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 Arsenal cannot afford another timid transfer window – they need to get ruthless That’s from today’s Telegraph and refers to an article by Jeremy Wilson in the paper. And before we go into the detail it is worth asking, was the purchase of Ozil and the purchase of Alexis “timid”? And that …
Read More “Who will Arsenal buy and how will they do it? Two different views.”
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you’ll know that I sometimes have a little snigger about the way the daily press in England pick up on our stories occasionally and then do a re-write of them – either covering the same ground, or being persuaded to set out an alternative vision by …
Read More “So exactly who has been Arsenal’s best keeper of late?”
By Tony Attwood How fast can you know that a player or manager is no good? Today the Telegraph has the headline “Has Guardiola finally been found out?” That implies that he has been tricking everyone all this time in some ill-defined way. He’s got three Spanish titles and two Champions League trophies, and he’s …
Read More “How to judge Arsenal: a touch of context, analysis and knowledge can help”
By Tony Attwood Enfield have lost their appeal against a points deducation which keeps them out of the play offs from their division. The appeal against an FA decision was organised by the FA, run by FA people, for the FA by the FA. The guilty party in the affair was at all stages and …
Read More “Enfield punished for FA total cock up; press happy to cover up the mess”
Chelsea and QPR have used different routes to get around FFP regulations. But are they going to succeed? By Tony Attwood Remember FFP? You might, but it seems the Premier League doesn’t. We should have known about the Premier League’s Financial Fair Play regulations a year ago, and still not a word. Indeed the only …
Read More “FFP: Uefa seems to have given up, but maybe the League will be more resolute.”
By Tony Attwood In the closing minutes last night a fellow Arsenal supporter sitting just behind me shouted out “You’re fucking useless Sanchez”. I felt the point he made lost something by a lack of detail and logical argument. But there it was. His opinion. But it was perhaps this comment that led to my opening a …
Read More “No new central defender; Wenger is rubbish, everything is rubbish.”
By Bulldog Drummond. Shock horror disaster!!! Danny Welbeck has scored three goals in four Barclays Premier League games against Swansea City, and he is out injured!!! Oh no!!! (I think I am getting the hang of this jouno hysteria). But of course Arsène Wenger knows exactly what’s what. “I’m ready to change but we had …
Read More “Arsenal v Swansea: the teams, the score, the detail. In fact everything.”
by Tony Attwood Tottery Downs is a wild and wonderful place somewhere in the vicinity of north London. It is a place wherein teams of a certain ilk find themselves talking about taking a step up, joining the Champions League, and other such wild, wild, dreams, while in reality the dear old team is as …
The Untold Banner: a brief(ing) update by Blacksheep Having suggested the idea of putting a banner up in the Emirates to mark our appreciation of M. Wenger I must admit to being overwhelmed by the number of positive responses and offers of hard cash from Untold readers. This is going to take some organizing but …
By Tony Attwood It has been clear since the earliest days of its existence that the FA is run by a bunch of dodos. But now that assessment looks to be challenged, for it is clearly an insult to dodos. Dodos must have been the cream of the intelligentsia compared to the FA. What has …
Read More “The grossest FA cock up of them all. I promise you won’t believe this.”
ANGER MANAGEMENT ARSENAL – Don McMahon One of the most ubquitous characteristics of the aaa and their media masters is a level of anger that does not correspond with any reality or actual circumstances at AFC. The black scarf movement, the Wenger out brigade, the vitrolic aaa and the media taking umbrage at the slightest …
By Tony Attwood That headline is, I confess at once, misleading. And one should not use misleading headlines. I know that because I wrote it in an article last week about selling via the post and email.* But it is a headline that we used to see all the time. I’m not sure Untold has …
By Tony Attwood This morning on my way to work I voted in the UK’s general election for an MP to sit in Parliament for the town in which I live, and I also voted in the election for local councillors to serve in my part of town. Unfortunately I couldn’t vote for Blacksheep, for …
By Tony Attwood We have often referred back to the match fixing scandals in Italy; I thought that maybe to add to the picture we ought to cover match fixing in some other countries too. And I thought I’d start with Greece, where the affair in 2011 was originally called The Koriopolis. But in case …
Read More “Match fixing in Greece, Olympiacos and next season’s Champs League”
By Tony Attwood This year St Totters Day was the biggest I can ever remember, with even the national media jumping on the bandwagon. Indeed if you want a flavour of what other Arsenal fans got up to on the great day this year take a look at St Tots Day from the Independent. This means of …
Read More “Why we need the young non-international playing players”
By Tony Attwood I can’t recall a new season starting so early, but that is how it seems. We’ve still got to establish the order of the top four, play Man U, Sunderland and WBA in the league, and sort out the FA Cup. And yet all the talk is of next season. No real …
Read More “We’ve got the 100, had St Tot and got into Europe. So now what?”
By Tony Attwood All clubs have style. It is reflected in the way the players are encouraged to present themselves, the way the club reveres its past, the way the club considers its fans, even the way the club considers the people who live in houses round about. In such an analysis there are some …
By Tony Attwood The last time Hull beat Arsenal at home was 2nd April 1915. It was match 33 out of a 38 match second division season, in a game played at Hull. The score was 0-1 to Hull, and the crowd was 8,000. Of the remaining games we drew one, lost one and won …
Read More “Is it time to sing, “It’s happened again…?” Hull v Arsenal. The preview.”
. So, Hull. Luring near the foot of the table. Pld W D L F A GD Pts 14 Aston Villa 35 9 8 18 29 50 -21 35 15 Newcastle 35 9 8 18 36 60 -24 35 16 Hull City 34 8 10 16 32 45 -13 34 17 Leicester City 35 9 …
Read More “Arsenal has more points after 33 games than any campaign since 2009-10”
By Tony Attwood Newspapermen often like to confuse ideas. For example if a football manager speaks out of turn (at least “speaks out of turn” in the mind of a journalist) then the manager has engaged on a “rant”. Call a journalist an ostrich, and immediately it becomes a rant. But if a journalist …
by Tony Attwood Selling players who we would rather like to keep is something that Arsenal became fairly familiar with during the years of paying for the new stadium. However that Liverpool, who have only just embarked on upgrading Anfield for a cost of around £114m, adding 8000 new seats, and yet are embroiled in …
Read More “Why Sterling can leave Liverpool any time he wants”
A little while back I wrote about the problems Arsenal have fitting all the current players and players on loan into the “25” list that is allowed. Of course that will be worked out later, but it is worth considering who is knocking on the door in terms of youth players who might follow Hector …
Read More “Jon Toral: one of ten under age players we could see next season.”
By Tony Attwood As was suggested in correspondence following an earlier article, the deal between Tottenham Hotspur and Haringey Council over the funding of the new stadium for Tottenham could be seen as state aid, something that is not allowable under EU law. Now Untold can reveal that the situation has been referred to the European …
By Tony Attwood What is the purpose of newspaper football journalism? It is not a question one hears asked very often, and indeed is not a question that football journalists ever pose at all. But this is Untold, and the clue to what we are is in our name, so let’s try and answer the …
Read More “How newspaper football journalists have become part of the opiate of the fans”
By Tony Attwood On 30 December 2014 Barcelona lost their third and final appeal against Fifa’s ruling that the running of their “world famous” academy was illegal under Fifa rules. Interestingly, the Spain FA, which was also found guilty in a related case, did not bother to appeal at all. Now Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid …
Read More “Barcelona’s new academy plan aborted and now Madrid about to be banned.”
