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 Tony Attwood As we have seen across the years, newspaper journalists and bloggers hunt in packs. When one writes a story others follow and then the notion that they are purveying becomes mainstream. The Athletic summarises this week’s assault with the headline “Let’s not beat around the bush, Arsenal have seen a fairly swift …
Read More “Have Arsenal really fallen apart as the media insist?”
By Banco Danglais One moment it is financial doom and gloom the next moment it is spend-spend-spend. But the reality is the Premier League clubs are being hit financially on all sides and there are multiple warnings in the air about how much money they are going to be losing. TV money is the obvious …
Read More “Which Premier League club is in the greatest financial trouble?”
By Tony Attwood Yesterday we reported on the Mail’s story Why the Mail’s “Everything that looked wrong at Arsenal WAS wrong” is arrant nonsense. Now one argument that could be made for running that piece in the Mail was that there is no real football news around, so the paper has to make something up. …
Read More “Another huge football scandal – and why the mass media in England won’t cover it”
Buy Sir Hardly Anyone (going at a reduced price) Yes yes very droll. But let us get onto the key issue. We have six new transfers to add to our ever-growing table. But again they are not spread out through the alphabet but rather clustered, suggesting once more that (shock horror) these journalists and bloggers …
Read More “Arsenal transfer list reaches 89 players with over 3 weeks to go before window opens!”
An Untold media accuracy review by Tony Attwood It’s a very shouty headline, exactly the headline that the Mail likes. “MARTIN SAMUEL: Everything that looked wrong at Arsenal WAS wrong… and that includes Unai Emery’s appointment. Under Stan Kroenke they’ve become a selling club so why will it be any different for Mikel Arteta?” The …
Read More “Why the Mail’s “Everything that looked wrong at Arsenal WAS wrong” is arrant nonsense”
By Tony Attwood Late yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from Arsenal. Not from the manager or one of the players, I must admit, from one of the guys who works at the club in the background – the ticket office or something like that. The call wasn’t made because I’m on the committee …
Read More “Arsenal FC gives me a phone call. We have a nice chat.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road (now shut) Amazing though it will seem, each one of these stories has appeared on a blog or in a newspaper in the last 48 hours. 1: Justin Kluivert “Super agent” (which I think means a man who tells …
Read More “From Kluivert to Smith Rowe, the Arsenal future you simply won’t believe!”
by Dr Evelyn Ver Bossity, head of psychology, at the University College of the North Circular Road. Every day he sits at the window as the 5.15pm bus pulls up outside his house, expecting his wife to get off and give him smile as she comes in before dutifully washing her hands and getting him …
Read More “English football in danger of deluding itself out of business”
by Tony Attwood It is quite clear that the Premier League and its clubs had no contingency plan for the interruption of the League which would result in matches not being completed by their due date. But it turns out that the TV companies were not quite so dumb, and have long since included in …
Read More “If the clubs were not prepared for lockdown, the TV companies certainly were”
By Tony Attwood They’ve ridden in on the back of our love of the game and our love of our club. Now they are taking control, demanding the games be played. They don’t mind empty stadia. They just want games, and they want them now. So having taken control, they are pushing us, the fans, …
By Tony Attwood PGMO – the organisation that runs refereeing in the Premier League, has generally stuck to its view that refereeing accuracy is around 98% to 99%. For example on 13 August 2013 the Daily Mail ran a piece on referees which says, “According to the Premier League, 99 percent of offside decisions are …
Read More “Crowdless stadia stats reveal fallacy of PGMO claims about referee accuracy”
By Christophe Jost An interesting comment from Mike T. recently on Macquarie, the Australian bank who have financed PL clubs growth got me thinking about the economics of the PL. The lenders’ chances of recovering their money seem slim. And now even the government says the games should be broadcast openly, which will dent the …
By Tony Attwood Here is an interesting situation. A lot of smaller clubs are now in financial difficulty. Some of the Premier League clubs are sitting on significant cash reserves. Two giant groups have established themselves in terms of buying up clubs to create a worldwide network: The City Group centred on Manchester City and …
by Tony Attwood We have got used to thinking about the resourceless acquisition of football clubs by the City Football Group which includes Manchester City, New York City, Melbourne City, Yokohama F. Marinos, Montevideo City Torque, Girona, Sichuan Jiuniu (China), Mumbai City FC and Lommel SK (Belgium). But it is always worth looking beyond the …
Read More “There are two organisations buying multiple clubs. Will there be more?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone I have a nasty feeling that some of our esteemed journalistic colleagues do little than work through the list of players in the world in alphabetical order, tipping them to come to Arsenal. For how else do we account for the fact five of the seven new names in this week’s …
Read More “The 82 players tipped to come to Arsenal this summer”
By Tony Attwood It is interesting that, although it is not full steam ahead for football in Germany, France, Switzerland and multiple other countries, there is a clear pathway being set out in relation to the future of football. Even League Two in England has managed to see its way forward. But the Premier League? …
Read More “How come we’re still arguing while Germany is up and running?”
