By Tony Attwood
North Korea is apparently a fairly awful place where the populace is reduced to near starvation as the family that runs the show spends money on itself, its army, its propaganda and nuclear weapons.
How do I know this? Because I read it in the papers and I saw it on TV. I’ve never been to the country of course; it’s just what most people who write or talk about North Korea in the media say about the country.
In fact much of what I know is like this. I know that Venezuela, despite being oil rich is in a mess. That human rights are in fairly short supply in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, etc and that Iceland has a beautiful landscape and is bloody cold. I haven’t actually verified any of this personally, but still I think “I know”.
Which is why I spend so much time worrying about the state of football, because what I experience in terms of football – what I know through my own personal involvement in the game – is utterly different from what I am told by newspapers, radio and TV.
The trouble is I’ve written about this so many times that I suspect that by now my readership level is down to about five, so if you are one of the five, great to have you along. And if I may explain, I’m back to the story because the disconnect between my own experience of football and what I read about, hear and see in the media is now so vast it is sometimes as if I had gone to North Korea and found a green and pleasant land where everyone had plentiful food, luxury goods, wonderful spacious houses, fabulous community football resources, and the total freedom to say pretty much what they wanted.
And then along comes tennis.
There is a huge story circulating in professional tennis to the effect that some 16 players ranked in the top 50 have been repeatedly reported to the Tennis Integrity Unit with strong suspicions they have thrown matches. These players include winners of Grand Slam titles, but all were allowed to continue competing and are still doing so.
So that is around a third of top tennis players who are reported to be fixing matches. Since there are two players in a match, and since the match fixing originates with gamblers, who aren’t going to fix both players at once, then if we took 100 top matches anything between 33% and 66% of those games were fixed.
Now this has apparently been going on for rather a long time. But my point here is not that tennis is fixed, but rather that the issue that tennis might be fixed has not been debated by the media. My suspicion as to why is the same as always – because the media that might unravel the story is the same media that has spent lots of money paying for the rights to report tennis.
Most democratic societies rely on their media to weed out corruption and bad practice, so this close relationship between media and sports systems that might be corrupt is thoroughly dangerous. This is not just because there might not be investigative journalism where there should be, but also because the financial relationship between the sport and the media also leads to excessively lazy reporting.
Take the issue of injuries in football – the common talk for years has been that Arsenal get the most and that Wenger must be to blame. It took the BBC (a news agency in part, but with a tendency still to do some very decent investigative work without being hauled back by the part of the Corporation that negotiates sporting rights) to show that the actual figures were completely wrong, and Arsenal were actually very average in terms of injury to players in the Premier League.
Now this led to one correspondent of Untold to ask a very pertinent question about the source of these revised figures, pointing out what appeared to be an error in their statistics. I answered his point on line, but it led me to do some more digging to understand exactly what definition there is of a player being injured or not.
I won’t bore you stupid by going through the details, but my point is, this is just Untold, a regular web site run by a few Arsenal fans with limited resources, and yet we have been suggesting for years that the injury story must have deeper elements to it than are reported. Fortunately someone at the BBC finally took the issue up and now we know a lot more. But why did this revelation have to wait for us to come along?
And since I am asking questions, where else is the reporting all going wrong because journalists won’t or can’t ask the right questions?
Remember all the “Arsenal the only major club in Europe not to buy an outfield player in the summer” story. Maybe that was true – I have no idea if it was or not – but the implication that this was a disaster and down to stupidity and incompetence was everywhere.
Worse, following that, and following Arsenal’s success this season, no one is investigating whether buying a lot of players is a good thing or whether Arsenal was right to hold back. Untold’s league table showing the amount spent on transfers v the position in the league suggests there is not much positive link between the two – but a full scale research project on this would be very welcome.
We know that Liverpool has been buying 10 players a season for years, and still can’t get out of mid-table – and yet the media still focus on transfer, transfer, transfer – and suddenly that image of a happy pleasant North Korea comes to mind. Transfer good. No transfer bad. Transfer good. No transfer bad. Transfer … well, you get the idea.
Then there is the eternal issue of referees. I read a piece just recently about a manager who was very unhappy about the way a ref had acted in a match. The report ended by saying the manager “was not a happy bunny”. It’s a phrase that removes all seriousness from the manager’s complaints, and which portrays him as being like a little child who has had a favourite toy taken away. It’s the latest way of throwing in “it all even’s out in the end”.
