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 At least you shouldn’t believe them because as the last two summers have shown only one in 33 of all such rumours is true and we’ve only got eight here. But still, there ain’t much other news around so let’s do a quick round up. 1: Max Meyer Max is reportedly …
Read More “8 Astoundingly astounding transfer stories you really shouldn’t believe unless paid to.”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. There are some jolly headlines around on a day which is a public holiday in England, and thus a day without too much news. The Telegraph has “Tottenham would have been reduced to nine men with VAR” …
Read More “Lies, damn lies, and a total lack of concentration and research”
By Tony Attwood “It shows well the state of our society that, when people are generous, we are surprised,” Mr Wenger said after the match. “We are even more surprised when it is footballers and strikers.” He was speaking about Aubameyang giving up the chance of a hattrick with the final penalty, to help Lacazette …
Read More “A pigeon flies across the sky. Why the media employs vegetables as experts.”
By Tony Attwood Driving back from the match today I heard the Stoke City manager, a Mr P. Lambert, state on BBC radio that the first Arsenal penalty should not have been given because his Stoke player had got the ball. The radio interviewer did not challenge or question this interpretation and his silence on …
By Bulldog Drummond It’s an early start for those of us who live outside London so I am writing this piece quite a few hours before kick off, and thus I may be missing some late breaking news in terms of what sort of team we might put out against Stoke Neanderthals. But still the …
By Bulldog Drummond It seems almost years ago that we had the ceaseless, continuous wild ravings of those who took their lead from the frankly deranged Stewart Robson who ceaselessly claimed that all Arsenal injuries were caused by Arsene Wenger’s training methods. Yet there are still aspects of the media that will give him time and …
Read More “Bizarre news for injury prone Arsenal. What will Steward Robson say?”
by Bulldog Drummond The run against Stoke has not always gone as well as we might have wished… for the last ten games (all in the league) have only yielded six wins, and a draw, when we might well have hoped for more. Date Match Res Score 02 Feb 2013 Arsenal v Stoke City W …
By Bulldog Drummond I must admit that I have never once understood how people at Stoke City can boo Aaron Ramsey for “getting himself injured” as I have heard some of them put it. It is something so incomprehensible to me that I can only continue to see those Stoke City supporters who engage …
By Tony Attwood Reputations, like football accounts can be funny things. We’ve had endless arguments on this site about what has happened to the extra money Arsenal have made from having almost paid off the cost of the Emirates Stadium, and why that money hasn’t brought more than the the three FA Cups. Those wins …
Read More “Reputations are not related to reality, but once broken are hard to repair”
By Tony Attwood Are Arsenal’s tickets the most expensive in the Premier League? It is something that is often raised on this site, and I thought it might be time to do one of our regular reports on the issue. If you’ve been with us down this route before you will know that the season …
Read More “Arsenal is not the most expensive ground in the world. Nor even London”
By Tony Attwood Car Thief Week – that regularly returning week in which there are two international matches scheduled for lots of countries, and in which the country managers behave like car thieves who nick your car, run it into the ground and then return it with a demand that you pay for the repairs …
By Sir Hardly Anyone There are all sorts ways of entering the rankings and then become someone who might just make it to the world cup. You can score goals, you can give assists, you can play through balls that no one else in the stadium can see. You can win almost every tackle and every …
Read More “Marvin Plattenhardt: Don’t tell anyone but we think he’s Arsenal’s new left back.”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. Moaning almost never works. It rarely makes life better. But people still do it, basically because moaning, moaning and moaning again acts psychologically as a way of embedding the notion that “it is not my fault”. It …
Read More “Why Arsenal moaners are, and remain so depressed, while the rest of us are happy.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Interlull news in the UK rarely captures much of the “fun of the fair” type of excitement of normal times, largely because few people in England expect the country to do very much in the WC and Scotland are not there. Nor Wales nor N Ireland. Nor the Isle of Man, …
Read More “Why international football managers are just like car thieves”
By Billy “the Dog” McGraw. Head of psychiatry at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. Of course not everyone is engaged in crisis talk. The Daily Canon has the headline “Arsene Wenger denies trying to bribe midfielder,” but well, it’s the Canon. However these days they are being rivalled by West Ham’s …
————- By Tony Attwood Bayern Munich thought they had their next coach lined up. But now it seems they don’t. Because although Jupp Heynckes will leave the club in the summer as has been clearly agreed, Thomas Tuchel (the man who was thought to be coming in to replace him) is definitely not going to …
Read More “Arsenal’s next manager puts his head over the parapet”
By Tony Attwood I am not at all sure how long the Said & Done column in the Sunday newspaper the Observer has been running – although our logs show I did a piece critical of the column back in 2009, so at least nine years. And in one sense it is quite jolly fun. …
Read More “How the fearless “Said & Done” in the Observer censors the news that just don’t fit”
By Tony Attwood The first two words of that headline, “Xhaka sublime”, came from a blog, The Hard Tackle, which is not a source that I normally associate with such praise. The piece was a review of a Swiss interlull game and read, “The creative powerhouse for Switzerland, Xhaka ran the show from midfield, opening …
Read More “Xhaka sublime. But by anyone’s standards, Arsenal have had a poor season.”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, chief psychologist at the University hospital of the North Circular Road It is self-evident that Arsenal have got completely the wrong group of people running the club. As an example of out to tackle problems we should take a good hard look at our government in the UK …
by Tony Attwood Many Arsenal fans, including myself, have always had a pride in the number of players who come up through the ranks to play for the club. By this I don’t mean that they necessarily join as a nine year old, but rather that they come along not in terms of a big …
Read More “The background revolution: young players are regaining control of their lives”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is not just that 97% of these rumours are likely to turn out to be untrue, but that there is other news of importance out there. The utterly wild and ludicrous claims by PGMO, provided without any of the evidence Walter and his team provided in the 160 game analysis, …
Read More “The fake news transfers: beware you are being conned two ways round”
By Robert Haynes Source: Liverpool FC via Facebook Every dog has his day and Arsene Wenger’s has been and gone. Three FA Cup final victories have boosted his stock as Arsenal manager but it is the right moment for the club to move on. Wenger failed to prepare his side for their Carabao Cup …
Read More “Would Brendan Rodgers Be a Good Replacement for Arsene Wenger?”
by Tony Attwood The trick for most fake news creators is a) To be able to write something that requires no research and so costs no money and takes very little time. b) To be able to benefit personally or corporately from the fake news. c) To ensure that the fake news is not …
Read More “The cause of empty seats for some Emirates games is the media not the fans.”
by Sir Hardly Anyone Yes the transfer window is not even open. Indeed the season is a long way from being concluded. And yet already we have 44 players tipped to be coming our way this summer. It is amazing where these people get their information from – and amazing how wrong …
Read More “The 44 players tipped to be joining Arsenal this summer”
By Tony Attwood I see that there is to be a match between Real Madrid Legends and Arsenal Legends. It is apparently the ninth edition of the Corazón Classic Match, which is described as a charitable game played with the proceeds aimed at helping children in need. This is organised by the Real Madrid Foundation and will …
Read More “Why there are some “charitable events” involving football that I have doubts about.”
