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 Last season Paul Merson wrote an article for the Daily Express in which he said that Arsene Wenger must be sacked if the Tiny Totts or Leicester win the Premier League. It was a most curious piece in that it seemed to imply that all the clubs near the top of the table …
By Tony Attwood Of course we need to be clear here: referees have been protected by the media for years because of the fact that the media will always put their own self-interest ahead of the need to report reality. Thus ever since the 1970s TV has been in the business of promoting football as …
By Sir Hardly Anyone M.Sc, PhD, (Burk). It has been a breathless few days on Planet Earth what with yesterday being pi day (March 14 – 3.14 if you see what these maths bods mean.) And indeed breathless on Planet Arsenal too, and again for a mathematical reason – in this case expotentialism. In order …
Read More “New manager negotiatons, players to return, injury boost; record beaking deal”
By Sir Hardly Anyone For the past year or two the media has filled up blank spots on its web sites with a range of articles that began with “Three things we learned this week”, and then not to be outdone by a rival became “Five things we learned this week” which soon mutated into …
Read More “Nine and a half things we learned from the media this week”
A summary of the research by the Referee Review team 160 games researched in detail It is commonplace for occasional visitors to Untold to write sarcastic comments about referees and our views thereon. The view, usually expressed very simply, and occasionally rather rudely, says “you always blame the refs when it is obvious to anyone …
By Tony Attwood Of course having a bent foreign referee overseeing a match full of foreigners in a foreign place with a crowd made up of foreigners isn’t exactly big time news in England. Rather the scenes of BT Sprout commentators being ordered by the producer to get up and leap about, (instead of wonder …
Read More “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Barcelona/PSG was the moment football finally changed.”
By Tony Attwood Just a couple of days back I raised the notion that maybe, just maybe, the football media was taking the first tiny, tiny steps towards recognising one of the the core problems in football: that they not only have viewpoints they also set the agenda. They decide what is an “issue” in …
by Tony Attwood Imagine you are paid to report football stories and likely rumours. Not weird made up tales but stuff that could well be true. Now imagine that you were doing this job 18 months ago and your boss said, “I want you to write a piece about who will win the domestic trophies …
By Tony Attwood I was talking to friends on the way back from the game, about their experience of the match in the family enclosure. They’d got tickets for three adults and four children in the lower tier, clock end, positioned next to the Lincoln supporters, and I was rather sorry to hear that it …
Read More “Stewarding must be a rotten job, but that’s not an excuse for not doing it properly”
By Tony Attwood Ewan Murray is the Guardian and Observer’s golf correspondent, with added responsibility for overseeing coverage of Scottish football. Ewan’s outside interests revolve around his own substandard golf game and Vladimir Romanov’s stewardship of Heart of Midlothian. So by and large he is not the man you would put at the top of …
Read More “The only question that remains is, was the ref bought or was he just incompetent.”
By Bulldog Drummond. The illness question is the most puzzling part of today’s game: Danny Welbeck and Alex Iwobi are said to be down with it. Mesuz Ozil (as WhoScored now have him listed) seems to have had it twice, has recovered, but is on the Physioroom sick list and out for weeks. All …
Read More “Arsenal v Lincoln: the teams, the upsets, the media menace, the man of the match”
By Bulldog Drummond It is interesting that Untold is receiving comments from the occasional reader telling us not to write negative articles. I am not sure that we are that guilty of such an offence; for a truly negative article how about “The 24 most boring Premier League teams ever” which appears today in the …
By Bulldog Drummond It is, to say the least, interesting to reflect upon the fact that our opponents this weekend were founded two years before Dial Square, who after one match in 1986, then in January 1887 became Royal Arsenal. Indeed the interesting if occasionally inaccurate official website of the club gives a decent chronology of …
by Bulldog Drummond And so, the FA Cup. Derided by the anti-Arsenal-Arsenal and dismissed by the Arrogant Amnesiacs with Asssumptions, undoubtedly in both cases because Arsenal are rather successsful at it, but still a competition of some merit and worth in my view.(as anyone who has had the pleasure of being at an FA Cup …
Read More “Arsenal in the FA Cup; change of rules, change of name, the heritage, the records”
By Tony Attwood The desire of some supporters seems to be to have Arsenal getting results akin to those achieved by Manchester United in the 21 seasons between 1993 and 2013. During that period they won the league 13 times, they came second five times and came third three times. It came after a period …
Read More “How can we get the sort of Arsenal that the Anti-Arsenal and Arrogant Amnesics desire?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Let me confess that no one in the weird news industry (by which we mean what used to be called Fleet Street, TV, radio and the bloggettas) is, at the moment at least, coming close to the suggestion that Alexis suffers from dissociative identity disorder and has eight different personalities. That’s still …
Read More “Weird News: semi-skimmed stuff about Arsenal and origami for pyromaniacs”
By Tony Attwood I can’t think when the last time was that I quoted the Daily Mirror – certainly not quoting the Daily Mirror for doing something innovative and interesting which the rest of the media had not done. But they have done it. Up to a point. The article in question was by John …
Read More “Is Alexis really a bad influence? Or just a bad player (some of the time).”
By Tony Attwood OK so you don’t want Mr Wenger to continue in his job. Maybe you want Ivan Gazidis to go as well. Perhaps you want Silent Stan to sell – he’s got Mr Usmanov always waiting in the wings so why not. Which raises the question, what are you going to do about …
Read More “What is the most effective way of bringing about change at Arsenal?”
By Tony Attwood Anyone with a mind to look at such things would have seen the perfect “before and after” pattern in the game against Bayern. Before the match BBC Radio 5 held a mid-afternoon interview with a man described as an Arsenal fan who spoke about how upset he was about the club’s current …
By Bulldog Drummond There was one really interesting and barbed comment that most of the media failed to analyse (well actually most of the media fail to analyse most stuff but this was a particular one upon which they faileed to turn their gaze). Mr Wenger’s statement that, “You have to accept that a team …
Read More “Arsenal v Bayern. The teams, the multiple personalities and the return of Per”
By Bulldog Drummond The injury league still looks completely unbelievable, and so the media are not believing it, by not mentioning it. Arsenal are showing 3 “injuries” – although we are told that Ozil’s injury is an illness of some sort. Looking down the list however he is not the only player with an illness …
Read More “Arsenal v FC Bayern München: Cech frustrated, lucid rage and total commitment”
By Tony Attwood I read the comment that I have put in the headline the other day. I thought it a strange comment at the time, but knowing how I am not averse to making awful cock-ups when I rely on my memory I decided to look again at the figures. But it turns …
Read More “Arsenal clearly should do better, because the club is so wealthy.”
By Tony Attwood The story of Arsenal losing a highly talented player is not new. It has happened regularly, as the media is now telling us over and over. Robin van Persie, Cesc Fàbregas, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy, Thomas Vermaelen, Bacary Sagna, Alex Song, Emmanuel Eboué, Andrey Arshavin, Emmanuel Adebayor, Aleksandr Hleb, Ashley Cole… But it is interesting that …
Read More “The flaw in Alexis Sanchez’ make up may make this the moment to move him on.”
By Tony Attwood Although neither the anti-Arsenal-Arsenal of the bloggettas nor the Arrogance, Amnesia and Assumption approach of the mainstream media ever look back to the past with a sense of insight and understanding, history reveals that there was, and still is an Arsenal Way of doing things. Originally there was the notion that Royal …
By Tony Attwood I see that the current President of the United States has accused the former President of the United States of tapping his telephone. It has also been suggested that President Obama is attempting a coup against President Trump. Some media outlets report this as serious news, others are highly sceptical. If …
