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 When it comes to what referees will do this coming season there will be some changes next season. But whether they are the right changes, I wonder. You’ll know if you are a regular here, that Walter and his colleagues have been running a regular analysis of refereeing of Arsenal games, and …
by Tony Attwood Lines for Arsenal Two things started me on this piece. One was a correspondent trying to suggest Arsenal don’t sign enough players (I’ll come back to that) and a piece in the Telegraph under the heading “10 young players Arsenal fans can get excited about this season”. I was fascinated by this, …
Read More “By this August at least half the Arsenal first XI will have joined in the past year.”
By Tony Attwood The other day we had a note from a reader saying that we shouldn’t trust the web site Who Scored. Unfortunately in common with so many correspondents no supporting evidence was provided as to why this was the case. Which is a shame because I would have liked to know. I haven’t …
By Sir Hardly Anyone (with another robot cock up in item 15). Latest Arsenal Odds With the transfer fenêtre now 19 days old we are clearly moving into a new phase of transferationalisms, for with 80 players now tipped to be arriving at Arsenal and 19 leaving, we are by and large running out of …
By Tony Attwood Football clubs as a basic starting point should surely set out to behave in the same way as any good and well run business. By which I mean that they should at one level treat those who attend the games as “customers” – worthy of the same level of service and …
Read More “When football clubs create problems of their own making… and then won’t ever back down.”
By Tony Attwood Substitute one word in the slogan and it is easy to see how Donald Trump land has come to football. In the world of toxic rhetoric Trump promises to expel Muslims and build a wall between the US and Mexico (which Mexico will pay for). How, why and with what consequence is …
Read More “We’re going to make Arsenal great again as now even the journalists are replaced”
By Tony Attwood In the course of things, Untold’s ongoing battle with the Anti Arsenal Arsenal is of little significance. But there is an issue that links us to the wider world, in the sense that the aaa uses the same sort of approach to debate as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. And …
By Tony Attwood Vangelis Marinakis, owner of Greek champions Olympiakos Piraeus, has been banned from football. He has been reporting to police every 15 days on strict bail terms and banned from football after he was released on bail of 200,000 euros. That’s not news but this is: He is now looking to take charge of Nottingham …
By Tony Attwood There was a piece in the Guardian this summer which said, “for years, Arsène Wenger has been accused of buying too many playmakers. Now he’s discovered the joy of playbreakers: in addition to Francis Coquelin, Granit Xhaka and Mohamed Elneny, he wants to sign Duracell bunny N’Golo Kanté from Leicester.” We don’t …
. Peter Goy gives an inside view on life with Arsenal in the 1950s. Interview conducted at Thorpe Hall Golf Club, Thorpe Bay, Essex on July 11th 2016, by John Sowman Peter John Goy was born on 8th June 1938 in Beverley, Yorkshire and became a member of Arsenal’s groundstaff in 1953 as a …
Read More “Arsenal Reminiscences with ex-Arsenal player Peter Goy”
by Bulldog Drummond. Shock, horror, disaster, Arsenal unprepared as usual. For the amazing news just discovered by the old Thunderer (as the Times used to be called) is that Arsenal could be without four of their main first team players for the starting day of the season!!! The four in question are Aaron Ramsey, Mesut Özil, …
Read More “Arsenal v Liverpool? – we have no players left for the game,shock horror.”
By Tony Attwood Proceedings against Mamadou Sakho of Liverpool by Uefa following his being found to have taken a banned subtsance were stopped and the case dismissed after Uefa stated that the drug should not have been on the banned list. A Uefa statement read: “The independent Uefa control, ethics and disciplinary Body met in …
Read More “Liverpool and Uefa contemplate suing anti-drugs agency”
By Tony Attwood I remember being taught at school that the Stone Age ended when we ran out of stones, so I suppose the Transfer Window ends when we run out of sand, soda and lime. But although that merciful release might still be 47 days away, there are real signs of strain as this edition …
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Now before we get going, let me offer you this. On this day, in 1789, Louis XVI, king of France wrote in his diary as he went to bed “Rien” as his record of the day’s events. The Bastille had just fallen. So don’t judge things too quickly is my …
By Jacko Jones “Aaron Ramsey Thanks the Cardiff Fans” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by joncandy At times, Aaron Ramsey doesn’t receive the credit that he deserves. The former Cardiff City man lives in the shadow of team-mate and Germany international Mesut Ozil at club level and Gareth Bale is widely regarded as Wales’ shining knight. Ultimately, Ramsey is often …
By Tony Attwood As I have reminded regular readers on occasion, I set up Untold in January 2008, just so I could put forward a few thoughts I had on stories that were never run in the newspapers or on TV relating to football. I hoped I might get a few people (apart from my …
Read More “Why do some football supporters of a certain football club get so very angry?”
By Tony Attwood This has been the week of the full back – any past full backs who have been mentioned before as possible transfers have had their stories picked up again while the nation’s “journalists” have been scouring the countryside (or the pubs) for new ones. Which is odd because a) we already have …
Read More “Arsenal looking to buy six previously unmentioned players”
By Tony Attwood As you may recall if you are a regular reader of Untold, we’ve taken a particular interest in the FC Barcelona case concerning child trafficking and we were one of very few places that kept on with the story. As we ran it the abuse poured in day by day (most …
By Tony Attwood While day by day Sir Hardly Anyone brings us the ever growing list of all the players who are about to join Arsenal (but never will), and all those who are about to leave (but likewise never will), so I’ve been gathering to great list of all these tales together in the …
Read More “The transfer debate: just a few of the transfers that were utter disasters”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Thus we have the big headlines of the week. According to those in the know, or if you prefer those with nothing better to do but sit around and make it all up, we will have, in the next couple of days two in, one out. It is, you must admit, …
Read More “One “Deal close” arriving, one “deal close” to leave, one midfielder to sign this week”
By Tony Attwood It has hardly been reported anywhere much, but the salary cap (technically known as Short Term Cost Controls – STCC) will be running in the Premier League from the forthcoming season, and will in fact run for the duration of the new TV financial arrangements. It will run alongside the Premier League Profit …
By Tony Attwood Since Untold started in January 2008 I’ve never thought that Untold would make any reader change his/her mind. Rather I just hoped that I might find a few people who like me, felt that football was not being reported in a reasonable way. And that seems to have happened. At least I …
Read More “Proving that neither transfers nor buying a top goalscorer are the way to win the league”
By Tony Attwood In May 2014 a new competition for B teams of some Premier League and Championship clubs was put forward by the Football Association. The reason for it was (via some mechanism that was never explained) to boost the number of young English players in the league. The idea was that the new league …
Read More “Why are football’s administrators so utterly and totally inept?”
By Tony Attwood We have shown in the past season that only about a quarter of all expensive new players deliver in the first season with the new club. Around a quarter never deliver anything like the standard expected. We have also shown that although having the top scoring players in the league in the …
Read More “How much did the Arsenal squad actually cost and did we get value for money?”
By Don McMahon It is pointless to compare our youth and reserve players to known superstars like Messi and Ronaldo. These two men are the exception to the rule, the one-offs who will likely never be repeated again. for example; Alfredo DiStefano or Puskas were such exceptional players for their time, BUT they played in …
