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 Walter Broeckx When I saw Mourinho win against Barcelona and Bayern Munich with his very defensive tactics I feared the worst for football. I feared that we were in for a lot of teams trying to stick to his tactics. Park the bus in front of goal and hope for a counter attack and …
Read More “The Mourinho revolution and the death of football”
OK, that would be just me then. Or at least that is what it often felt like when he was in the team. In his short, peak period, I thought he was God’s gift to the team, and was certain he was going to become one of the all time greats. There’s even a little …
Great Expectations – Why are you an Arsenal Fan? Guo Sheng Lee I’ve been putting off writing this piece for quite a while now, as work has limited the time I have to write for Untold. However, after reading the piece on Le Grove and actually visiting the blog for the first time, I felt …
Read More “It’s time to ask the doubters… Why are you an Arsenal Fan?”
Will he come by bike? By Walter Broeckx We all know how most of the media in the big football countries are talking about transfers. I should have said lying about transfers. Every big name that goes along is rumoured to be sold, or has been sold or will be sold before, during, after the …
Read More “Arsenal’s new central defender. You read it here first (unless you speak Dutch).”
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 Walter Broeckx Some people who have seen the game Holland – Denmark might have noticed them. A group of Dutch girls in orange mini dress. They sang and danced and well they were a very nice thing to look at. I would say almost better than most world cup matches I have seen so …
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 Billy the Dog McGraw, the Old Fish Shop, Hereford. Following the amazing revelations on the influential Le Grub web site to the effect that somewhere between 50% and 80% of Arsenal season ticket holders will not be renewing their tickets next year, Untold Arsenal can now exclusively reveal what will happen as a result …
Read More “No one will leave early from the Ems next season – official”
By Walter Broeckx Last summer Inter Milan bought the Argentine striker Diego Milito and the Brazilian midfielder Thiago Motta from Genua. Both had a great season with Inter that won the league, the cup and off course the champions league. Both players played a major role if we only look at the final of the …
Read More “Inter to be stripped of Euro Cup? Italy enters the world of a huge new football scandal”
Until monday lunchtime (when I’m writing this) it has been an utterly wonderful world cup for Arsenal. First, while players from other teams were getting knocked about, or knocking themselves about, none of our players went down will anything much. Then, amazingly, the French team played, and although Sagna got assaulted and could have been …
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 Walter Broeckx So here we go again, the world cup has started. I have let you know on many occasions that I hate international football. I don’t give a damn about it and I think the world could be a better place if Fifa and the national teams would suddenly disappear from the planet. …
Read More “How Arsenal players will get on in the world cup”
Tony Attwood Michael Ballack and Joe Cole have left the KGB compound in Fulham on free transfers. There’s no doubt that both are great players, and that in earlier days would have been given new contracts by the world’s leading exponents of Prefabricated Football. You bring in already fully made talent, and exploit it for …
Read More “First signs of new Uefa financial rules having impact as clubs start shedding players”
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 Walter Broeckx Warning: this article contains insulting and abusive language. In this article I will try to give an answer on Tony’s question: “can you send a player off for calling the ref a crook and a scoundrel and a shameless bastard?” This is a very difficult question to answer. There is not a …
Read More “What you can (and absolutely can’t) say to the ref”
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 Tony Attwood, and the guy who writes Le Grove Three linked financial matters. First, the EPL is haemorrhaging cash on salaries. Secondly most Arsenal season ticket holders are giving up their season tickets, and third the Glazer Gang’s other businesses have all come unstuck so they have no choice but to hang on to …
Read More “Arsenal’s financial collapse, EPL financial collapse, Man U financial collapse”
“If I met him in the street I would slap him.” By Tony Attwood Untold, from its earliest days, has carried the argument that FIFA is a bent organisation organising bent tournaments. The site has only reported a handful of the incidents that lead to that conclusion, but if you want more you only have …
Read More “The referee for the England game is “a crook, a scoundrel and a shameless bastard””
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 GF60 “Looking back is sometimes dangerous because we see the past that we want to remember and not the past that has happened in reality.” With all-seater grounds, nancyfied and oh so safe stadia, no-one will ever know again, the thrill of being able to tell the crowd size merely by the pressure on …
Read More “Highbury, Crush barriers, Cliff Holton and Stanley Matthews. A trip down memory lane”
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 Tony Attwood Through a special arrangement with the excellent Young Guns web site, Untold can now bring you the in-depth news concerning our latest youth signings. You might remember (if you were paying attention that is) that I went into a spin after Arsenal became the first team to retain the Academy title, and …
Read More “Arsenal sign Argentine goalkeeper, plus Roberts and Ebecilio and maybe Barca’s Assulin”
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”
