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 As surely everyone knows, football is in financial meltdown, and is surviving only because incredibly wealthy individuals, and in some cases countries, are ploughing money into clubs to keep them alive. Matters were pretty bad before the pandemic, but now, with income dramatically reduced debts have got out of control. Interestingly no …
Read More “Just how huge are the debts of the big football clubs?”
by Tony Attwood A couple of weeks ago Gianni Infantino head of Fifa, a man on trial for corruption in Switzerland, met (not for the first time) with US President Donald Trump. this was when Infantino attended the signing of the agreement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the White House on …
Read More “Infantino looks sunk; but if he takes down Fifa as well, what replaces it?”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University Hospital of the North Circular Road. The notion that Arsenal need to be warned that there could be huge losses ahead is one of the more bizarre stories that has emerged from the British national press of late, but that is what the Daily …
Read More “Arsenal warned over huge financial losses … presumably because they don’t realise!”
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Guardian which says “Whether football returns in June or September, or later even than that, it will be a long time before it is played in stadiums packed with crowds of tens of thousands, without players having to undertake complex social distancing measures. Normal isn’t coming …
Read More “Football is not coming back any time soon: so what happens to the clubs then?”
By Tony Attwood The football industry, which consists of the clubs, the players, the non-playing staff, and the businesses and industry that get an economic boost from it, want football back, because it’s their living, their way of life, and in many cases, it makes a profit. By and large the fans want it …
Read More “Why the clamour to restart football is fuelled by gambling firms”
By Tony Attwood You won’t read about it in the British press, but there is a court case going on involving a villa in Sardinia valued at 5 million euros which was offered by Nasser al-Khelaïfi, the president of PSG to Jérôme Valcke the former secretary of Fifa who was fired on 13 January 2016 …
by Tony Attwood “The most important week in the history of the Football League – act now, or risk carnage”. So said Mark Palios, the former FA Chief Executive. It doesn’t really matter when he said it, because it is always the most important week. But this week is a special week in the history …
Read More “At all levels of football, the crisis is here, and it won’t go away”
by Tony Attwood I just got a post on my phone titled Big Topic Discussion: “What an ideal transfer windows for Arsenal will look like?” It’s not too hard to translate it into grammatical English however, so we can get the rough idea of what they wanted to talk about. This statement came from AFC …
Read More “Football’s big problem: cash flow, transfers, collapse of sponsors, piracy, everything…”
By Tony Attwood “Why should players take a pay cut?” That’s an interesting question, but because that question begins with “why?” you can be sure that it doesn’t get much coverage in the media. For the British media is notorious for ignoring the “why?” in any debate. What they do is skate over issues, and …
Read More “I object to some of my tax payments being used to pay staff at Liverpool FC”
By Tony Attwood So this is where we’ve got to. 1: By and large the players in the Premier League, following the lead of their union, are refusing to take pay cuts. Some very public players in Europe are taking pay cuts. 2: Clubs are laying off lesser paid staff, and telling them they will …
Read More “Football is now in deep crisis, and it is hard to find a solution”
By Tony Attwood and Christophe Jost So we have had weeks and weeks of pretending nothing is happening, or if it is happening it is only those silly foreign people getting into a tiz, while we English know that it is all alright, and indeed it would all be fine in Europe if only those …
Read More “Top earners take no cut; media attack, gambling firms lose money”
By Tony Attwood Daniel Levy, (Mr Tottenham), has suggested that Premier League players and managers should accept lower pay. The club has also placed 20% of its staff on furlough. This is the sort of thing that Untold has been predicting through this crisis, while the blogs and newspapers have been outshouting each other with …
Read More “How the richest men in football are telling the poorest staff to take pay cuts”
by Tony Attwood Premier League executives have been told it will cost them £762 million in lost broadcast revenue if the 2019-20 season fails to finish due to the coronavirus, according to The Athletic. This sum is calculated to be the amount paid by the TV companies that contract to show games, with the money …
Read More “Football Broadcasters want their cash back but the clubs don’t have it.”