by Tony Attwood According to a report in the Telegraph, “Premier League clubs have been left stunned after being told that they could have to repay £350 million to the broadcasters – even if the season is completed behind closed doors.” Apparently this scenario was set out in a presentation given by the Premier League …
by Tony Attwood Professional football clubs in Switzerland have been offered loans to help see them through the current crisis. But there is an interesting caveat. The clubs which take the loan will not only have to repay it but lower their payroll by 20% within three years. It is an extraordinarily imaginative scheme, …
Read More “Who spends the most on transfers in Europe and League financial support”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Does Untold have an impact? OK we seem to have persuaded a few journalists to lay off the use of “reportedly” since we told them the real meaning of the word. But really? “Reportedly” was, of course, a trivial matter, but an amusing one. But what about noticing the total lack …
Read More “A spot of morality creeps under the door, restart nostart, and Arsenal’s signing”
by Christophe Jost and our on the spot secret agent, plus the Prime Minsiter. The Bundesliga (1st and 2nd divisions) resume their games next weekend. After a period of planning, political lobbying, medical research, and financial negotiations a plan has been laid out and approved by the German government. And it is interesting to see …
Read More “Germany restarts, or perhaps not. Is the PGMO involved in the “Go to work” message?”
By Tony Attwood Some years ago we analysed the way the English newspapers reported Arsenal and found the most amazing bias in those reports. Our report with its analysis is still online here. There was also a long period in which English journalists ran the story every week that because of Mr Wenger’s training methods …
Read More “What foreign journalists think of the missing ethics of their English counterparts”
by Sir Hardly Anyone We have now got another seven players being linked with Arsenal plus a second group the details of whose transfers have been updated just of late. I really didn’t think we were going to get any fantasy stories at all during the corona-pause but they continue to roll in. The only …
Read More “The 77 players tipped to be joining Arsenal this summer – the full list”
by Tony Attwood Somehow, somewhere there has to be a hierarchy of priorities. Because just in the nature of things, certain aspects of life are more important than others. And so it is in football. But unfortunately the hierarchy is upside down. Consider this: what is the more important – the total abolition of human …
Read More “Saudi Arabian questions as we have been celebrating liberation”
By Tony Attwood If it goes on like this there really won’t be any need for Leagues, broadcasters, the PGMO, and anyone else else, because everything will be done by the City Group. Except that there is a problem with the continual growth of Citygroup, which is called Eurojust. To give the background… City Football …
Read More “City Group’s expansion is starting to run into legal complexities”
By Tony Attwood As I have said many times, football in England doesn’t do leadership. Nor, perhaps coincidentally, does football in Scotland. England’s Premier League clubs are about to have a day of discussion about what happens next and certainly, at this moment it is not clear where this is going to go. The reason, …
Read More “Football in England and Scotland reveals exactly how an organisation should not be run.”
