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 In football we hear about it all the time: the fit and proper person’s test. And we gather that since he is at the helm of Manchester City, Sheikh Mansour is a fit and proper person. I am sure that is right. But it seems Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, crown …
Read More “This is no surprise: in football there is not fit and proper person test”
by Tony Attwood Arsenal have an incredibly interesting group of youngsters in the club at the moment. Consider these players who already have first team squad numbers… In defence there are three Tolaji Bola, Zech Medley, Bukayo Saka In midfield there are seven Ainsley Maitland Niles, Joe Willock, Matteo Guendouzi, Robbie Burton, Reiss Nelson, Eddie …
Read More “The Arsenal youngsters on the up and why the speculation is wrong”
by Tony Attwood There are four stories circulating about Arsenal. Story 1: Arsenal are buying, and they are going to buy big. This is the overall conclusion that one has from the fact that no less than 101 players have been tipped as being sought by Arsenal this summer. And that before the transfer season …
By Sir Hardly Anyone If you are using an advertisement blocker, please consider turning it off while reading Untold Arsenal. Running a blog with a large readership does have its costs in terms of the server, protection against hacking, and maintenance, even though none of the writers get paid. Readers looking at advertisements on our …
By Tony Attwood Businesses that want to grow and last over time need to take risks, try out new ideas, explore new avenues, venture into something different. Not all businesses do – some stick rigidly to what they know on the grounds that it has always worked until now, so “if it ain’t broke…” But …
Read More “Speculate to accumulate is a sound business model, but not for football”
By Tony Attwood If you are reading this page with your ad blocker turned on, and if you appreciate what Untold does in raising questions often not seen elsewhere, could I ask that you consider turning the ad blocker off for Untold. It does cost money to keep the site running and clicks on the …
Read More “Clubs struggling to pay broadcasters refund; TV wants more concessions”
by Sir Hardly Anyone As you may have noticed we rather unusually had a suggestion for a number of other players who have been listed as transfers for Arsenal this summer, whom we have missed. Obviously, a journal of such esteem as ours does need to check our sources, and we have assiduously been going …
Read More “Yet another clutch of transfers as Arsenal head towards 100 pre-window rumours”
by Tony Attwood On 21 December 2019 Arsenal drew 0-0 with Everton. The report on Sky Sports was typical, the opening paragraphs of their post-match posting reading, “New Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti and Arsenal head coach Mikel Arteta looked on from the stands at Goodison Park as their respective new sides played out a dour …
Read More “Arsenal have the youngest squad. Does that help our prospects?”
By Tony Attwood It is already happening in Europe, but it is a subject football journalists are totally silent on, in England. It is not complicated, it does not involve Fifa corruption (the topic that seems to be totally forbidden when it comes to reporting for fear of damaging the proposed FA bid for the …
Read More “The new contract chaos that football journalists don’t want to talk about”
By Tony Attwood Untold has been arguing for quite a while that there is a profound financial crisis hitting the clubs which has been caused by their tendency to spend money they don’t have in order to reach the top seven and get into Europe, or to avoid relegation. The example we have repeatedly given …
Read More “Finally the media is admitting just how bad PL finances have now become”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is always sad when journalists run out of steam. Maybe they have just got tired and gone to bed. Maybe they nipped into the Toppled Bollard for a final swift one, but lingered rather longer. Maybe they have simply forgotten where the scrap of paper with another ten players names …
Read More “Transfer news: the 93 players Arsenal are looking to be (according to reports)”
Running Untold costs money in terms of maintaining our site and undertaking research. If you are running an ad blocker could you consider removing it for this site and viewing our advertising, as it is the site’s only source of income. Thanks. By Tony Attwood In 2015/16 Arsenal came runners’ up in the league …
Read More “Arsenal: where has it all gone wrong and how can we put it right?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone In previous summers we have ended up with a list of players who are leaving the club, a list which incorporates virtually all players regular first team players and the subs. Of course only a few of them have gone, and in the end the exercise of collecting everyone’s name has …
Read More “11 players tipped to be leaving Arsenal this transfer window.”
