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, as we all know, get the most injuries of any club playing in the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy. We know this because S Robson esquire and a guy who once coached Wales have told us over and over and over again. Now we are about to find out how …
Read More “Daily Telegraph reveals the true cost of injuries … or maybe not.”
by Tony Attwood There is an article in the Metro which is drawing a lot of attention. It opens… “As rumours continue to swirl surrounding Alexis Sanchez’s future, Arsene Wenger has been very clear that the Chilean [Alexis] is not for sale. But there’s a problem. He has taken that stance on countless occasions in …
Read More “Did Wenger really promise that Henry would not leave, and then sell him?”
By Tony Attwood We’ve now had four games in which Arsenal have been involved, which is enough time to give us an idea as to where the journalists are going to take the issue of Arsenal on TV, in the newspapers, and in the various bloggettas that newspapers have now set up to try and …
Read More “The five things we have learned about this season’s reporting of Arsenal, so far”
by Tony Attwood Arsenal now have two players out on loan with Marc Bola having gone to Bristol Rovers following the announcement of Takuma Asano’s continuation at Stuttgart. In terms of number of loans out Chelsea are in a league of their own. They already have 13 players out on loan already, and may beat …
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal : Ospina, Maitland-Niles, Mertesacker, Monreal, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ramsey, Xhaka, Bramall, Ozil, Iwobi, Lacazette Arsenal substitutes: Martinez, Bielik, Koscielny, Kolasinac, Coquelin, Elneny, Nelson, Malen, Nketiah, Giroud, Welbeck Chelsea with a long ball and as Maitland-Niles is beaten Per has to stretch out one of his long legs to prevent further danger. Chelsea with …
By Bulldog Drummond 足球 (That’s football in Chinese) Chelsea’s pre-season has been rather different from that of Arsenal, in that aside from a match against Fulham held in secret (Chelsea reportedly won 8-2) they have not had a pre-season on the pitch. As we will see below they have had a pre-season in the office …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea – not really a friendly. The teams, and the transfers”
By Bulldog Drummond The media will always present games against Chelsea as a foregone conclusion: a Chelsea win – even though Arsenal have won the tie more often than Chelsea. “Ah,” they say (for they like saying “ah”) “that’s because of the 1930s. If you take recent results you will see Chelsea are way ahead.” …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: the preliminaries, the food poisoning, the stories”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal used graduates from their academy more than any other Premier League side last season, a study by the Press Association has found – with the graduates taking part in a tiny fraction under one fifth of the Premier League minutes played. 6,628 of Arsenal’s total Premier League minutes – which to …
Read More “Arsenal’s use of academy players; club transfer comparisons; use of teenagers.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Certainly things have slowed down of late, and one can only assume that the volume of journalist alcohol consumption has risen past the level where even semi-coherent thought might burst through and find itself on the blog page or even in print. But there are six new names on the …
By Walter Broeckx Bye bye Wojciech Szczesny. So it seems. I’ve seen a video of you entering what appears to be the place where you would do your medical to join Juventus. I must be honest and say you that I will miss you. Even though you have been in Italy for 2 years I …
By Tony Attwood I must say I think Arsenal.com and via them the club as a whole did us all rather poorly over the match against Bayern. Licensed to an obscure channel through which one had to pay for a month’s football to watch one’s match, and know that they will put the credit card …
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal : Cech, Bielik, Mertesacker, Monreal, Maitland-Niles, Coquelin, Xhaka, Kolasinac, Ozil, Welbeck, Lacazette Arsenal substitutes: Giroud, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Iwobi, Martinez, Elneny, Malen, Nketiah, Walcott, Bramall, Nelson, Ramsey. A last minute change in the starting formation as Per was sick prior to the game and so we had Elneny in his place in the team. That …
By Bulldog Drummond Bayern have played one friendly so far this summer – against Erlangen Bruck, a team that plays in the Landesliga Bayern-Nordost, the sixth tier of German football. Erlangen Bruck has a ground capacity of 1000, and they lost 9-1 to Bayern. As far as I can see other than that, this is …
Read More “Arsenal v Bayern Munich in Shanghai. The teams, the mind games, the TV options.”
