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 Slowly, very slowly, there are a few people in the media who are starting to consider the wider issue of the Kroenkes influence on Arsenal in recent years. The issue that is slowly, very slowly, being raised is, is the downturn in Arsenal’s fortunes of late due to poor management by Wenger, …
Read More “How Arsenal got into this mess, and the one thing they must now do.”
by Tony Attwood In its report on Leicester’s win at Tottenham, the Guardian mentions Leicester penalty five times. On the BBC Radio 4 report this morning the penalty was mentioned four times. But neither news source mentioned the real oddity of the Leicester penalty. That is that this was Leicester’s ninth penalty of the season. …
Read More “Leicester heading for all time record number of penalties, and the away win figures”
By Tony Attwood And so we have now had the first suggestion that we should get rid of Mr Arteta and bring in… Brendon Rodgers. That’s the media’s idea of course, I’ve no idea what other Arsenal fans think of it. Not something I’d like to see. But it goes on and on. We got …
Read More “As Arsenal sink lower changing the manager again is not the answer”
By Tony Attwood Last season Leicester City raced to near the top of the league and for a long time were looking dead certs for at the very least a top four finish, if not a runners’ up spot. And then they fell apart and slipped right back down the table. So, in our normal …
Read More “Tackles, fouls and yellow cards: the PL season so far”
by Tony Attwood In football reporting, every incident becomes a crisis, because every day needs a story. And yesterday we got two, with the defeats of Liverpool and Manchester United. Such things have happened all the way through football history. There are famous tales told of Arsenal losing 7-0 away to Newcastle in 1925 just …
Read More “Yesterday was great fun, but the scores alone don’t tell us much”
By Bulldog Drummond In their final match before the lock down West Ham lost away to Arsenal – a result which meant they only won one of their last ten pre-lockdown. Thereafter they won three, two of which were against fellow stragglers in the league, lost three and drew three. Date Game Res Score 20 …
Read More “WHAM BAM how are they doin’? WHU v Arsenal: the prelude”
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Guardian which says “Whether football returns in June or September, or later even than that, it will be a long time before it is played in stadiums packed with crowds of tens of thousands, without players having to undertake complex social distancing measures. Normal isn’t coming …
Read More “Football is not coming back any time soon: so what happens to the clubs then?”
By Tony Attwood You might not know if from reading the English blogs and newspapers but yes, decisions are being made, and proposals are being put on the table. OK these things have not worked out well in Scotland, where, as we noted last time around, a certain local difficulty has been encountered. But elsewhere …
Read More “Slowly football is changing, but unfortunately not everyone is following the plot”
By Christophe Jost As I explained in my previous article on The Last Pandemic, the end of the pandemic was just the beginning of a new set of problems. Those who survived had a whole new set of issues to face. As different countries approach a stage in which the curve representing the number of …
Read More “Exactly how are we going to start football again?”
By Tony Attwood I have several times raised the point that the media hates the question “why?” And so it seems today as none of the main news outlets in the UK are asking why the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that he wanted footballers to take pay cuts and thus …
Read More “At least this time, the media can’t attack Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood “Why should players take a pay cut?” That’s an interesting question, but because that question begins with “why?” you can be sure that it doesn’t get much coverage in the media. For the British media is notorious for ignoring the “why?” in any debate. What they do is skate over issues, and …
Read More “I object to some of my tax payments being used to pay staff at Liverpool FC”
By Tony Attwood and Christophe Jost So we have had weeks and weeks of pretending nothing is happening, or if it is happening it is only those silly foreign people getting into a tiz, while we English know that it is all alright, and indeed it would all be fine in Europe if only those …
Read More “Top earners take no cut; media attack, gambling firms lose money”
By Tony Attwood There really does seem to be a feeling among many journalists that a) this season will resume some time soon, b) titles, promotion and relegation will be resolved in the normal way c) next season will happen and all this will seem like a weird interlude of a few weeks. But actually …
Read More “Football ain’t coming back soon, but will Man City come back at all?”
By Tony Attwood A sense of wait and see has been replaced by a sense of “let’s do something” in football, as the realization sinks in that doing nothing will inevitably lead a number of clubs into financial administration or indeed total collapse. Partly it is the technical point that if a company goes into …
Read More “Financial crisis and end of contracts cause clubs to act”
By Christophe Jost The virus’s effect on our daily lives is now visible and for the moment all we can do it simply hope people will find ways of avoiding catching it – by taking precautions and helping each other. Regarding the human dramas that have emerged and those yet to play out, football may …
Read More “Football is about to collapse totally. So what happens after that?”
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.”
Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look By Tony Attwood In the modern blogging world, exploring the issue of cause and effect is sometimes known as moaning – and “moaning” of course is a pejorative word. No one likes a moaner. So what is a …
Read More “The problems at Arsenal: Trying to resolve the cause and effect”
by Tony Attwood Untold Updates videos We’re back with our videos – do take a look Over the weekend I used some of the findings we had on the relationship between fouls and yellow cards; you may recall the data that shows some clubs have to commit many, many more fouls than others to …
Read More “Burnley’s tackling is three times as dirty as Leicester’s! Really???”
The latest video: Untold Gooner News on injuries By Tony Attwood I have been arguing for some time that just as changing managers is not a guaranteed recipe for taking a club up the league, nor is buying lots of players. In fact figures presented here recently show that the six clubs that spent …
Read More “Does spending money on new players take a club up the league? The eastern experience”
Untold Updates and solving the mobile problem: We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews Football corruption and scandals. Why is it all so under reported? Part 1 Football corruption and scandals. A few stories that did get reported. Part 2 Football corruption and scandals. How we tipped off Fifa and …
Read More “Transfers for the big spenders are not working, so why does the media want more of them?”
By Tony Attwood There is something of a feeling of elation after the win against Manchester United, as indeed there should be. For after five games without a win and indeed just one win in 16, a win against a traditional “top six” club was very welcome indeed. After all it stopped what seemed an …
Read More “After 21 games this season: it’s not the defence that is the key problem.”
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).”
by Tony Attwood Latest news: We are developing our own video channel. It’s still at the experimental stage but you can get a feel here… Untold Gooner News We recently published research that showed that only 20% of clubs in the PL that have changed managers in the past 18 months are now better …
Read More “Do we want Arsenal to wait 30 years to recover. Or is there a shortcut?”
Latest news: We are developing our own video channel. It’s still at the experimental stage but you can get a feel here… Untold Gooner News By Tony Attwood I suppose one of my biggest gripes about football journalists is that they treat their audience like little children who will gobble up anything that …
Read More “The journalist code: Treat the audience like children, treat the players as worthless.”
By Tony Attwood And so now we know. Just as our ancestors allowed the Hill-Wood family and their allies to force out Henry Norris – the man with the vision of a club owned by its members, and with the best manager in the land – so our generation has allowed that combination of journalists …
Read More “And so now we know what their victory looks like”