We also know that this season could see more managerial moves in England than ever before – but even though some of the media is reporting this, none of them is comparing managerial movement with club success. The Wenger out approach has at its base the assumption that another manager would do better than Mr Wenger and the proof of that is …. none. But I can’t recall too many media reports that follow that line.
Or take the fact that Mesut Özil won the German player of the year award for 2015 just as he did in 2011, 2012 and 2013. The reaction to that was a) did Arsenal fans fix the voting and b) how could he be player of the year, given that he was poor against Southampton? Apart from the number of pushes in the back the player got in that match, which were not punished by the ref, no one seemed to question whether a measurement over a year could be compared with a measurement over one match!
I could go on and on about the disconnects between the football world I experience and the football world reported by the media, but I suspect my audience of five is already down to three. So I’ll summarise.
The fight for video refs – so obviously needed, and yet an issue the media is strangely quiet about much of the time. The entire issue of PGMO, an organisation of fundamental power but whose existence you would probably not know about unless it was for Untold and a few other sites. But why the silence?
The way in which time wasting is always cut out of football on TV – even live football on TV – to make the game appear ever more exciting, when in fact one side is doing all it can to stop it being even mildly interesting. And while we are on that, the way TV will of course accept no responsibility for the fact that some grounds are fundamentally unsafe because of where the cameras are placed in pits near the goals.
What is actually going on in Spanish football resulting in three teams now being banned from transfers. What did Barcelona et al do to these children? Child abuse is normally front page news in England. Why not here?
Some issues the media can’t miss – like Fifa – although they ran very little on the subject until it hit them in the face. But even now most papers won’t face up to the intricate link between the FA and Fifa, nor to the FA’s enormous failings and its rank stupidity. Which is why they still accept the notion that having more English players in the Premier League might help football, and why they won’t cover the appalling decline in grassroots football facilities in England. Why they don’t cover the mass redundancies made by the FA, and its inept finances. It’s a bloody monopoly guys – it ought to be able to make money, not lose it!
And so, my one dedicated remaining reader, I have bored you enough. But just think on this. Is the football you know and you see, actually the football that is reported in the media. Or could it actually be that North Korea is a green and pleasant land of plenty?
In terms of North Korea, I seriously doubt it. But in terms of football, I know for sure, the football that is all around me, is not the football that is on TV, the radio or the press, any more than it is the football reported in Sir Hardly Anyone’s bloggettas.
Maybe that’s why Untold got over 6 million page views in the past 12 month. Maybe the readership is more than just you after all.
You might also enjoy
- How a gap in the story can give a totally misleading vision: the youngsters who don’t make it at Arsenal.
- Stoke – Arsenal: not losing and keeping your best players fit was the task
- The second deal of the transfer window is just on done
And two anniversaries from the olden days
19 January 1878: Herbert Chapman born at Kiveton Park, Yorkshire. After success as a manager with Northampton and Huddersfield he transformed Arsenal – but it took five years for him to win the club’s first trophy that everyone craved.
19 January 1889: Arsenal doubled the highest number of people turning out to see them as 2000 watch the game against Clapton. Being a London Senior Cup semi-final it was due to played on neutral territory, but it seems it was played at the Spotted Dog Ground which had become the home of Clapton in September 1888. See also here.
Coming soon
Bob Wilson writes for Untold
1 of the 5
Glad to be one of the five … should we have t-shirts ??? Or does Tony’s 5 sound more like a cut-price TV sci-fi show ??? (The other four readers need to be of a certain age to get that one).
Reminds me of an article in the Daily Mail after an Arsenal AGM in the late 1990’s. Essentially, there was (yet another) crisis at the club as the “men in suits”, (I for one was wearing a suit that day, so they got something right), had “demanded” that Ian Wright be sacked and cast out of the club, his behaviour deemed unacceptable for an Arsenal player. (The Mail had been running a series of anti-Wright articles that week … like rehashing the allegation of insulting a disabled linesman, here’s a reminder if you were unaware of the story http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football-wright-faces-charge-fa-awaits-linesmans-decision-1506224.html). Peter Hill-Wood the Arsenal chairman was reported to have been visibly shaken by the vitriol in the room and Arsene Wenger had been ordered to miss training with the players to attend the AGM !!! IT WAS TERRIBLE …
I was there however … what I saw was an elderly gentleman who during open questions, told us all he’d been going to Arsenal since the Chapman era and a player who behaved like Wright would not have been tolerated back then and should be sacked immeadiately. The reaction from the room ??? They laughed … Mr Hill Wood and Mr Wenger smiled politely and the Chairman as I recall expressed that football had moved on and that Mr Wright was a fairly important part of the current team. (This was pretty good going really, what with being him “visibly shaken” and all that).
