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 According to that pack of jokers known as Football London, “Analysis from the Arsenal Supporters Trust yesterday said that the club could face a loss of up to £144 million if games resume behind closed doors and that, for the first time in their history, they may have to use a £50million …
Read More “By this summer all clubs will be feeling the pinch.”
By Tony Attwood There are arrangements in place in the UK through which all companies can hold back on making their monthly tax payments to the government, where they have been affected by issues relating to the advent of the coronavirus. Under a system known as Pay As You Earn (PAYE) companies are obliged by …
Read More “The tax man is watching and he’s not going to let clubs go…”
By Tony Attwood You won’t read about it in the British press, but there is a court case going on involving a villa in Sardinia valued at 5 million euros which was offered by Nasser al-Khelaïfi, the president of PSG to Jérôme Valcke the former secretary of Fifa who was fired on 13 January 2016 …
By Sir Hardly Anyone I think I am right in saying that never before in the history of never before, have so many players been tipped by so few to go to the Arsenal before the window swings open. There are 42 days before the window swings open (do remember if writing about transfers the …
Read More “63 players tipped for Arsenal! Pre-window transfers reach an all time record”
by Tony Attwood We mentioned a number of times recently that there is a problem with the notion of ghost matches in that some fans are more than likely to gather at or near the stadium when a match is being played, whether they can gain admission or not. It is one of the reasons …
Read More “The season’s end is meandering into a right muddle, but then that’s what we’d expect”
By Tony Attwood In his post this morning Sir Hardly Anyone noted the word “reportedly” and the standard dictionary definition of the word as meaning “according to what some say (used to express the speaker’s belief that the information given is not necessarily true).” Immediately the discussion broke out: was the word used as much …
Read More “Arsenal “reportedly”. How often are those words used together?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone “Reportedly” is now the football journalists’ go-to word of choice. The on-line dictionary provided by Google (which tends to be quite helpful on words that have achieved recent popularity) defines it as “according to what some say (used to express the speaker’s belief that the information given is not necessarily true)” …
Read More “The seven players Arsenal are reportedly buying this summer”
By Christophe Jost We suggested in the last post that taking the Premier League to Cyprus could be a way through the current crisis – a way of playing out the rest of the season in a series of ghost games, while allowing us all to watch the whole series on TV. So what is …
Read More “How other leagues are seeking a way through the crisis; another Untold exclusive”
By Christophe Jost As we all now know, football in Europe has one huge of a problem with the Covid-19 pandemic Or I perhaps I should say, several linked problems : not being able to play in front of crowds not being able, so far, to finish the season not being able to guarantee that …
Read More “Exclusive: the Premier League – a unique problem and a unique solution”
By Tony Attwood It is interesting that the amount of space in the media given over to the rejection of the demand for a pay cut by Chelsea to its players, is much smaller than the coverage of the alleged refusal of Ozil to go along with the pay cut demand by Arsenal. But that …
Read More “Are the media balanced in their reporting of Arsenal, or is it all bias? The evidence.”
By Tony Attwood There is a post online at the moment which has the headline: “‘Circus’, ‘I’m done’, ‘Our board are just a joke’ – These Arsenal fans fume at transfer news.” It was posted last night by The Transfer Tavern, a blog, and it contains very brief quotes from six Twitter accounts. They may …
Read More “How six Arsenal fans are selected to represent the views of us all”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, chief psychiatrist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. It was with much surprise and interest that I made my monthly sojourn to the official website of Tottenham Hotspur football club and found with much astonishment the headline Stream Arsenal match ‘live’ this Sunday! Yes that …
Read More “Tottenham Hotspur: dead or alive, and five more players newly tipped to be signing”
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Mail today which says that if the League was not finished off, and points per game were assigned as the way of determining who gets into Europe next season, “Manchester United and Sheffield United would take the Europa League places, while Arsenal and Tottenham would miss out …
Read More “Three places for English clubs in the Europa League? Has the Mail got this right?”