By Rowley Birkin MBE Before we begin, allow me if I may to introduce a new element in the annals of Untold. The “Bonkers notion of the Week”. This appears on the ESPN website and reads thus Perhaps Wenger sees Lacazette playing behind Giroud — especially if Alexis Sanchez does end up leaving the club — …
By Tony Attwood There is a problem with the way football is reported in England and it is this. There is always an assumption that how things are now will be how things are next year. Only bigger. It is curious because serious journalists working in other areas of reporting rarely fall into such a …
Read More “The Premier League finances are utterly unsustainable. But will Arsenal survive?”
by Tony Attwood Four things are going to be apparent in the team next season: First, a continuation of the five at the back that was so extraordinarily effective last season, although with the option of suddenly changing, if that seems a good idea. Second, three creative forwards at the front. Third the Xhaka – …
Read More “How Arsenal will line up next season: the 4 key tactics that we now know.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone There have been three big events for Arsenal over the last three days: one good, one amusing, one bad. 1: Elneny On the good side Elneny has turned out to be a more than decent centre back. Since the media has been screaming about how we leaked goals last season conceding …
By Tony Attwood The league table of players bought and the money paid has changed quite a lot in the past week as the top five for numbers of players and money spent shows: Pos Club Money Spent Number of players 1 Manchester City £172m 4 2 Manchester Utd £106m 2 3 Everton £86 10 …
Read More “All the purchases so far: who has done the most business?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Desperation. You can smell it. The old certainty in which a child in the bedroom can create a blog calling Wenger an idiot, and get people to read, is being challenged. Not because people won’t read any more but because the bedroom bloggettas have gone professional buoyed by the ready made …
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw Now this is getting seriously weird. I mean, for years the summers have been first odd, then strange, then very strange, then weird, but now this. This is, well, probably seriously weird is not enough. Which ever way you look at it. The BIG story for weeks and weeks …
Read More “Is this the weirdest Arsenal summer ever? Even so the Europa plan sounds fun.”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal: Ospina, Koscielny, Elneny, Monreal, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ramsey, Xhaka, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Lacazette, Giroud Subs: Martinez, Mertesacker, Kolasinac, Bielik, Bramall, Coquelin, Willock, Nelson, Ozil, Nketiah, Walcott A first start for Koscielny and Ramsey in this match. Maitland-Niles playing in the left wingback position and The Ox at the right hand side. Elneny playing in the centre …
by Tony Attwood Western Sydney Wanderers were formed in April 2011 with the idea of having a club with a strong community focus. In their first season they won the A League, which by and large is not a bad start. They currently play at Stadium Australia and Sydney Showground Stadium while their permanent home ground of Parramatta Stadium is in …
Read More “Arsenal v Western Sydney Wanderers. The teams, the opposition, the food, the transport”
By Tony Attwood This summer I have been trying to look at how Arsenal compare with other clubs in terms of the way various matters are handled. The first example has been the transfers in – looking to see if it is true that Arsenal always dither and never manage to get the deals done, …
Read More “Just how do Arsenal compare when it comes to loaning players out?”
. By Sir Hardly Anyone now in a new colour. . Part 1: Genius found . 1.1: ‘Natural’ Reiss Nelson among Arsenal kiddies ‘very, very close’ to playing for the first team. In the good old days (before robots took over newspapers) when a player came back from a long injury he would be …
By Tai Emeka Obasi Arsene Wenger is a name that draws all manner of emotions. While some love him because of his as-a-rule dedication to the beautiful game, others hate him for virtually same reason. But love or hate him this astute French football manager is a unique character for Oscar flicks, a bestselling …
