By Lady Market Dominance In English culture, and maybe elsewhere, the domestic vacuum cleaner is often known as the Hoover, the Hoover being a dominant make of the product dating back to the early 20th century. So dominant did it become in the market that the word passed into the language as meaning “to take …
By Tony Attwood By the end of course it was getting truly ridiculous. Indeed as Short Fuse announced, “Arsenal’s transfer window descends into farce as structural problems remain.” What they didn’t realise was that the farce was created by the media as time and again they told us deals had been done, and were confirmed, when …
By Sir Hardly Anyone We’re almost there it is almost done – at least in terms of the buying. And as you probably expected, despite all the frantic suggestions by the People Regularly Engaged in Spurious Stories (or PRESS for short) nothing is happening thus far concerning Arsenal in terms of buying, although Perez looks …
Sir Hardly Anyone reflects on another wasted night at the bar. I have generally thought most “reporters” who cover transfer chit chat to be half baked, but some of those I have met in this fenêtre de transfert don’t seem even to have made it into the oven. And to hear the silly little people …
By Tony Attwood There has, I think, not been a transfer market quite like this one, and that for two reasons. One is that the Premier League summer market gets crazier every year, first because each year the media tries to do more and more to outdo whatever crazy things they got up to last …
By Sir Hardly Anyone What happens to the bloggettas owned by newspapers when their computers get overheated in the, well, err, heat? This morning, Wednesday 8 August, we find out as Foot Lond, the Daily Mirror’s endlessly automatic computer generated churning bloggetta, runs the story, “There’s less than a week left of the transfer window – …
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, head of pyschology at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Arsenal’s new head coach Unai Emery could be an unmitigated disaster or a phenomenal success. We do not really know, and that alone is a radical departure from the past decade when …
by Tony Attwood So Mr Kroenke has made an offer to buy the shares of Mr Usmanov in Arsenal, and it seems Mr Usmanov is willing to deal. Mr Kroenke will then own just over 97% of the shares. At this point, under English law all the other shareholders must be offered the same deal. …
By Sir Hardly Anyone And so as the word “slammed” is taken out of its cupboard and prepared to be given a massive overdose of multiple use by so-called journalists, we approach the last mile, the final furlong, the extra yard and the finish line which is not so much about to be passed with …
By Tony Attwood During the last 10 years as you well know we have won 3 FA Cups, and this obviously was not good enough for some people who attended matches. And of course was wholly unacceptable for the media who jumped on this, as they often do with their perceived negatives when reviewing Arsenal. …
By Tony Attwood As you will know, if you are a regular reader, the media and their tail coat hangers on, have created more transfer rumours in terms of players joining Arsenal, than ever before. (We’re not keeping a record of rumours of leavings since we had that summer two years ago in which every …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes it is true, there have been more transfer rumours concerning Arsenal this summer than in any of the previous transfer windows we have measured. Not by much but we have got there. 116 players have been tipped to be coming to Arsenal (or in the case of Jack Wilshere, signing …
By Tony Attwood Ten years and a bit ago – in April 2008 to be exact, I wrote an eight part series on Reasons to be Cheerful. It’s not the only “Reasons to be Cheerful” series on Untold – I did another three in 2009 and there have been several since. I’m not going to …
By Bulldog Drummond In my youth, on hearing that “the season starts today” (as it does for the championship etc, and of course Scottish football) old timers would say “it gets earlier every year”. To my utter dismay, on realising that the we were now only one week away from the Manchester City match I …
by Sir Hardly Anyone. It is, of course, most important to eat only in the best restaurants where one meets the right people and so the dinner which involved Ousmane Dembele and his chums at Arsenal has produced the wagging of tongues and the moving of mouths. For there was our new superhero Mattéo Guendouzi …
By Sir Hardly Anyone These are confusing times in the transfer market, and indeed as my old chum and informant Sir Jasper Fish III said just last night in the Toppled Bollard public house off the Old Kent Road, as I pointed out yet more confusing reports of the comings and goings, “It just shows …
By Billy “the dog” McGraw Our weird news correspondent. And Trends Editor. With all the bits and pieces about who Arsenal are and are not signing, it is easy to lose track of some of the other events around football at the moment. But they are still worth taking a look at because individually and …
By Tony Attwood Here is a line up for the coming season that in popular among journalists and bloggers… Bernd Leno; Hector Bellerin, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Shkordran Mustafi, Nacho Monreal; Lucas Torreira, Aaron Ramsey; Alex Iwobi, Mesut Ozil, Henrikh Mkhitaryan; Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. And a variant Petr Cech; Hector Bellerin, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Shkordran Mustafi, Sead Kolasinac; …
Aubameyang leads the line Ramsey, Guendouzi and Elneny start in midfield Sokratis partners Mustafi at the back Cech (c) Bellerin Papastathopoulos Mustafi Kolasinac Guendouzi Elneny Ramsey Ozil Mkhitaryan Aubameyang Substitutes Leno, Chambers, Mavropanos, Holding, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, E. Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Nelson That’s the confirmed line up. Chelsea’s team W. Caballero, Azpilicueta (c), David Luiz, Rudiger, Marcos …
By Bulldog Drummond So here we are again in the next round of the ICC. We’ve drawn/lost one, and won one thus far, and here’s the league table. Chelsea’s previous game was a 1-1 draw with Inter which they won 5-4 on penalties. Pos Team P W WP LP L F A Pts 1. Tottenham …
by Sir Hardly Anyone Maybe it is the change of arrangements, what with bringing the end of the window back to mid-August – a bit like having an extension done to your house by making the garden bigger and the living room smaller. (Sorry that doesn’t quite work but I am trying to play with …
By Tony Attwood In recent articles I have been looking at what next season’s Premier League table might look like. In the first article we showed there was a link between how much clubs spent in the transfer window and whether they would go up or down. Then in the second article considered how this …
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw It is always rather encouraging when one hears managers of other clubs moaning, whinging and whining. Of course much of the time, the moaning is all made up to cover what is happening, but even so, there seems to be a certain level of uncertainty in one or two …
By Tony Attwood Yesterday we unveiled our new prediction process in the article How much does it cost in transfer fees to take a club up one place in the PL? It looked at purchases for last season and showed how they resulted to rises or declines in the position in the league table. In short, …
By Chayasai Unai Emery has not only brought a load of confidence back to the squad after their poor finish – by their own lofty standards – last season , he has also instilled in them a sense of pride in playing in Arsenal Shirts , a heightened sense of discipline and that you create …