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 One of the main effects of football commentary on radio, TV and in newspapers has been to make football seem simple. Anyone can see at once what is wrong and how it needs to be put right. And everyone can – except the manager. As a result of this view, every mistake …
Read More “Will any player ever want to sign for Arsenal after headlines like this?”
By Tony Attwood A story which has appeared in the New York Times, and many other publications is saying that a trusted adviser to the owner of Manchester City is a key person in discussions relating to the take over of Newcastle United by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund. Now Manchester City is involved as …
Read More “Who is suing whom over the Newcastle / Saudi affair? Answer: everyone”
By Tony Attwood It is strange how the discussions that go on in the media in Europe can be so very different from those in England. For example, at the moment there is a discussion going on about the morality of asking players to have their salaries cut during the current crisis. Into this debate …
Read More “The transfer paradox: how expert knowledge in football became worthless”
By Tony Attwood Last night I saw a comment saying that Arsenal would not get anywhere under the Kroenke ownership because the Kroenke’s would not spend any money. My immediate reaction to this was that it was quite untrue, and that the current owners had in fact exceeded expectations (or certainly my expectations) in terms …
Read More “Just how wasteful has Arsenal’s transfer policy been? Here’s the answer.”
The starting line up was as below but we made two changes during the first half… Leno Bellerin Mustafi Mari Tierney Xhaka Guendouzi Willock Abuameyang Nketiah Saka No one predicted that! So with Now TV not giving me what they tell me I have paid for I move over to Arsenal TV and what …
Read More “Not a very good first half. Thank goodness for Leno – it could have been worse”
By Bulldog Drummond Additional note: Thought I would watch it on Now TV with a day pass. £9.99. Clicked on the link on their site, credit card at the ready, and what do I get? Oops something went wrong Sorry, something went wrong at our end, please refresh this page to continue. Glad to see …
Read More “Team Predictions for Man City v Arsenal, recent form and a Newcastle bid”
By Bulldog Drummond If the feeling in Europe is right and that home advantage doesn’t really work any more then, the historic home and away form analysis that Untold has run before matches for years, will be of little interest. But I’d like to see a couple of games in the Premier League before agreeing …
Read More “Manchester City v Arsenal. Looking for a 0-3 victory.”
By Bulldog Drummond In a piece yesterday the New York Times revealed that “Since the German league resumed on May 16, there have been only 11 home wins — or 20% — and 28 away wins (50.9%) from 55 games. Home wins accounted for more than 40% of results in the Bundesliga before the break.” Teeth must really have been gritted at the Daily Mail’s football …
Read More “Man City v Arsenal: let the press negativity and referee bias recommence”
By Tony Attwood If you have been with Untold Arsenal for a while, you will know that in my writing I rather like the notion of proof, evidence, logic and data, instead of simple assertion and rumour. Transfer stories are of course the home of rumour, and the stupidity of them is that on average …
Read More “Oh yes he did oh no he didn’t. The statistical discussion about football statistics”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Oh yes, Arsenal are truly on the move now with players coming to the club so fast it is impossible to keep up with them all. Here are the details, roll up roll up, get your new (and old) transfer rumours here). 1: Upamecano This transfer story of the Leipzig centre-back …
Read More “14 Arsenal amazing transfer deals being highlighted this week”
By Tony Attwood Of course you may have missed what is going on if you are in the UK, as British papers don’t like reporting the difficulties Fifa are in, in case someone wakes up to the fact that the stadia in Qatar are being built using slave labour. A bit embarrassing when the streets …
Read More “Sepp Blatter hit with new corruption charges as Fifa condone slave labour”
TODAY: An audience with Mark Pougatch – live I have been mentioning the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association (AISA) on line meeting with journalist Mark Pougatch for a couple of days. And now we’ve arrived at the event… it is happening tonight, and is open to all AISA members. If you are an AISA member you …
Read More “Who in the PL spends more on wages than they earn from all sources?”
