I am very sorry indeed that Untold has been up and down like… well you know what like.
We’re now back up again and I’ll post a piece in a moment. But please accept my apologies. You can’t begin to imagine how frustrating this has been for me.
Tony
Untold Arsenal: Supporting the club, the manager and the team
"I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art." A Wenger
So glad you’re back. I’ve been longing to ask you to explain how Liverpool and Everton are where they are in the league currently, when according to Wenger and you A.K.B.’s “we just can’t compete” with the petrodollar / oil-rich mega clubs.
Or how Athletico Madrid are currently top of the table in Spain, above the super rich clubs such as Barcelona and Real Madrid, when they ( Athletico ) are on a similar budget to Everton.
Or how Wigan were able to beat Manchester City in the F.A. Cup a while ago ?
Or how Blackburn and Bradford both with far inferior wage bills to us ( and not having sugar daddy owners ) were able to beat us in the Cups a while back ?
Or……
I am using Firefox and am still having problems. Either the page won’t load at all or I am getting incomplete pages, server temporarily unavailable, internal server error messages etc etc. Example below…
Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.
Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@untold-arsenal.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.
More information about this error may be available in the server error log.
Additionally, a 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
I also can’t enter the site with IE or Firefox. I am now using google chrome and at least I am back on the site trying to post this
I will suggest you have a bad cookie Walter. Perhaps you should delete any old cookies from UA, and then try to login again.
This is good advice, Gord. I just followed it for my Firefox browser by showing all history, highlighting a call to UA, right-clicking, and clicking on ‘Remove this site’.
Glad to have helped. 🙂
Spectrum, if you don’t know the answer to all that you know nothing about football. I could add, “or how Walsall of the Third Division North beat Arsenal who were Champions, in the FA Cup, when Arsenal were managed by Chapman.
Really, what a silly load of questions. Oh and you can ask how Arsenal went unbeaten all season while playing in front of 38000 crowds. etc etc etc.
Good to see the site up and running again!
AKBs – impart knowledge ,facts ,figures and their well reasoned arguments to enrich and educate the true supporters .We gain something by each posters well thought out and measured comments .
AAAA – Why this ? Why that ? Why Cesc ? Why Song ? Why RVP?
Why don’t YOU tell us ! Give US the benefit of your research and findings .
We all could do with a couple of laughs . Or the blissful sound of silence !
Gord,
You were right about the cookies. I removed them and now it works again. Computers….sigh… I’ll never understand them
Tony – Go on then,please tell me. And stop diverting from the issue.( Chapman’s era didn’t have oil-rich clubs,so I don’t see the relevance there). Stick to the present ( which I know you don’t feel comfortable with ), and explain why the clubs I mentioned are able to compete with and/or beat the likes of City, Chelsea and in Athletico’s case, Real and Barca. According to Wenger’s philosophy,if we’re to take it on face value, this shouldn’t be possible. These teams, with the odd exception, generally don’t spend massive amounts on players, because they DON’T HAVE massive budgets. Yet somehow regardless of this “handicap” they’ve built teams that are capable of winning the title. And in Liverpool’s case could well do so.
Doesn’t this show that Wenger’s merely using financial resources as a smokescreen to cover his own inadequacies ? It’s not just about spending power. It’s equally about QUALITY of management – and the decision making that goes with it. Wenger’s decision making ( and non-decision making ) has left us in an endless loop of underachievement considering the stature of Arsenal Football club.
And now that financial “restraints” are no longer an issue ( or do you dispute this too,despite plentiful evidence to the contrary ? ) you’d think that Wenger would be champing at the bit to spend the 100 million plus that he’s been gifted by the board. Yet his recent public statements indicate that( surprise surprise ), he’d rather keep focusing on youth. Why then, the deliberately misleading crap about “not being able to compete” with the ultra rich that he’s been repeating ad nauseam all this time ? He’s not been constrained. He’s consciously CHOSEN not to spend and therefore ( genuinely ) compete.That,combined with his personal flaws and poor judgment is why we’ve collapsed yet again.
