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 On 21 December 2019 Arsenal drew 0-0 with Everton. The report on Sky Sports was typical, the opening paragraphs of their post-match posting reading, “New Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti and Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta looked on from the stands at Goodison Park as their respective new sides played out a dour …
Read More “Arsenal have the youngest squad. Does that help our prospects?”
By Tony Attwood It is already happening in Europe, but it is a subject football journalists are totally silent on, in England. It is not complicated, it does not involve Fifa corruption (the topic that seems to be totally forbidden when it comes to reporting for fear of damaging the proposed FA bid for the …
Read More “The new contract chaos that football journalists don’t want to talk about”
By Tony Attwood Untold has been arguing for quite a while that there is a profound financial crisis hitting the clubs which has been caused by their tendency to spend money they don’t have in order to reach the top seven and get into Europe, or to avoid relegation. The example we have repeatedly given …
Read More “Finally the media is admitting just how bad PL finances have now become”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is always sad when journalists run out of steam. Maybe they have just got tired and gone to bed. Maybe they nipped into the Toppled Bollard for a final swift one, but lingered rather longer. Maybe they have simply forgotten where the scrap of paper with another ten players names …
Read More “Transfer news: the 93 players Arsenal are looking to be (according to reports)”
Running Untold costs money in terms of maintaining our site and undertaking research. If you are running an ad blocker could you consider removing it for this site and viewing our advertising, as it is the site’s only source of income. Thanks. By Tony Attwood In 2015/16 Arsenal came runners’ up in the league …
Read More “Arsenal: where has it all gone wrong and how can we put it right?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone In previous summers we have ended up with a list of players who are leaving the club, a list which incorporates virtually all players regular first team players and the subs. Of course only a few of them have gone, and in the end the exercise of collecting everyone’s name has …
Read More “11 players tipped to be leaving Arsenal this transfer window.”
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”
