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
So – does size really matter. According to the Sun. And sadly the BBC in a recent article repeated the same stuff, without crediting the Sun, and I fear without checking any of the facts. . Because Sun + facts = a contradiction & as I show below, there is a very good reason why …
These days watching a Royal Shakespeare production is a bit like watching Arsenal at Barnet. The players are there, the skills are there, but the auditorium isn’t. If you are not devoted to Shakespeare, or you don’t live in England, you’ll not know that about three years ago the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford was …
Read More “How Arsenal share an approach with the Royal Shakespeare Company”
Welcome to Season 91. In September 1919 Arsenal started to play in the First Division, having been awarded a place in the reshuffle that followed the end of the First World War. The top division was expanded by two clubs at that time, but the issue of promotion was made very murky because the last …
Read More “Welcome to Season 91. Plus Amazing growth of the soaraway Sun”
Going off on holiday for a couple of weeks always makes me feel that when I return there ought to be something BIG – some incredible news that has changed the world while I have been away. Of course it is rarely like that and I returned late last night to see that Newcastle are …
I am about to leave for a holiday for a couple of weeks – out of the rain of Northamptonshire to the sun of Italy. During this time I am leaving the site open so that comments can be posted by those who have posted before. However anyone new posting, or anyone posting with a …
Read More “What did Wenger say about defenders, and the issue of bent football clubs”
Were the Last Four Years the Worst in Arsenal’s History? by “LRV” Arsenal joined the old Football League Division 1 (the top flight in English football) in the 1919/20 season. Since then, Arsenal Fans have witnessed the good, not-so-good, poor, not-so-poor, Very good, not-so-bad, bad seasons. In all of these, one thing remains a source …
According to the Sun “Manuel Almunia has challenged Arsene Wenger’s transfer policy, by insisting: We can’t win anything with kids.” The story also appears in the Mirror. No journalist or source is given, and at the moment I can’t find the usual suspect: the interview given in Spanish, and read by a Sun journo whose …
Read More “Arsenal fans vow to hunt Sun journalists to extinction”
Yesterday this was the only blog that linked phone tapping to football. Today the news confirms what I could only hint at yesterday: football is very much involved in the phone tapping story. Sir Alex F-Word and Alan Zebra have now both been named as people whose phones were tapped by the News of the …
Read More “Arsene Wenger discussed in phone tap conversation”
There is a story in the Mail, which was highlighted by a correspondent, that suggests Rosicky won’t play for Arsenal this year. It is the usual mishmash of gibberish and invented twaddle. Meanwhile on the Metro there’s a piece that says ‘Speaking to Czech newspaper Sport, Rosicky said: “I think I will be back in …
Read More “The News of the World, Rosicky, phone tapping, football, the truth…”
There I was, pausing in my busy daily schedule of writing stuff, to take a quick Florida Salad Sandwich, when the news pops up. Arsenal will sell Cesc for £40 million. And you know it must be true because it is in that central and vital source of all news about Arsenal, the people on …
Yesterday the BBC chose to put tennis on TV, and the same match on BBC Radio 5, relegating the European U21 final to 5 live Sports Extra – a digital channel. I can’t get digital radio in my car, and as I was on the way to a gig (not a very big gig, but …
Read More “BBC choose Scot in toilet to England in Final; new Sun hoax released”
Just as I was thinking we’d had enough of hoaxes on this site for a while, a post turned up claiming that “Wenger is London’s least popular Premier League manager in the eyes of his club’s own supporters with Roy Hodgson, Guus Hiddink, Gianfranco Zola and Harry Redknapp all polling higher marks for last season” …
Read More “Evening Standard launch another hoax Arsenal story, but its not very good”
Anthony Kastrinakis. the man behind the Sun’s famous Fábregas-to-Madrid hoax has been arrested by police. Kastrinakis’ article which claimed that Fábregas was ready to play for Real Madrid was picked up by Arsenal blogs and national newspapers, making it the most successful football hoax in the history of football journalism. The Sun had for some …
Read More “Man responsible for Sun Fábregas hoax arrested by police”
A hoax mistranslation of an interview given by Cesc Fábregas in Spanish in relation to Spain’s Confed Cup defeat has been repeated as fact by newspapers and blogs alike around the world. The Sun was the first paper in the UK to run the story, and from there it spread very rapidly indeed. The original …
Read More “Blogs and press caught out by Sun’s Fábregas hoax”
Articles on Untold Arsenal are so good that they also appear on Team Talk. The same is true with much of our correspondence. The name of the “author” is changed on Team Talk. Team Talk have been told repeatedly, but won’t stop the activity, so, I think we should celebrate this situation. Read it here, …
Read More “There are 3 ways of running a top EPL club. (Two don’t always work)”
Doomsday postponed, but Paradise Lost, maybe. We now know it is to be EPSN that shows the Setanta programmes – probably charging us a fee per game. So the EPL have got their money – at least for this season. Although the small print suggests that there is a question about how much the 3 …
As we entered the close season I planned this as a sort of weekly revue of EPL clubs, and how they are coping. I expected to be fighting off the usual “Oh my God its a disaster, Man IOU has signed everyone and we haven’t” but in fact its not quite like that at all. …
Read More “This transfer window, who is doing well, who is quivvering, & who is on police bail”
There’s a story that has cropped up a few times recently, and it goes like this… Arsène Wenger is on holiday or in the Far East or both, when he should be concluding deals in Europe. If he can’t take the club seriously he should be sacked. As has already been said here by others, …
By Ronny Lamb and Tony Attwood Aided by the growing number of correspondents around Europe who are now contributing to Untold Arsenal I’ve been pulling together the financial doings of Real Madrid. And here’s the irony. They are just like Manchester IOU. Each is as bust as the other – and there are serious doubts …
Read More “United in insolvency: the story of Real Madrid & Manchester U”
As far as I know there have only been two books which are not primarily about Arsenal but which make Arsenal a central part of their story: Fever Pitch and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery. (There are of course other novels that mention Arsenal in passing, but I’m speaking here of stories where Arsenal FC is …
The central theme of this last season was the change in the way newspapers report football. The Times preoccupation was rewriting the news – in one case (Bugduv) they even went so far as to remove previous entries on the story from old pages of their web site. Just as KGB Fulham do with their …
Read More “The most stupid stories & events in football this season.”
I spent a jolly afternoon on Wednesday in London, doing my bit being interviewed for a DVD review of last season, pontificating in front of the cameras on the Lord Wenger and all his doings etc. Of course the great danger is that one can, in the heat of questioning, make a prediction or two, …
After those of us with a bit too much time on our hands gave the Mirror and News of the World a bit of a run around over their “Everyone wants to leave Arsenal” campaign, they’ve retaliated twice – once with the old-fashioned “snub” standby, and now today with with Wenger clearout story. The “snub” …
Read More “Invented Arsenal stories + a rundown of all the clubs that have gone bust”
It is tempting to say it has been a bad week for the BBC – looking stupid over totally ignoring the FA Youth Cup Final and now having their lead football reporter threaten violence against a fellow journalist while broadcasting. But I fear the powers in the BBC don’t even recognise any of this as …
Read More ““I will kick him; I will kick him” – Alan Green last night”
The first rule of journalism is fill you spacce with the official line – cos if you don’t someone else will take your space, and you might be asked again. The second rule of journalism is never apologise, never explain. So it is that as it has become utterly clear that only a handful of …
Read More “This Sunday we’ll tell Arsene Wenger what we think of him”