by Tony Attwood The key point to note from the latest Uefa rulings on what happens next in relation to football, is first that national leagues will not be banned from European competition if they don’t finish their seasons. That ruling has been overturned. But more importantly from Arsenal’s point of view is that this …
Read More “Following Uefa’s ruling, Arsenal, not Tottenham enter the Europa League”
By Tony Attwood We began with total denial. With the transfer window still months away the names of players – often very expensive players – that Arsenal were going to buy started to pop up. The interruption to games was seen as a temporary inconvenience. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to bother the English clubs. …
Read More “Gradually the mood in the League is changing but the thinking’s hardly begun”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Both George Lewis and his agent are claiming he’ll sign for Arsenal this summer. Lewis has openly stated that he is joining Arsenal and Jeorge Bird, who generally knows a thing or two about the kiddies, says that Lewis’ agent says he will sign for Arsenal before the next season starts. …
Read More “55 players tipped to be joining Arsenal this summer: the full list.”
By Tony Attwood Fifpro, the union of professional footballers which is established across the world (although rivalled in England by the PFA) conducted a survey of some 1,600 footballers (1,134 men and 468 women) from England, France, Switzerland, South Africa and the United States from March 22 to April 14. According to his results, “22% …
Read More “Football’s starting up again. Oh yes it is. Oh no it isn’t. (Reportedly)”
By Tony Attwood On 17 April Untold Arsenal ran the headline, “Football is being taken over by those fighting their own wars. Can Arsenal survive?” In the subsequent article we set out the battle that was now being fought between Arabic countries with football as the battle ground. Here’s the simple table we ran… Club …
Read More “What the press won’t talk about in relation to football”
by Sir Hardly Anyone It is extraordinary that in a time when we don’t actually know when football might begin again, let alone how much money clubs will have, at a time when players are being asked to give up their salaries, and clubs are starting to talk about not being able to continue unless …
Read More “The six new players Arsenal are being tipped to sign this week”
By Tony Attwood To begin, what do we know about Mesut Ozil? We do know, because there is a lot of evidence for it, that he has paid for 1,0000 vital operations for children across the world. We also know that he is paying to fee 100,000 homeless people at 16 refugee camps in Turkey …
Read More “Mesut Ozil, the allegation, naming the guilty parties, the truth”
By Tony Attwood For most journalists, there is no “why”. Their job is to report the facts, they will tell you. Unfortunately, this leads to the notion that there is no change, except for the occasional movement of a player from one club to another. Life goes on. Because of this the fundamental as always …
Read More “Daily Mail calls Untold “revisionists”, but doesn’t quite get the word’s meaning”
By Tony Attwood The Guardian has an interesting piece: “Newcastle United: seven priorities for the potential new owners” in which it takes a pragmatic view of what the new owners at Newcastle will do. It comes in a series of headlines, all of which are valid from one rather narrow point of view Make a …
Read More “Priorities in football: two utterly different views”
by Tony Attwood People who like to think they have power but who actually don’t are prone to making crazy pronouncements which cannot be seen through, without any thought as to practicalities. It is rather like the fable of King Canute (which is actually the reverse of the truth but is passed on down through …
Read More “Start dates for football without plans in place are worse than useless”
By Tony Attwood OK, you might be expecting me to argue in a piece about what is wrong with football, that the force blocking all change is the notoriously conservative Football Association, and yes’ I’d go along with that. But there is another force acting against all change, and they are much more powerful than …
Read More “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the agents (Shakespeare, almost)”
By Sir Hardly Anyone A quick peek in through the shuttered windows of the Toppled Bollard (favourite drinking house of football journalists across London) reveals the awful truth. It’s shut. Which is why the rumour mill has gone into hyperplus overdrive as those who make up the summer transfer tales eschew their normal drinking hole …
Read More “The 49 players now tipped for Arsenal this summer”
