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 Christian Purslow, MD of that amusing little club up in the north west, has finally admitted that the club can’t service the debt. While Kenneth Dalglish MBE (a man whom all football fans must remember as a sensational player, and a man of considerable dignity in the aftermath of Hillsborough) seems now …
By Tony Attwood Before the round of games on September 11th I wrote in a semi-joking manner that both Tottenham Middlesex and Liverpool RBS would see the weekend as an opportunity to claw their way into the top half of the Premier League. I have to say I am rather surprised to find my prediction …
Read More “Liverpool – it is all over bar the pain (and there will be quite a lot of that!)”
Spot Fixing in English Premier league Dilshan Mohemad On the back of Pakistan cricket teams spot fixing scandal one has to wonder how clean is the English game and could it be also targeted by bookies if it has not been already. First we must understand what spot fixing is. It is different from match …
By Tony Attwood Sometimes things just go wrong. You can’t help it, but well, you know, you find your wife is having an affair with not only the groom and the stable lad, (or maybe one of those nice centre forwards from Man IOU) and then your mate says she was also seen with the …
By Walter Broeckx We all have read about the madness that has gone in to football when it comes to spending money. The likes of Chelsea and Manchester City with their financial doping is already well documented on this site in many articles. And let us not forget it is a force which Arsenal have …
Read More “Royal Madness: how one team spent 280m euros and got absolutely nothing”
By Tony Attwood We’ve often taken a little look at the finances at clubs such as Man IOU, Barca and the like on this site. Swiss Rambler does the same, often in more detail, and recently did a brilliant piece on Inter Milan, showing how they too are facing an absolute financial crisis, and how …
Read More “Man City was 40% of the transfer window this year. What the hell happens now?”
By Tony Attwood Just a couple of days after the annual Untold preview of Arsenal’s five squads (the “25”, the cup squad, the reserves, the loanees, and the youth team) the Guardian is reporting that the EPL is looking to ban loans. In the article “One club five squads” we all picked up on the …
Read More “Premier League trying to ban all loan deals following Man City “squad doping””
By Roxy Beaujolais, our correspondent in foreign parts. Well, my little Tour Eiffels, my little je ne sais quoi. Tony advertised for a foreign correspondent, I replied, got the job, and he sent me off to… Manchester. I know it is a foreign country et al, but realmente, I mean. It’s not even in Europe. …
Read More “Exclusive: Untold Arsenal interview with the owner of Manchester City.”
By Richard Bedwell and Tony Attwood The formula for popularity? Given that football clubs are brands, the start of each season is a chance to re-measure each brand and see how well it is doing. Brands, we should explain, are what all businesses aspire to be. Being a brand means that your name is recognised …
by Tony Attwood For years there has been a general assumption that there are only three ways of developing a club and two ways of making money out of football. You can make your club grow (so it was always said) by Development Method 1) Buying in those who are already acknowledged to be the …
The Twinkle of a Fading Star By Tony Attwood Trotting off to Italy for a week and a bit is rather an interesting experience. My Italian verges on the non-existent side of useless, so my attempts to glean footballing information from Corriere dello Sport in its native printed form is limited. Fortunately there is an …
By Tony Attwood Running a football club is about two things: surviving and winning. Obviously if you can’t do the former, then the latter is out of the question. So far, only one club in the modern era has fallen from pretensions of greatness to a desperate attempt to survive: Leeds. Other supposedly big clubs …
by Phil Gregory With the new Financial Fair Play rules all over the papers along with a sackful of misconceptions of how they’ll actually work I thought it’d be worthwhile to have a look at them and see what’s what. Without further ado…. The new Financial Fair Play (FFP) criteria assess the financial situation of …
Read More “Financial Fair Play criteria, what’s it all about”
Liverpool FC are likely to become the first EPL side owned by the state By Tony Attwood A Chinese government fund (China Investment Corp) supposedly represented by Kenny Huang has, apparently, being selling off share assets to raise exactly the amount of money that Liverpool Insolvency is in debt to the banks: £351.4m. (That’s not …
Read More “Liverpool FC are likely to become the first EPL side owned by the state”
By Phil Gregory Leveraged buy-outs (LBOs) are – thanks to the situations at Manchester United and Liverpool respectively – all over the papers. They are something most fans don’t really “get”, and pertinent questions such as “how could they buy our club if they didn’t actually have the money?” pop up quite often. I’m going …
Read More “Could Arsenal be heading for a leveraged buy out?”
By Phil Gregory Yesterday Untold Arsenal published the second in the series of Barca’s finances revealing how the club has lied over supposed profits, and how the prediction made previously that they were actually on the edge financially was completely true. Having seen the story develop I wanted to know what happened in the build …
Read More “Barca: how a once great club has collapsed under the demands of its fans”
By Tony Attwood You might remember how Barcelona have boasted about making money, having no problem with cash, and winning things at the same time, and all that sort of stuff. Why can’t we be like that, cry the anti-Arsenal Arsenal. Well here’s why. I had the temerity to put up an article “Barca on …
Read More “Barca’s chaotic finances – now at last the truth emerges”
It never used to be like this. In the olden days each season was pretty much the same as the season before. There’d be two new clubs in the First Division (usually West Ham and Blackburn, if memory serves) and every other year we would have a new centre forward (probably Scottish). If there had …
I reported that Roma have been put up for sale even though they came second in Italy – and that they have loads of debts. Now I find (in an article on Italian-Calcio Blog) the Italian football federation has announced that Serie B side Ancona and 20 Lega Pro sides have been kicked out of …
Read More “Half a league, half a league, half a league of debts onwards”
Our review of the finances of Tottenham Hotspur was read by more people than any other articles we have published. With such interest Phil Gregory has taken a further look at Tottenham, the finances of football and the conclusions we can draw. A big issue for fans and clubs is one of knowledge. Anyone needs …
Read More “Why football accounting is so crazy, and why it is hard to believe the Tottenham figures”
Tottenham’s finances part two By Phil Gregory Obviously it is a good idea to have read part one first – if you didn’t here it is. Prospects for future growth: Attendances account for 99% of capacity at Tottenham, and their matchday revenue is dwarfed by the sides at the top of the table that they …
Read More “False profits – a look at the finances and spin of the Spurs”
False profits – a look at the finances and spin of the Spurs This is the first of a two part report on one of the most bent and disreputable forms of accounting ever seen in English football. by Phil Gregory Next up in the Premier League financial review is Tottenham Hotspur. Given they are …
Read More “False profits. Revealed: how Tottenham cooked the books and conned us all”
By Tony Attwood Until recently I had the feeling that the mass media was going to pretend forever that Barce-loan-us was a well run, well organised football club who have every right to take any players they want from any club they want. They are, after all, God’s team. Although the news that they could …
Read More “Barca on the edge of defaulting on their debts: new figures”
By Tony Attwood The members of the North Korean branch of the Arsenal supporters club tend to consider Arsène Wenger a renegade running dog who can’t admit his mistakes, who clings to power when all the world that victory is inevitably theirs. Their world view is a simple world view. First, they set up a …
Read More “The philosophy of Arsène Wenger and how the North Koreans don’t get it”
By Phil Gregory Before you start reading, check out What’s really going on (if you haven’t already). It explains all of the terms and whatnot, which makes all that follows easier to, well, follow. Liverpool FC hasn’t been out the news for much of last season for both financial and on-field reasons. It’s probably best …
Read More “Imagine a top EPL club being owned and run by its bank. Stop imagining – it’s true.”
