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, This summer we have had some positive moments – beating Bayern, and a draw with Real Madrid (before the penalties) were both welcome results. There was a nice win over Fiorentina too. But we lost to Lyon in the Emirates Cup at home which wasn’t too clever. So can we draw …
Read More “How does pre-season 2019 compare with pre-seasons in the past?”
By Tony Attwood Continuing my little saunter around the We Care Do You document put out by Arsenal Supporters’ Trust and other groups and individuals, the second paragraph of the piece says that “Off the pitch, fans have never felt more marginalised, less listened to or valued.” Now the authors of the piece don’t actually …
Read More “We Care Do You Part 2: A certain latitude with historic reality”
“Nicolas Pepe adds welcome risk and directness to Arsenal’s shot-shy attack” So says an article in the Daily Telegraph. To find out how they justified this odd statement, if at all, one would have to pay the Telegraph a subscription fee, and at the moment I am trying not to give money to organisations that …
By Tony Attwood “The time for excuses is over”. So runs the opening of the Guardian’s preview of Arsenal’s season to come, in which they boldly predict that this season Arsenal will finish … sixth. There is fun had in the article at the expense of Ivan Gazidis for thinking that the days of the …
Read More “Arsenal to finish 2019/20 in sixth – the media’s demolition of AFC is in full swing”
By Tony Attwood In recent weeks I’ve written a lot about Arsenal’s situation when it comes to next season, and we’ve touched on a whole range of issues that will affect just how well the club will do in 2019/20. Issues such as the reality of there being a limit of £45m on transfer expenditure …
Read More “Predictions can be made emotionally. But adding in a few facts can help as well.”
By Tony Attwood This series began with the article “This season Arsenal celebrate 100 years in the top division” and here we reach the conclusion of the series. And here, as the final point, we move on to the issue of why so many clubs voted for Arsenal rather than Tottenham as the additional club …
Read More “Arsenal’s 100 years in the top division: the final chapter”
By Tony Attwood Way back on 21 October 2014, the Evening Standard ran the story that “Arsenal have £42m to spend in January, claim ‘frustrated’ Supporters’ Trust “ That may look a rather familiar tale given that through this summer we have been hearing that Arsenal only have a £40m (or sometimes £45m) transfer kitty. …
Read More “How AST promoted the notion that Arsenal had a budget of £40m for transfers”
By Sir Hardly Anyone When I was invited to write a piece on the silliest transfer rumours so far this summer I didn’t actually think I would be taking them all from one source, for I searched low, high, and then even lower to find the most ludicrous tales. But two things happened. I found …
Read More “The most bonkers transfer rumours this summer & all from the same source!”
By Tony Attwood Until the Arsenal supporters club meeting with Arsenal directors at the stadium on 25 July the story was everywhere: Arsenal had a budget of £40m or £45m. Anything else had to come from player sales. Indeed so hard up is the club (so the story went) Ozil was going to be transferred …
Read More “One day it’s £45m total budget, now Arsenal are spending £75m on one player”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Untold’s regular round up of the ever more desperate fantasy make believe of England’s semi-skimmed journalists. “Unai Emery’s summer transfer budget is not restricted to just £40million, according the Arsenal’s managing director Vinai Venkatesham.” That’s in the Metro today. And was on Untold Arsenal yesterday. Never mind. At least they didn’t …
Read More “Incredible journalist makes predictions over Arsenal transfers (satire)”
by Tony Attwood This article carries on the series of pieces looking back over the events that led to Arsenal’s election to the first division in 1919, and dispelling the many myths that surround the issue. From January 1919 onwards there was an almost constant state of discussion going on within the Football League over …
Read More “Arsenal’s 100 years in the first division: the debate begins”
By Tony Attwood By no stretch of the imagination has this been a transfer window that could be called “one hell of a rush to spend money” – at least not so far as the top six from last season are concerned. At the moment of writing the table of all the players in and …
Read More “Arsenal directors make it clear that £45m transfer limit is a newspaper myth”
By Tony Attwood. Of course this might not be the first time one of the national papers in England has taken up my theme, but it is the first one I have seen: the idea that Arsenal deliberately play a different line up at home and away. The newspaper in question is the Daily Telegraph …
Read More “The home and away issue – the player who can solve the problem”
By Tony Attwood In the first part of this series (Arsenal celebrate 100 years in the top division) I mentioned the match fixing episode involving Liverpool and Manchester United, as a result of which Chelsea were relegated in 1915 However this was not the only match fixing that was alleged during the last few years …
Read More “Promotion in 1919: celebrating 100 years in the top division”
By Tony Attwood Are there cover ups in football? Cover ups of corruption, incompetence, match fixing, the old boys network looking after each other, abuse of money, abuse of power, that sort of thing…. Certainly in the case of the child sex abuse scandals that have swept across English football in recent years it …
Read More “Why does everyone in football seem to have something to hide?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone I know how tough it is to have to plough through line after line of bland gibberish at the start of each article telling you for the 93rd time this week that Arsenal are desperate to sign players after missing out on the champions league at the end of last season. …
Read More “All the players being tipped today by journalists as coming to Arsenal – and the team.”
