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
Premier League: The best bromances of the league For centuries, football has always gathered millions of fans around the world regardless of race or religion. However, apart from this solidarity around football fans, it also happens that links are formed between players of the same team. We tend to forget it but football is above …
Read More “Premier League: The best bromances of the league”
by Tony Attwood According to a report in the Guardian, the president of La Liga has announced that he is certain that Spanish League can be completed by 30 June. It is an issue of course because if it is not completed then the question arises of who gets the places in the next European …
Read More “New football competition sets Spain alight. England will follow.”
The Arsenal History Society Files have no less than 20 significant events that have occurred in relation to Arsenal on 21 March. These include: An international match for Arsenal’s first ever international player Nine wins in ten games to save Arsenal from relegation, but also… The start of an eight match run without a win …
By Tony Attwood There are two ways to imagine football as and when the current crisis is all over. One is that everything picks up from where it left off, with the same competitions, the same number of games, the same financial situation, the same funding etc. The other is that this crisis will cause a …
By Tony Attwood So football, like all other industries, waits. Everything has changed. The news from the BBC this lunchtime says we are likely to be in lockdown not for a few weeks or couple of months, but for a year. The problem being that if we do find an antidote to the virus, it …
Read More “This unreported event shows just how fast football can implode”
A Short History of Arsenal Football Club Just about any football fan would prefer to spend their days listening, watching, or reading about their favourite club. However, real-life sometimes gets in the way and that isn’t always possible. Matches, and sometimes entire leagues, are cancelled or you might not be able to find the time …
by Sir Hardly Anyone Although the media started the enforced Winter Break by shouting about the players Arsenal were going to buy and should be selling, they have settled down a little, seemingly finding few new names since the initial outburst to pull out of imaginary hats – perhaps because this imaginary transfer window has …
Read More “The eight Arsenal transfer stories currently being talked up – all gathered together.”
Arsenal’s head coach Miekel Arteta has warned that the club’s players are starting to crack under pressure of their demanding schedule. He also warned that standards will take a tumble if changes are not made or the squad is not increased to 26 or even 28 players. “I think there are a lot of …
Read More “Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta Says Top Players are Cracking Under Pressure”
By Christophe Jost Rumour has it that Arsenal FC has arranged for all its players to undergo intensive training on FIFA 2020 and other electronic games during the current virus-induced forced isolation period. Now we know that many of the club’s players are already very adept at handling their virtual memes in the cloud. So …
Read More “Arsenal make preparations for football in a post-virus world”
By Tony Attwood A sense of wait and see has been replaced by a sense of “let’s do something” in football, as the realization sinks in that doing nothing will inevitably lead a number of clubs into financial administration or indeed total collapse. Partly it is the technical point that if a company goes into …
Read More “Financial crisis and end of contracts cause clubs to act”
By Tony Attwood I recently noticed an excellent point made by “Just Arsenal” that Arsenal will be helped this summer by the fact that apart from the two loanees, only Matt Macey is out of contract at the end of this season. If that’s so, and I have no reason to disbelieve their fact checking, …
Read More “Interesting developments for Arsenal in the transfer market”
By Christophe Jost and Tony Attwood As you may have heard, the UK in general and England in particular has gone its own way in dealing with the coronavirus crisis. And inevitably that has meant a certain amount of uncertainty and worry about what Britain is doing, and what effect it will have. Now that …
Read More “Will footballers actually want to come to England in future?”
By Tony Attwood There appear to be four exits out of the current mess, with each writer, correspondent, expert, blogger, broadcaster, man on the street or even the man on the Clapham omnibus (as used to be said in the old days) taking up one of them. Or in terms of newspaper writers, at least …
Read More “It’s the end for the Premier League as we know it. But what happens next?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone In one interesting little development, FoLo have started listing players that they have no information on, as with, “I genuinely don’t know of any current interest from Arsenal in Tah, though I also wouldn’t dispute whether or not there is any.” At least it is a sudden outbreak of honesty. But …
Read More “The 14 players Arsenal are being seriously tipped to sign, this window.”
By Christophe Jost The virus’s effect on our daily lives is now visible and for the moment all we can do it simply hope people will find ways of avoiding catching it – by taking precautions and helping each other. Regarding the human dramas that have emerged and those yet to play out, football may …
Read More “Football is about to collapse totally. So what happens after that?”
by Don McMahon The footballing world, along with the global community, is full of disappointment, confusion and dismay over the potential entertainment, financial, social and health implications that threaten to overwhelm our worldwide social fabric. The Coronavirus, a flu-like, but far more nefarious virus, is currently invading and changing our comfortable, uneventful and mundane lives …
Read More “This pandemic could be a blessing in disguise for football, if we seize the opportunity”
By Sir Hardly Anyone After the shock of the closure of the Premier League the bloggettas and newspaper websites went silent for a day. But only a day. Now they are acting as if nothing is happening and are back with stories of the players that Arsenal will buy for next season. Which means it …
Read More “The players Arsenal will buy immediately the corona virus crisis is over”
By Tony Attwood In the last set of figures presented via annual accounts, the 20 clubs in the Premier League were shown to have a turnover of £4.827 bn. Which is quite a lot of money. Their wages bill was just over half that. 58% to be (more or less) exact. Now obviously the virus …
Read More “Premier League: No one seems to have planned for anything to go wrong.”
By Tony Attwood Next season is due to start on Saturday 8 August. And according to the standard contracts operated by the Premier League and by the English Football League, players are entitled to “five weeks paid holiday to be taken at a time or times determined by the club – subject to the club’s …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Quite clearly the Premier League is in a state of flux, and with Arsenal’s manager having the virus, and players out of action now for a couple of weeks, even if the season continues Arsenal are going to be behind in completing the fixtures. But it turns out, that is only …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal locked down, Arsenal fans locked out, government and horse racing says “carry on, carry on!” See also… What do the terms and conditions of my season ticket say about coronavirus? Everywhere shuts down, except England. No one knows what to do except President Trump who knows everything because he’s clever. Or …
Read More “Arsenal in lockdown, football not in lockdown – horse racing says “tally ho!””
by Tony Attwood Here are three things that probably won’t surprise you in the slightest. First, I’ve never read the terms and conditions relating to my Arsenal season ticket. Second, from what I know generally, terms and conditions are not actually written in my favour. Third, there is no mention of pandemics in the Arsenal …
Read More “What do the terms and conditions of my season ticket say about coronavirus?”
by Sir Hardly Anyone The central theme of the football journalist is simple to spot: he (or occasionally she) knows. The correspondent can identify the major issues, and can talk about them knowingly. He knows a non-issue when it slaps him around the face like a wet kipper, and he doesn’t mention it. Because of …
Read More “The campaign against expertise: how the media is manipulating football to its own ends”
by Sir Hardly Anyone That headline is certainly implied via an article in The Athletic recently which reflected on the Atletico Madrid 1-0 defeat of Liverpool last month. Pesky foreigners; no telling what they get up to. Can’t trust any of them! And of course there is nothing new in this. England as a footballing …
Read More “Is it only nasty foreign people who cheat at football?”
By Dr Billy the Dog McGraw, senior psychiatrist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. The stories below appeared within a single 3 hours 30 minute spell prior to the Manchester City game being called off. Of course not every blog followed this approach, but there appeared to be a concerted attempt …
Read More “A concerted and shocking attempt to attack Arsenal from every side.”
