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
The Football Association chief executive resigned on 18th March 2010 after about nine months in the job. Like virtually all of his recent predecssors he has simply thrown in the towel once he realised the enormity of the problem the FA faces. No reason has been given for his departure, and at the moment I …
Read More “Exclusive: the real reason why Watmore resigned from the FA”
. According to the chitter chatter of a million journalists trying to catch up with last year’s stories, up to one in four season ticket holders at EPL clubs are considering not renewing for next season in a bid to cut costs, according to a survey published today. And Manchester IOU are going to put …
Read More “Next season the stadia will be empty, so we’d better enjoy the noise now”
. A few weeks ago I put up a list of all the EPL clubs with thoughts on their finances. Now I’m trying to do some updates club by club. Here’s more on Liverpool- and this time I want to try and put forward a different idea. One that says that the way a club …
Read More “Liverpool Me and You. The club we all part own sinks deeper into the mire.”
Top Four? by Simon Bailey As the clock ticked round to 90 minutes on Saturday, my friend John grimly declared that if the score stayed as it was we could kiss the league goodbye. My first instinct was to agree. My next thought was that we have been written off twice already this season. My …
In yesterday afternoon’s article Paul Collins reminded us in passing of the battle between Arsenal and Villa for fourth a year ago. Clearly we all know what happened on the pitch both last year and this (today Villa are 18 points behind us with three games in hand, six points off fourth with two games …
Read More “Arsenal and Aston Villa: what happened after the battle for fourth”
This is a story of life and death. And acting. And celebration. It is the story of a club from the Russian Premier League side FC Moscow which has gone bust just a short while after their oligarch owner, a man in the Roman Abramovich league, pulled out, having decided to switch sports. And it …
Manchester United win things. That is undeniable. They have a big support (even if it is largely located in Cornwall) and they fill the ground. That’s undeniable. And they have an extraordinarily successful manager – something we have to admit even if we don’t like some of his behaviour. And they are so broke it …
Read More “Man U’s plan is for global domination, and this is why it might all end in tears”
To the Football Association, from Simon Bailey Sir, I am writing to you as a concerned supporter of both England and of a Premier League football team. The history of football in England is rich and diverse, but at the root of it are the clubs that make up the leagues. Clubs that have existed …
Trying to stay in touch with the financial morass that is the EPL, is tough. In this article I am trying to pull together some of the latest facts, figures, and then conclusions. I am hopeful that if there are factual errors these can be pointed out and I will produce an update a bit …
The argument about Aaron Ramsey runs roughly like this… The media, with a mixture of traditional English dislike of success, plus a deep-rooted disgust at all things French, and a desperate need to create news out of nothing, constantly announce that the only way to beat Arsenal is to rough them up. The story is …
Many of us have been outraged beyond endurance by the assault on Ramsey on 27th February. 24 hours later I am still frustrated an annoyed in a way that is not a normal part of my nature. If I may speak for once for Walter (who is of course more than able to speak for …
Read More “Man U colour protest fizzles out: there’s a lesson to be learned”
18 English clubs owe 56% of the debt of the 732 European clubs licensed by UEFA Manchester U and Liverpool liable to be excluded from Europe under new regulations There is a secret UEFA report called “The European Club Footballing Landscape,” which reviews the finances of football. The latest available edition is that which trawls …
Read More “EPL owes more money than rest of Euro football combined”
You don’t know what you’re doing By Phil Gregory. If you haven’t already read Tony’s cracking piece on football finance that went up on Monday, I’d recommend it before you read any further. As a humble second year economics student, I’d like to share with you some of the insights my studies have given me …
Read More “You don’t know what you’re doing: English football heads for disaster”
Financial stability or ambition? Which do fans want? Rhys Jaggar Easy to answer that: BOTH. Fans want to know that their club can win something, but they don’t want the club to go bust. Thing is: for many clubs, it mightn’t be possible. Arsenal seemed to manage it, but now it seems that stability has …
Read More “Financial stability or ambition… Which do fans want?”
The F.A. Forget To Bolt The Stable Door……Again. Simon Bailey. The fact that the Champions League is fast becoming the only prize worth having in club football has not escaped Michel Platini or UEFA. Staging this round over four weeks so as to maximise TV income is a clever move evidenced by the greater income …
Read More “F.A. Forget To Bolt The Stable Door, plus teams, and the incredible Untold Rumours.”
If the EPL is about to go bust, what can we as fans do to resurrect it? Rhys Jaggar Sensationalism has been our diet on the back pages, on the internet and at fanzines for the past decade. Foreign ‘billionaires’ coming in, huge debts to pay off, great dreams of Kaka, Ronaldo or Zidane coming …
Read More “If the EPL is about to go bust, what can we as fans do to resurrect it?”
There is a feeling in football that things really aren’t that bad. In this article I will try to convince you that they are not just disastrously bad – they are actually far worse than that. Football in England is about to explode. I’ll start with something that we all know about: Portsmouth FC. We …
Before we begin, Untold Rumours now appear that end of the main article in each edition of Untold Arsenal. Today, its our new goalkeeper, and the availability of season tickets. Now onto the meat and two veg… ————————————- I have been working on a piece for several days about the collapse of football as we …
Read More “Which clubs in the EPL are going to survive the next four years?”
Arsenal, the cult of personality and the collective By Brian Baker Another week, another defeat, another round of Chicken Licken posturing from the Arse-blogosphere. I’m not going to dwell on the painful realities of the loss to Chelsea, here, but offer another long-term perspective of Arsenal’s situation. I will start with the cult of personality …
Read More “Arsenal, the cult of personality and the collective”
In the aftermath of the two defeats against Man U and Chelsea there are the inevitable calls from change and an uprising from those who feel all is not right at Arsenal – not least because we get these calls even with Arsenal are winning. But I’d like to put forward something else: an examination …
Read More “There are a limited number of ways of running Arsenal, and most are not sustainable”
London police have seized half a tonne of footballing equipment in buildings that they say were being used as a base by the terrorist football separatist group “KGB Fulham” The discovery of the dump, which included shirts, boots, and grass cutting equipment, was made in the early hours of saturday morning. Fake driving licences, cars …
Read More “Police raid Chelsea terror centre, and Arsenal announce surprise team for match”
By Gf60 The recent finding by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that Chel$ki were not guilty of inducing a breach of contract by Kakuta was a surprise. More of a surprise was the noting that the original contract between Kakuta and Lens was invalid. This raises more questions than it answers. A few hours before this …
Why Arsène’s Arsenal are hated (even by its own fans): a long perspective By Brian Baker I was prompted to write this following the extraordinary convulsions in the Arsenal blogosphere after the defeat to Manchester United. Chicken Licken bloggers, one of whom claimed they could manage Arsenal better than Arsene, renewed their calls for Denilson’s …
Read More “Why Arsène’s Arsenal are hated (even by its own fans)”
I ended my last piece by saying, “So, if the system works as it has for 100 years, is there any reason for thinking it is different today from what people saw in 1910?” As I have written my answer to that question, it has grown and grown, and I can’t put it all in …
Read More “Why is English football in such a total utter mess?”
By Phil Gregory I read a great book over Christmas, Michael Lewis’s Moneyball. Despite my total lack of knowledge on the sport it is concerned with, I was fascinated because it’s actually a baseball book which follows a particular American team that consistently outperforms its rivals despite severe financial constraints (see where I’m going with …