by Tony Attwood 100 years ago, at the start of the 1919/20 season, Arsenal started the new campaign back in the first division, after an absence of six years – that break made up of two seasons in the second division and four seasons when the league was abandoned due to the war. 100 years …
Read More “This season Arsenal celebrate 100 years in the top division”
By Tony Attwood There is not too much being written about the differences between last season and the 2019/20 campaign – but there really are a number of interesting twists which are, I suspect, going to take a few players, and commentators, by surprise. There are changes to the rules on free kicks, substitutions, goal …
Read More “Time to get ready for this season’s rule changes”
By Tony Attwood It was interesting to read the recent TalkSprout headline, “Chelsea and Man United are in turmoil’ – Arsenal hero predicts 2019/20 top four” The hero is Perry Groves, and unfortunately he doesn’t give us any real insights in the interview, other than to say that we might grab the slot because Chelsea …
Read More “Why a Champions League slot really is possible at the end of this campaign”
By Tony Attwood In this series I have been looking at the way some fans and much of the media has been at war with Arsenal throughout the club’s history, and how the club’s response to this situation has varied. The failure to win anything between 1953 and 1970, and the dramatic decline in fortunes …
Read More “The crowd and the media against the Arsenal part 4: modern times.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Seven new names have been added in the past week and eleven have had their details updated with new claims made in the media. Of course these stories are just inventions by a bunch of journalists and bloggers with noting better to do, but some people seem to take the whole …
Read More “82 players tipped by the media to be coming to Arsenal this window”
By Tony Attwood This is the third part of our exploration of the history of the relationship between Arsenal, the media and Arsenal supporters. Our two previous articles on the relationship between the club, the media and its supporters has taken us to the end of the glorious 1930s era of four league titles and …
Read More “The crowd and the media against the Arsenal part 3”
By Tony Attwood So with all that boring old business about there being a limit on Arsenal’s transfers safely revealed to be a load of old tosh, and Kroenke Jnr confirming what Untold has been saying all summer, that there is no £45m limit on Arsenal’s spending this transfer window it seems we can get …
Read More “Arsenal sign Saliba with Kroenke saying there is no £45m limit”
by Tony Attwood This article follows on from Supporters and the media against The Arsenal. How it all started. In part one of this series I pointed out that Arsenal had long history of getting harsher treatment from the authorities than other clubs, of in-fighting within the club, and Arsenal fans turning on their own …
Read More “The fans and the media against the Arsenal: “Nothing is ever good enough for this crowd””
by Bulldog Drummond There is a definite change of attitude emerging among the media. They have now stopped the semi-skimmed reporting of 16 (or sometimes 17) Arsenal supporters groups who have criticised the running of the club. (In fact I keep asking people to give me a list of the 16 (or 17) but no …
Read More “In case you missed it: video of goals of Arsenal 2 Bayern 1”
