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 One of the great things about Arsène Wenger is his ability to run rings round journalists so many times that they not only get giddy, they have no idea what he is actually saying to them. But I must admit that since he accepted a job at Fifa as chief of global …
Read More “What is Arsène Wenger up to with his proposals relating to the world cup?”
By Tony Attwood There is something of an oddity with Arsenal. During the Wengerian days there was a cry from parts of the ground saying “spend some fucking money”. Mr Wenger would smile and carry on as before. Indeed he would often say that if he was given unlimited funds he give it back, preferring …
Read More “Which squad has cost the most, and which players did Arsenal miss out on?”
by Andrew Crawshaw First the Context: Chelsea have been the WSL champions most years recently. They have the deepest squad and, in Emma Hayes, one of the most determined managers in any branch of the game. To say she dislikes losing is an understatement. Manchester City are the only other team, apart from ourselves to …
By David Lovelock Rumours suggesting that Mikel Arteta would land one of his big targets this summer in Norwegian starlet, Martin Odegaard, started even before the player went back to Real Madrid. The 22-year-old was keen on a move away from Real Madrid, it was said, and Los Blancos were ready to sell. What could …
Read More “Martin Odegaard: signalling a serious re-build under Arteta”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Well! I say again, “Well!!!” Can you imagine what the reaction in the UK media would have been if the ex-Arsenal goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez had still played for Arsenal. The world (and possibly half the solar system) would have come crashing down on Arsenal’s head. Or what if Tottenham’s Cristian Romero …
By Tony Attwood Chelsea are the reigning women’s premier league champions. But more than that they have won the title five times in the last seven years. But at Arsenal Stadium today Arsenal Women saw off Chelsea with a 3-2 win under the guidance of the new Arsenal manager. Of course the media are using …
Read More “Arsenal women beat the Champions in a really exciting match”
By Sir Hardly Anyone We’ve talked about the way in which the Daily Mirror has pretended that Martinez had a better season in 2020/1 than Leno and that Arsenal made a mistake in selling Martinez. They ignore the fact that Martinez was not happy to stay on as backup keeper, and had he been forced …
Read More “Was there another reason why Arsenal ditched Martinez and kept Leno?”
by Andrew Crawshaw In an eerily familiar fashion Arsenal have been drawn against both Chelsea and Manchester City in their opening three matches of the Women’s Super League (WSL). Unlike our men though the Women will be fighting those two clubs for the title so both games are real six-pointers. The WSL started on …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea Women – opening weekend of the WSL”
by Tony Attwood There was a time when, during the interlull – that period when league games are forcibly stopped so that our players can go and get injured playing for countries of whom we know little, even with a globe in front of us – that Blacksheep and I would go and watch non-league …
Read More “Just an interlull? No, there are FA Cup games being played”
By Bulldog Drummond Things really are looking bleak. Given the inevitable furious outpouring to the fact that Arsenal actually took the chance of the interlull to play a friendly without inviting the journos along (goodness how the media hated that) and won it (something now considered utterly unacceptable) and revealed yet another young player on …
By Sir Hardly Anyone As you’ll know Arsenal played an extra friendly this week against Brentford, using a new formation and of course only those players who were not playing international kickabouts. The team we put out was… Ramsdale; White (Hutchinson 76), Mari, Gabriel (Holding 69) Chambers, …
Read More “Arsenal v Brentford: Charlie Patino shines – watch the video of yet another new star”
By Tony Attwood I have regularly argued that football journalists and bloggers base all their ideas on the notion that the only way forward for clubs is to buy new players. As I have shown, the media likes making this a big story because it costs nothing in terms of research, and when over 95% …
Read More “Why the collapse of the transfer market prefaces the collapse of football.”
By Tony Attwood Such is the state of the media, it is getting hard to find many Arsenal players who have been with the club for a while who are considered worthy of driving the lawnmower to cut the grass on the pitch, let alone turn out for the team. Leno is considered an absolute …
Read More “Xhaka has covid and has refused vaccination. So should we blame him?”
