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 Sir Hardly Anyone I guess the logical follow on from the earlier article today is to suggest we are going to sign Jack the Ripper. Actually now I’ve written that, what’s the betting some sports web site thinks that is the nickname of a contemporary player and follows it up. In fact we have …
By Tony Attwood Last weekend I attended an excellent lecture on Jack the Ripper which was put on as part of a literary festival. A literary festival, not a history conference, because the talk was about the way the media created and ran with the story of the Ripper. During the talk the speaker made …
By Sir Hardly Anyone 1: DONE DEAL. Sokratis L’Équipe is running the story that we really really have signed Borussia Dortmund defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos. Plans are being launched for the Arsenal programme to print the team sideways to allow for longer names. Actually I made that up, just as I think have L’Équipe. And given the …
Read More “Deals deals deals. Arsenal are signing players like there is no tomorrow”
By Tony Attwood Today is quite an important day in Arsenal’s history, and although I normally confine my Arsenal history comments to the website of the AISA Arsenal History Society I thought I’d stray into Untold just for a moment to correct some of the stories that often crop up around this time. And indeed …
Read More “Getting Arsenal facts wrong, on this day of all days”
By Tony Attwood The fiasco of Liverpool signing Fekir but not signing Fekir despite all the papers being certain that he had been signed, has ended with little blame being assigned to Liverpool, reminding me (if no one else) of the lack of balance that there is in the way clubs are treated. However despite …
Read More “How the starting line up for next season is coming along at Arsenal”
by Tony Attwood BeIn Sports recently did an interview with Ivan Gazidis. Nothing special about that given the changes that are happening to the club this summer, but interestingly at 6 minutes and 38 seconds the interviewer attempts to quote our banner at the stadium, and indeed the slogan we still have on this site: …
Read More “Football should be an art: Mr Gazidis knows it, even when the TV interviewer stumbles”
By Sir Hardly Anyone We’ve had a look recently at how the media deal with transfers relating to Tottenham and Manchester United to see if there is a difference in style and tone from the way they report possible transfers relating to Arsenal. This isn’t meant to be a definitive approach; just a quick resume …
Read More “Continuing the contrasting styles of reporting Arsenal and other clubs. Today: Liverpool”
By Tony Attwood If you’ve been around Untold for a while you’ll know we’ve been watching refereeing in the PL for over ten years years, and we’ve taken on a whole range of projects, culminating in analysing the first 160 games of a season and working out how many referee decisions were wrong. With that …
Read More “The 10 Factors that make PL match fixing more likely next season”
By Tony Attwood In a year’s time it will cost around £1000 a year to subscribe to the three “outlets” (what a ghastly word) that will divide up Arsenal matches on TV for UK watches: Sky Sprout, BT Moan and now Amazon. I haven’t got a silly alternative name for Amazon Footie yet, but I …
By Tony Attwood As I noted in my last article, for the financial year 2016-17, we have one club that hasn’t filed its accounts and has been threatened with a winding up order (Crystal Palace), two clubs that made a loss (Chelsea and Sunderland) and 17 that made a profit. Clubs don’t have to report …
Read More “Where does Arsenal stand financially in relation to the other top clubs?”