By Tony Attwood Qatar was awarded the World cup in 2010. Evidence that has emerged since then suggests very strongly indeed that the award was rigged. One suggestion among many is that al-Jazeera (since then renamed beIN Sports) had signed a TV contract that included a $100m fee to be paid to Fifa if it …
Read More “If all lives matter, if slavery is unacceptable, what is the FA doing about Qatar?”
By Tony Attwood As you might have noticed, of late Untold has been focusing quite a lot on how ghost games (or games “behind closed doors” as the English media love to call them) produce different results from those played in front of crowds. In short away teams do much better without a crowd. …
Read More “Without crowds, away teams do much better. So what will the ref do to Arsenal?”
By Tony Attwood Here is a very simple contrast. Statues of men who made their money out of the slave trade many many years ago are being pulled down. But football playing nations are continuing to work towards a world cup in which the stadia are still being built by men who are effectively slaves. …
Read More “British media universally continues to support modern slavery”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The Prelims:… An audience with Mark Pougatch – live Arsenal Independent Supporters Association (AISA), which I have mentioned many a time before, as I am a member, is inviting all its members to an audience with Mark Pougatch. Mark Pougatch, the TV and radio football broadcast journalist is also an Arsenal …
Read More “Arsenal try to sign the player who replaced Pepe at Lille as hysteria strikes.”
By Tony Attwood Normally I drop straight into the article without any preliminaries, (and if you are anxious to move in, it does start in a moment) but first something a little different An audience with Mark Pougatch – live Arsenal Independent Supporters Association (AISA), which I have mentioned many a time before, as I …
Read More “The Premier League: mid-range in almost everything”
By Tony Attwood Sort out Arsenal’s weak backbone, resolve their torrid away form and finally discover Nicolas Pepe’s mojo: The issues Mikel Arteta MUST fix as he prepares his side for the restart Such is the headline in the Daily Mail’s piece by Jonathan Spencer and of course anyone familiar with the Mail will know …
Read More “Journalist’s wild anti-Arsenal rant unravels after simple fact checking”
By Tony Attwood As we have noted the Manchester City hearing at the Court of Arbitration for Sport is over and we await the outcome. I have suggested before that there might be three possible results but looking further at the matter and judging by what has been said there could be several more First, …
Read More “The CAS hearing regarding Man C’s suspension is over. What now?”
By Forkout N By It is always good when Deloitte comes into the financial fray in terms of analysing football, since they have about 1000 billion times the resources that Untold has for doing financial analyses, and their calculators tend to go wrong less often than mine. But it is double good when they agree …
Read More “Arsenal sink down the money league, and there’s a huge danger below”
By Tony Attwood As we have seen in recent articles the amount of money clubs spend on players varies year by year, but is growing. Our little table yesterday made this particularly clear I thought: Era TV Revenue 1st year loss Final year loss 2013/14 to 2015/16 £5.25bn £12.17m £395.44 This set of figures shows …
Read More “Arsenal’s astounding shining success in the midst of football’s collapse”
By Tony Attwood Long before the virus appeared, Premier League clubs were in serious trouble, for it appear that last season they made a combined loss of over half a billion pounds. An analysis from Vysyble and republished in the Telegraph totalled the clubs’ losses at £599.54 million, despite the clubs making record revenues of …
Read More “Premier League losses have now gone way beyond the unsustainable level”
by Tony Attwood There has been of late a growing number of attacks upon Arsenal over its transfer policy. And one regular line of this assault concerns the allowing of young players to leave. Players who then go on and have a great future with another club – Serge Gnabry is often quoted in this …
Read More “Are Arsenal really awful at holding onto talented youngsters?”
By Tony Attwood and Christophe Jost And here we go again. Just as Untold was saying in this morning’s article that the UK media will not touch stories about Fifa (for fear of prejudicing the FA’s bid to hold another world cup in England) Europe’s media comes alive once more as the justice department in …
Read More “Huge Fifa corruption story breaks; no report in English media!”
By Tony Attwood The appeal by Manchester City to Committee for Arbitration in Sport against Uefa is surely one of the key pivotal moments in modern football, the outcome of which will be as important and far reaching as the decision by the FA to ban women’s football in 1921, and Uefa’s ban on English …
