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 OK, you might be expecting me to argue in a piece about what is wrong with football, that the force blocking all change is the notoriously conservative Football Association, and yes’ I’d go along with that. But there is another force acting against all change, and they are much more powerful than …
Read More “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the agents (Shakespeare, almost)”
By Sir Hardly Anyone A quick peek in through the shuttered windows of the Toppled Bollard (favourite drinking house of football journalists across London) reveals the awful truth. It’s shut. Which is why the rumour mill has gone into hyperplus overdrive as those who make up the summer transfer tales eschew their normal drinking hole …
Read More “The 49 players now tipped for Arsenal this summer”
By Tony Attwood It has probably never been said before, but Facebook and Google’s sales look like they are going down as a result of the virus crisis. However since most other companies are seeing revenue falls at about 10 times the amount of Facebook and Google, it probably doesn’t bother anyone too much. Travel …
Read More “Could this be the time when the broadcasting of football finally changes?”
By Tony Attwood Of course no one knew coronavirus would happen now, but anyone who ever studied the history of the Earth would know it, and other disasters like it, will happen. Just because the last pandemic that totally took our society apart happened 100 years ago, it doesn’t mean human pandemics just don’t happen …
Read More “Two simple rules: stuff happens, and if you’re worried don’t sign the contract”
by Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. Mike Ashley bought Newcastle United for £134m. He bought it in stages, making use of UK law that says that once a single person or company owns over 30% of a listed UK firm, he or it …
Read More “Football is being taken over by those fighting their own wars. Can Arsenal survive?”
by Tony Attwood Slowly very slowly football clubs in England are starting to realise that there is not going to be a return to the old ways, at least not any time soon. There are too many problems – the current season running past the end of contract date, actually finding time to finish the …
Read More “The big issues facing football, and why no one is addressing them.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone A quick peek in through the shuttered windows of the Toppled Bollard (favourite drinking house of football journalists across London) reveals the awful truth. It’s shut. Which is why the rumour mill has stopped milling – or at least has reduced its normally feverish output to the merest trickle of drivel. …
by Christophe Jost I feel good. Yep, that is how a feel about Arsenal. Really. No kidding. No sarcasm. And I am not day-dreaming either, I think. Let me explain. The team As I mentioned the other day, Arsenal have 4 contracts expiring this summer. One is an Arsenal player, Matt Macey. the 3 players …
Read More “Why this is the moment to feel good about Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood Somehow we expect the German League to have everything sorted, done and dusted when it comes to getting the pesky virus out of the way. We imagine them having a plan so that this season dis quickly dealt with and then its full steam ahead up to the next season. While the …
Read More “It is not full steam ahead for football, even with the plans for ghost games”
by Tony Attwood “The most important week in the history of the Football League – act now, or risk carnage”. So said Mark Palios, the former FA Chief Executive. It doesn’t really matter when he said it, because it is always the most important week. But this week is a special week in the history …
Read More “At all levels of football, the crisis is here, and it won’t go away”
By Tony Attwood You might not know if from reading the English blogs and newspapers but yes, decisions are being made, and proposals are being put on the table. OK these things have not worked out well in Scotland, where, as we noted last time around, a certain local difficulty has been encountered. But elsewhere …
Read More “Slowly football is changing, but unfortunately not everyone is following the plot”
by Neil Down / Ann Weep We have held back on doing an Untold report on Scottish football despite frantic emails from Tony asking for a piece which clarifies what the F*** (to use the technical term) is going on, simply because despite being the designated news feeders to Untold for football in Scotland, we …
Read More “The Scottish play; the kiss of death; what is going on with football in the north???”
By Christophe Jost As I explained in my previous article on The Last Pandemic, the end of the pandemic was just the beginning of a new set of problems. Those who survived had a whole new set of issues to face. As different countries approach a stage in which the curve representing the number of …
Read More “Exactly how are we going to start football again?”
By Christophe Jost It is possible that in recent days you may have wondered a little about the competence of all those sports reporters who are seemingly totally unable to start telling the real story of the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of its effect on football. So, given that our colleagues who actually get paid …
Read More “How does the new football world translate into reality for Arsenal FC ?”
BY Don McMahon Don McMahon is a retired senior referee Every week, for countless years, I have read endless and repeated complaints about the PGMOL and its members, the ¨Professional¨ officials who make up its herd. I am now going to propose a possible set of solutions to the PIGMOB and its head swineherd Mr.Riley. …
Read More “Now is the time to investigate the refereeing system in the Premier League”
By Christophe Jost and Tony Attwood History teaches us that often things happen that are a repetition of previous events. And as a result, we can learn from the past and do it differently this time. So it is reasonable to consider going back 100 years to the last time a pandemic swept across Europe …
Read More “The last pandemic was 100 years ago. But the effect on football this time is different”
By Tony Attwood When you think about it, West Ham have it all. So much in fact that it probably makes every other club green with envy and puce with anger and probably maroon with something else. In 2017/18 (the last season for which figures are available) WHU had the eighth highest turnover in the …
Read More “How can West Ham possibly be in financial difficulties after being given a stadium?”
by Tony Attwood I just got a post on my phone titled Big Topic Discussion: “What an ideal transfer windows for Arsenal will look like?” It’s not too hard to translate it into grammatical English however, so we can get the rough idea of what they wanted to talk about. This statement came from AFC …
Read More “Football’s big problem: cash flow, transfers, collapse of sponsors, piracy, everything…”
By Tony Attwood Slowly it has been realised: the clubs across Europe owe around £4.5bn in transfer fees. Of course in one way it can be said that that is not a crisis since everyone owes everyone else, so if A pays B then B pays C etc and ultimately we’ll be ok. But in …
Read More “£4.5bn is in outstanding transfer fees, and few have got the money to pay.”
by Sir Hardly Anyone “The six players Arsenal must sell this summer to give Mikel Arteta the squad he needs” is a challenging headline. Six? I mean really six? More than half a squad??? All sold at once??? Of course, some of them might be youngsters or players who are already out on loan, but …
Read More “Is this a real attempt to undermine Arsenal, or just whacky gibberish?”
By Tony Attwood As we noted yesterday, the USA is about to go onto the attack against Fifa (see USA is about to attack Fifa in the biggest assault on bribery in football ever) But in doing this it is also going on the attack against Qatar and its winning of the right to hold …
by Tony Attwood Investigation teams in the USA have now stated that the three decisive votes for the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar were subject to a wholesale process of bribery and corruption. It is what most of us have concluded all along, but of course, the level of proof demanded by …
Read More “USA is about to attack Fifa in the biggest assault on bribery in football ever”
by Tony Attwood If there have been any central themes on Untold during the corona virus outbreak they could probably be best summarised as a) Football in England could well be in a dire mess because many clubs have no reserves to allow them to survive a crisis. Indeed it seems unlikely that when the …
Read More “Arsenal v Liverpool. How the two clubs are treated so differently by the media.”
By Tony Attwood Very, very slowly newspapers and online commentators are starting to think – if this all goes very wrong, some clubs could lose a lot of money. They are not yet asking “And then what?” but it is a step in the right direction. And when we start looking at how much money …
Read More “Clubs are much closer to the edge than you might think.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone To be fair to the termites who write this stuff, the volume of transfer rumours is down considerably on the last three years. But since the grown ups are spending their days simply wondering which club is going into liquidation first, it all seems a bit odd. Arsenal of course are …
Read More “Despite financial fears, Arsenal to sign 42 players”
