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 Nick Tolhurst The truth about the success of the German national team and what it means for Arsenal. Despite losing to Spain in the semi-final, the story of this year’s world cup has without doubt been the rise of a new, exciting and multi-cultural young German team that has put much heralded and more …
By Phil Gregory Before you start reading, check out What’s really going on (if you haven’t already). It explains all of the terms and whatnot, which makes all that follows easier to, well, follow. Liverpool FC hasn’t been out the news for much of last season for both financial and on-field reasons. It’s probably best …
Read More “Imagine a top EPL club being owned and run by its bank. Stop imagining – it’s true.”
By Walter Broeckx In the last decades we have seen that the more technical ability and skill you have in your team the more chance you have of winning something. You also need other things but without these first two key points you are hardly going to win anything these days. If we take the …
Read More “For England and the FA, it is time to choose which way to go”
By Adrian Raffill On 23rd February 2008 Birmingham City’s Martin Taylor launched himself into a challenge that took Eduardo’s foot clean off the end of his leg. Arsene Wenger had barely finished his post match criticism of the thuggery that had just been broadcast live all over the world before the English football world rose …
Read More “The best thing to do is to kick these foreigners. That shows them who’s who.”
Untold Arsenal runs a list of up and coming young players who we expect to break through into the first team at some time in the next year or four. It’s called the Golden 30, although for reasons that will not become apparent at this time, it has only 28 players on it at present. …
Read More “Wellington Silva (our new superstar signing) and the issue of balls”
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?”
By Tony Attwood The last post (the one from Walter on what you can and can’t say to a ref) was about football with attitude. So this is about football with altitude. Clever eh? Oh well… Anyway, as you would expect, the issue of playing 10 miles up in the air is one that FIFA …
Read More “Untold world cup: football with altitude. What the mainstream media never tell you.”
By Phil Gregory I was recently fortunate enough to be able to do a short interview with Bill Gerrard, Professor of Sports Management and Finance at Leeds University. Professor Gerrard is heavily involved in the game, having worked with top sides in fields as diverse as squad valuations and performance analysis, while advising the board …
Read More “Statistical analyses in football: an interview with the Professor”
by Walter Broeckx An injury free world cup? Who’s responsible? Since Tony has given my the opportunity to do some writing on Untold I have on occasionally tried to provide some information on the rules in football and how refs should act according the guidelines given by Fifa. As with every World Cup Fifa is …
Read More “Fifa’s finally promise that leg breaking fouls will be properly punished”
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.”
How Arsenal came to the rescue of English football. By Tony Attwood I started researching this article with three questions in mind: a) Why is England so bad at football b) Why does Arsenal under Wenger use so few English players? c) Why does the Netherlands, with its small population seem to do better than …
Read More “How Arsenal came to the rescue of English football”
By Walter Broeckx If you type in the words “Wenger should buy” in Google, then you get some 44.500 hits in the last 24 hours. If you take the last week you come up with some 177.000 and 426.000 in the last month. If we include the words “AW should buy” we get another 70.800 hits …
Read More “Arsène Wenger gets advice on who he should buy every two seconds.”
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 GF60 How I loathe the the silly season. Even with the World Cup, the thought that the only sides I’m interested in at are those with Gooners playing (preferably they all get minor injuries whilst training and miss out) and the locals, is insufficient to stir the enthusiasm. So a tendency to look back at the …
Read More “This world cup is so utterly boring, so here’s something else…”
Today’s Sponsor: The Supporters’ Direct Conference: click here for details ———————– ‘Football is a simple game’ – The biased Media By Guo Sheng Lee How many times have we heard the saying: ‘football is a simple game’? Maybe it’s just me, but I seem to have seen/heard it too many times when reading/watching the English …
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”
Why our summers are always so miserable… and why this is the last summer of pain. Ian Trevett I can remember when summers were fun. After a long season it was nice to get weekends back for a month or two. Go on holiday, maybe watch a World Cup or Euro Championship (with hardly any …
Read More “Why our summers are always so miserable… and why we won’t be bullied any more”
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”
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.”
by Walter Broeckx The final games have been played. The league table is final. As you know I have done a few reviews of our season and compared it with the games we had last season. So now we can try to draw a few final conclusions. Until the game against Birmingham we were doing …
It’s clear we are about to buy Chamakh. And the Lord Wenger has announced that he will be buying some defenders. In the plural. At least two. Maybe more. In fact, if you manage to plough through all my ramblings, you will see I am predicting a giant squad (and not as I wrote in …
Read More “Arsenal’s squad for next season: no restriction on the number of new players”
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?”
