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 I have several times raised the point that the media hates the question “why?” And so it seems today as none of the main news outlets in the UK are asking why the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that he wanted footballers to take pay cuts and thus …
Read More “At least this time, the media can’t attack Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood The way the media has reported football’s issues during the current crisis has been desperately slow and illogical, They started out by continuing to report potential huge money transfer fees, while suggesting that this issue would all be over shortly, and seem to have now got to the position of saying that …
Read More “Fake news vs fake hope. The crazy battle that is going on for football”
By Tony Attwood “Why should players take a pay cut?” That’s an interesting question, but because that question begins with “why?” you can be sure that it doesn’t get much coverage in the media. For the British media is notorious for ignoring the “why?” in any debate. What they do is skate over issues, and …
Read More “I object to some of my tax payments being used to pay staff at Liverpool FC”
by Sir Hardly Anyone We’ve now got 36 players being tipped to be coming to Arsenal, with enormous sums being suggested, just at a time when Arsenal has had its most expensive transfer window ever, and along with the rest of the Premier League is facing an unprecedented financial challenge. Some of the stories are …
Read More “The 36 players now tipped to be joining Arsenal and an unexpected departure”
by Tony Attwood Uefa is bringing pressure to bear on European leagues by suggesting that any leagues that do not complete their 2019/20 fixtures may be excluded from the Champions League and Europa League for next season. This follows the decision by the Belgian League to abandon the 2019/20 season, and declare the league table …
Read More “In desperation, Uefa’s “TV Solution” is being considered”
by Don McMahon There are many dire and some less morbid predictions being mentioned by the desperately understaffed media as to the future we face as a human collective. Some media figures like the Muppet in chief in Washington, are inventing their own future based on their most recent brain-fart. Others, whose intellectual gifts and …
Read More “The shape of things to come: a north American view of the aftermath that is to come”
By Tony Attwood So this is where we’ve got to. 1: By and large the players in the Premier League, following the lead of their union, are refusing to take pay cuts. Some very public players in Europe are taking pay cuts. 2: Clubs are laying off lesser paid staff, and telling them they will …
Read More “Football is now in deep crisis, and it is hard to find a solution”
By Tony Attwood and Christophe Jost So we have had weeks and weeks of pretending nothing is happening, or if it is happening it is only those silly foreign people getting into a tiz, while we English know that it is all alright, and indeed it would all be fine in Europe if only those …
Read More “Top earners take no cut; media attack, gambling firms lose money”
By Tony Attwood Daniel Levy, (Mr Tottenham), has suggested that Premier League players and managers should accept lower pay. The club has also placed 20% of its staff on furlough. This is the sort of thing that Untold has been predicting through this crisis, while the blogs and newspapers have been outshouting each other with …
Read More “How the richest men in football are telling the poorest staff to take pay cuts”
By Tony Attwood Journalists in general rarely apologise for getting things wrong – and when they do it is generally only when forced to. Football journalists go further; they simply don’t ever admit they were wrong. In fact they make it up as they go along, and then ignore any protests about the fact that …
Read More “How lazy football journalists make it up to meet their own requirements”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, chief psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. The dismissal of nine players by FC Sion has taken on a particular importance in European football, as much of the continent is now watching to see how things begin to shake out, following the “interesting” behaviour …
Read More “What really happened to Song and Djourou at FC Sion”
by Tony Attwood In part one of this series The 10 ways football is changing as a result of the virus: part one. – we looked at salary caps and the notion that clubs could turn on Manchester City and their endless supply of capital. Now here are a couple more ways in which football …
Read More “The 10 ways football is changing as a result of the virus: part two – Chelsea / Kroenke”
By Timothy Cassidy For 29 games, Liverpool have played some of the best football we have ever seen. Until the post-Christmas break, it was hard to even imagine them being beaten. Of course, time, fatigue, injuries and well-organized and motivated adversaries eventually lead to their one league defeat having also only drawn one match (in …
Read More “Liverpool deserve to be recognized, just not as league champions”
By Tony Attwood 1: Salary caps in the Premier League Across the world, but most particularly in Europe, clubs are getting into a financial pickle, largely because a) they have no money coming in from sponsors, gate receipts, broadcasting, advertisers and the like, but b) they are still paying their players. This might be a …
Read More “The 10 ways football is changing as a result of the virus: part one.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Well yes, there is a growing awareness that civilisation as we know it has come to an end, and there is no football being played. But we still have a bunch of bananas writing in the national newspapers and associated websites and they are determined to pretend that everything will start …
By Tony Attwood The Athletic has admitted it; a huge amount (quite possibly most) of football reporting is pure and simple rubbish. In a recent article the online magazine says, “We often do not find out how much signings cost, we are never told how much people are paid and we rarely witness what actually …
Read More “Do journalists really know what football is like, but choose not to tell us?”
by Tony Attwood So the drive towards salvation has started as (ignored by the majority of blogs) European clubs try to cut salaries. What is clear however is that clubs really don’t have any idea how to do this and for every club that is trying to reach reasoned compromises with players over salaries, and …
Read More “Forget transfers. It’s the player v club battles over wages that are dominating now.”
By Tony Attwood So here is the argument: Matchday money has stopped. TV money has stopped. But salaries continue. And that is not good news for the clubs. Just how bad the bad news is can be seen by this table. We’ve run it before, but now here are two extra columns as the situation …
Read More “Why financially, Arsenal are well and truly up against it – but are not alone.”
by Tony Attwood According to reports in the European media FC Barcelona were already in a certain amount of financial difficulty before the Corona crisis. Now they really do have a problem. All of which may seem rather hard to imagine especially since it was only on 19 September 2019 that Óscar Grau, executive director …
By Tony Attwood There really does seem to be a feeling among many journalists that a) this season will resume some time soon, b) titles, promotion and relegation will be resolved in the normal way c) next season will happen and all this will seem like a weird interlude of a few weeks. But actually …
Read More “Football ain’t coming back soon, but will Man City come back at all?”
By Tony Attwood and Christophe Jost And so slowly, very slowly, the media starts to get it. If you stop football for a while, then there will be economic consequences of mega-proportions from which many clubs may well never recover. The Daily Star (yes really) said, “the loss of TV rights money, matchday revenue, European …
Read More “What happens next? In Germany its becoming clearer, but in the Premier League, less so.”
Today’s story from the Arsenal anniversary files is of Mark Randall, and man who in his early days appeared to be destined for great things (and Mr Wenger appeared to agree with that) but who could never settle at Arsenal, and indeed appears to have had difficulty settling anywhere else. And yet in his role …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes while Belarus keeps playing football, and many (although not it seems not all) of England’s journalists dream that it will all be ok soon and the mighty transfer window will swing open before it crashes shut, and the money will roll in like it has never been stopped from rolling …
Read More “Players asked to take pay cuts as Arsenal projected to spend £100m on transfers”
Earlier today we published an article by our Swiss / German friend Christophe “The day Arsenal broke the Premier League” reflecting on how the English media is reporting the current football situation in England. Now we have a letter by our regular correspondent Don McMahon, a retired referee, from North America. —– Dear Tony You …
Read More “English football: it is incompetence and a lack of leadership that is the problem.”
By Christophe Jost I must be transparent. I do not live in the UK, I am of German and Swiss descent, work in France and Switzerland, and have lived in quite a few countries so far in my life. Some of the countries are rich, some are poor. So my vision may be a galaxy …
Read More “The day Arsenal broke the Premier League: the view from overseas”