“Injuries “! I hear you cry. Not a legitimate excuse. Yes we’ve had more than our fair share of them.But whose fault is that ? Why are we and why have we, been in this situation numerous times before ? Partly because there is evidently a problem with the medical staff not having the requisite skill to treat them effectively,( something which he as manager, is responsible for and which should have investigated and subsequently rectified, long before this ), partly because he relies on ( recklessly and unnecessarily ) winging it every season with a small first team squad* ( *Giroud forced to be our only striker for so long for example ), and partly because he runs players into the ground – due to few other options being available to him*. *Again – whose fault is that ? Brings them back before they’re ready a.k.a. Wilshere and now Ramsey e.t.c. only for them to break down, leaving us short once more.Or persisting with an unreliable perma-crock like Diaby who’s only averaged 17 games for us each season, and is costing the club a fortune. All inept management.
Spectrum,
with all respect you are wasting your and our time but here it goes in short my answer to your ‘Wenger out’ and an answer to your why, why, why:
1.Atlecico is broke. Completely broke. If I remember correct a debt of 500M euro. They only survive because the Spanish government allows them to delay a payment of some 100M euro in taxes that had to be paid a long time ago. If it would have been any other company they would have been declared bankrupt. Mind you the same goes for the other 2 Spanish clubs you mention. So it only takes a good 500M euro in debt to compete with them.
2. Liverpool is the 3rd highest spender behind Man City and Chelsea. So what are you talking about having no budget?? They outspend us completely in the last seasons. And most of the other PL clubs.
3. Everton has been seen by Man City and Chelsea as a club that might disturb the others without disturbing them. So they loan them players that can help them disturbing us. Players that cannot play against their own team of course. Even Barcelona loans them players to keep going. And Everton has been very dependent on their youth system. Shock horror terrible. As that is what Wenger has been doing and is planning to do. And what you seem to find so terrible.
4. Wenger is not a doctor. The doctors are the ones that say when a player can train and when not. If they say he can train/play then it is the medical department that makes the decision. May I point out that more than 40% of the injuries sustained by Arsenal are contact injuries. That is almost half. And that the numbers we have shown on this site have indicated that when it comes to non contact injuries we are not the worst of compared with the other teams.
5. Finally: Apply for the job. Send a letter go Gazidis. Explain you skills and I am sure that if Gazidis will read rants like this he will be completely impressed. I’m sure you are probable Pep, Klopp or even Moaninho in disguise wanting the job.
Write it today to Arsenal and you might even lead out the team in the FA cup final next month. So I wish you success with your job as the next Arsenal manager where we will win every match, where we will buy all the players in the world, where we will have no more injuries and hell who knows you even might be able to replace Riley as head of the refs and send nothing but excellent refs to Arsenal who never make mistakes that cost us points.
Finally : we know you want Wenger out. Thank you for your contribution. You will not convert many souls round here. We like to focus on the good things and not fill our lives with moaning.
Oh and forgot: just look at the numbers of fixtures Everton and Liverpool have played and compare with Arsenal. Like I said jokingly before: maybe we should finish outside the European places for once, dump ourselves out cup competitions as soon as possible. Play around 42 matches instead of 52. I does help you know.
Well at the moment it looks like we are not going to get the 4th place and CL even if we win all of out matches, that is really all we can do. Yes, no CL will be hard for Arsenal, which would not be so bad if we already had all the players we need, but in reality we need to get CL if we want to get any additional top players in summer to enhance the team.
Saying all that, Arsenal not being in the CL would be so strange for us all.
para
Yes no positives about no CL, other than the fact that last time we were in the Euefa Cup we got to the final and were only beaten by a freak goal. Also we’d be likely to get to play some different teams to the ones that usually beat us in the CL.
@Walter, 2 but if we’d wanted we could have outspent Liverpool, only we chose not to. And you see where that got us. Oh and don’t we have a far larger wage bill than Pool?
3. As far as I can see Everton have been a victim of good management. Getting loan players in to help them, how resourceful. Maybe we should have done the same to cope with all the injuries.
5. Stupid response, worthy of a Spurs fan!
@Jax, we’d still fail to win the Europa. Fourth is looking unlikely but it may not be a bad thing. The usual waste of time that is the CL will mean we can focus on the league as I imagine Wenger won’t take the Europa too seriously.