By Tony Attwood As we have seen across the years, newspaper journalists and bloggers hunt in packs. When one writes a story others follow and then the notion that they are purveying becomes mainstream. The Athletic summarises this week’s assault with the headline “Let’s not beat around the bush, Arsenal have seen a fairly swift …
Read More “Have Arsenal really fallen apart as the media insist?”
By Banco Danglais One moment it is financial doom and gloom the next moment it is spend-spend-spend. But the reality is the Premier League clubs are being hit financially on all sides and there are multiple warnings in the air about how much money they are going to be losing. TV money is the obvious …
Read More “Which Premier League club is in the greatest financial trouble?”
By Tony Attwood Yesterday we reported on the Mail’s story Why the Mail’s “Everything that looked wrong at Arsenal WAS wrong” is arrant nonsense. Now one argument that could be made for running that piece in the Mail was that there is no real football news around, so the paper has to make something up. …
Read More “Another huge football scandal – and why the mass media in England won’t cover it”
Buy Sir Hardly Anyone (going at a reduced price) Yes yes very droll. But let us get onto the key issue. We have six new transfers to add to our ever-growing table. But again they are not spread out through the alphabet but rather clustered, suggesting once more that (shock horror) these journalists and bloggers …
Read More “Arsenal transfer list reaches 89 players with over 3 weeks to go before window opens!”
An Untold media accuracy review by Tony Attwood It’s a very shouty headline, exactly the headline that the Mail likes. “MARTIN SAMUEL: Everything that looked wrong at Arsenal WAS wrong… and that includes Unai Emery’s appointment. Under Stan Kroenke they’ve become a selling club so why will it be any different for Mikel Arteta?” The …
Read More “Why the Mail’s “Everything that looked wrong at Arsenal WAS wrong” is arrant nonsense”
By Tony Attwood Late yesterday afternoon I got a phone call from Arsenal. Not from the manager or one of the players, I must admit, from one of the guys who works at the club in the background – the ticket office or something like that. The call wasn’t made because I’m on the committee …
Read More “Arsenal FC gives me a phone call. We have a nice chat.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road (now shut) Amazing though it will seem, each one of these stories has appeared on a blog or in a newspaper in the last 48 hours. 1: Justin Kluivert “Super agent” (which I think means a man who tells …
Read More “From Kluivert to Smith Rowe, the Arsenal future you simply won’t believe!”
by Dr Evelyn Ver Bossity, head of psychology, at the University College of the North Circular Road. Every day he sits at the window as the 5.15pm bus pulls up outside his house, expecting his wife to get off and give him smile as she comes in before dutifully washing her hands and getting him …
Read More “English football in danger of deluding itself out of business”
by Tony Attwood It is quite clear that the Premier League and its clubs had no contingency plan for the interruption of the League which would result in matches not being completed by their due date. But it turns out that the TV companies were not quite so dumb, and have long since included in …
Read More “If the clubs were not prepared for lockdown, the TV companies certainly were”
By Tony Attwood They’ve ridden in on the back of our love of the game and our love of our club. Now they are taking control, demanding the games be played. They don’t mind empty stadia. They just want games, and they want them now. So having taken control, they are pushing us, the fans, …
By Tony Attwood PGMO – the organisation that runs refereeing in the Premier League, has generally stuck to its view that refereeing accuracy is around 98% to 99%. For example on 13 August 2013 the Daily Mail ran a piece on referees which says, “According to the Premier League, 99 percent of offside decisions are …
Read More “Crowdless stadia stats reveal fallacy of PGMO claims about referee accuracy”
By Christophe Jost An interesting comment from Mike T. recently on Macquarie, the Australian bank who have financed PL clubs growth got me thinking about the economics of the PL. The lenders’ chances of recovering their money seem slim. And now even the government says the games should be broadcast openly, which will dent the …
