By Tony Attwood At the start it is always the same. First there are the deals and the regulations: in the case of football the requirements that the Premier League and others place on broadcasters, such as not showing any pitch invasion, not showing violence in the ground, limiting the questioning individual refs and never …
Read More “Football analysis: hear it, read it, see it enough, and it starts to become true.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone I notice Alexis scored the winner for Chile to keep them in with a chance of qualifying for the Russian World Cup. Chile has moved up to third in the South American league having beating Ecuador 2-1. And with little else to talk about following some rather unexciting football in Europe …
Read More “Passing the interlull with thoughts that the world cup might not quite happen as planned.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. First the serious bit. It is now two months since the Community Shield match raised money (we don’t know how much, but it should have been a lot) for the families and survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster. And still there is not a word on where the money has gone. …
Read More “C-Shield money missing, newspaper criticises generalisations, PSG to get Alexis, Guinea foul.”
By Tony Attwood Goodness knows how many police raids, tax fraud allegations, court cases, questions about contractual clauses and the like we’ve covered in the nearly 10 years we’ve been running, but it has been quite a few. Spanish football has been rife with scandals, but there has been some activity in the UK too. …
Read More “Newcastle United charged with tax fraud over player transfers”
By Tony Attwood It’s not much of a talking point in England largely because of the huge investment made the English media in talking up Manchester City, Manchester United and Chelsea but in Europe there is an almost continual debate going on concerning the ability or otherwise of Uefa to control the super-rich clubs – …
Read More “Clubs are getting round FFP and Uefa know what they have to do. But will they act?”
By Tony Attwood By and large criticism of Fifa, like criticism of the FA, is limited England. Fifa is outrageous, corrupt and disgraceful at every level and in every regard, and most people seem to recognise this, but the issue is put in a box, carefully kept aside from the fact that English players go …
Read More “Bayern, PSG and the FA implicated in continuing deaths of construction workers in Qatar”
by Tony Attwood It was in 2015 on one of my trips to Australia to see my daughter that I visited Melbourne City FC and was astonished to see how much it was being re-designed to look like Manchester City. It was a surprise because a couple of years before that I had predicted that …
Read More “La Liga awakens to the dangers of City group’s football franchise scheme. But where will they venture next?”
Latest in the wild and wacko world of football By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw While in the world cup France played a goalless draw with Luxembourg with Giroud starting and Lacazette taking over, it is being said elsewhere that the Spanish League wants Uefa to investigate Manchester City’s spending, and to expand the ongoing …
Read More “Spanish League demand investigations, WHU demand satisfaction, Tottenham only have 21 adult players for Europe”
By Tony Attwood There was a moment, when Manchester City were found by Uefa to have broken FFP rules, when it looked very much as if the club could not believe it. Which I guess is to be expected if the club is part of the personal fiefdom of the rulers of a phenomenally wealthy …
Read More “Football enters the end of the rule of law, as a new French Revolution might be on the cards”
By Tony Attwood I started the summer thinking I might run four indexes this summer (see note at the end) one of which tracks all the players going out on loan from PL clubs, but the numbers grew so rapidly, and included so many players I hadn’t heard of (meaning I had to keep double …
Read More “The Loans: two clubs dominate the loan deals this summer. But is it really working for them?”
By Tony Attwood “Why are so many Premier League teams so bad in defence?” You’ll know, if you have read my meanderings across the years, that I rather like evidence. Not “The evidence of my own eyes” but actual numbers. So when someone rages in a bloggetta that “Xhaka is clearly not up to …
Read More “Are Premier League teams really so bad in defence as the media suggest?”
By Tony Attwood We’ve been trying to keep tabs on all the transfers that have gone through this summer involving the top ten clubs from last season buying players in. The latest table is below. In terms of the number of new players coming in the table reads Everton: 13 Manchester City 6: Chelsea: 5 …
Read More “The key questions facing Premier League clubs this season, plus the transfers so far for the top 10 clubs.”
By Tony Attwood Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe’s largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of 840,000. And on March 18 this year they wrote: It is often said that taking performance enhancing drugs makes no sense for soccer players. Then why …
Read More “Footballers are taking performance enhancing drugs. So why are the FAs, Uefa and Fifa are covering it up.”
