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 “Expensive flop Granit Xhaka the personification of Arsenal’s problems” That is the headline on a blog today. Granit Xhaka is a flop. We know it. We don’t have to give evidence. That’s it. What of course is never taken into account is the fact that the majority of players (around 75%) …
By Sir Hardly Anyone. 58 days to go til the window creaks open and the glass falls out, and already we are on course to beat last summer’s amazing total number of 110 players who are coming to Arsenal. Of course you might think that last summer’s abject failure by the assembled bunch of geezers …
By Tony Attwood Back at the start of this season a few of us involved in Untold Arsenal raised eyebrows at one particular transfer: Mario Balotelli to Nice. And this for two reasons. One was because Balotelli had had such a troubled time at Liverpool, after having been such a quality forward (not to say penalty …
WHAT CHANGES DO WE REALLY NEED? … Don McMahon The anguish, whining and prognosticating that has occurred after our loss at WHL and our declining fortunes this season are truly Shakespearean in the extreme. The press are overjoyed with their hyperbole against AFC and the aaa are jubilant at the prospect of having one more …
By Tony Attwood A comment on Untold yesterday got me thinking. It was the one about having “owners who care”, and the problem with Arsenal being that we don’t. Of course as soon as one looks at a statement like that it opens a can of worms because “caring” is difficult to define. The current …
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Telegraph today that says, “Once the butt of every joke, now Tottenham are laughing at complacent Arsenal’s expense.” It is an approach which is replicated in many newspapers and on many blogs; Tottenham are on the way up and Arsenal are on the way down, and …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes it has been a big and important moment for Tottenham as they achieved the their dreams over the past 20+ years by finishing this season above Arsenal. And Tottenham’s aim is now clear – to emulate and then overtake Arsenal in terms of the number of times they have …
Read More “Tottenham target equalling Arsenal’s league record by 2055.”
by Bulldog Drummond There has been quite a bit of commentary in the media about the fact that with around 15 minutes to go before the final whistle in their cup semi-final, Tottenham fans began to leave Wembley, even though scoring twice in 15 minutes (it actually turned out to be 14 as the ref …
By Tony Attwood OK you are an Arsenal supporter and you know that the last time Tottenham finished up in the league above Arsenal was 1994/5. If this happens again (which it will if Arsenal do not win on Sunday) then it might well seem a tragedy. If you are a Tottenham supporter it will …
Read More “How you contemplate the possible end of the St Tots run depends on where you are placed.”
by Tony Attwood I am not sure that it was covered by that much by the media in England at all, but FC Barcelona President Josep Maria Bartomeu is, it seems, only one step away from being found guilty of corruption. His latest appeal in the case of the transfer of the Brazilian striker Neymar in …
Read More “Corruption news: 43 footballers, 8 agents, 12 clubs, Barcelona, and Tony Pulis.”
By Tony Attwood I made mention in a little piece yesterday (Who are the most fouled players?) that fouls reported by referees are most likely not the total picture when it comes to behaviour on the pitch, because, for various reasons that I laid out in that article, referee engagement with fouls is not a …
Read More “Tottenham v Arsenal preview: will it be a dirty game?”
By Tony Attwood There is an article on the Telegraph web site at the moment with the headline “The top 20 most fouled Premier League players of the season – can you guess the No 1?” It’s a beguiling idea – an analysis of which players are kicked to death and which don’t get the …
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Have you ever wondered where the people who make up transfer stories get their make believe from? Or indeed how one can tell if one story out of the hundreds that circulate is actually true. Well, I’m going to show how it is done, with an outrageous example from a blog …
By Bulldog Drummond Of course some news comes in at most inconvenient moments. Here am I about to prattle on concerning the line ups for tonight when we get the announcement that Newcastle Utd and West Ham United were raided this morning by HMRC concerning suspected criminal tax fraud in professional football. That is what …
By Bulldog Drummond If it is an Arsenal match, then it must be time to talk about Alexis Sánchez leaving and going to, well, anywhere, everywhere, you name it. Except this time Arsène Wenger has said there is no way that Alexis Sánchez will leave Arsenal this summer even if it means going on a free …
Read More “Arsenal v Leicester: how exactly do the teams compare with our position last season”
By Bulldog Drummond The very early indications on injuries that we have for the game tomorrow is that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was not seriously injured in the cup semi-final and that Lucas Perez has now recovered from his injury that kept him out of the weekend game and is back in full training. Whether the Ox …
Read More “Arsenal v Leicester: a shocking home and away comparison, and excellent injury news”
By Sir Hardly Anyyone It has been something of an erratic week for the football fiction writers as Mr Wenger has wrong footed them twice – once by changing his line up style and once by beating the glorious Pep. However this has not stopped the scribblers noting some more players who will be …
By Tony Attwood When managers come in, their job is to do better than the last man. that is the sort of basic requirement most people lay down although some go for winning the title each season or at least challenging for it until the last few weeks. Of all managers Pep Guardiola was the …
Read More “Supposing we’d sacked Mr Wenger a year ago and brought in Pep Guardiola”
by Tony Attwood Barcelona are continuing their attempt to move football into a completely new arena for not only have they played out a game in which the activities of the referee caused even the most solid “there is nothing wrong with the referee’s so stop whinging” media to turn pale and re-consider their approach, …
Read More “Barcelona take football into new territory with appeal against red card to CAS”
By Tony Attwood It is funny just how difficult a lesson it is to learn, both by football supporters and by journalists but somehow the reality never gets through. When looking at the actions of officials, it is no good taking one or two (or even three or four) incidents and then blaming the ref …
Read More “Record beating manager, record beating club, maybe its time to revive Lucky Arsenal”
By Bulldog Drummond. Looking, as we usually do, at the injury table we find that Liverpool are the team not to beat – way out ahead according to the Physioroom charts with no less than nine injuries. Man City are on four, Arsenal five. # TEAM TOTAL INJURIES LATEST PLAYER INJURED INJURY 1 Liverpool 9 …
Read More “Arsenal v Manchester City: a win pays Arsenal’s salaries for a week and a half.”
By Tony Attwood It is not something that you are likely to read much about in the papers, and not something that social media want to tell us but it is true: Arsenal are this weekend becoming the most successful team in FA Cup history, and Arsene Wenger the most successful FA Cup manager of …
By Tony Attwood On 15 July 2016 Untold covered the case of proceedings against Mamadou Sakho of Liverpool by Uefa following his being found to have taken a banned substance. The proceedings were stopped and the case dismissed after Uefa stated that the drug should not have been on the banned list. Now in reporting …
Read More “The weird story of Uefa attempting to by-pass world doping rules is finally resolved.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Part 1: The Frightening (Daily Mail) OK, the Daily Mail with its daily hate campaigning is always frightening, but this is very frightening. They claim that “Bookies slash odds on Chelsea captain John Terry joining Arsenal next season from 33-1 to 5-1.” A large number of bets were placed in the …
Read More “You really really won’t want to believe who Arsenal are on the verge of signing”
by Tony Attwood The story at first was that Arsenal season ticket holders were in revolt and were not buying tickets for the FA Cup semi-final this Sunday. But as per 2014 and 2015, the tickets were sold fast enough, once the sale was opened up to those holding season tickets without any away …
