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 Bulldog Drummond What do the following all have in common? Gennaro Gattuso Paulo Fonseca Antonio Conte Hansi Flick* Mauricio Pochettino Erik ten Hag, Brendan Rodgers Julian Nagelsmann Tony Attwood Answer: none of them want to manage Tottenham Hotspur. Now it is true that the last name on the list hasn’t actually been invited to …
Read More “8 men offered the managerial job including a character from Hello Hello”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The key message in the media is invariably that when it comes to transfers Arsenal always fail to get their man because they are consistently too slow, and make ludicrously low bids because Arsenal want everything on the cheap, and ultimately lose the player because, well, because it’s Arsenal. So it …
Read More “Forcing square holes into round pegs: Arsenal’s transfer story gets truly weird”
By Tony Attwood If you have been here before you’ll know the story we’ve been following: that last season Mr Arteta dramatically cut the number of tackles that Arsenal put in. Through doing this he cut the number of fouls given against Arsenal players, and through that, cut the number of yellow cards. If you’ve …
Read More “How Arsenal challenged referees, by taking the tackle out of their game”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. According to Football.London “Arsenal took out a loan from Barclays for an unspecified amount last month, which was taken out to pay back the COVID-19 refinancing loan the club asked for last year.” Then the Mirror (which owns Football.London) ran the headline, “Arsenal ‘take out loan’ which could help fund ambitious £130m …
Read More “Will Arsenal really gamble everything on a set of transfers this summer?”
By Tony Attwood How wrong can an opening sentence be? Take that from Kaya Kaynak who is described as the “Arsenal Writer” at Football London. He says, “Last time out it’s safe to say that Arsenal’s Premier League campaign did not go to plan.” Safe to say? No, it most certainly isn’t. The timing may not …
Read More “Arsenal nay-sayer takes a little step forward by recognising last Christmas”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The Daily Cannon’s bleak headline, “Arsenal still haven’t submitted formal bid for Andre Onana,” certainly suggests Arsenal are not taking this transfer window seriously. And they are not alone, for that headline reflects a similar one 24 hours earlier from “Pain in the Arsenal” who wrote “Arsenal risk Andre Onana transfer …
Read More “The Andre Onana transfer story turns up something rather weird.”
By Tony Attwood Imagine living in the home of one of the Daily Mirror’s football writers. Every morning there would be a call for breakfast. But it wouldn’t be a call saying, “breakfast is on the table”, it would be a “make or break” call telling you that you are going to have a tough …
Read More “Imagine living in the same house as a Daily Mirror football columnist!”
By Sir Hardly Anyone With football in the summer I guess we all have a choice. First, we can forget about it – Arsenal are not playing, and there so there’s no real excitement. Play table tennis, read a book, go swimming…. Second, we can follow the internationals to make sure that our players don’t …
Read More “How to occupy yourself while waiting for the season to start: become a journalist”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Now here are three interesting issues that have come up. First, the media know most of the transfers they mention won’t happen. After all, this is how it has been each summer, when generally over 100 players are mentioned, but actual transfers are normally only mentioned a day or two before …
Read More “73 players coming to Arsenal this summer! 7 new; 11 updates. The full list.”