By Christophe Jost The virus’s effect on our daily lives is now visible and for the moment all we can do it simply hope people will find ways of avoiding catching it – by taking precautions and helping each other. Regarding the human dramas that have emerged and those yet to play out, football may …
Read More “Football is about to collapse totally. So what happens after that?”
Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look By Tony Attwood In the modern blogging world, exploring the issue of cause and effect is sometimes known as moaning – and “moaning” of course is a pejorative word. No one likes a moaner. So what is a …
Read More “The problems at Arsenal: Trying to resolve the cause and effect”
by Tony Attwood Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look The first rule in business, for many people who run companies, is “treat complaints seriously”. The second rule is “deal with them fully and in a thorough manner”. The reason for this is simple: the …
By Tony Attwood I am shocked, amazed, stunned, bemused. For 12 years we have been plodding away, writing up the notion that the reporting of football is warped by the media to suit their own needs and ends, and those of their powerful allies. Among the many examples found are those suggesting that key stories …
Read More “Few journalists ever criticise the state of football… so why is it starting now?”
By Tony Attwood If you have been reading this site over the years you will recall my little piece on 22 January 2015: Switzerland take a greater interest in Fifa – at last You’ll remember because ever since I have kept on going on and on about it. It reported a change in the law …
Read More “We predicted Fifa scandal in 2015, no one believed us. Now it starts again.”
Untold Updates videos We’re back with our videos – do take a look For advertising enquiries contact Snack Media at 0207 272 7582 or email Tom@Snack-media.com For all other issues please contact Untold Arsenal at Tony@schools.co.uk =============== By Tony Attwood One of the many odd consequences of the way in which football journalism works in England …
Read More “The 8 key questions that football journalists simply won’t ever ask”
The latest video: Untold Gooner News on injuries By Tony Attwood I have been arguing for some time that just as changing managers is not a guaranteed recipe for taking a club up the league, nor is buying lots of players. In fact figures presented here recently show that the six clubs that spent …
Read More “Does spending money on new players take a club up the league? The eastern experience”
By Tony Attwood At the heart of the story that has been revealed by the hacking of emails concerning Financial Fair Play, Manchester City, PSG and Uefa, is the involvement of Gianni Infantino who is now the head of Fifa. It is a story that many, I suspect, will choose not to believe. But before …
Read More “How Infantino, now head of Fifa, fixed FFP on behalf of PSG and Man City.”
By Tony Attwood There is so much pouring out from the leaked documents concerning Uefa and Manchester City it is getting hard to follow it all. But if we thought the complexity was why a lot of the English media has stopped running the story, we were wrong. The media have been directly complicit …
Read More “How the media was persuaded not to follow Man City / Uefa corruption story”
by Tony Attwood The latest round of suggestions of wrong doing by Manchester City takes us into an area that not only concerns Uefa and Financial Fair Play but also that rather tenacious leg biting dog: Revenue and Customs – the British tax collector – and a complaint from Spain to the EU. It’s all …
Read More “Yet more Man City allegations, Etihad financial problems, La Liga puts complaint to EU”
By Tony Attwood This article continues from my earlier piece: Did Uefa collude with Man City in an FFP cover up across the last four years? Both articles continue from the investigation we did four years ago which resulted in a series of articles, the last of which was Man City decides to take on Uefa; the …
Read More “FFP, Man City and Uefa. Some of the new allegations that are being reported.”
by Tony Attwood Now here is a turn up. The Untold Arsenal Editorial Board (also known as that bunch in the corner of the Toppled Bollard public house, on the Rutland / Northants border, along with our friends in Switzerland and other exotic places) was very much of the opinion that “Financial Fair Play” …
Read More “Did Uefa collude with Man City in an FFP cover up across the last four years?”