By Tony Attwood It is a total tragedy that the bloggettas and the rest of the media largely ignored last night’s under 21 game between England and Scotland, or else if reporting it hardly registered Eddie Nkehtiah’s contribution of two goals and a perfect assist. The game was life and free on TV in England …
Read More “It’s Eddie Nkehtiah’s day, Villa won’t pay, Palace won’t say, Chelsea lose their way”
By Tony Attwood Eddie is playing and it is on live TV, and better still free. There’s a channel called Free Sports (it is available to Sky customers whether you subscribe to Sky Sprouts or not) and they are starting to pick up some interesting bits and pieces including the Toulon Tournament. The semi-final is …
Read More “Scotland v England live on TV and free. Now. (Eddie is playing)”
By Tony Attwood Yes indeed, he was on the list at number one (largely because the list is by and large in alphabetical order and his surname is Adli) and we have signed him. Making it two players signed. If anything is going to encourage the rumour makers to keep going it is a …
Read More “He’s number 1 on our list of 85 player we’re signing, and he’s just signed”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes we have ten new players added to the list of those coming to Arsenal according to the creators of these tales and three players updated. It takes us up to 85 players, with the target being around 110 players by the time the window “slams shut” as Sky and the …
Read More “The 85 players Arsenal are said by the “experts” to be signing this summer”
By Tony Attwood Yesterday afternoon Blacksheep and spent a while in the British Library, during which we discussed (not for the first time) the fact that the British media, when contemplating football, is generally desperate to avoid any questions starting with the word “Why?” Yet it often seems to me the most interesting question in …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Not everyone has gone bonkers over the story that Arsenal are going to sign Fellaini on a free, but there is quite a bit of that coverage around with agents in discussion, a medical happening and so forth. Maybe by the time you read this the transfer will have happened. Maybe …
Read More “Current rumours reveal Arsenal’s audacious plan: and it might just work.”
By Tony Attwood Liverpool are not just leading the way in this transfer window, in terms of serious business they are completely out on their own. Of course they have the advantage of what might be called managerial non-movement, and so their arrangements were undoubtedly known and planned well in advance. But whether doing the …
Read More “This could be the most difficult transfer window yet for Premier League clubs.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It had to happen in the end. Another website has picked up on the idea of recording a list of players who are said to be on their to Arsenal. So naturally I have taken a look with interest. And at first site it is interesting because this commentary incorporates the …
Read More “Confusion reigns as a new list of all Arsenal transfers for this summer appears”
by Tony Attwood This game was, (presumably for some sort of copyright region), only available in the UK. So not even visible in the Channels Isles it seems, and I’m really sorry that not everyone was able to see the game, as it was great fun. The skill that these older players retain really is …
Read More “Real Madrid 2 Arsenal 1 full time: great Sunday evening fun, but only in the UK”
by Tony Attwood I must admit that I have not seen a legends game before, and so am in the process of watching this one simply because it is free to view on Arsenal.com And 100% applause to Arsenal.com for doing this; it really is fun. Obviously it is not a total commitment, heavy tackling …
By Tony Attwood I wrote a little piece yesterday taking a snapshot of how Tottenham Hotspur are treated by the media in relation to Arsenal, and it raised a little amount of interest so I thought I would have another go today with Manchester United. This piece of course as with the Tottenham jottings is …
Read More “How do Man U get treated by the media compared to Arsenal?”
by Tony Attwood There’s an article on “Just Arsenal” which rails against the criticism that players like Bellerin, Xhaka and Ozil get from a small selection of Arsenal fans. To that one could add Mustafi and Cech who have also come in for continual abuse in the past year. Indeed just as I write this, …
Read More “How do the media treat Arsenal and Tottenham? A simple one day comparison.”
By Tony Attwood Some businesses I’ve come across are indeed in the aforementioned state of turmoil, while others just seem to stumble around a lot and some sail on serenely never troubled by the choppy waters on which they sail. So I wondered, in football is it just Arsenal that is in a state of …
Read More “Why does football always have to be in a state of constant turmoil?”
The eight biggest transfer stories of the moment By Sir Hardly Anyone Since the issue has been raised about Arsenal being slow off the mark, in a moment I shall take us through all the players thus far signed by a Premier League club and you will be shocked, I can promise you that. But …
by Tony Attwood Because I don’t have any real interest in international football except in watching out for dreadful injuries to Arsenal players and wishing such young men had more sense than to put their futures in the hands of car thieves (if you remember the old description) who wreck your vehicle, then hand it …
Read More “It’s all gone quite quiet over there. A few little local footballing difficulties”
