By Tony Attwood There is an argument that says that Arsenal should fill up their stadium for every game of the season, and because there are empty seats around that shows that the club is failing and the owner and management are to blame. In fact in terms of seats that are the argument is …
By Bulldog Drummond A little confusion is happening in the Bulldog household owing to conflicting information. In terms of watching the match against Boreham Wood on TV today, on Arsenal.com there is only one method signified: by signing up with Premier Sports, who are said to have exclusive coverage of every Arsenal pre-season game. It’s …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Arriving at Arsenal The headline “Arsenal mulling over move for Senegal international Keita Balde” in the Daily Mail does take a new twist on the journo lingo that has been causing us some amusement. “Mulling over” indeed. Not ready to buy, not having bought, not “the deal is on” but just …
By Tony Attwood When Ospina came to Arsenal the fee was modest – £3m was the reported sum, and his contract was for a four year deal. He started off playing in the League Cup (a home defeat to Southampton) and the Champions League (at home to Galatasaray after Wojciech Szczęsny was sent off). Although …
By Tony Attwood One thing is not a secret, nor even a point of discussion at Arsenal is that there is a lot of mumbling about the owner of the club and his apparent restriction on the transfer budget at a time when Arsenal have been making a profit. In 2016/17 the club made a …
By Brickfield Gunners Having been an avid reader of this blog form almost from the beginning of its inception ; and also being a very occasional contributor of articles, but a regular commentator here , I have observed first hand the gradual mental decline of many Arsenal fans and the anguish and the utter confusion …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes no less than 72 players have now been tipped by the media to be coming to Arsenal this summer, while 22 have been said to be leaving. Here is Untold Arsenal’s unique list of all the nonsense tips. Our own tip is that by the end of the window only …
by Tony Attwood So Arsenal have made a signing: Gabriel Martinelli. That makes it one out of 72 rumoured signings so far in this transfer window that has come true. A success rate for the rumour mongers of 1.4%. Not that good so far. The original claim that Arsenal was interested came from Yahoo Esportes, …
By Sir Hardly Anyone When we run silly stories we try to say so in the headline (not to mention with the name of the author). But not Football.London who have tricked innocent Arsenal fans into reading their stuff with the tale that “Ismael Bennacer has impressed with Empoli in the season just gone, registering …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Today we hear that Arsenal have offered £40m for Zaha and Palace value him at £90m. And the Daily Express tells us that Ray Parlour “wants Wilfried Zaha over Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang as Man Utd eye Gunners ace”. The reason is because Abua is now 30 and so, it seems, of less …
by Tony Attwood Here are 10 headlines from stories that all appeared within about two hours of each other. All have strong negative connotations. All are about Arsenal. And I wonder why – why are we getting all these stories (most of which are either untrue or highly convoluted with the clear intent of giving …
By Sir Hardly Anyone As you may have noticed, the Africa Cup of Nations has begun. A little later than planned, but it has begun. What it means is that those players involved will not be available at the start of the season since they won’t have had a proper summer rest. In this case …
By Tony Attwood I decided to put in this chart of players in last season’s top six clubs who are already noted as leaving, following some blog comments to the effect that the release of half a dozen players by Arsenal for the grand sum of £3.5m showed how disorganised we are in our long …
Research, analysis and constant hiccups from too much time associating with football journalists by Sir Hardly Anyone. Of whom it has been said. Part 1 of the Transfer List: The Players coming to Arsenal this summer We have six new players announced in the past week, with five others having their rumours updated by the …
By Sir Hardly Anyone So the season ends and as expected Cech went back to Chelsea. And immediately the blogs were reporting Arsenal fans being annoyed – TBR Football was one of many such sites with this story. But the report came with no sense of irony; irony because many supporters had been saying …
By Tony Attwood “Incompetence” has long been a theme of disenchanted supporters of Arsenal, and the bloggers and journalists who love to encourage their moaning, day after day after day. Arsenal are not just poor at football, they are incompetent at management, recruitment, organisation, training, decision making, pitch maintenance… Take these stories across the past …
By Tony Attwood I guess for many of us who just go and watch the under 23s occasionally through the season, the appointment of Freddie Ljungberg to first team duties as a coach was a bit of a surprise. Not because Freddie is not a good coach and a man who is totally Arsenal orientated, …
By Tony Attwood If you want to know what the media are saying about Arsenal this summer and have been saying since the end of the season it is simple. We need to buy loads of players – particularly defenders. Indeed Charlie Nicholas, increasingly disjointed from contemporary reality, summarises nicely in the rant reported in …
From Brickfields Gunners Could Hérold Goulon be Arsenal’s answer for the problematic ‘central spine ‘ in our defensive midfield and center back /positions? Who ? You may well ask. Although Goulon has played before in the English league ,the Frenchman has been mostly plying of his trade in the lower leagues for most of his …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal were a different kettle of fish at home and away from home last season. In fact you may have seen me mention it before. At home Arsenal were the third best team in the league in term of points with a goal scoring difference of +26. Away from home Arsenal were …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Background noise The players listed below aren’t all coming to Arsenal of course, nor are all of the 21 shown as leaving actually leaving, but these are the names of players that individual blogs and newspapers are claiming one way or another are coming our way or wandering away. So just …
By Tony Attwood I have seen it argued that managers often do better in their second season at a club than in their first, as by the second season they have got to understand the players in the squad and been able to bring in new players to suit their style of play. Thus Mr …
By Sir Hardly Anyone This is the fourth summer running that we have run our transfer rumours index, each time showing that around 97% of the supposed deals never happen. Indeed as far as we can tell, they were never going to happen, but were in fact just fantasies invented by writers looking for an …
By Tony Attwood On 27 May 2015 Untold ran this headline If Fifa execs had read Untold in January they would have known they were going to be arrested That story related back to our piece on 22 January that year which itself had the headline Switzerland take a greater interest in …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Three players at once? Yes if you believe the media. But then, on the other hand, if you believe the media then you believe, well, just about anything. Including the fact that we are currently trying to sign 54 players. But I thought it might be fun to put these three …