By Tony Attwood Oliver Holt in the Mail got rather exercised this week claiming, “The seven minutes and 16 seconds encounter with Usain Bolt, Justin Gatlin and Christian Coleman shows athletics has lost its drugs battle” His sub editor then gave us some headlines… A journalist asked Usain Bolt, Justin Gatlin and Christian Coleman why …
Read More “Journalists still working hard to ensure that football ignores the drugs cheat threat”
by Ian Brookes I was at the Emirates Cup this weekend with my 2 sons and has been the recent tradition, I treated them to a new shirt for the season. Of the 3 on offer both opted for the Home kit in short sleeve with Lacazette and number 9 on the back. The cost …
Read More “Surely children’s replica shirts should be a lot cheaper than the adult shirt, not more expensive!”
By Tony Attwood Suddenly people are talking about FFP rules not being legal – all over again. Just after we’ve had two peaceful years of thinking that was all settled, Neymar comes along and some people get all excited thinking that FFP will be torn up by the European Court of Justice. So first the …
Read More “Neymar’s transfer is blocked in Spain. But is FFP illegal? Here’s what the court says.”
By Tony Attwood For Paris Saint-Germain the issue of the Neymar transfer is not just one of getting the player. It is a case of getting the player and not getting debarred from, or penalised within, the Champions League. Of course PSG know a bit about FFP since they have already come under fire from …
Read More “How PSG plan to get round FFP and where that plan has gone wrong.”
By Tony Attwood This little piece contains brief details about five things that I think are indeed wrong with football, but which most people in the media seem to find ok – except when it involves knocking Arsenal of course. 1: Drugs in football? Who cares? Drugs testing is treated as irrelevant nonsense in football, …
Read More “The five factors that reveal there’s something very wrong with football (and Arsenal)”
By Tony Attwood While the media in Britain has occasionally hinted that maybe all is not well, most of the time they seem to be enjoying the hyper-inflation of transfer fees that is going on. But the public in Germany are now being told that Bayern Munich will not participate in the current “madness” of …
Read More “Bayern describe transfer market as madness and say they don’t want to join in.”
By Tony Attwood According to the Sun, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona both call surprise press conference half hour apart as Neymar’s £195m switch to PSG. Of course the chances are that this is typical Fake News from the Sun, the Express and the other media outlets. But even so, the huge transfers going through …
Read More “How Uefa is being directly challenged by PSG and Qatar, and what might happen next.”
By Tony Attwood Untold is unremittingly critical of the way TV, radio, newspapers, websites and blogs report football. You’ll know that. I’m personally very critical of the Guardian, because it gets much of the rest of its work on its blog and its printed editions right. And some of its football reporting is good too, …
Read More “Beyond the media; how to take back football from those who tell us how to think.”
By Walter Broeckx Now is everything. That is how things look in this world. I think this is what we could call modern times as it is more and more the norm in society. But in football this is really rising to ridiculous heights. Because of my interest in Arsenal and football in general, if …
Read More “How You Tube has destroyed all sensible football debate”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal didn’t do too badly when it came to the Africa Cup of Nations last time around – Elneny was called up to play for Egypt, but as he wasn’t seen as central to the team at the time, it wasn’t a departure that was keenly missed. But it hasn’t always been …
Read More “Cup of Nations to be moved; Man City in further tapping up allegations”
by Tony Attwood A couple of days back, police in Spain say arrested Ángel María Villar Llona, the president of Spain’s football association, Real Federación Española de Fútbol, on suspicion of embezzling funds. It is an interesting move because Villar Llona is also a senior vice-president at Fifa and Uefa those two gloriously clean and untarnished organisations …
Read More “President of Spain’s FA arrested. And behind the corruption, there are stories of referee fixing.”
By Tony Attwood Our correspondent in Switzerland has just come up with the calculation that the English players in the top level of the academy at Arsenal outnumber the non-English by two to one. The suggestion is that there is some serious forward thinking going on, judging by the way the transfer market …
Read More “Are we now in a two tier price structure when it comes to buying players?”
