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
By Sir Hardly Anyone Certainly things have slowed down of late, and one can only assume that the volume of journalist alcohol consumption has risen past the level where even semi-coherent thought might burst through and find itself on the blog page or even in print. But there are six new names on the …
By Rowley Birkin MBE Before we begin, allow me if I may to introduce a new element in the annals of Untold. The “Bonkers notion of the Week”. This appears on the ESPN website and reads thus Perhaps Wenger sees Lacazette playing behind Giroud — especially if Alexis Sanchez does end up leaving the club — …
By Tony Attwood There is a problem with the way football is reported in England and it is this. There is always an assumption that how things are now will be how things are next year. Only bigger. It is curious because serious journalists working in other areas of reporting rarely fall into such a …
Read More “The Premier League finances are utterly unsustainable. But will Arsenal survive?”
by Tony Attwood Four things are going to be apparent in the team next season: First, a continuation of the five at the back that was so extraordinarily effective last season, although with the option of suddenly changing, if that seems a good idea. Second, three creative forwards at the front. Third the Xhaka – …
Read More “How Arsenal will line up next season: the 4 key tactics that we now know.”
By Tony Attwood The league table of players bought and the money paid has changed quite a lot in the past week as the top five for numbers of players and money spent shows: Pos Club Money Spent Number of players 1 Manchester City £172m 4 2 Manchester Utd £106m 2 3 Everton £86 10 …
Read More “All the purchases so far: who has done the most business?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Desperation. You can smell it. The old certainty in which a child in the bedroom can create a blog calling Wenger an idiot, and get people to read, is being challenged. Not because people won’t read any more but because the bedroom bloggettas have gone professional buoyed by the ready made …
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw Now this is getting seriously weird. I mean, for years the summers have been first odd, then strange, then very strange, then weird, but now this. This is, well, probably seriously weird is not enough. Which ever way you look at it. The BIG story for weeks and weeks …
Read More “Is this the weirdest Arsenal summer ever? Even so the Europa plan sounds fun.”
by Tony Attwood Western Sydney Wanderers were formed in April 2011 with the idea of having a club with a strong community focus. In their first season they won the A League, which by and large is not a bad start. They currently play at Stadium Australia and Sydney Showground Stadium while their permanent home ground of Parramatta Stadium is in …
Read More “Arsenal v Western Sydney Wanderers. The teams, the opposition, the food, the transport”
By Tony Attwood This summer I have been trying to look at how Arsenal compare with other clubs in terms of the way various matters are handled. The first example has been the transfers in – looking to see if it is true that Arsenal always dither and never manage to get the deals done, …
Read More “Just how do Arsenal compare when it comes to loaning players out?”
By Tony Attwood “What are they smoking at Liverpool?” is a question that could be said by an Arsenal director, if any wanted to remind the principal owner of Liverpool of what turned out to be a rather foolish jibe at Arsenal’s expense. A foolish jibe because he later let slip in a sports conference …
. By Sir Hardly Anyone now in a new colour. . Part 1: Genius found . 1.1: ‘Natural’ Reiss Nelson among Arsenal kiddies ‘very, very close’ to playing for the first team. In the good old days (before robots took over newspapers) when a player came back from a long injury he would be …
By Tai Emeka Obasi Arsene Wenger is a name that draws all manner of emotions. While some love him because of his as-a-rule dedication to the beautiful game, others hate him for virtually same reason. But love or hate him this astute French football manager is a unique character for Oscar flicks, a bestselling …
By Tony Attwood Trying to pick a line up before the first friendly of the summer is tough going. For example, I have no idea which of the keepers will get a game today, but I suspect we will have one in the first half and a different one in the second. Cech and …
Read More “Sydney v Arsenal. The teams, the opposition, the stadium, the Sydney fans.”
by Tony Attwood As you may know, if you are a regular reader, Untold takes quite an interest in football finances, and we’ve covered a large number of clubs whose financial matters don’t seem to be 100% as they ought to be. Leeds, Cardiff, Portsmouth… well if you’ve been with us, you’ll know. In the …
by Tony Attwood The Independent has today published a piece reviewing all the transfers made by different clubs (another web site to copy our idea), but they have gone a bit further – because they have a little note for each club headed “Still needed”. In the case of Arsenal, “still needed” is a central …
Read More “According to one report Arsenal need another central defender. But why?”
Apologies for the problems in reading Untold this morning on some computers. It was a tech fault which I think has now been fully resolved. This morning’s article is of course still available – there is a link to it at the foot of the page. THE 10 COMMANDMENTS- Don McMahon Many of us …
Read More “THE 10 COMMANDMENTS: how to run a football club.”
By Tony Attwood One of the most bizarre comment lines I have read during this season said “Doubts over Arsene Wenger’s future are prompting emotional displays among both his supporters and his critics”. The notion that people were getting emotional at football matches because Mr Wenger had not said whether he was staying or going …
Read More “The current league table as it appears in the eyes of football journalists”
By Sir Hardly Anyone According to those who know these things, or at least those who claim that they know these things, this is going to be one hell of a transfer window for Arsenal, for not only are better players needed, Arsenal need to change the “weak, leaderless dressing-room culture” and stop recruiting players …
By Billy McGuire There are many reasons not to like the FA. The fact that they take tax payers money, the fact that they are in cahoots with successive governments who will not act against them, the fact that are congenitally unable to reform themselves, the fact that they run the shambles that has been …
Read More ““Clubs have been advised not to investigate historical (sex) allegations at this stage””
By Sir Hardly Anyone Last summer we ran the Arsenal Transfer Index and recorded over 110 players who were coming to Arsenal in the transfer window. Of those only three actually made it – and they were only tipped at the last minute when the transfer was already under way. What this actually means …
Read More “The player being being tipped more than everyone else to come to Arsenal this summer.”
by Gord A while back we had a note from a reader who suggested that it was not unreasonable to expect each year that Arsenal should win the title or at least be challenging for the title up to the last few weeks of the season. In reply Untold showed that such a situation had never …
Read More “A Millenia of the Pulis/Fat Sam – BundesLiga type EPL”
By Bulldog Drummond It is all looking a bit gloomy in the injury league table, which probably explains why various websites have been desperately trying to cook up long term injury tables (without any proper analysis of the statistics) to show that Arsenal have the worst injury record of all time, or at least the …
Read More “Arsenal v Manchester City. Mr Wenger speaks on referee corruption”
By Tony Attwood There is a certain type of person who not only says about rules and regulations “they does apply to us” but who also seriously means it. The sort of person who knows about the rules but also says “no one bothers with that”. Football it seems is rife with such people, …
By Tony Attwood You might recall, if you have a very good memory, that back in January we reported that The Independent claimed that “Arsenal suffer most injuries”. Untold did quite a lot of work on that data and our headline added the phrase to their headline “after using obviously faked data” There were …
Read More “Arsenal are the club most prone to injuries (again, and again) Well up to a point…”
by Tony Attwood There is a story doing the rounds that all season ticket holders who want a ticket for the Wembley semi-final against Man City have got one. And of course this has been taken up as a chance to knock Arsenal and Arsenal support – exactly as happened two years ago, and the …
Read More “Even the issue of tickets for the semi-final is a way of knocking Arsenal now.”