And if any of you weren’t aware, the manager always attends the AGM at Arsenal … the only time I went to one when he didn’t was 1997, when Mr Rioch had departed and Mr Wenger was serving his notice in Japan.
My father who was also there, wrote to the Mail and got about 8 lines published in their comments section, with a standard bland response along the lines of “that’s what you say” … better than nothing I suppose …
So no, I rarely believe what the press says for as Tony says, when you have seen something yourself, it often bears little resemblance to what you recall … although as we all know witnesses, (especially paid ones it seems) are notoriously unreliable.
Surely the world as reported in the media has nothing to do with the actual world around little old me.
I often talk about my Gran (who cleans at the Emirates) on these pages, yet the media never mention her.
I frequently write to GMB asking that the narcissistic Piers Morgan be sacked, yet no mention is made of this in the media.
My dear wife and I are approaching our 68th wedding anniversary but there is no media interest in awarding me a well-deserved medal.
I will write no more as I sense the proximity of Tony’s moderating weapon.
Suffice it is to say that until the media as a whole becomes far more family-orientated, I will broadcast MY personal news via the pages of Untold…..whether you all like it or not. 😉
I view the BBC revelations about corruption in tennis with the suspicion that the BBC has an unseen agenda.
I say this because, the BBC must have had the information they have made public long before the start of the start of new tennis year with its first Grand Slam.
The same with its claims about corruption in FIFA.
They must have had the information they made public well before the FIFA meeting to announce the location of the World Cup for 2018 and 2022 yet they waited till FIFA met.
Does the BBC provide us with regular news about the on going investigations in to corruption in football?
No it doesn’t, yet it is in a good position to do so.
It remains to be seen for how long the BBC publishes its news on ‘corruption in tennis’.
My suspicion is that once the Grand Slam is over and the tennis circuit moves onto lesser tournaments so the BBC will quietly put its ‘corruption in tennis’ story back on the shelf from which they took it down.
An enjoyable article, well written and with a load of common sense. Have you ever been on the online Gooner? That site is the complete opposite to your article. The posters are the biggest moaners ever, even though we are top of the league.
With age comes experience and sometimes wisdom (not always in my case) anyway as I’ve got older I do not fret over Arsenal defeats, I do not fret over winning a trophy and I take very little notice of the media. My attitude is one of enjoying the games I watch. It wasn’t always this way:-)
I haven’t moved to North Korea though.
Brilliant piece, Tony.
Talking of disconnects. The first 5-10 minutes of the Stoke game took some beating for weirdness. The commentator couldn’t stop mentioning the reaction to Ramsey, but seemed desperate not to be critical, and even to justify it. So there was a weird combination of pussyfooting- there was an ‘incident’ five years ago- and a doomed attempt to insinuate that they were well within their rights to be furious. The effort floundered badly because the facts were too stark to disguise, but it was evident the main commentator was desperate to do so as they were an awful fit to the narrative.
The commentary throughout the entire match was worthy of being preserved somewhere, in fact. It brilliantly demonstrated media power.
On about twenty occasions the Stoke raged against punishment for obvious fouls or not getting fouls which weren’t fouls. Why would a commentator never ever comment on that? It wouldn’t need severe condemnation, maybe they could try justify it, maybe they approve, whatever, it is very worthy of comment. If nothing else, it tells of the reality of refereeing there.
Then the absolutely pathetic dive from the left back. They watch that on a replay, and…nothing.
If those commentators had done the bare minimum of their job, something it is very strange for them not to do, which is to simply report what they see and hear, attention would have been drawn to the fact the fans do not accept perfectly good decisions against them, do everything in their power to try force the ref into wrong decisions, that the only player on the field that day who dived was a Stoke player, that the ref was amazingly reluctant to produce yellow cards, and that Ramsey was targeted from the off for sick treatment.
