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, king of the predictive arts, emperor of the future, master of the middle-distance, irony champion 2010, and knower of all sorts of stuff. No one likes a smart-arse. So I am preparing to be disliked. FC Barcelona, who have just signed David Villa, is attempting to negotiate a 150 million- euro bank …
Read More “Barcelona teeters on the edge of financial collapse. How? Why? What? Err?”
Newcastle United financial review By Phil Gregory This continues our series of articles about the finances of EPL clubs. There’s a full index of the articles in this series so far, by clicking here. Matchday income Credit to Newcastle for having a transparent set of accounts, but the finances themselves totally baffle me. Matchday revenues …
Read More “Welcome to the strange financial world of Newcastle United”
by Tony Attwood There is a school of thought that says that no matter what, a club as big as Liverpool will always be able to carry on. The banks would never foreclose on those irritable little scoucers and besides, they are just too important to go bust. Someone will buy them. Quite possibly this …
Read More “Liverpool chairman admits, the owners no longer have any control of the club”
English Premier League financial review – a look at a few of the issues in the League as a whole By Phil Gregory First up, a couple of general notes. As most of the teams in the Premier League are privately owned, they are much slower at publishing their accounts than you might expect. But …
Read More “The English Premier League: where is it all going wrong?”
By Phil Gregory Manchester United: highly profitable business, well run within its means. But… This is the third in a series of articles covering the economics of the premier league, based entirely around information found in their official accounts. There’s a link to all the articles in this series at the end. Manchester United’s finances …
Read More “Man U: highly profitable, well run within its means, but…”
—————————- The finances of the Premier League by Phil Gregory Part 2: Chelsea Introduction: This is part of a growing series of articles on the economics and finances of clubs in the Premier League. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend you read the financial review I did of Arsenal here as in that I explained …
Read More “The operating loss to end all operating losses. How Chelsea totally lost it”
By Tony Attwood A director of Rangers FC in Glasgow, has revealed that he abandoned his plans for a takeover of the club because of the behaviour of… wait for it…their bankers, Lloyds I appreciate that you (like me) may well have far less of a grasp on Scottish footballing affairs than on the EPL, …
By Phil Gregory Here’s the first of a series of articles on the finances of the Premier League for Untold. There’s no hearsay going on in this series: all figures are straight from the accounts so you can trust the data I’m using is reliable (for most teams anyway!) and check it yourself as the …
I believe the transfer or non-transfer of Cesc to Barca-loan-us involves three factors, only one of which has anything to do with the simple transfer of a player from one club to another. Here’s the three parts… Part One: The simple concept of the transfer. This is easy to deal with: Barca-loan say they want …
Read More “The Great Cesc Fàbregas Transfer Saga: what’s really going on”
By Phil Gregory I recently stumbled upon Five Pound Football Club – a fantastic initiative whereby for a fiver anybody can contribute to the purchase of a football club. In an era of billionaires, leveraged buyouts and regular administrations for lower league sides, the democratic and community-focused ownership model of Five Pound Football Club stands …
By Tony Attwood Well, I guess if we had not won the league for 20 consecutive years you would feel a bit like… a Liverpool fan I suppose. This summer that’s the figure you would have to cope with, as well as dealing with the 25th anniversary of the Heysel Stadium riot. Not a good …
Read More “Imagine not winning the league for 20 years: how would you feel?”
Tony Attwood Michael Ballack and Joe Cole have left the KGB compound in Fulham on free transfers. There’s no doubt that both are great players, and that in earlier days would have been given new contracts by the world’s leading exponents of Prefabricated Football. You bring in already fully made talent, and exploit it for …
Read More “First signs of new Uefa financial rules having impact as clubs start shedding players”
by Tony Attwood, and the guy who writes Le Grove Three linked financial matters. First, the EPL is haemorrhaging cash on salaries. Secondly most Arsenal season ticket holders are giving up their season tickets, and third the Glazer Gang’s other businesses have all come unstuck so they have no choice but to hang on to …
Read More “Arsenal’s financial collapse, EPL financial collapse, Man U financial collapse”
by Tony Attwood If you take homeowners who in recent years spent far more than they should on buying a house on a mortgage, you can liken them to clubs who’ve also taken the “everyone else is doing it!” approach of reckless financial management. Instead of living within their means, they’ve run up debts they …
Read More “The collapse of football: how the toxic weed of Strategic Default took over our game.”
