By Tony Attwood
As you may know, there is a news accumulator service, News Now, which lists many of the latest stories about Arsenal that appear in newspapers, blogs and the like. Indeed that may be how you found us today as Untold Arsenal is included in its listings. You’ll find the Arsenal page here.
It’s a page I often look at not just to see what others are writing, but also in order to help us live up to the “Untold” name by avoiding those stories which others are covering, or at least by following them up from a different angle. Of course, we can’t always be sure we are running stories others don’t, or having an angle that others don’t but our general positivity about Arsenal does set us apart from most outlets.
For what we normally find are tales of relentless negativity. And indeed there are some negative stories doing the rounds yesterday and today such as Jesus receives surprise Brazil snub with Spurs and Man Utd stars preferred (from
But now, suddenly, in the most recent tales that the media is picking up on there is an almost regular positivity. For example, we have “Arsenal would be a dream destination for me” – Bundesliga star hints at future move from
Now this is a bit of a fanciful story in that it is about Wolfsburg striker Jonas Wind who only signed for the club in January so is hardly likely to leave, but he is doing well for his club, is highly regarded and has said something positive about a desire to move to Arsenal in the future.
Then we have Premier League star tells friends he wants to join Arsenal from Caught Offside. This tells us that “Aston Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz has reportedly told friends he wants to join Arsenal in January after a move failed to materialise during the summer transfer window.”
And as if that were not enough there is ‘Walking on water’: Arsenal on-loan ‘revelation’ now has 5 goals and 2 assists from last 6 games . This time it is Folarin Balogun. They say, “The Gunners gem managed just three goals in 18 games as Boro missed out on the Championship playoffs. But now, it’s a completely different story for Balogun, who is absolutely tearing it up at Reims.
“The 20-year-old joined the Ligue 1 side on a straight loan deal in August. Balogun hit the ground running, registering three goals and one assist in his first three league games. Though he didn’t score or assist against Lyon, he then grabbed two goals and assist in the next two matches.
“To date, Balogun has a staggering five goals and two assists from his opening six games of the campaign.”
Now of course they may have picked something along these lines from our little piece on Balogun “How is Reims doing with Balogun?” but maybe they have their own team of investigators who just happened to turn up the story a few days after we did.
And this is not all, because Football Insider tells us: “Exclusive: PL star tells friends he wants to join Arsenal as new talks held.” This exclusive announces that “Douglas Luiz tells friends he wants to join Arsenal as new talks held” and that “Arsenal are still working on a deal to sign Aston Villa midfielder Douglas Luiz, sources have told Football Insider.”
Although it is listed as an exclusive the Daily Mail did run the piece a few weeks back that said, “Oscar has revealed that his former Chelsea team-mates and compatriots David Luiz and Willian wanted him to join them at Arsenal this summer.”
Now, all this level of positive talk is very unusual about Arsenal, although occasionally the media do plant these stories in order to write a follow-up a week or two later saying the deal has fallen through because Arsenal would not meet the asking price or that Edu was dithering or the board could not agree. Indeed that in turn can lead to another story that says, “Arteta ready to quit over Arsenal’s refusal to sign his chosen player”. And so on.
So maybe things are changing, and maybe some other poor club is going to get the rampaging negativity thrown at it, that Arsenal has had all these years.
It would certainly be a welcome change
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