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 As far as I know, the English media has not picked up on this story that has broken from Fifa HQ in Switzerland. Therefore my use of the word “exclusive” might be a slight exaggeration, but “Exclusive in the UK” seemed a bit cumbersome. And you never know, there have been …
Read More “Fifa preparing to change football’s rules. An Untold exclusive (at least until tomorrow)”
By Gooner Mikey I find fake news, post truth etc., fascinating in the sense that those who use it show a degree of inadequacy and demonstrate a whole new dynamic in terms of social engineering. Don’t get me wrong though I don’t for one moment question its effectiveness, we only have to look at the …
By Tony Attwood There is a story doing the rounds that the wing of British military intelligence that works in secret in countries outside the UK (MI6) not only helped the British agent who put together the Trump sex dossier, he always worked with MI6 investigating Russia’s bid for the World Cup of 2018. A …
Read More “Football in crisis. Football in chaos. Football as a fairy story.”
By Tony Attwood . Last summer it was hard to see much beyond the ceaseless baying of the mainstream media and their camp followers on the bloggettas. We had (and this lot came from just a period of a few days) Arsenal transfers: 10 strikers Arsene Wenger could sign – Telegraph Which striker should …
By Tony Attwood . It is indeed amazing just how quickly a manager can move from being the ultimate superstar, the man Arsenal should have brought in if they really wanted to win the league, to being an also-ran, another silly foreigner who doesn’t really grasp what the Premier League is all about. Indeed it …
Read More “Would Arsenal be higher up the league if we had Pep Guardiola instead of Arsène Wenger?”
By Tony Attwood OK, I admit it. I know nothing about football. When it was announced that the Football Observatory was publishing a new list of the 100 most valuable footballers according to their own special unique super-wonderful way of evaluating players my pal and I decided to test our knowledge of football. The game …
Read More “The value of Arsenal’s players is not what you think. Or at least not what we thought.”
By Tony Attwood You’ve probably heard that Liverpool! had to leave Joël Matip out of their team to play Man U because, although he has publicly retired from international football, Cameroon still called him up for the Africa Cup. He didn’t go, but Fifa still haven’t ruled on the situation so he can’t play. Bournemouth were …
Read More “Football might be the biggest sport in the world but its management is chaotic”
By Sir Hardly Anyone One of the great twists of the Football Fake News creators is that they not only create fake news day by day, but that they then attribute the “story” to another source – in which the story didn’t appear in the first place. So not only is the news fake but …
By Tony Attwood I am endlessly fascinated by the way in which the media and their camp followers in the bloggettas adopt twin approaches in order to bolster their constant provision of Fake News – largely to the detriment of Arsenal. The first is the view that anyone can have an opinion (which is true) …
Read More “Simple answers and the rejection of experts: the need for multiple scorers”
By Tony Attwood Of course I’ve never met the guy but think I can still make a fairly decent guess as to what powers the brain of Alexis. He’s got a big ego. That isn’t a very insightful comment however because I suspect most top level footballers have got very big egos. Very very big …
By Bulldog Drummond When asked if Santi would play again this season, Mr Wenger, the Arsenal manager, said: “I hope so. Santi is far from starting to run again; he had a little procedure and we have a meeting with the medical people. Certainly he will not be available in the next six weeks.” That is actually …
Read More “Santi update, team v Swansea, more from Özil and Torino story is fake news.”
By Bulldog Drummond The early team news Coquelin and Bellerin are still about a week away from returning, Theo is maybe two weeks from returning. Gibbs and Mert are also out as well, obviously, as are Santi Cazorla and Mohamed Elneny. But coming back (and I would have thought absolutely certain to play) are …
Read More “Swansea v Arsenal: the prelims and early team news”
By Tony Attwood I have often wondered just how much people know about their football clubs. Or indeed how much some people know about football. And whether the number of people going to games is going up or down. It is not often that such ramblings within my brain can all be answered at once, …
By Tony Attwood An elite group of nine European ‘super clubs’, including five from the Premier League, are now so wealthy that nobody else has any realistic chance of catching them financially. That is what a new official report from Uefa says, although it is not clear what it intends to do about it. …
Read More “Recent transfers, total cost of squad, and salaries against position in the league”
By Tony Attwood As you might have noticed (if you ever read the home page of Untold Arsenal with its daily list of Arsenal anniversaries through the club’s history) today is both the ninth anniversary of the launch of Untold, and the anniversary of the meeting that AISA Arsenal History Society had with Rt Hon …
Read More “The funniest (and also the most embarrassing) transfer story this January”
By Tony Attwood I can remember, from my days as a child, Arsenal playing Racing Club de Paris, and wondering who they were, and why the match happened. Such childhood memories are of course notoriously unreliable, but I do recall it seeming a bit odd. One of those things that old people knew about, not …
By Tony Attwood Here’s a thought and a half: Olivier Giroud has scored 12 goals from his last 17 shots on target in the League, FA Cup and Champs League. Here’s another: he takes less time on the pitch to score that Lionel Messi, Diego Costa or Sergio Agüero. His figures at Arsenal now look …
Read More “Arsenal don’t have a plan B. Well, actually we do. It’s Giroud.”
By Tony Attwood As I was preparing myself for another day’s publishing on Untold this morning two curious things happened. One, not curious in itself, was that Andrew sent me his regular match preview for the weekend concerning the referee for the forthcoming Arsenal match. The other was that the Daily Telegraph newspaper attacked PGMO …
By Sir Brightly Plusfours; UK Government Czar of all the balls I am delighted to have this opportunity to address the ensemble of readers who are known as the most positive, fervent and enthusiastic of Arsenal supporters this side (and indeed that side of) the Great Wall that divides us all. My mission is to …
By Tony Attwood If you read my ramblings on a fairly regular basis the is a chance that you may have picked up the fact that a) when I did play football in my younger days I was utterly useless at the game b) when I played the indoor five a side game in later …
Read More “The nine health benefits of playing football, and what to do when you get too old.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Our young Mr Cohen cost anything from £40,000 to £80,000, opinion varies, but in terms of his age there is an agreement he is 20, which makes him rather old for a youth signing for Arsenal. His position is best described as Bellerinesque. Well, ok not best described as Bellerinesque, …
By Tony Attwood Do Arsenal players really care about the club they play for? Do they care about how the results go? Are they properly prepared for each game? Or are some of them a bunch of highly paid guys who really couldn’t care less, and who simply turn up and go through the motions? …
By Tony Attwood Untold has a number of correspondents from around the country, and indeed from outside the UK, who regularly feed in thoughts and ideas relating to the issues that we cover on the site, and this week brought in an email on the topic of the way refereeing is undertaken in the Premier …
Read More “Could football learn a thing of two from the way games are refereed in rugby?”
by Tony Attwood Actually it was me that was in total meltdown as in the original version I wrote something, changed it, wrote something else and totally screwed up what I was saying about Messsi, Barcelona and Real Madrid (the last bit of which I then cut). Excuses are there many, but the key point …
Read More “BT Sprout in meltdown; Giroud sails on; must be time to knock Lucas.”
By Bulldog Drummond. The fighting Just on a month ago Preston North End were forced to fine two of their “players” (Jermaine Beckford and Eoin Doyle) for fighting each other on the pitch during a match against Sheffield Wednesday. Both players were sent off, obviously, and the fines levied on the players were promised …
