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 Tony Attwood Journalists in general rarely apologise for getting things wrong – and when they do it is generally only when forced to. Football journalists go further; they simply don’t ever admit they were wrong. In fact they make it up as they go along, and then ignore any protests about the fact that …
Read More “How lazy football journalists make it up to meet their own requirements”
by Tony Attwood Details of the earlier articles in this series are given below. 4: The Salary Cap in the Premier League Our figures have shown that Premier League clubs cannot continue without match days for very long, unless they have the resources from their owners that Chelsea and Manchester City can call on. Those …
Read More “10 ways football is changing as a result of the virus 3: Salaries and Transfers”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, chief psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. The dismissal of nine players by FC Sion has taken on a particular importance in European football, as much of the continent is now watching to see how things begin to shake out, following the “interesting” behaviour …
Read More “What really happened to Song and Djourou at FC Sion”
by Tony Attwood In part one of this series The 10 ways football is changing as a result of the virus: part one. – we looked at salary caps and the notion that clubs could turn on Manchester City and their endless supply of capital. Now here are a couple more ways in which football …
Read More “The 10 ways football is changing as a result of the virus: part two – Chelsea / Kroenke”
By Timothy Cassidy For 29 games, Liverpool have played some of the best football we have ever seen. Until the post-Christmas break, it was hard to even imagine them being beaten. Of course, time, fatigue, injuries and well-organized and motivated adversaries eventually lead to their one league defeat having also only drawn one match (in …
Read More “Liverpool deserve to be recognized, just not as league champions”
By Tony Attwood 1: Salary caps in the Premier League Across the world, but most particularly in Europe, clubs are getting into a financial pickle, largely because a) they have no money coming in from sponsors, gate receipts, broadcasting, advertisers and the like, but b) they are still paying their players. This might be a …
Read More “The 10 ways football is changing as a result of the virus: part one.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Well yes, there is a growing awareness that civilisation as we know it has come to an end, and there is no football being played. But we still have a bunch of bananas writing in the national newspapers and associated websites and they are determined to pretend that everything will start …
By Tony Attwood The Athletic has admitted it; a huge amount (quite possibly most) of football reporting is pure and simple rubbish. In a recent article the online magazine says, “We often do not find out how much signings cost, we are never told how much people are paid and we rarely witness what actually …
Read More “Do journalists really know what football is like, but choose not to tell us?”
by Tony Attwood So the drive towards salvation has started as (ignored by the majority of blogs) European clubs try to cut salaries. What is clear however is that clubs really don’t have any idea how to do this and for every club that is trying to reach reasoned compromises with players over salaries, and …
Read More “Forget transfers. It’s the player v club battles over wages that are dominating now.”
By Tony Attwood So here is the argument: Matchday money has stopped. TV money has stopped. But salaries continue. And that is not good news for the clubs. Just how bad the bad news is can be seen by this table. We’ve run it before, but now here are two extra columns as the situation …
Read More “Why financially, Arsenal are well and truly up against it – but are not alone.”
By Walter Broeckx With the whole World suffering under the corona crisis, football is not really the main focus of most people. But the impact on football is big. And this is also the case in Belgium football. As most of the media in the UK is still sticking their heads in the sand and …
Read More “Corona crisis in football: the situation in Belgium”
by Tony Attwood According to reports in the European media FC Barcelona were already in a certain amount of financial difficulty before the Corona crisis. Now they really do have a problem. All of which may seem rather hard to imagine especially since it was only on 19 September 2019 that Óscar Grau, executive director …
By Tony Attwood There really does seem to be a feeling among many journalists that a) this season will resume some time soon, b) titles, promotion and relegation will be resolved in the normal way c) next season will happen and all this will seem like a weird interlude of a few weeks. But actually …
Read More “Football ain’t coming back soon, but will Man City come back at all?”
By Tony Attwood and Christophe Jost And so slowly, very slowly, the media starts to get it. If you stop football for a while, then there will be economic consequences of mega-proportions from which many clubs may well never recover. The Daily Star (yes really) said, “the loss of TV rights money, matchday revenue, European …
Read More “What happens next? In Germany its becoming clearer, but in the Premier League, less so.”
Today’s story from the Arsenal anniversary files is of Mark Randall, and man who in his early days appeared to be destined for great things (and Mr Wenger appeared to agree with that) but who could never settle at Arsenal, and indeed appears to have had difficulty settling anywhere else. And yet in his role …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes while Belarus keeps playing football, and many (although not it seems not all) of England’s journalists dream that it will all be ok soon and the mighty transfer window will swing open before it crashes shut, and the money will roll in like it has never been stopped from rolling …
Read More “Players asked to take pay cuts as Arsenal projected to spend £100m on transfers”
Earlier today we published an article by our Swiss / German friend Christophe “The day Arsenal broke the Premier League” reflecting on how the English media is reporting the current football situation in England. Now we have a letter by our regular correspondent Don McMahon, a retired referee, from North America. —– Dear Tony You …
Read More “English football: it is incompetence and a lack of leadership that is the problem.”
By Christophe Jost I must be transparent. I do not live in the UK, I am of German and Swiss descent, work in France and Switzerland, and have lived in quite a few countries so far in my life. Some of the countries are rich, some are poor. So my vision may be a galaxy …
Read More “The day Arsenal broke the Premier League: the view from overseas”
As you probably realise, each day we publish a list of 20 or more anniversary events related to Arsenal, for that day, on the Arsenal History Society site. We write a bit of background on each item and then try to do a bit more digging in relation to one particular person mentioned on that …
Read More “The Arsenal junior who became Theirry’s assistant”
by Tony Attwood Premier League executives have been told it will cost them £762 million in lost broadcast revenue if the 2019-20 season fails to finish due to the coronavirus, according to The Athletic. This sum is calculated to be the amount paid by the TV companies that contract to show games, with the money …
Read More “Football Broadcasters want their cash back but the clubs don’t have it.”
By Tony Attwood Football’s club owners don’t do crises very well. And football journalists don’t do the reporting of crises very well either. The history of crises in football is by and large a history of club owners digging their heels in and saying any change will result in the end of football as we …
Read More “How players started to take power away from the clubs, and keep it for themselves.”
The answer, as you might guess, as it is asked here, is Arsenal. And the topic has arisen on the Arsenal History Society website since on this day in 1907 Arsenal lost in the FA Cup semi-final for the second year running. They did not make it back to the semi-final for 20 years. At …
By Tony Attwood Windfalls in monetary terms are generally defined as an unexpected gain in income which could be due to winning a lottery, an unforeseen inheritance, or a tax refund that you didn’t expect. But Football.London, the website that publishes around 40 Arsenal stories a day, some of which are, perhaps we might say, …
Read More “The £158.87m Arsenal windfall: is it real, where does it come from?”
By Christophe Jost and Tony Attwood Looking at what is happening in Germany there appears to be much more acceptance in Germany than there is in England of the reality that now football has stopped the financial consequences could be huge. There seems to be far less of the talk in Germany about the huge …
Read More “How things are evolving in Europe: it’s doubtful the PL can do the same.”
22 March is the day on which the clubs that went on to be founder members of the original football league came together for the first time, to discuss how things were going to be done. Arsenal of course were not part of it – it took Arsenal another five and a half years to …
