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 Now that it has been confirmed in such an overt manner that the owner of Arsenal is not putting any more money into the club and is merely interested in taking money out, the blogs have finally got the message. Publishing ever more expansive lists of players Arsenal are going to buy …
Read More “How Arsenal can achieve further success, as history starts to repeat itself”
By Tony Attwood Looking at the way Arsenal are playing at the moment I am starting to get the view that no one within the club has properly briefed the manager and his team on the unique approach to refereeing in the Premier League. I wonder if this is because Mr Wenger and Mr …
Read More “Money, players, progress and referees. How Arsenal are developing.”
By Tony Attwood The thesis set out here during the “Wenger Out!” period was that changing the manager at Arsenal last season would probably not solve much. Only “probably” rather than “definitely” because there was always a chance – but the odds were against us. Football is a game in which all sorts of things …
Read More “The three things we can learn from Arsenal’s current position.”
by Bulldog Drummond Today is the 11th anniversary of the launch of the Untold Arsenal site. Our first ever article published on 14th, concerned the match against Birmingham on 12 Jan 2008, and focussed on rotational fouling which was unpunished by the referee. There’s no real consensus on who is going to play but …
Read More “West Ham v Arsenal: the team, the returnees, the beach, the past, the future”
By Bulldog Drummond Samir Nasri is likely to appear for Wham (that is the football club not the popular singing combo) against Arsenal. He played for West Ham in their FA Cup win against Birmingham. And the buzz stat that is circulating is the both teams have only managed to concede zero goals in a …
By Bulldog Drummond Unai Emery has said Arsenal will not be able to sign players this month but just take them on loan. So all this talk of Barcelona’s Denis Suárez and Sevilla’s Éver Banega means loan deals not transfers – if the talk has any basis in fact. And all the other chatter about …
Read More “Why can’t Arsenal buy any players in this month – but maybe we’ve got one.”
By Bulldog Drummond Physioroom currently has Arsenal top of the league table for injuries alongside West Ham United, each club on nine injured players. But a closer look at the figures suggests that a fair number of these players should be avaialble for selection for Arsenal in the West Ham game. Indeed while WHAM, as …
Read More “West Ham v Arsenal injury news, line up and transfer update”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Transfer window times are when journalists and bloggers make prats of themselves, regularly touting stories of transfers, and trying to slide out of any responsibility by citing unknown overseas sources as the origin of the story – omitting to say that these self-same sources are often quoting the English newspapers and …
Read More “These are not good days for football journalists who like to be called investigative”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal have moved senior football analyst Ben Knapper over to the new position of Loans Manager. Ben Knapper has been working for Arsenal with Prozone who gather sports data for Arsenal – having joined the club in 2010. It is said that he will work with director of football Raul Sanllehi and …
Read More “Arsenal appoint loan manager – and here’s how the loanees are doing…”
By Sir Hardly Anyone And those two players are… “£26m star ready to snub Man Utd to join Arsenal after Gunners make contact over deal” That headline is from Football-Talk and it relates to Yannick Carrasco. The other player comes through this headline… “Offer accepted: Player agrees Arsenal transfer after chat with Unai Emery, talks between …
By Tony Attwood One can’t help but smile when one sees headlines such as “Jurgen Klopp facing defensive crisis as Liverpool lose Dejan Lovren to hamstring injury” in the Telegraph, especially if one thinks, “What would they have said about Arsenal? And come to that what they have said about Arsenal – although Liverpool didn’t …
Read More “Who will spend money this window, and what Pochettino said about Wenger.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Now we are all used to wild and weird transfer rumours popping up and turning out to be completely untrue, but then there is something else. For the Daily Excess today published an article on the five players Arsenal are most likely to sign. Nothing odd about that, of course, but …
Read More “The Top 5 most likely transfers for Arsenal that you are not supposed to know about”
