By Tony Attwood The British Prime Minister and senior cabinet ministers are said to be investigating ways of introducing legislation to prevent English clubs entering the European Super League, according to senior cabinet sources. Meanwhile the backlash against the proposals have now reached such proportions that the credibility of those who instituted the plan is …
Read More “Breakaway clubs face largest football PR and political disaster of all times”
By Tony Attwood In 2016 Untold ran a piece that began, “In recent years the UK has been swamped with details of a huge number of child sexual exploitation cases.” We didn’t report all the details but mention Jimmy Saville, the Rotherham gangs, Gary Glitter, and Rolf Harris, before we moved on to the story …
Read More “Why is the FA still in control?”
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 When I say “so few” in the headline above, I have to admit I am not sure if there are any non-white referees or assistants working in the Premier League. Maybe that speaks to my lack of observational powers, or maybe I have just come to accept the fact that footballers come …
Read More “Why do PGMO employ so few (if any) non-white referees in the Premier League?”
It’s been a painful season for Gunners fans around the globe, but the start of 2021 has seen a revival in form and the team’s potential is beginning to show. The side are still as temperamental as ever though, and it’s tricky to guess which Arsenal will turn up on any given match day. …
Read More “Arsenal’s Bargain Buys”
By Tony Attwood The Swiss prosecution service has called for prison sentences against the president of beIN and the ex-number 2 of Fifa, Jérôme Valcke. You might recall that Untold, alone among UK publishers has been following these various stories, while the UK media utterly refuses to acknowledge that these cases are even happening. The …
Read More “Swiss prosecutors demand prison for beIN & PSG president and ex-Fifa No 2.”
Mikel Arteta wants to create new opportunities in his midfield. In the course of this, Arsenal FC is interested in Amadou Diawara. Its advisor confirms the London efforts.Recently, Arsenal’s alleged interest in Amadou Diawara popped up for the first time. There was talk of a possible swap deal with AS Roma, which could receive …
Read More “Amadou Diawara: Agent confirms Arsenal FC interest”
By Tony Attwood Qatar was awarded the World cup in 2010. Evidence that has emerged since then suggests very strongly indeed that the award was rigged. One suggestion among many is that al-Jazeera (since then renamed beIN Sports) had signed a TV contract that included a $100m fee to be paid to Fifa if it …
Read More “If all lives matter, if slavery is unacceptable, what is the FA doing about Qatar?”
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 …
Read More “The Fifa / PSG / Swiss corruption cases are major news in Europe. But not in the UK. Why?”
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 Slowly it has been realised: the clubs across Europe owe around £4.5bn in transfer fees. Of course in one way it can be said that that is not a crisis since everyone owes everyone else, so if A pays B then B pays C etc and ultimately we’ll be ok. But in …
Read More “£4.5bn is in outstanding transfer fees, and few have got the money to pay.”
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 Christophe Jost I must be transparent. I do not live in the UK, I am of German and Swiss descent, work in France and Switzerland, and have lived in quite a few countries so far in my life. Some of the countries are rich, some are poor. So my vision may be a galaxy …
Read More “The day Arsenal broke the Premier League: the view from overseas”
Premier League: The best bromances of the league For centuries, football has always gathered millions of fans around the world regardless of race or religion. However, apart from this solidarity around football fans, it also happens that links are formed between players of the same team. We tend to forget it but football is above …
Read More “Premier League: The best bromances of the league”
By Tony Attwood There are two ways to imagine football as and when the current crisis is all over. One is that everything picks up from where it left off, with the same competitions, the same number of games, the same financial situation, the same funding etc. The other is that this crisis will cause a …
Read More “Arteta warns that players are starting to crack under the pressure. But will anything change?”
By Christophe Jost and Tony Attwood As you may have heard, the UK in general and England in particular has gone its own way in dealing with the coronavirus crisis. And inevitably that has meant a certain amount of uncertainty and worry about what Britain is doing, and what effect it will have. Now that …
Read More “Will footballers actually want to come to England in future?”
By Tony Attwood In the last set of figures presented via annual accounts, the 20 clubs in the Premier League were shown to have a turnover of £4.827 bn. Which is quite a lot of money. Their wages bill was just over half that. 58% to be (more or less) exact. Now obviously the virus …
Read More “Premier League: No one seems to have planned for anything to go wrong.”
By Tony Attwood Next season is due to start on Saturday 8 August. And according to the standard contracts operated by the Premier League and by the English Football League, players are entitled to “five weeks paid holiday to be taken at a time or times determined by the club – subject to the club’s …
Read More “When will this season end, and when will next season start? It’s not that easy to work out.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal locked down, Arsenal fans locked out, government and horse racing says “carry on, carry on!” See also… What do the terms and conditions of my season ticket say about coronavirus? Everywhere shuts down, except England. No one knows what to do except President Trump who knows everything because he’s clever. Or …
Read More “Arsenal in lockdown, football not in lockdown – horse racing says “tally ho!””
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?”
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”
by Tony Attwood It is interesting to see The Athletic in a current article taking an interest in AFTV, and recognising (perhaps a little late in the day) that not everyone who claims to be an Arsenal supporter actually likes AFTV. But I do find it a little frustrating that articles like this are presented …
Read More “How “The Athletic” touches on issues without realising what they are”
By Adam Up Untold Gooner News video: A lesson in how to silence the critics The Daily Mirror has done an update of the list of men said to be “in the running” for the job of Arsenal coach, and what do you know. Although the list is remarkably similar to the list …
Read More “The 14 men tipped to be Arsenal’s next manager (although hopefully not all at once).”