By Toby Maitland I’ve been an Arsenal fan since the mid-1970s: a season-ticket holder in the late eighties, now living in the US and follow The Arsenal on the telly and the web. I was hoping that you would post something the Untold Arsenal blog that relates to the Cesc Situation. Much has already been …
Read More “Why Cesc won’t go now, but why he might, maybe, perhaps, possibly, could go in August”
By Tony Attwood Well, there it is. I pop over (or rather under, since I went by train) the English Channel for a few days, practice following the football news in French, watch France and Spain on TV being given the run around in warm ups, muck about a lot a Futuraworld (Poitiers) and then …
Read More “Revenue and Customs issues writ against the whole Premier League”
by Walter Broeckx This is the follow up on an article that was on this site and that you could read here. Back to the Champions League and the fact that if the new ruling comes in place and if this would mean that some big teams could not play in it. Would this be …
by Walter Broeckx A question that is being raised is the fact that when Uefa will introduce the financial fair play rules how this will effect the big teams. It has been said that Uefa will back down when it comes to excluding big teams as it cannot afford to play the Champions League without MIOU, …
Read More “Is the champions league good for English football”
By Tony Attwood I have, from time to time, let slip that I feel that corruption is rife in football in England – and indeed elsewhere. The little affair of Lord Triesman and his allegations about bribes in the world cup didn’t come as a surprise, nor did it that it took FIFA just a …
By Tony Attwood An unpublished document within the EPL’s HQ (revealed by the BBC in a Radio 4 programme just over a week ago) agrees that the EPL has club debts of over £3bn, which is quite a lot, really. One thing that is agreed by most independent analysts is that this is not sustainable …
Read More “A new football structure in England in Spain within the next four years”
The last time I wrote about the new Champions League anti-financial-doping regulations that are being voted on today, 27th May, a lot of people wrote in saying that they had already been watered down, and wouldn’t work because clubs would find a way round them. I know it is bizarre for me, a person who …
Did Sandro Rosell unintentionally signal the hidden fear in Spanish football? Mike Urbanski Cesc is leaving. Or Cesc isn’t leaving. Barcelona say they can only pay £30m for Captain Fabulous. Arsenal are said to be demanding £80m. Cesc and Arsene have sat down and discussed his potential transfer to Barcelona. Or they haven’t sat down …
Read More “Barcelona’s Unintended Prophet heralds the collapse of the Spanish Empire”
A week or so back Untold published an article which revealed how a tiny group of people had created the doom and gloom movement at Arsenal by undertaking multiple postings from different email addresses. In that article and others I’ve tried to point out what I think are the complex interrelated issues that need exploration …
Read More “Catastrophists and doom mongers fail to come up with a coherent plan”
TODAY’S SPONSOR: Picklive the new football game that you play on your laptop while watching football on the telly launched its new look this week ahead of the Championship Play Off final and Champions League final at the weekend. There will be free and pay-to-play versions of the game available for every match during the …
Read More “Uefa to pass financial doping rules on 27 May; most of EPL won’t qualify for Europe”
Is spending more and more money the answer? by Walter Broeckx Some Arsenal fans had a lot of problems with the approach of the board and the manager in the last years. Some accept that Arsenal had not a lot of cash because of the financial and housing market crisis and had to be careful. …
Read More “Comparing the incomparable: Arsenal, Read Mad, Man Arab”
