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 Sir Hardly Anyone. Now before we get going, let me offer you this. On this day, in 1789, Louis XVI, king of France wrote in his diary as he went to bed “Rien” as his record of the day’s events. The Bastille had just fallen. So don’t judge things too quickly is my …
By Jacko Jones “Aaron Ramsey Thanks the Cardiff Fans” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by joncandy At times, Aaron Ramsey doesn’t receive the credit that he deserves. The former Cardiff City man lives in the shadow of team-mate and Germany international Mesut Ozil at club level and Gareth Bale is widely regarded as Wales’ shining knight. Ultimately, Ramsey is often …
By Tony Attwood That headline, or something akin to it, must have been the instruction given out this morning to by the sports editor of the Telegraph to their Football News Correspondent Matt Law. For while other papers dealt reasonably with the issue of the clash of loyalty when a coach at a club is …
Read More ““It’s been 12 hours since we last attacked Arsène Wenger. What’s keeping you???””
By Tony Attwood As I have reminded regular readers on occasion, I set up Untold in January 2008, just so I could put forward a few thoughts I had on stories that were never run in the newspapers or on TV relating to football. I hoped I might get a few people (apart from my …
Read More “Why do some football supporters of a certain football club get so very angry?”
By Walter Broeckx If we look at the last finals from international tournaments from Uefa or Fifa (or similar organisations) we get this as the final scores of the matches after 90 minutes: WC 2010: Spain – Holland 0-0 EC 2012: Spain – Italy 4-0 WC 2014: Germany – Argentina 0-0 EC 2016: France – …
Read More “Football is being murdered in front of our own eyes.”
by Andrew Crawshaw Arsenal Back Row – Sari Van Veenendaal GK, Josephine Henning (CB), Farah Williams (MF), Dominique Janssen (MF), Jemma Rose (CB) (bending forward) , Kelly Smith (Forward) 83, Casey Stoney (LB) Front Row – Danielle Van de Donk (Attacker), Alex Scott (C) (RB) 78, Jordan Nobbs (MF) 72, Vicky Losada (MF) Subs …
Read More “Arsenal Ladies v Notts County Sun 10 July – The Match Report”
By Tony Attwood This has been the week of the full back – any past full backs who have been mentioned before as possible transfers have had their stories picked up again while the nation’s “journalists” have been scouring the countryside (or the pubs) for new ones. Which is odd because a) we already have …
Read More “Arsenal looking to buy six previously unmentioned players”
By Tony Attwood As you may recall if you are a regular reader of Untold, we’ve taken a particular interest in the FC Barcelona case concerning child trafficking and we were one of very few places that kept on with the story. As we ran it the abuse poured in day by day (most …
By Tony Attwood While day by day Sir Hardly Anyone brings us the ever growing list of all the players who are about to join Arsenal (but never will), and all those who are about to leave (but likewise never will), so I’ve been gathering to great list of all these tales together in the …
Read More “The transfer debate: just a few of the transfers that were utter disasters”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Thus we have the big headlines of the week. According to those in the know, or if you prefer those with nothing better to do but sit around and make it all up, we will have, in the next couple of days two in, one out. It is, you must admit, …
Read More “One “Deal close” arriving, one “deal close” to leave, one midfielder to sign this week”
By Tony Attwood It has hardly been reported anywhere much, but the salary cap (technically known as Short Term Cost Controls – STCC) will be running in the Premier League from the forthcoming season, and will in fact run for the duration of the new TV financial arrangements. It will run alongside the Premier League Profit …
By Tony Attwood Since Untold started in January 2008 I’ve never thought that Untold would make any reader change his/her mind. Rather I just hoped that I might find a few people who like me, felt that football was not being reported in a reasonable way. And that seems to have happened. At least I …
Read More “Proving that neither transfers nor buying a top goalscorer are the way to win the league”
by Andrew Crawshaw Before we get carried away with the thought of buying a stack of new players, I thought it would be a good time to have a look at the players we currently have on our books. As we all know the Premier league has a squad limit of 25 players over the …
Read More “Arsenal Squad 2016-17. We urgently need to loan or sell eight players”
By Tony Attwood In May 2014 a new competition for B teams of some Premier League and Championship clubs was put forward by the Football Association. The reason for it was (via some mechanism that was never explained) to boost the number of young English players in the league. The idea was that the new league …
Read More “Why are football’s administrators so utterly and totally inept?”
By Tony Attwood We have shown in the past season that only about a quarter of all expensive new players deliver in the first season with the new club. Around a quarter never deliver anything like the standard expected. We have also shown that although having the top scoring players in the league in the …
Read More “How much did the Arsenal squad actually cost and did we get value for money?”
By Don McMahon It is pointless to compare our youth and reserve players to known superstars like Messi and Ronaldo. These two men are the exception to the rule, the one-offs who will likely never be repeated again. for example; Alfredo DiStefano or Puskas were such exceptional players for their time, BUT they played in …
By Sir Hardly Anyone It’s a funny old business, this transfer lark. You remember Carlos Tevez and how with WHU in 2007 he conspired illegally to keep State Aid Utd in the Premier League at the expense of Sheffield Utd. Sheffield got £18m in compensation for the behaviour of State Aid (then known as West …
Read More “L’Equipe suggests new signing imminent, Morata to Arsenal, Tottenham for England”
By Tony Attwood Back in the early days of the century, Arsenal were portrayed as the dirtiest team in the Premier League. Every time Arsenal got a card there was manufactured outrage by the media. Interestingly no one ever compared Arsenal’s card level with any other team, and so those who were anti-Arsenal and …
By Walter Broeckx With the transfer window being open again we get the usual : “Arsenal must buy ….. (fill in)” to win the PL. Let me spell it out once again: I am not against buying a player at all and I will welcome any player that we buy and support him. But in …
Read More “How Arsenal could buy the next Messi or the next Ronaldo”
By Sir Hardly Anyone With the Guardian and Telegraph now both running articles questioning Mourinho’s relationship with reality and most trying to pretend that Barcelona is not a club closely linked with law breaking at every level (child trafficking, tax evasion, false accounting…) we turn once again with relief to that island of insanity, the …
By Tony Attwood I like to think I know a bit about Arsenal and the club’s players (although I know many will disagree with this view) but I am certain I don’t know too much about the ins and outs of other teams. But it has always struck me that it isn’t just players …
Read More “A complete guide to how the League will pan out next season”
By Tony Attwood In a recent article I asked if there was no end to the criminal behaviour of people associated with FC Barcelona and some other clubs. The answer of course is no, there is no end. Today we hear that Lionel Messi has been sentenced to 21 months in prison after the Catalonia Court …
Read More “What a mess(i). Yet more dodgy dealings involving FC Barcelona and its players.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone After yesterday’s look at which youth players are now training with the first team, looking to be the next Bellerin or Iwobi, it is interesting that Mourinho has started to “defend” his own record with youngsters. Speaking about the fact that he simply could not find ways to bring young …
By Tony Attwood It is well known that Chelsea have had the largest number of loanees out and about in Europe, and a big youth squad. Arsenal have been languishing with their under 21s in division 2, gaining promotion at the end of last season. Man City have built a new stadium just for the …
Read More “Arsenal addition to the first team will be chosen from this shortlist revealed today.”
By Tony Attwood Seven Spanish clubs including (of course) Real Madrid and FC Barcelona have been ordered to repay tens of millions of euros in illegal state subsidies. While the amount having to be paid in fines will hardly be noticed by either club, and while the world’s media will continue its eternal love …
