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 “Ben White to Arsenal transfer claims dashed as well-placed source reveals cold, hard truth” That uncomfortable headline came from Team Talk. And it was uncomfortable because a lot of “sources” have been telling us the opposite. As with the report from Team Talk (yep the very same) that White was already …
By Tony Attwood As we know, last season, with no crowds present for most games, the traditional balance between home and away wins was upset. Only 38% of games ended as home wins while 40% were away wins and 22% were draws. The average across the Premier League years before this past season was 46% …
Read More “Will home advantage (and referee bias) return with the crowds next season?”
by Chips Dinero There’s a very curious thing in the papers at the moment. Journalists (and their coat-tail bloggers) are calling for Arsenal to buy more and more players. But at the same time they are telling us that so many of the players Arsenal have bought in the past have lost value because the …
Read More “How much is Arsenal’s first team worth? The full data.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone “Bukayo Saka could be set for a shock Arsenal exit this summer as the Gunners frantically look to raise transfer funds. Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta will be forced to consider selling the academy graduate if the club fail to qualify for next season’s edition of the Champions League.” Now that story …
By Tony Attwood We’ve been getting bits and pieces of the pre-season fixture list although no one really seems that minded to put the whole thing together – largely because it emphasises just how little break quite a few players will get. Nor indeed do the football authorities want to spell out just how much …
Read More “Arsenal’s full six match pre-season fixture list revealed”
by Tony Attwood You’ll perhaps know that the central theme on this blog this summer is that Arsenal underwent a revolution last season, dramatically changing the style of play of the team, and that as a result the last two thirds of the season saw a dramatic improvement in form. The argument has been …
Read More “Bellerin reveals how the revolution at Arsenal came about”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. 87 players tipped to sign, Including seven names that have appeared for the first time this week. But here’s a thought. Supposing all clubs deliberately put out false stories about who they are going to buy, to protect discussions with the real purchases that are actually going on. This would fit …
Read More “87 players already tipped to be joining Arsenal. 427 to go.”
By Tony Attwood We are receiving more and more messages saying that the notion that the latter part of our season was not good, because we had an easy run-in at the end of the season. I’ve answered this several times but I thought it might be easier to stop the discussion by publishing the …
Read More “Arsenal only did well after Xmas because the fixtures were much easier”
By Tony Attwood By and large it is agreed that the European Super League was a terrible mistake, but it’s all resolved now, the clubs have paid their fines to Uefa for breach of rules and some fans are demanding seats on the boards. Except… in football nothing is ever quite what it might seem. …
Read More “The European Super League II; how it is being built, and by whom”
By Tony Attwood All summers are weird, in that journalists and bloggers have the job of writing their columns, but without any actual football to write about and so mostly resort to making stuff up. But this one is turning out to be particularly odd, because this summer there are so many big stories …
Read More “The 10 things they don’t want us to think about, concerning Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood It was indeed just two months ago, in April 2021, that the story appeared that “Arsenal will look to sell at least four players this summer in a bid to raise funds for new signings, football.london understands.” So not https://www.connectpcsupport.co.uk/even that we had a budget at all, but instead “a bid” to …
Read More “How did Arsenal move from no budget to quarter of billion in 2 months?”
by Tony Attwood Untold has published over 10,000 articles, and one of my favourites remains Switzerland take a greater interest in Fifa – at last It was the story that reported that Switzerland had changed its law to remove the legal protection previously offered to people who were visiting Switzerland to attend meetings of international …
Read More “Uefa make it quite clear to UK government: “We are above your laws””
By Sir Hardly Anyone The key message in the media is invariably that when it comes to transfers Arsenal are invariably too slow, and make ludicrously low bids because Arsenal want everything on the cheap. So it is a bit of a surprise to find an exclusive in 90min to the effect that “Arsenal are prepared …
Read More “Arsenal to spend quarter of a billion; all going to happen (according to reports)”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. “Stan Kroenke ‘approves £250m Arsenal transfer spree’ as Mikel Arteta eyes five signings” so says the Express who add that Barcelona are having a “fire sale” to solve their financial crisis. They give us three players – Philippe Coutinho (“a decent alternative to Odegaard”) and two new names: Sergi Roberto Roberto “the …
Read More “82 players tipped to join Arsenal this summer in £250m spending spree”
by Tony Attwood The notion of a home grown rule came into force after the Bosman ruling in 1995 and was introduced by Uefa as a way of coping with the implications of that ruling. However because of the free movement of people regulations within the EU the rule does not focus on nationality but …
Read More “Last season a quarter of PL clubs failed to list 25 players. Why?”