Will we miss out on stellar players? Well maybe but there’s no guarantee we’d buy any anyway. Ozil was the first but maybe he was a sop for all the angry fans who’d had enough of the club’s niggardly transfer dealings. The best players go to the mega rich European clubs and we get what’s left. Don’t think being fourth would have changed that too much.
Will Everton be able to buy better players than us even if they’re in the CL? Unlikely and if they do we must really wonder what’s going on. They don’t have a worldwide respected manager or our financial clout. Same goes for Pool.
Manu will be our main threat in the market because they may have the will to spend big depending on whether the Glazers have the courage to do so. They have the “brand” name but that is somewhat counteracted by Moyes being a nothing manager.
Interesting summer awaits.
Walter Broeckx – A pretty feeble rebuttal on your first point re. Athletico Madrid and their debt situation. Surely the fact that they are struggling financially, ( and badly ) underlines EVEN MORE the point I was making, rather than diminishing it ? If Wenger says he “can’t compete” on the resources that OUR club has, HOW MUCH MORE of an achievement is it for Athletico to do so with a 500 million DEBT around their necks ? Very considerable, I’d say, wouldn’t you ? So as money / spending clearly ISN’T the issue*,( *that misleading LIE has been exposed and can now be put to bed ) …..what other factors might be involved, I wonder ?
I didn’t say that Liverpool had NO budget. That’s your misinterpretation. They made better use of their budget with the odd exception as I said i.e. they paid too much for Carroll,( but that was under Dalglish if I remember correctly ? )You could also argue that they paid too much for Henderson, but he’s been playing very well for them since. And what of the outstanding shrewd purchase like Suarez and Sturridge e.t.c. ? They net outspent us because they displayed AMBITION, and were determined to emerge from their barren spell with a trophy.In other words, they “walked the walk” and didn’t just “talk the talk” as our complacent stale board and manager have. And it is paying off for them in spades.
Finally, advising me to become a manager myself is a poor cop out. That’s an easy way to deflect and avoid answering the pertinent questions.I venture to say that many of us “armchair fans” the ones Wenger arrogantly calls ” those who haven’t worked a day in football” would do a better job and make fewer mistakes than Wenger is doing. Because some of his decisions are lacking in common sense and bordering on the bizarre at times. Why for instance, against Wigan, would you take off Podolski – who has 100 caps for Germany, and leave on a raw inexperienced novice in Sanogo, who is out of his depth and ineffective, despite his enthusiasm ? That’s just ONE example, and one which Wenger was rightly booed for. Examples like this don’t take a coaching certificate to understand. It’s plain common sense.
Wenger isn’t a doctor, agreed. But it appears from his player selections that he either ignores or overrules his medical dept.’s advice on some occasions. Why else would he bring players back in to the side when they’re obviously not completely ready ? He even admitted this himself in the case of Wilshere, not that long ago.It’s probably because he’s FORCED TO, due TO HIS OWN NEGLECT in not forseeing this from PREVIOUS SEASONS in which the exact same scenarios occurred !!! Yes, I said FROM PREVIOUS SEASONS – this IS NOT a NEW phenomenon, though from reading some posts on here, you’d think it was. He never learns ! He never prepares !
Rupert,
2. but Liverpool might face problems with FFP regulations as they have recorded big losses
3. Do you really think that Mourinho would have loaned Lukaku to Arsenal Rupert? Seriously? Or sold us Mata? Seriously? I know you will now mention RVP. Well that is something that shows that Wenger is not only a good manager but also probably the only decent human being amongst the managers.
5. Stupid response. and I will not even bother to try to insult you.
Rupert Cook @10.10 a.m. – Exactly. You said it before I could.
Spectrum,
when Atletico goes the way Glasgow Rangers has walked you will probably understand what it means.
Arsenal CANNOT allow themselves to rank up a debt of 500M. Surely it would win us a few cups before we can sit back and remember how we all went towards the cliff and fell of it with our hands full of silverware that now lie down at the bottom broken to pieces.