So why did none of that happen? It ‘not fitting a narrative’ is actually too kind a description for me. They actively don’t want to draw attention to the nonsense of the fans of a team who remain pretty dirty furiously insisting their opponents are the cheats, even when they so clearly aren’t.
They don’t want that because the attention will be bad news for the former team and good news for the latter. In the same way they don’t want to draw attention to the reality that at the very least those home fans make the referees job more difficult. I’d have no problem with them trying to make the case that this is natural and good, but they know very well that would expose them to criticism. So they make no arguments at all, they ignore the reality in front of them.
They shape what happens in the future. Thanks to the attention they chose not to give to Pieters dive, it is much easier for him or another player to do the same next time out. Thanks to not mentioning the referees refusal to use his card, he escapes scrutiny for it. Thanks to not reporting that the crowd cries cheat and is furious when obvious free kicks are awarded against the team, no debate ever occurs, or rather no one even thinks about whether that is a good thing.
Then the Ramsey stuff. For me, that would never be happening at this point if the media had taken on the simple task of condemning it from the off. Then you wonder if the Ramsey incident was in the first place partly a product of media coverage past. I would say- absolutely. That and refereeing past.
Tony – and commenters. Really good.
I would note that the North Korean media almost certainly ARE proclaiming their land as green, pleasant and affluent…
I agree that sports-rights holders are reluctant to upset the apple cart. But what about those organisations that did NOT win the rights? Why aren’t they putting the boot in?
To be fair to the BBC they DID air that notorious Panorama programme just before the World Cup vote (which probably cost England any residual chance) and they did also do that rather thinly-evidenced Panorama on managerial bungs.
But the written press are dire. The Evening Standard has some new columnist – Tony Evans (WHO?!) – whose very first article was advice to Wenger to kick himself upstairs and sign Guardiola.
I have been reading The Secret Footballer’s latest effort – and he is absolutely gushing about Wenger’s genius – and is a self-confessed Totts fan. I agree that Guardiola is good – but I don’t necessarily agree that he will bring sustained success along the lines that Wenger has (and I count Top 4 through the austerity years as a great success)? In fact I might be prepared to punt that if Guardiola goes to Man City, which seems likely, Wenger could outlast him. I hope so!
“They must have had the information they made public well before the FIFA meeting to announce the location of the World Cup for 2018 and 2022 yet they waited till FIFA met.”
You might need to take this up with Mr Andrew Jennings.
BBC investigative journalism is probably as good as it gets.
……and what better time to release the info, for the most effect
Have to say that tennis, being a popular individual sport with many tournaments and almost every tournament featuring the knock out format (contrast with golf), is an absolutely obvious target for corruption of the players. Very surprising (or perhaps not) that journo’s haven’t been sniffing around.
The other thing that surprises me about sports corruption in general is that the bookies don’t raise the alarm more avidly – as they would be the losers? Or are they all platforms now crossing bets – and not taking principal positions? I’m not a gambler so wouldn’t know… But if I was a punter I would be furious if I ever suspected I lost money on a suspicious game.
OT: Nacho has just singed a new contract. Fantastic! Interestingly, he says that his indifferent early performances were due to time being required to settle in London and learn the language. I know for a fact that he learnt English extremely rapidly – he is a very bright lad. But this sort of supports Tony’s assertion that new signings must be given time.
Yet another one Wenger got absolutely right.
@ Serge
My point exactly. Release the information when tennis is more in the public eye the#an usual especially in Australia.
The same with releasing what it had on corruption in FIFA the moment it has world attention. that way more people tune in to the BBC at the expense of the rest of the media with whom the BBC competes with for its audience.
It is games man ship which has nothing to do with serious broadcasting and providing a reliable and truthful news service.
I too am one of the five.
Gooner S is spot on. Best just take what the media take woith a pinch of salt. However, it is frustrating.
The problem for me is the rise of the ‘follower’; this uninelligent being who takes everything he hears in the media as fact (specially if following an agenda). Social media has exposed the huge numbers of socially inept and brain dead to a level I never expected was possible. Despite technical advances over the last 30 years, that has put information at everybodys finger tips, it appears intelligence levels have dropped. We have some really dense people out there. Just look at some of those Stoke fans, they even look backwards and you wouldnt be surprised to see them stooped over, dragging their knuckles along the ground.