By Sir Hardly Anyone, our man on the inside. Ever wondered how a club like Arsenal can be so chaotic in its transfer dealings and player management? Or how there are so many football rumours all swirling around at once. Or who creates them? And if it is true that there is one mega empire …
Read More “The Inside Story: how today’s football rumours all come from one source”
By Tony Attwood An interesting article in the Guardian today about making mistakes, by Daniel Taylor, which contains this line… “The referees you see demonised on social media tend to get a lot more right than wrong,” and of course that is absolutely true. The article goes on to say that with VAR next season …
Read More “Refs get a lot more right than wrong, but anyway it’s ok, they’re English.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Once upon a time football rumours, which Untold has followed with a combination of absolute disdain and occasional amusement, were out on their own. Wild and whacky with no sense of Earthly reality, the stories were created by drunken scribblers meandering around the Toppled Bollard public house telling shouting out names …
Read More “Journalists panic as transfer rumour could actually turn out to be true”
By Bulldog Drummond There is little point trying to write out a team sheet because far too much is unknown for this match. We do know that various academy players have been used this season so far, with Bukayo Saka being the last when he came on against Fulham. But which ones are still in …
Read More “Blackpool v Arsenal: the match preview and team guesswork”
By Tony Attwood When it comes to records in the FA Cup there really isn’t much point looking beyond the top two clubs, since they are so far above the rest, no one else could get close for years. Club Wins Last win Runners up Last 2nd Total finals Arsenal 13 2017 7 2001 …
Read More “Arsenal in the FA Cup, and when unbeatable challengers finally fall flat.”
By Bulldog Drummond For Arsenal of course this is the start of the FA Cup this season. For Blackpool it is match number four. Here are their results thus far… Date Match Result Score 10 Nov 2018 Exeter City v Blackpool W 2-3 30 Nov 2018 Solihull Moors v Blackpool D 0-0 18 Dec 2018 …
Read More “Blackpool v Arsenal: contemplating the past and the line ups.”
By Tony Attwood Accoding to the Swiss Ramble website, between 2008 and 2017 Premier League clubs had over £8 bn of available cash. Of this 54% came from their own operation – that is TV money, marketing income, sponsorship, gate money, prize money and transfer income. That money is down to the club’s own operating …
Read More “The money available: how each of the top six clubs gets it money”
By Tony Attwood Following Andrew’s review of the women’s team (see link at the foot of this article) I thought I would return to my contemplations of the men’s squad, and in doing so I have found that for some weeks I’ve been getting things wrong. So no surprise there. But then so has the …
Read More “In the men’s team, Arsenal could have two new players. Here are the options”
By Tony Attwood So how are we now doing after the Christmas and New Year rush, having played 21 games, compared with recent seasons? It’s a question that fascinates me, even if no one else wants to rush into the numbers. It seems to me to be a relevant question since the whole purpose of …
Read More “Now and then: Arsenal after 21 games compared with previous years.”
By Tony Attwood In our society there are many things that one doesn’t talk about. Notions that are considered so awful that they simply can’t be debated – at least not in public. Notions that, if we had the Thought Police actively working on the streets, would lead to instant arrest just for thinking about …
Read More “What we are not allowed to talk about concerning Premier League football”
By Bulldog Drummond Depending on which newspaper or blogetta you choose to read Arsenal will either play Ozil or he will be “assessed” prior to the game. And there is a general feeling that Monreal will be back as will Bellerin. And before we get too carried away with this being an easy match we …
By Bulldog Drummond Mesut Ozil will return it seems or at least he will be assessed before the game against Fulham. And if he doesn’t play – well there will be another outburst of rumours, all without a trace of evidence. In fact as far as we can tell the problem is a knee injury …
By Tony Attwood As you will probably have heard Peter Hill-Wood died this week at the age of 82. He came onto the board in 1962 and became chairman in 1982, serving until he stepped down through ill health in 2013. The Hill-Wood engagement with Arsenal goes back to the time of Sir Samuel Hill-Wood, the …
Read More “Peter Hill Wood and the end of the dream of an Arsenal owned by its fans”
