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 and Christophe Jost These days it is not so hard as it used to be to knock up appearances at Wembley Stadium since FA Cup semi-finals and the Community Shield games are played there as well as the final. But even so what Mikel Arteta and Arsenal have done of late really …
Read More “Arsenal’s record breaking cup final run and Arteta’s amazing Wembley record”
By Tony Attwood As if one total and absolute explosion in Switzerland is not enough it now looks as if the federal prosecutor is re-opening the case that saw Blatter and Platini kicked out of Fifa in the first place. In December 2015, Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini were each given eight year bans by …
Read More “Another legal case involving Fifa, yet more silence in the UK media”
By Tony Attwood In one way I suppose Stan Kroenke the owner of Arsenal FC must be quite pleased about the past two years of unmitigated chaos. He is, after all, a man who has donated $1m to the Donald Trump election campaign, and Trump is the President par excellence who revels in chaos. One …
Read More “Arsenal finally back on track after 2 years of avoidable chaos”
by Tony Attwood There was something astonishingly satisfying about that win against Liverpool. It wasn’t just the media’s overwhelming assumption that Liverpool would in fact be Liverpool!, the team that would swat Arsenal aside with a mere flick of the wrist. It wasn’t just the media’s belief that Arsenal’s winning of the FA Cup was …
Read More “Arsenal’s victories in cup and shield were predictable, for anyone who wanted to look”
By Bulldog Drummond Since Liverpool beat Arsenal in the 2001 FA Cup final, Arsenal have appeared in the Cup final seven times and won the lot. Which means we have quite a feeling for Wembley. As for the Charity Community who knows where the money goes Shield Arsenal and Liverpool are equal second in the …
Read More “The “Community” Shield line up, Arsenal CS history and a four word commentary”
By Bulldog Drummond My goodness how time passes ever more quickly when one gets older. Seems like only yesterday that (etc etc). But it is good to see the wonderful headlines are still with us, such as Sports Mole with “Who will win the 2020 Community Shield?” The answers when I looked were… Arsenal 0.0% Liverpool 0.0% …
Read More “Top of the league Arsenal with no chance in the Community Shield (analysis)”
By Tony Attwood As you may have read, a number of clubs are reporting that players are going down with the coronavirus, or have been close to people who have. So they have to isolate. And yet the government of the UK announced on 20 May that a “world-beating” system to test, track and trace …
Read More “How the FA is helping corona virus spread through football via 54 unnecessary games”
by Sir Hardly Anyone One of the constant tricks by the media is for the newspapers and broadcasters to make up a story, and then when it turns out to be utterly untrue, present that, not as “we got that one wrong” but either by a) ignoring their previous commentary b) claiming that Arsenal has …
Read More “How Arsenal has taken on the media, and the club is winning”
By Sir Hardly Anyone If it were “all go” on the transfer front I’d say it was all go on the transfer front, but it isn’t, so I won’t. Even though in the blogs and the newspapers and TV stations, it is. Mind you it is fun watching Barcelona at the moment. Looking at their …
Read More “Arsenal don’t do swaps. They have just found a money tree.”
By Bulldog Drummond And so we approach the Community Shield, once known as the Charity Shield until the FA were found by the Charity Commission not to be keeping proper records and so were fined and forbidden from using the name “Charity Shield” again. How much money actually went to charities – if any – …
Read More “Which of the “big six” have won the most trophies in the last seven years?”
by Billy “the Dog” McGuire Yesterday’s pre-season game between MK Dons and Arsenal was shown on Arsenal’s web site. The opening was a bit strange with several minutes of water being sprinkled onto the pitch (and no commentary – just think of what some of the chattering journalists could have made of that, contrasting the …
Read More “Those Arsenal matches without crowds and not shown on TV & 4 fantastic tales”
By Tony Attwood A two match pre-season is something one can easily miss, but that’s what we have been offered, so that’s what we have to take. Concerning last season’s “pre-season opener” everyone seemed surprised to find that Mohamed Elneny can and does play well – which is what we were saying before he went …
Read More “So that’s 50% of pre-season done, and those who looked seemed to think it ok”
From the Bickfields Gunners Blog – HOLD THE PRESSES ! Some people see things as they are and ask why ? I dream of things that never were and ask , why not ? – George Bernard Shaw. Is Barcelona unwanted Luis Suárez set to join Arsenal in a shocking move to England, and …
Read More “Hold the presses, new transfer news, and all the latest on tonight’s big game”
By Tony Attwood I was interested in the headline “Arsenal’s sorry state reflected in recent global rankings” in Just Arsenal News. The story included such statements as “Arsenal has been in a state of decline for a long time now and a new ranking has shown how bad it has gotten.” And “Arsene Wenger oversaw …
Read More “What marks out a winning season? Revealing football’s complexity.”