Fact based journalism died years ago and has been replaced with desperados competing for a position in the saturation of online content. The Newsp[aper numbers are dwindling and journos are now nothing more than trolls. In their desperation, they look for ways to provoke the reader/listener/viewer and fact plays no part in that. Indeed, they manipulate ‘facts’ and distort them into what almost becomes a total lie.
There are thousands of examples of this.
Jeremy Wilson created mass hysteria on the WOB blogs in 2014, when he incorrectly claimed Arsenals wages were the highest in the Premier League. Recycled endlessly and repeated by journos, pundits, presenters to beat up pur club. Nobody even bothered to check the validity of his claims because it was a good story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/11110007/Arsenals-annual-wage-bill-moves-ahead-of-Chelseas-for-first-time-in-more-than-a-decade.html
Although anyone with half a brain knew that couldnt possibly be true but any protestation to that facst resulted in the usual sneers. When the lie was exposed there was no similar outrage and no apology. It was all brushed away quietly despite the trouble it caused, with Jermemy Wilson laughing it off as a ‘guess’ based on the accounts he had seen. Like all the FFM’s he thinks he is an expert on everything when in fact he’ ignorant. Seriously, take one look at Piers Morgan and see just how morally corrupt and dense these guys are. Morgan even turned on our squaddies with those photos he knew were fake, despite his Brother serving!! Lying is a game they play to court publicity and it matters not a jot who they upset along the way. Its just a game.Unfortunatley, Arsenal have been on the end of more than their fare share of this.
Fcat based journalism is dead and it is only going to get worse with the competition out there and our moral decline.
OT: Arsenal announced that Nacho Monreal has signed a new long-term contract. For me, that’s better news than a new signing.
Although I do appreciate that the ‘Happy bunny’ terms can be used poorly, it can also be used to express genuine agreement with the ‘manager’ if it was “understandably XXX was not a happy bunny”.
I agree that the ‘all evens up in the end’ rubbish get shovelled out by every half-wit but this isn’t necessarily a good example without knowing the full sentence.
Colario
Agreed.
Can’t wait for the BBC’s First Contact info to be released.
Sorry – got verbal diarrhoea today…
I keep an eye on the BBC’s daily gossip column (a roundup of all the “newspaper” rumour and speculation). I’ve noticed in recent times that Arsenal players feature very rarely. I think this shows that (i) the existing players are pretty happy at the club; (ii) the club value stability and (iii) when we do do business we try to keep under wraps as long as possible.
Well looking at the comments you still got more than just me reading at the end of another great article! 🙂
Great article…and by the way, I am one of those 5 🙂
Anyone seen Kim Jong Durham’s article today?
I finally have the sense to rarely look at his output any more, and no longer get angry when I do, but, wow, he continues to surpass himself.
It’s not really that funny,though. He’s at the extreme end of things, but represents a big flashing light which says not only ‘TWAT’ but that things are very wrong.
If the environment here- media but also consumers- was passably ok, or just a little bit off, there’s no way in hell such a ludicrous man would be getting any work doing what he does.
Excellent article and comments.
(from the remaining reader), Thanks.
Tony,
This is beautiful. Every word, every letter, every comma, every full stop.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I fucking hate the media!
Overstated modesty is not big or clever Tony…..there’s at least ten of us!
I know everyone won’t agree with my analogy but it merely demonstrates a concept. I heard a lifelong Labour voter on a phone-in the other day saying he couldn’t possibly vote for an “extremist” like Corbyn. Now, ignoring the obvious debate, my point is that a load of very rich people who own newspapers clearly have an agenda against Corbyn because he would not operate in THEIR best interests. He would almost certainly act in the best interest of millions of people, just not the elitists bunch that run the country. So the media paint this picture of some Stalinist dictator who would sell the country out to communism. (At this point I have to avoid pointing out the nature of the “extremist” who currently lives at number 10.)
Nonetheless, what we have is a media that formats its reports into what it wants people to believe irrespective of the truth. As I’ve said for many years. The UK is not a democracy but it may be one of the least undemocratic countries in the world. The media is merely a self-serving elite which only employs people who buy-in to that belief.
Rant over. All I’m doing is agreeing with everything Tony says. Although I still can’t work out what AFC and Arsene did wrong……….apart from try and upstage the media idol with the red nose that used to be at Old Trafford.
PS Clattenburg for the Chelski game……..it could be worse!
