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 Terence McGovern BETTER THE DEVIL YOU KNOW When I first thought of writing this article. it occurred to me that dozens of others would be doing the same and I decided to leave them to it. Days and weeks passed and not one scrap appeared on the subject matter. At that point I felt …
Read More “Better the Devil you know, than the owner you don’t.”
————— Today’s Sponsor: “Making the Arsenal” – just so you can realise what it was like in the really bad times. ————— By Tony Attwood The BBC and a lot of other commentators and news sources said, “Chelsea Football Club has said it is now “virtually debt-free”.” You’ll remember it well. 30 December last year …
Read More “Chelsea FC are not debt free at all – it was all a huge con (or a mistake)”
Today’s Sponsor: Historical Fiction on Acid. The strangest book on football in the history of books on football. ———————— Crisis, What Crisis? By Simon Bailey. Is the English game in crisis? Well if we compare it to FIFA or Trinidad and Tobagos FA our own situation doesn’t look too bad. But judged on it’s own …
Read More “Crisis what crisis? The rotten structure of English football.”
By Walter Broeckx In September the UEFA’s Executive Committee approved the Financial Fair Play concept for the well-being of European club football. The major objective of the Financial Fair Play concept is to improve the financial fairness in European competitions, as well as the long-term stability of European club football. In order to achieve this …
Read More “Financial fair play: how Uefa’s new regulations will be run by a plumber”
By Tony Attwood Two stories at once – this one, and the fact that Arsenal Ladies won the league yesterday (Sunday). I’ll come back to the triumph of Arsenal Ladies in the next piece. First… Liverpool’s finances look awful – more awful than before. But I don’t think that that is the whole story. Give …
Read More “The league look ready to abandon support for Liverpool”
By Tony Attwood Fulham is one of those teams that I rarely have animosity for. They don’t seem to play long ball stuff, and they don’t try to kick us to death. (Of course having written that a few hours before the match, they might well try to do that today, but my recollection is …
Read More “Football is a mug’s game. Just when you think you are on the up, this happens.”
By Tony Attwood Since everyone in the UK is still wondering who is going to run the country, and no one is reading blogs, I thought I would amuse myself by doing a preview of the game against Fulham by looking at their finances. Fulham FC is actually a network of companies which ultimately seem …
Read More “Fulham FC – the financial perspective of the club that tried to buy Arsenal”
What should you do if you don’t like the way your club is run? This is a story of two clubs at the opposite end of the spectrum. One with millions of fans worldwide, one hardly known outside its locality. One with the biggest debt ever seen in football, determined to carry on as always, …
Read More “What should you do if you don’t like the way your club is run?”
———————– This week’s special activity: Go to your local public library this week and ask them to order a copy of “Making the Arsenal” by Tony Attwood. You don’t have to read it but I would like to get a few more sales as we are coming out with a new edition shortly. (And if …
Read More “How Man IOU fans are responding to their club’s crisis. A guide for catastophists”
Click for the latest Arsenal V Fulham premiership betting odds —————————————— Herbert Chapman’s first match in charge of Arsenal was at Highbury. It brought in a crowd of 53,000 and was against Tottenham. We lost 0-1. I have often wondered, in this era of the Catastrophist, if the crowd sang for him to be sacked. …
Read More “Chapman and Wenger: how the crowd respond to our biggest losers”
———————— Today’s Sponsor: I am not going to tell you: it’s a surprise ——————————— It is easy to argue that Wenger should go by taking one issue and shouting it, without any backup argument. But it is harder to construct the logic over a larger number of issues. In fact I have never seen it …
Headline News: Exclusive Vermaelen interview on this site Friday 30th April ———————- By Walter Broeckx Sometimes you hear fans say that we haven’t won anything since 2005 and that it is all down to Wenger not wanting to buy players. Wenger is according to those fans also to blame because he didn’t keep the invincibles …
Today’s Sponsor: Making the Arsenal: historical fiction on acid —————————– There is a story doing the rounds that says that the EPL is about to propose that transfer fees must be paid within a year of a player signing. At the moment the fee is paid over a period up to five years, which is …
Read More “Trying to decipher the code: what are the EPL going to do next?”
Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News And as today marks the 100th anniversary of the last day of Arsenal’s turbulent season when Norris first mentioned taking us over, today’s Sponsor is: Making the Arsenal ————————- At Arsenal there is an issue for some supporters (the black propaganda revisionists and catatrophists). They want us to follow the Charlton Athletic …
This past week I have got a trifle cheesed off with correspondents on this site who have ignored the article written, and instead developed their own pieces declaring that Arsene Wenger should leave the club. If you’re a regular reader here you’ll know I only cut comments where- plagiarism, racism, antisemitism and anything …
Read More “Wenger: the nutty professor who should leave now? Or is it some fans who are bonkers?”
Today’s Sponsor: Gooner Gifts – everything for the real Arsenal fan This team will have its day by Ian Trevett Today is a depressing day as the team effort at Wigan was as poor as we have seen for a long time. I didn’t think we paid them enough respect and it cost us big …
Today’s Sponsor: Gooner Gifts – everything for the real Arsenal fan In the many comments on the post re the Wigan game there were a number that said that we should recognise that Wenger and his youth project had failed. One in particular caught my eye: it said that it was harder to recognise this …
Read More “Has Wenger and his youth project utterly failed?”
One of the best statements I have read on this site since the end of the 10 year unbeaten run was that encouraging us all to wear the shirt with pride. The 10 year run in which we were unbeaten in the league by Tottenham Sewage (a club renamed to coincide with the chants of …
Read More “Wear your shirt with pride as the EPL starts going to court”
Spurs and shares. by Phil Gregory Well, well, well, if it isn’t North London Derby O’clock. The derby at the Emirates was an absolute cracker, one of those where you remember what you were doing that day. I, unfortunately missed some of the match, getting roped into playing for my team’s Saturday morning game despite …
Read More “Well, well, well, if it isn’t North London Derby O’clock.”
Today’s Sponsor: “Making the Arsenal”. A book utterly unlike any other book ever written about Arsenal FC. If you have ever wanted to know what it is that is so utterly incomprehensibly special and different from every other club, this book will go some way to explain that. —————- I am going to start by stressing that …
Read More “Why I don’t believe the financial records of Portsmouth and Tottenham”
It’s a bit of a funny old world at the moment (as they say), and my ramblings herein have no overall focus, what with us not having a match this weekend. But I thought I’d just throw in some of the stuff that has caught my attention of late. If it is all too boring, …
Read More “The world of football meanders along, and carries us with it…”
The story doing the rounds is that Manchester IOU will see a significant drop in revenue over the next two years, now that they have decided not to put up the cost of season tickets again. Figures of around 11% decline a year are being talked about. The figures come from a JP Morgan paper …
Read More “Manchester United hit new financial problems; is this straw and camel back time?”
“The childish whimpering of car thieves like Domenech represent the pathetic winging of football’s dodos entering the last chance saloon.” I think that is a fair and reasoned statement. The idiot Domenech, whose main job is to steal footballers who are carefully trained, developed and nurtured by their clubs, not to mention paid by their …
Tony’s confession I made an absolute howler in the original headline of this piece with a grammatical error the size of Real Mad’s overdraft. It has been pointed out in correspondence, quite rightly. Normally I don’t go back and change a site once published, but this error was so bad I just couldn’t live with …
Read More “Make the most of this Barca game: they are almost as bankrupt as Liverpool”
Is Internet Streaming Killing Sport? By Simon Bailey. This week I watched the Arsenal match on my PC courtesy of a stream provided by an unknown person in an unknown location in the world. The Optimum Internet. reason for this is twofold; Firstly it was a 3pm kick off and no UK TV channel is …
Read More “Is Internet Streaming Killing Sport? Or is it just the lawyers?”
