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 Overnight the value of the pound fell. And then fell some more. And then more. And then… As most Untold readers recognised a long time ago I am not a clairvoyant so I don’t know what happens next, although I can look back to 11 September 2001 and 15 September 2008 when …
By Tony Attwood The headline reads Arsenal’s failure to sign Jamie Vardy highlights their naivety in the transfer market It is written by Jeremy Wilson who is described as the paper’s deputy football correspondent. But the tale makes 10 wholly misleading statements. Here they are (to save you reading the original piece). Misleading information – part …
By Tony Attwood Today is my birthday. Of course as one gets older birthdays get to mean less, and indeed one can readily wish that they didn’t have to happen quite so often. And birthdays get a bit more spread out. I saw one of my daughters and her children last weekend, I’ll see another …
Read More “Why 22 June is just about the most important day in the year in Arsenal’s history.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Now this is at last getting interesting for the media, desperately short of inane rumours to pedal have come up with not just one but two new ideas to fill up space. First, if there is any player thought to have even a 1% chance of coming to Arsenal they proclaim …
By our Special Correspondent Now you may be slightly surprised but I’m going to answer the question in that headline by suggesting that yes there is. It’s not foolproof, but it is a method that tilts the odds just a little further in the punter’s favour. The approach is to… hold back a little. …
Read More “The Euros: Is there a way of improving one’s ability to predict match results?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Since the anti-Arsenal Arsenal movement (commonly known as the aaa, the contemporary equivalent of the boo-boys who lambasted Herbert Chapman and his team) emerged after the move to the Emirates Stadium, it has gradually grown more vitriolic in its outpourings. But even so, there was little in the past couple of …
Read More “The eight most outrageous anti-Arsenal stories since yesterday”
by Tony Attwood You probably saw the stories: “Croatia fans threw flares onto the pitch hitting a steward amid the latest sickening scenes at Euro 2016 in France”. The match was stopped, fans called “sports terrorists”. And all reported in bold, and often in capital letters. Could it have anything to do with the fact …
By Tony Attwood I reported last week in the Index update how surprised I had been throughout this first ever effort to chart the transfer rumours week by week, how quickly the rumours dry up. The first Arsenal Transfer Index was run on 20 April, ten weeks before the transfer window opened (and of …
Read More “Balotelli to Arsenal and the 62 players listed this summer as joining him”
By Tony Attwood I don’t normally run too many video clips on Untold, but I am very happy to make an exception here. Do you remember how Ooooooooooooospina was criticised for one error? “Arsenal legend Ian Wright blasts Arsene Wenger for selecting keeper David Ospina following Champions League defeat” screamed the Mail at the time. …
Read More “Watch David Ospina; man of the match and making an unbelievable penalty save”
By Tony Attwood Huge gatherings of sports fans for international events. Great fun. Big TV event. Why not? Well, if the current round of huge gatherings is anything to go by, the answer is because they can be rather troublesome. We have the Euros in France organised by Uefa, a body that is renowned for …
By Sir Hardly Anyone (whose claim for overtime is in the post) . FACT 1: Henrikh Mkhitaryan will not extend his contract at Borussia Dortmund, the club have confirmed. This certainly does seem to be a fact, in that every report that mentions this, confirms the point. He’s got one year left on the Dortmund contract, …
By Tony Attwood There are many people – I suspect it is a majority in England – who believe the world and what makes it work, can be understood by common sense. “The evidence of my own eyes” as one correspondent wrote recently on Untold. In this view you can look at anything in the …
Read More “Football in the shadows. Why the great game isn’t all that it seems.”
By Tony Attwood Premier League academy teams will be allowed to play in the EFL Trophy next season after plans to change what was once known as the Johnstone Paint Trophy were agreed. As part of the deal the PL has put up £1m to create a total prize fund of £1.95m, with bonuses awarded …
By Tony Attwood Granit Xhaka made more passes (116) and had more touches (130) than any other player in the first round of fixtures in the Euros. So what does that tell us about where he plays? And what does it tell us about who plays around him in the Arsenal team next season. The media, …
Read More “Revealed: next season’s line up: and it raises some question marks.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Sepp Blatter has suggested that some European draws were fixed by placing certain balls in the refrigerator before the draw, so that person pulling the balls out of the box or bag knows to pick a big name or small name club or country. A Uefa person reacted by saying, “Allegations …
By Tony Attwood The Arsenal Supporters Trust (of which I am not a member but was associated with – if that is the right term – when the Fanshare scheme was running) does a survey each year, and this year on reading its results through I find I have have a few doubts about its …
By Tony Attwood The alleged transfer of Jamie Vardy to Arsenal which emerged and then vanished again like a puff of cigarette smoke has taken another turn after the Daily Mail published pictures which shows Vardy carrying a supply of legal, but dubious, drugs. This comes at a time after Uefa turned its back on …
By Sir Hardly Anyone, As you will know we have discovered to our alarm that the invention of new Arsenal rumours has ground to a halt, with all the people who normally make up new rumours each day simply re-cycling old rumours. We desperately need new rumours to feed into the machine, otherwise the machine …
Read More “To all Arsenal fans: your club urgently needs your help. Now.”
By Tony Attwood How do you know if a club is making progress or not? Well, in one sense the answer is probably totally obvious. If the team came 14th one season and then third the next, we might see this as progress. But was it real progress? And is it sustainable? These are tough …
Read More “Are Arsenal making sustainable progress or are we standing still, or drifting back?”
By Tony Attwood I am not sure anyone has ever charted the ebb and flow of transfer rumours through the summer before – if they have I haven’t been able to find the analysis, which is why Untold has chosen to take this task on with the Arsenal Transfer Index. The Index aims to chart …
Read More “Arsenal transfer rumours take on a new and unexpected twist”
By Tony Attwood …weeping children in replica shirts stumble about with their frightened parents looking for nonexistent transport, peering down side streets, plotting escape routes from the sudden spurts and burps of violence that flared again through the night. The Métro was running, but not the stop near the stadium, and without any guidance on …
Read More “The English media and government are directly responsible for the violence in Marseille”
By Tony Attwood Of course if you enjoy football on Sky, the BBC, ITV or BT Sprout you’ll disagree with my headline, but I do find broadcast media’s commentary on football – be it live matches or in discussions or reviews of games – completely unrelated to my experience of football as an actual spectator …
By Tony Attwood We live in a world of blame. And not just any old blame, but instant blame. Blame for the last minute of the last game. Blame for violence. Blame for the economy. Blame for the fact I sneezed just as I was going to start writing – it must be the fields …
By Tony Attwood There is a lot of talk about what seems to be Vardy’s rejection of Arsenal. “Vardy ’80 per cent’ certain he will snub Arsenal” says the Independent. And to rub it in, “Arsenal transfer plans face disruption over Vardy delay” in another article in the same paper. Typical bloody Arsenal, …
Read More “Why is it that when Arsenal goes for a player something always goes wrong?”
By Tony Attwood If you occasionally read my ramblings on Untold you might know that I get just a little fed up with what journalists say about Arsenal, Arsenal management, Arsenal players, and Arsenal fans. Everyone can have an opinion of course, but when there is nothing but opinion and not a single back up …
Read More “Memo from editor: It’s the Euros. Make sure you knock Arsenal and its fans at every turn”
