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 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.”
By Bulldog Drummond Here’s a nice opening thought just in case you have some nerves about the game today: When we beat Reading last weekend, that gave us nine wins in a row. That is our best run since the Invincibles won 10 games in a row in 2004. The match that ended that run …
By Bulldog Drummond Mourinho will be defensive, and be happy with a draw. That’s what everyone seems to be saying, and it is probably true. It might not be worth the £1000 a ticket that is said to be the going price. We have been awaiting a Mourinho “voyeur” statement, or the production of a …
By Tony Attwood I do like it when football journalists let slip just how out of touch they are with the real everyday fans – the people who pay out of their own pocket to watch games, often being given grotty seats in stadia where the niceties of life such as actually obeying the Licensing …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: How to misunderstand football and its fans.”
Arsenal v Chelsea 26 April 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly following Walter’s review of the Newcastle game Ref Review : Newcastle – Arsenal: an overwhelming bias here is the updated “Table of Shame’ Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 19 Red Cards 4 16 Penalties 4 …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea 26 April 2015 – The Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood The aaa spent much of the early part of the season saying that we should have gone out and bought more players. My answer was the same: it ain’t that easy. You have to ask Does the player want to come Does his agent like the deal If non-EU can we get …
Read More “Who you can buy depends an awful lot on who you have got.”
By Tony Attwood “Wenger can signal power shift to Arsenal – but only by ending his Mourinho hoodoo” screamed the Telegraph this week. They and the rest of the press will follow this up with a piece that says “Five things we learned this weekend.” It is all nonsense of course, based on the childish …
Have the referees been any better in Arsenal games recently? by Andrew Crawshaw This question arose as Tony, Blacksheep and I were having a drink in a bar before the Cup Semi-final. The essence of the conversation was that both of them were convinced that the refereeing had improved in more recent games. I was …
Read More “Have the referees been any better in Arsenal games recently?”
By Tony Attwood The new financial analysis of clubs’ finances for the season 2013/14 makes familiar reading. Manchester United with its world wide marketing earns the most and spends the most on salaries. Indeed the clubs vying for the top four places in the Premier League earn the most and spend the most on wages …
Read More “High wages do not ensure victory… but they can help”
By Tony Attwood Sometimes it seems like screaming at a concrete bunker. Those odd campaigns that Untold takes on, when few other people want to notice. We keep on plodding away, reporting each bit of news, in the hope that in the end the story will unfold and people will get interested, at least for …
Read More “At last, our complaints about state aid for football are heard”
By Tony Attwood When Untold gets its teeth into a story we like to dig in deep, and not give up until we’ve got to the bone. OK, perhaps not the best idiom when I am about to talk about injuries, but I’m sure you know what I mean. You’ll remember the era when we …
Read More “Bayern’s medical team resign, and the forgotten cause of injuries”
Women’s Super league – Arsenal’s start to the season By Andrew Crawshaw The WSL is now well under way, all eight teams have played three games, here is the table :- Pld Pts W D L F A G.D Pts Chelsea 3 9 3 0 0 7 1 6 9 Arsenal 3 7 2 1 0 …
Read More “Women’s Super league – Arsenal’s start to the season”
By Tony Attwood I’m not sure that Arsenal actually needed any additional publicity among the football playing fraternity in order to ensure that the players the club wants, want to come to the club, but if they did, then achieving the FA Cup records they have just gathered ought to do it. Everyone must know …
Read More “It’s not who we can afford to buy, it’s who we can fit in”
By Tony Attwood It is, by any standards, a grotesque and appalling place, made worse by the avarice of capital and the incompetence of inefficiency. But its foundations show something far more sinister and dispiriting. In a week when we learned that British industry and commerce is now so inefficient that the French as a …
Reading v Arsenal FA Cup Semi-final – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw The Officials for the two semi-finals are :- Reading v Arsenal Referee – Martin Atkinson Assistants – Michael Mullarkey and Gary Beswick Fourth Official – Andre Marriner and for completeness, Aston Villa v Liverpool Referee – Michael Oliver Assistants – Stuart Burt and …
Read More “FA Cup semi-final: It is Mr Atkinson. He doesn’t like us, but there is some good news.”
By Tony Attwood Poor Thierry. Last week he slaughtered the odd bods gathered in the studio to pick the meat out of Burnley v Arsenal, he turned Coquelin into the Police Officer, and showed just what those funny digital screens they have are actually there for. With a breathtaking analysis of how Arsenal controlled the …
Read More “Spare a thought for Thierry as Sky take their revenge”
By Tony Attwood Over the years of building Stadium Wenger, we’ve got used to players deciding to move on. Robin van Persie, Samir Nasri, Bac Sagnay, Ashley Cole, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Alek Hleb, Cesc Fabregas, Gael Clichy, Alex Song… Some have done well, some have quite simply taken the money and run, some have …