By Tony Attwood In the end it was 134 players who we noted as being predicted by the media as coming to Arsenal this summer. Exactly the same number as last summer. Of these the journalists got six right, which is a success rate of 4.5%. If a footballer or a club ever failed …
Read More “Predicting Arsenal’s transfers: journalists score 4.5% accuracy rate”
By Tony Attwood “…the Arsenal hierarchy seem to have opted for a different, almost riskier approach, investing in six young talented players who will no doubt take time to bed in and flourish in red and white. “The risk stems from the fact that Arteta, along with technical director Edu, have opted for a long-term …
Read More “How half of last seasons top 8 are tackling more but fouling less!”
By Tony Attwood The great fear that I personally had for this window was that Mr Arteta would repeat his unwelcome trick of dropping players from the squad, without arranging a loan or a transfer for them. But rough and ready calculations by Untold (always notoriously unreliable when it comes to sorting out the 25 …
Read More “Edu has done a brilliant job in handling the “25”, and apologies to him are needed”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Since 1 January, all players transferred from EU countries to English clubs have required an endorsement from the Football Association to be granted a work permit, and English clubs have been banned from signing under 18 year olds from foreign lands. This, it was feared, could have had a major impact …
Read More “How PL clubs spent less this summer and yet still bought more players”
By Sir Hardly Anyone In the end we bought six out of the 134 players tipped by journalists and bloggers to be joining us, a success rate for the journalists and bloggers of about 4.5%. That was their highest ever success rate in tipping transfers since we started counting – mostly brought about by a) …
Read More “Takehiro Tomiyasu makes us the top spenders, and most went on the defence”
By Sir Hardly Anyone (and an abacus) “Arsenal [are] paying price for Mikel Arteta’s disastrous £140million spending spree”. “Why are Arsenal not spending despite having £400m in reserves?” Those quotes emerged just four years apart. If Arsenal spend a lot then it is a “spree” suggesting it is done without care. If they spend little …
Read More “This is only the 8th most expensive Arsenal transfer window in the last 10 years.”
By Tony Attwood Discussing the treatment of clubs by referees is made quite difficult by the fact that anyone who tries to claim their club is poorly treated by referees is simply told that this is just an excuse. Our 160 game analysis went a long way to resolve that debate by presenting video evidence, …
Read More “This season each Arsenal foul is earning a much stiffer response from refs”
by Andrew Crawshaw On Tuesday Evening Arsenal Women kick off their second round match in the UEFA Women’s Champions League. The tie is being played home and away, the first leg at Borehamwood with a 19:30 kick off, the second leg is in Prague on Thursday of next week 9 September with an earlier kickoff …
Read More “Womens Champions League round 2 – Arsenal v Slavia Prague tonight”
By Sir Hardly Anyone When Arsene Wenger first came to Arsenal in 1996 he bought in four players. Indeed such was the oddity of Mr Wenger taking over the club but staying to see out his contract in Japan, some of the players arrived before he did. Those four were Patrick Vieira, Nic Anelka, John …
Read More “Just how many new players can Arsenal bring in over three summers”
By Tony Attwood Does being bottom of the league after three games really mean anything? Presumably the people who write newspapers and blogs want their readers to believe that it does. They don’t spell it out, but the implication is always that how the table looks after three games is an indicator of how …
Read More “Does being bottom after 3 games actually tell us how the season will end?”
By Tony Attwood It is more than likely that you’ll know the Arseblog website; a blog very highly rated by many within the literate section of the Arsenal fan base. And yet I find to my surprise that in a recent blog, the writer can say, in questioning why Kolasinac was playing, “Reportedly he spent …
Read More “It is the failure to ask one simple question that is causing problems for Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal by the end of last season was still operating at a level below that achieved by Mr Wenger in his final season – the season in which he was forced out of the club. We did for a short while under Mr Emery reach a higher level of achievement, but then …
Read More “It has taken 3 years and we are still not back at the level of when Wenger left”