By Bulldog Drummond What do the following all have in common? Gennaro Gattuso Paulo Fonseca Antonio Conte Hansi Flick* Mauricio Pochettino Erik ten Hag, Brendan Rodgers Julian Nagelsmann Tony Attwood Answer: none of them want to manage Tottenham Hotspur. Now it is true that the last name on the list hasn’t actually been invited to …
Read More “8 men offered the managerial job including a character from Hello Hello”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The key message in the media is invariably that when it comes to transfers Arsenal always fail to get their man because they are consistently too slow, and make ludicrously low bids because Arsenal want everything on the cheap, and ultimately lose the player because, well, because it’s Arsenal. So it …
Read More “Forcing square holes into round pegs: Arsenal’s transfer story gets truly weird”
By Tony Attwood If you have been here before you’ll know the story we’ve been following: that last season Mr Arteta dramatically cut the number of tackles that Arsenal put in. Through doing this he cut the number of fouls given against Arsenal players, and through that, cut the number of yellow cards. If you’ve …
Read More “How Arsenal challenged referees, by taking the tackle out of their game”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. According to Football.London “Arsenal took out a loan from Barclays for an unspecified amount last month, which was taken out to pay back the COVID-19 refinancing loan the club asked for last year.” Then the Mirror (which owns Football.London) ran the headline, “Arsenal ‘take out loan’ which could help fund ambitious £130m …
Read More “Will Arsenal really gamble everything on a set of transfers this summer?”
By Tony Attwood How wrong can an opening sentence be? Take that from Kaya Kaynak who is described as the “Arsenal Writer” at Football London. He says, “Last time out it’s safe to say that Arsenal’s Premier League campaign did not go to plan.” Safe to say? No, it most certainly isn’t. The timing may not …
Read More “Arsenal nay-sayer takes a little step forward by recognising last Christmas”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The Daily Cannon’s bleak headline, “Arsenal still haven’t submitted formal bid for Andre Onana,” certainly suggests Arsenal are not taking this transfer window seriously. And they are not alone, for that headline reflects a similar one 24 hours earlier from “Pain in the Arsenal” who wrote “Arsenal risk Andre Onana transfer …
Read More “The Andre Onana transfer story turns up something rather weird.”
By Tony Attwood Imagine living in the home of one of the Daily Mirror’s football writers. Every morning there would be a call for breakfast. But it wouldn’t be a call saying, “breakfast is on the table”, it would be a “make or break” call telling you that you are going to have a tough …
Read More “Imagine living in the same house as a Daily Mirror football columnist!”
By Sir Hardly Anyone With football in the summer I guess we all have a choice. First, we can forget about it – Arsenal are not playing, and there so there’s no real excitement. Play table tennis, read a book, go swimming…. Second, we can follow the internationals to make sure that our players don’t …
Read More “How to occupy yourself while waiting for the season to start: become a journalist”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Now here are three interesting issues that have come up. First, the media know most of the transfers they mention won’t happen. After all, this is how it has been each summer, when generally over 100 players are mentioned, but actual transfers are normally only mentioned a day or two before …
Read More “73 players coming to Arsenal this summer! 7 new; 11 updates. The full list.”
By Tony Attwood JustArsenal.com have an article which talks about last season and summarises it as “Absolutely horrible; eighth place finish; no european competition. I guess that’s about it. But what caused it and how do we solve it?” Now if you are a regular reader here you’ll know that not only do we disagree, …
Read More “Why Arsenal absolutely must not “allow the players to play””