So go ahead spend the fucking money we have and even some more. Do like Chelsea and City. As if there is no tomorrow. Well you should check: we don’t have a sheikh, we don’t have a owner who uses the club as a computer game because he is probably bored from counting his money and has nothing better to do with it.
If you don’t like the way the club has been run: fine. But never expect me to support Arsenal going that way. You probably dream of doing it that way. Not me. My local team had once such a rich man who made the club his toy. Oh how nice it was when we made 2 promotions in a row, made the 3rd and then the owner was put in jail, the club suddenly with no more money and barely survived it and now is still feeling the consequences.
So I know what it’s like to see your favourite (be it local) club going through such a thing. Believe me no real supporter will want such a thin happening at Arsenal. Unless you are a glory hunter. Willing to risk the whole future of the club you pretend to support just to being able to brag about it.
I think it was Al who made the point a few days ago that we seem to get a couple of new AAAs posting every two or three days – a bit like organized rotational fouling – Spectrum seems to be the latest of these.
Every time one of these rotational AAAs pots up the rupert (MCAAA – member of the corrosive AAA) is there to to help fertilize the anti Arsenal propaganda. What a waste of time and space.
Walter – I admire your patience.
The notion that Arsenal could go out and buy whomsoever they want is one that seems to underline a lot of debate. If you think that is true, then of course that’s it, you think that it is true, and so your argument is complete.
Personally I can see many reasons why it is not true – simply because the player has to want to move, the club has to want to sell, and the agent has to agree it all, and other clubs can readily hi-jack the move through all the mechanisms outlined on this site something like two years ago when we did a whole series of articles on it. Indeed last September with the Ozil transfer I outlined how I thought Arsenal had countered these manoeuvres and how the whole transfer was possible because of Ozil’s belief in Wenger.
The evidence that we have shows clearly that what is printed in the media and repeated by those who choose to believe it, is far from the truth. Clubs and agents lie about what is going on, and indeed this year we have had Liverpool coming out and admitting it openly. that comment to me is just the tip of the iceberg.
So really, this is the basic point: if you believe that Arsenal can go and buy the players they want, without anything getting in the way, fine. I am sure there is some evidence for that view somewhere. If you don’t fine; this site has presented the evidence on what the problem is.
I am not sure what the evidence is to suggest that Arsenal could go and get whoever they want without the deal being hi-jecked by a club that says to the player, “whatever Arsenal’s salary offer is, we’ll double it” but if that’s what you believe, so be it.
However the news is filtering through this morning that Man City and PSG plus 18 other clubs are going to be sanctioned because of FFP, and that Chelsea need to repeat last year’s turnaround of their finances to stay in the clear. If that is so and they like Barcelona are debarred from signing players, that certainly could help.
Site willing, there will be an article on this later today.
bjtgooner,
patience is my middle name 😉
FFP, we’ll see if that’s got any teeth. Let’s hope so.
@Walter, did I ever suggest I wanted Chelsea to loan us Lukaku? Sure he’s better than Giroud presently but I don’t believe Chelsea would loan us anyone. We couldn’t even get Ba and he’s not that great. That chap from Barca Everton have looks ok though. I wasn’t going to mention RVP but since you bring it up………….well you know the argument but one wonders how bright it is to sell your best striker for a pittance compared to the amount you’ll then have to invest to buy one of equal stature. Hardly great business sense. Oh but he’d go on a free but would he when he saw Ozil being bought and Fergie retire? Guess we’ll never know.
@Tony, we know all this and yes we know how hard it is to sign players or at least Arsenal make it appear so. But why on earth do you think that the minute we’re interested in signing someone another club will suddenly hijack the deal? Is this why we buy so many average players, the latest looking like he’s not up to it being Monreal? I notice nobody scuppered the Ozil deal and he is one of the best players in the world so I guess it only happens every now and then. You see I always thought if your theory is correct that Wenger should show great interest in really average players and then all these gazumpers could buy themselves a load of dross. Clever eh? Or maybe Wenger has tried this and nobody fell for it which is why we ended up with Chamakh, Park, Squillaci and all the rest.
We all have some relevant points for and against in these debates but I guess the argument is only really won when we see what happens on the pitch. We may miss out on fourth but we may have an FA Cup trophy. I know which I want more. Seems the majority of fans interviewed after the semi-final agree, a real trophy trumps a virtual one.