By Tony Attwood You won’t read this in an English paper largely because the only stuff they publish about Fifa comes from official press releases, as we saw last week, and not surprisingly Fifa are not issuing press releases talking about the collapse of the entire Fifa committee structure that Infantino has so carefully filled …
Read More “Infantino is one step closer to the edge of the cliff, but UK media is still silent”
By Tony Attwood Everyday on the AISA Arsenal History Society website we publish a video of an Arsenal match from history along with all the day’s Arsenal anniversaries. Click here for today’s video (Hint: a Brazilian scores one of the four). “Edu instrumental in convincing Gabriel Magalhaes to join Arsenal as he nears £26.4m transfer from …
Read More “Gabriel dos Santos Magalhães makes it 5 Brazilians at Arsenal … but not yet”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Following this morning’s list of all the players we are reputed to have been chasing, and the seven players we have so far signed, here are the details of the clubs who finished above us last season in terms of their buying and selling Club Bought Price Sold Price Total …
Read More “Who’s signing whom: how to big six and wannabes compare in terms of spending”
By Sir Hardly Anyone with special thanks to Ruud the Driver. The total number of players tipped as coming to Arsenal by the all-knowing media is now 134! The signings so far are Salah-Eddine Pablo Marí (£14m) Cédric Soares Willian Tim Akinola Marcelo Flores George Lewis That makes 7 Signed 8 Updated rumours this week …
Read More “Arsenal sign 7 players, plus 5 new rumours, making 134 rumours in total”
by Andrew Crawshaw The first two quarter finals were played yesterday evening and went pretty much as I expected. Glasgow City were overwhelmed by Wolfsburg losing by 9 – 1 and Athletico lost a very tight match against Barcelona 1 – 0. Athletico arrived with a very truncated squad having had 6 players test positive …
Read More “UEFA Womens Champions League Arsenal v PSG – Match Preview”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. The total number of players tipped as coming to Arsenal by the all-knowing media is now over 120. And here are the top ten stories of the moment. But a word of warning. They are not all true. 1: Nikola Maksimovic Arsenal are set to battle Everton and Roma for the …
Read More “10 players out, 9 coming in, in amazing Arsenal reshuffle”
by Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you will know I’ve been going on and on and on about the fact that the UK papers won’t cover the huge Fifa scandal which could see the removal of Infantino, just as Blatter was removed before him. But today, out of the blue, the Guardian …
Read More “Is Fifa now threatening the media’s future access to the world cup?”
By Tony Attwood As the new season approaches we now learn that a whole raft of matches are not going to be seen by any fans at all. None in the ground, none able to watch on TV. Now that might not affect Arsenal too much, because the media will normally pick up our matches …
Read More “Insane TV decision for new season should be knocking transfers off the back pages”
by Tony Attwood According to The Times, Arsenal have agreed a five-year deal with Lille defender Gabriel Magalhaes – but are now scrambling to fund the deal. Note the word “scrambling” – it implies rushing, falling over, trying to get a grip, doing things in the wrong order. There is nothing good about the word …
Read More “Arsenal in financial chaos: everything fine in Europe, nothing to see.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Arsenal have agreed a deal with Lille for Gabriel Magalhães. And yet he has not arrived. So what is causing the problem? One issue is that other clubs have an interest, and all seem willing to pay the fee quoted variously as betweeen £22m and £24m. But it is not just …
By Tony Attwood Fifa as we know, wants to own everything. And by “own” I mean that 100%. Fifa wants total control of all incoming money both the legal (a minor part of the operation) and the illegal (the bribes, the fraud, the re-selling, the executive jet flights across the world…) But now suddenly out …
Read More “Can Uefa’s “Final 8” competitions kill off Fifa’s attempt to take over the universe?”
