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
It is not something that we read about very often but the issue of stress is one that is at the heart of playing football at a professional level. Just as actors, musicians, TV presenters and others may or may not feel nerves upon getting up on the stage or in front of the cameras, …
By Tony Attwood It was almost four years ago that I wrote on this blog that “we have just been told that Manchester City has launched an investigation into links between [the paedophile Barry] Bennell and the club. Meanwhile Crewe Alexandra’s most famous employee, ex-manager and director of football, Dario Gradi, denied any knowledge that …
Read More “Paedophile case comes back to haunt Man City and Crewe Alex but papers won’t report it”
v By Christophe Jost Football has a fundamental problem of leadership for one very simple reason: all of its “leaders” have vested interests, which are very clearly defined. And yet at the same time, each of the different entities that is trying to have a say in the future of football, knows that they are …
By Tony Attwood There are signs that football journalists, and indeed their employers, the newspapers, radio and TV stations, are getting edgy. In the last couple of days, for example, the Guardian has published an article headlined “Premier League critics should recognise football cannot wait forever” and then Gary Neville accused Premier League of “failing …
Read More “The huge mistake that football made even before the current crisis.”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University Hospital of the North Circular Road. The notion that Arsenal need to be warned that there could be huge losses ahead is one of the more bizarre stories that has emerged from the British national press of late, but that is what the Daily …
Read More “Arsenal warned over huge financial losses … presumably because they don’t realise!”
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Guardian which says “Whether football returns in June or September, or later even than that, it will be a long time before it is played in stadiums packed with crowds of tens of thousands, without players having to undertake complex social distancing measures. Normal isn’t coming …
Read More “Football is not coming back any time soon: so what happens to the clubs then?”
By Christophe Jost So the Bundesliga and the DFL have presented a broad concept to restart, addressing health issues, security, training concepts, finances, etc. all set out in a 41 page document. My opinion, based on what I am reading, is that they have done a very thorough job looking at most aspects if not …
Read More “German football considers ending its lockdown. We wait to see…”
By Tony Attwood Now either you can think that this is another story that is being hidden from British football fans and others interested in corruption by the British media, or you may think that the British media take the view that British supporters are just not interested in fraud issues relating to Fifa. You …
Read More “Yet another Fifa scandal breaks, but again the British media won’t report it.”
by Sir Hardly Anyone Yes this is looking like becoming the all time record transfer window for Arsenal – in fact it is getting so back the media are going to rename it the transfer garage door. It can still slam shut after it is all over but without the danger of breaking glass. We …
Read More “Forget the lockdown: Arsenal now linked to 70 different players!!!”
By Tony Attwood One of the fundamental parts of the Premier League’s plan, rather oddly named ‘Project Restart’, (why does it need a name, and if it does, why not just “Resuming the fixture list”?) is that the matches would be played (or as the journalists now say in a desperate attempt to get their …
Read More “Six clubs reject behind closed doors scheme, is that enough to scupper it?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone When the phrase such as “The mistakes made by Arsenal in the transfer market over the past decade-and-a-half are well documented” pops up on the internet we all know what will happen. Soon site after site after site will copy it and use it. And we know that because that is …
Read More “Why do Arsenal always get it so wrong in the transfer market?”
By Tony Attwood The football industry, which consists of the clubs, the players, the non-playing staff, and the businesses and industry that get an economic boost from it, want football back, because it’s their living, their way of life, and in many cases, it makes a profit. By and large the fans want it …
Read More “Why the clamour to restart football is fuelled by gambling firms”
By Tony Attwood On 27 April we broke the story that Cyprus could be considered as a location for running the remainder of the Premer League season, as it is still not possible to play the rest of the season in England – and probably won’t be for a while. We’ve given a few more …
Read More “We broke the news about the PL finishing the season overseas. Now…”
By Tony Attwood As you may have noticed in passing, on 30 April, in the morning, I wrote a piece under the headline The Fifa / PSG / Swiss corruption cases are major news in Europe. But not in the UK. Why? About seven hours later the Guardian covered what at first I took to …
Read More “Why is the British media aligning itself with Fifa and ignoring alleged corruption?”
by Sir Hardly Anyone There is no telling when football is going to start again (although talk today among the chattering journalists is not so much about this season being abandoned but whether next season is playable) but the “reportedly” gang are still at it. In our last run down we found 63 players who …
Read More “8 players not previously noticed who are now all signing for Arsenal”
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.”