Tony – We absolutely CAN buy anyone we want ( within reason of course ). All those reasons you gave why it supposedly isn’t easy, while there is some truth to them, are the SAME potential problems faced by every other team in the world, not just Arsenal.Yet they seem to cope okay. They don’t have as many problems and pitfalls and “bad luck” in transfer negotiations as Wenger does.Wenger hates spending. He prefers to build a team HIS WAY, through signing promising youngsters and unknown or little known senior players ( normally cheap bargain buys from Ligue 2 in France for example ). This is why we lack depth and quality, despite him saying he will only bring in players who are top, top top, quality, and who are better than what we already have.”
Can we afford them ? Yes. Do we have THE WILL to buy them ? more often than not, no.
From 26th February 2013 – ( quote ); “Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood insists they can compete for the very best players in this summer’s transfer market.
Yesterday the club revealed a half-year pre-tax profit to the end of November of £17.8m and cash reserves of £123.3m.
Hill-Wood told the Daily Star: “We are in a position where we can compete with most people. If there is someone we really want, then the price guide is secondary.”
From Danny Fiszman way back in 2007 !!! ( quote ) ; “We are in a very strong financial situation and if he [Arsene] wanted to spend £100m, he could. he decides whether a players fee and salary is worth it. It is his decision and his decision only.”
Arsene Wenger from 11th January 2013 – ( quote ) ; ….“The second thing; can we afford them? Most of them, yes. A few of them, no. Can you afford Messi today? Certainly not. But we can afford 90 per cent of them.”
Then Tony, you said : “I am not sure what the evidence is to suggest that Arsenal could go and get whoever they want without the deal being hi-jacked by a club that says to the player, “whatever Arsenal’s salary offer is, we’ll double it”. Sure, that happens. But that doesn’t mean we still can’t build a team to challenge those kind of clubs. I’ve just shown you that it is possible to compete without necessarily being a mega rich – mega spending mentality. So that argument is redundant.
Rupert
RVP wanted the same status that Rooney now enjoys at ManU… Ie..Bigger than the club. There was no way that was going to happen, and wouldn’t have happened at ManU either if Ferguson was there. RVP wanted input and insights into transfer targets, he wanted a ridiculous pay package, he wanted to leave and go to only ManU, and to accomplish this he released a statement meant to ensure Arsenal would struggle to hold him to his contract. In terms of pure business, Arsenal made the best of a bad situation. Emotionally it is tougher, but blame RVP for that, not Arsenal.
And as for Ozil, PSG did try to ‘hijack’ the deal, but Ozil preferred to move to us. In his own words, this was due to a) Arsene Wenger and the belief he showed in him (Remember Wenger wanted him before he went to Madrid) and b) the ambitions and plans he outlined for the club’s future. Basically, Ozil chose to come to us, despite having other options, where in all likelihood he would have earned more money. Not every footballer would choose that option, most wouldn’t I think. And hence being ‘gazumped’ is a likely possibility, especially because Chelsea in particluar have been using their funds to take away targets from potential rival clubs, (Willian from Spurs, Salah from Liverpool) and using the loan market to hurt their rivals (Lukaku, not loaning Ba to us – fair enough, but the point stands that they are doing it)
Even I would pick the FA Cup ahead of 4th this season, especially with the circumstances as they are. That doesn’t mean I would have made the same choice all the previous seasons. We needed the money then. We still do now, but to a lesser extent.
Spectrum I have published one of your long commentaries, but I’m stopping now. All you are doing is reiterating the same points which we have heard before, and so it is a bit boring.
What you also do is focus on one element – for example can we afford to buy a player – and answer that quite reasonably in parts, but then draw the conclusion from that that everything else in your argument follows.
You ignore the other points made in various articles, such as the issue of agents, the issue of the negative impact on the club of the AAA and the media which most other clubs don’t have, the statistics on referee decisions, the historical impact of the AAA on the club which as shown elsewhere dates back to the 19th century and continues to this day, and so on.
So that is your position. We have heard it. This is a site set up to counter those views – and you have had your say. So time to stop.