Bravo. Reading that felt like Morpheus talking to that big crowd in the 3rd film of The Matrix!
Rich.
Durham has made a name for himself largely because of the way he has set up Arsenal as his enemy. Not a day goes by wothout him having a go at our club. This is what I was saying about the media in our Country, it beggars belief that thisi s what it has come too. Utterly Childish but it gets page clicks.
For those who dont know, he actually said this: “Arsenal’s best outfield player this season (OziL0 missed the game (Stoke) with ‘a slight foot injury.’ Now either this injury is worse than ‘slight’, or you have to question the player’s commitment to the cause, especially as there is a full week until the next game.
Arsene Wenger had no problem putting players in his team who were in the ‘red zone’ in the past, so how come a player nowhere near the red zone with only a slight injury missed such a crucial game?
fter Hector Bellerin dangled a dainty foot in a feeble effort to stop Joe Allen scoring the home side’s late equaliser at Liverpool in midweek, I questioned on my radio show whether the required level of commitment was evident in every single Arsenal player for them to go on and win the title.
John Terry would have put his face in Allen’s boot to stop it going in – but then that’s why he is captain of the champions. That’s the kind of commitment required”
It is very amusing. What is not so funny is that the braindead in our society lap it up and agree with him!
Great work Tony! I thought I was the only one having similar thoughts watching the matches until I came along Untold a few years ago. Grateful for all the work you, Walter, and the rest of the Untolders due to support the club and hold the media accountable!
@Rich, in regards to the Stoke chanting at Ramsey, at least 1 person in the media, Craig Burley on ESPN, called the minority of the Stoke fans that chanted that “a disgrace.”
With the Ramsey chanting, I would suspect it falls foul of disability discrimination laws – similar to the homophobic chants aimed at Campbell when he was at Portsmouth.
I wonder if Stoke will prosecute the offenders identified on CCTV?
A very good article – mirrors completely my view of the media – and not just the UK media.
For example, we have a NATO member engaged in a vicious sectarian attack on a proportion of its own people. The media in that country, under complete government control describe the genocide as “defending against terrorism.”
The same NATO country has openly supplied weapons in huge quantities to the most vicious of terrorists, provided training to the terrorists – all to destabilise neighbouring states – with all the ghastly misery that one could imagine.
The western press – in Europe and the good old USA ignores the genocide and the root cause of the terrorism and simply regurgitates the propaganda from the agressor government. NB the agressor government does spend many millions of dollars in the west “lubricating” its propaganda into the media.
Against that sort of press visual impairment the press defects wrt football seem minor – although to those of us who watch our team being screwed by the PGMO each week and with the PGMO being protected by the press, the situation is most infuriating.
Unfortunately, mankind in the form of the media has embraced corruption for short term gain and lost perspective and direction.
I believe those accusations about tennis are about eight years old so some one digging them out now certainly does seem suspicious behaviour.
Tony – Enid would be proud of your 5.
I am not patient enough to read a lot but some articles keep me involved. This one did.
The tennis story is being revived to create interest in the media. The protagonists seem unassailable so a pinch on the bottom of scandal brings a new focus.
Footballs corruption is going to be ignored until the fraud squad disclose the laundering of ill gotten gains by some of those involved. Monopoly is apparently acceptable in some areas of society. North Korea is less secretive than the P……..
Oh well it is 2016 & things might just begin to change.
First and foremost , I must confess that I am one of that five !
Secondly , I do agree that the media in general only regurgitate nonsense , that the masses seem to love to lap it up ! I have stopped reading the newspaper for more than 10 months , and am already feeling smarter ! Now to get rid of the local cable operator , in order to make redundant their expert crap spewers .
I’m sure that all these ostriches and experts will be able to find some other gainful employment elsewhere once when they are let go. Advertising maybe ?
Well into the double digits Tony; there may be hope for Untold yet ;-)!
It’s good to remember that media reporting does not occur in a vacuum – as in there is almost always a set narrative which over-rides actual narrative and evidence.
As for Arsenal; this season is looking promising, and likely for at least a few more seasons after this one too.
Enjoying your subject writing as always, thank you.
OK so now I know where I am going on my hols. North Korea here I come!!
Tennis now GGs -http://www.bbc.com/sport/horse-racing/35359041
‘It’ is gradually spreading the net & sport is in the spotlight.
If only I knew what ‘it’ was.
Count me in as one of the five!