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
FA Regulations are quite precise in these matters, and sadly Cesc Fabregas is clearly guilty on a number of issues… Regulation 28 (4) iii A player who is not playing shall not enter on the field of play after the game is over for at least 30 minutes after the game. For clarity it should …
There are clubs that owe an uncontrolled unmaintainable fortune, and those that don’t. Arsenal have a debt that declines year by year with the mortgage, the rest have debts so huge they can’t be refinanced and interest can’t be repaid. And there are Arsenal supporters who think Arsenal should join these manic clubs, should buy …
A Cole should be banned by England for his past behaviour
The inevitable consequence of an acceptance of Insanity Week and the international matches therein is that Sepp Blatter and his fanatics will keep proposing the 6+5 regulation through which six players in every starting 11 have to be qualified to represent the “football country” in which they play. (I say “football country” because it is …
Read More “Most Arsenal players would have to leave if new regs come in”
Two things have happened… one involves Mr T Henry, one involves UEFA/FIFA. Mr Henry first. According to Square Football today 1 April he will sign for Tottenham. Given that today is 1 April, one presumes that this is an April fool. But given that Square Football is not above posting some very strange pieces without …
Read More “Insanity Day meets April Fool. Come and watch Arsenal reserves”
Thanks to everyone for the updates – I really do appreciate every email. In case you missed any… It seems Vela didn’t play because he was suspended (silly me, didn’t know that). Van Persie has left the Dutch squad because of a hamstring injury. That could be a bit of a bugger, because those things …
Read More “Insanity week: injury to Arsenal players updates”
It is the day when we take all our best players and give them to nutters who don’t care about their long term well-being and will sacrifice our players’ careers just to keep their own job. It is the day that Capello has decided to have a spat with Appy Arry Headcase over Ron Knee …
As you’ll know if you read the wonderful honest excellently truthful British sporting pages, every year every single player from Arsenal is about to leave and play somewhere else. In fact, what actually happens is that the Lord Wenger manipulates the market in order to move on players that he thinks have come to the …
Read More “Entire Arsenal first team will leave this summer”
Adebayor hasn’t played a game in 78 weeks (or something) so he flies off to his country to train with the squad, and Togo say, “we promise he won’t play”. Eduardo plays bits but keeps getting injured, so he meanders off to Croatia (you’ll recall he is Brazillian) to play for them. Yup – it’s …
If you follow the women’s game you’ll know that for years we’ve dominated, going for century after century without being beaten by anyone. But this year Everton have tried to match the record. The Arsenal/Everton games have somehow slipped back to the end of the season, which is how we have Arsenal played 15 won …
It is interesting how the world changes. On 1 March Aston “If you go down, hold your head” Villa (so named after their tactics at the Ems this season) were six points clear of Arsenal, following a 2-2 draw with Stoke. But despite this rarefied position in the league their fans were full of …
Read More “Having by-passed the evil of Allerdyce, where next?”
It was a stroll in the park illuminated by two utterly stunning goals. We won 7-1 if you count shots on target, and it revealed another element of the Lord Wenger’s masterplan for football domination. So it seems a bit churlish to complain, but I am going to anyway. If ever there was a case …
Read More “Bringing the game into disrepute as Wenger’s plan is revealed”
Fifa – the organisation of which a US judge famously said that they “lied and lied again in court” claims that it has now worked out a way of restricting the number of foreign players in each team, while staying within the rules of the European Union. It wants to talk to the European Commission …
Jose Mourinho said yesterday that he thought the ref was biased against his team in their game against Manchester United – and the big news today was that for some reason he is not going to be sanctioned by UEFA. Not that I want him sanctioned – but I just like to understand the rules. …
100 years ago football was in total crisis, with games regularly ending 0-0, and 1-0 being a treat. The football authorities responded (although rather belatedly) by changing the off side rule from needing 3 opponents to 2 in front of the attacker when the ball was kicked, and restricting handling by the goalkeeper to the …
The salary cap is the centrepiece of the current round of UEFA proposals. It is based on the notion that each club will have to declare its “football income” – that is money raised directly from footballing activities. The clubs will then be limited as to how much of that income they can spend each …
Milan were centrally involved in the bribing of referees (the Calciopoli scandal) in Itlay and managed to get away with just a little points deduction. That really is enough to have the club kicked out of European football for quite a few years, but no, they are still there, and still doing their stuff. To …
Numerous blogs and news services such as RedAction are currently urging supporters to turn up on Monday night for the Cardiff game with St George flags. National flags are banned at the Ems, although no action is taken against supporters in the away section for waving them. It is anticipated that a lot of Cardiff …
Read More “What will Gallas and the rest make of all the English flags on Monday night?”
Listening to Lord Triesman (chair of the FA) give an after dinner speech last night one thing was very clear. He absolutely cannot register that some people think the FA is of itself a very bad thing. His view more of less seems to be “it is, it must be”. Of course as chair of …
It is often said that to win the EPL a team needs an English spine. There’s no evidence presented for this – it is just something that is said. Watching Brazil last night I think I’d sooner my team had a Brazilian spine rather than one made up of John Terry types, but each to …
Read More “Brady arrested (not that one), English spines, Arsenal’s youth”
These days, when a ref makes a dubious decision, the inclination of most people is to blame the ref’s ability. The suggestion is that referees today are simply not able to keep up with the speed of the game. What most commentators don’t suggest is that the ref might have been bought. In Italy of …
The image of the band playing on the Titanic while the iceberg joined in with the percussion is so hackneyed that I always try and avoid it, but after half an hour of sitting here I can’t find anything better to describe the news swirling around football. While most of the media focusses on the …
When Chelsea wanted to join the Football League sometime around 1905 it didn’t do so on the basis of the football it had played so far – because there was none. No club, no team, no stats – just a ground on which the terraces were unsafe and crumbling even before the club opened. Chelsea …
There was a time in the 1990s when Italian football was king. WC Milan (then known as AC – before they started playing silly buggers) in particular had the most stunning side that played fluent exciting wonderful free-flowing football. It was Total Football II. In those days it was all so good you could watch …
Read More “Football in England starts the journey into decline”
Nearly a year ago the major football clubs in Europe agreed to drop their legal case against Uefa and Fifa over injuries sustained by players while playing for countries rather than clubs. As a result the clubs now get some money from the countries when there are international tourneys. But as we have seen the …
