by early qualification”. The quote in the headline was Wenger saying he was surprised by it (Arsenal being so far the only English club to qualify) and that considering where we came from at the start of the season, overall he is happy. But of course, the headline suggests that even Wenger didn’t expect Arsenal to get through with a game to spare, and he is SHOCKED that they have.
They also ran a separate piece where the headline is “Van Persie proves his worth again” and the sub heading is “Arsenal indebted again to striker” This was by chief football writer Phil Mcnulty. Indebted??
As far as I can recall, the BBC took a turn for the worse fairly recently. After all it did run quotes from Untold before that. But just from memory, the first time I noticed some frankly ridiculous headlines and articles regarding Arsenal appearing on the BBC, was around the same time that SIR Alex Ferguson and the BBC ended their dispute and came to an understanding. Not saying there is a definite connection, but I just think it was around the same time.