By Tony Attwood JustArsenal.com have an article which talks about last season and summarises it as “Absolutely horrible; eighth place finish; no european competition. I guess that’s about it. But what caused it and how do we solve it?” Now if you are a regular reader here you’ll know that not only do we disagree, …
Read More “Why Arsenal absolutely must not “allow the players to play””
By Tony Attwood There is a feeling around that Arsenal slipping outside of the top six is somehow abnormal, a crisis, the end of the world, time to rip everything up, something that never happens to other clubs. But actually a season in which one of the big six ends up outside the big six …
Read More “In 10 of the last 15 seasons one of the big six hasn’t been in the top six. It’s normal.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone With the list of players we are about to lose (according to “reports”) now bigger than two teams the growth of the leavers list has slowed right down. Virtually everyone has been named. But we are still getting some good comments. HITC tell us Arsenal will make £60m in sales, but …
Read More “24 players leaving Arsenal: the full updated list”
By Tony Attwood The story about Mr Arteta wanting to play a 4-3-3 formation but not being able to do so because he doesn’t have the right people in around half a dozen of the positions to use that formation, has been doing the rounds since last November. Taking the failure of that opening of …
Read More “How Arteta gave us a hint of what he was about to do, but we missed it.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal face several dangers next season. The first will occur when the summer transfer window ends, and the fans who have believed the media with their vision that Arsenal need half a dozen new first team players find they have not arrived But there is a second issue, and this could arise …
Read More “What will the PGMO do about Arsenal next season?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. The kindest thing to say to the increasingly desperate journalists and bloggers running the transfer rumours is, “you’re having a laugh”. The tragedy is they portray the image of deadly seriousness. The stunning success of Arsenal after the audacious tactical change that we’ve outlined so often everyone is now bored with …
Read More “Players tipped to come to Arsenal reaches 66: the full list”
By Tony Attwood Yellow cards are, to say the least, bloody annoying. When a player gets one in a match he knows he has to take it easy for the rest of the game for fear of a second. If he is a defender that can mean him not doing his regular job but instead …
Read More “Arteta’s revolution: the secret behind the post-Christmas improvement at AFC”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal are under attack on all sides in an unprecedented propaganda campaign that has nothing to do with reality but everything to do with de-stabilising the club and bringing it to its knees. The campaign is continuous, is repeated by numerous outlets, and is so simple that its aim can only be …
Read More “The appalling suggestion which is taking hold and could derail Arsenal completely”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The Daily Mirror has published its starting XI for Arsenal for next season, and it makes interesting reading. Not least because it includes Hector Bellerin, who the Mirror has been saying that Arsenal should get rid of, all summer. Because that is the opposite of what they have been saying over …
Read More “Mirror publishes 13 articles saying Bellerin must go – and then selects him to stay”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Football365 has published a really interesting review “ranking all 24 Premier League managers 2020/1” and so naturally I turned straightaway to Mikel Arteta. It’s a fascinating commentary. First off let’s see the Mr Arteta commentary from 24 March. 12 Mikel Arteta (Arsenal) Still a long road to travel, still mistakes being …
Read More “Why does everyone say of Arsenal “it’s a bit of a mess” when it is anything but?”
by Tony Attwood Consider this simple statement, “Football is a team sport and you’re only as good as your team.” First thing to say it is obviously true. But after that? Most normal people would see anyone saying that as either stating the obvious, or perhaps because they were being praised as a good player, …
Read More “Perhaps Mr Arteta could instruct Arsenal players never to speak to the media at all”
By Sir Hardly Anyone By and large the journalists agree, Arsenal need five or six new players this summer. As for example with Football.London saying, “Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta is understood to want to strengthen his squad with five new signings this summer.” And what they don’t want you to ask is “in what way …
Read More “We brought in 7 players last season and sank to 8th. So why buy another 6??”
By Tony Attwood Allowing Arsenal fans to have shares in the club, or perhaps giving a supporters’ group a golden share, is one of the key demands of some fans. Some also demand a seat on the board of the club to represent fans. Of course this is nothing new for Arsenal – because the …
Read More “Should Arsenal’s owners give out shares to the club’s fans?”
Each summer journalists and bloggers report over 100 players that Arsenal are planning to buy – and that number excludes players who the bloggers and journalists suggest Arsenal ought to buy. Usually only about three or four of these rumours turn out to be true. Also, usually, these truthful rumours normally only emerge a few …
Read More “The 58 players tipped to join Arsenal so far this summer”
By Tony Attwood Still puzzling over the anomalies of last season I’ve had a quick peek at the figures of Leicester, comparing them with Arsenal. And something rather interesting has cropped up. Looked at in the most obvious way, Leicester outdid Arsenal last season. Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts 5 …
Read More “How different clubs use the rules in different ways, with different results”
By Tony Attwood Over the last ten years Arsenal have won the FA Cup four times, and had a runners up places in the league, the league cup and the Europa. And that’s it: four trophies and three second places. F A Pts Pos FAC LgC Europe Eur 2011–12 74 49 70 3rd R5 QF …
Read More “How Arsenal resolved their problems while Tottenham carried on as before”
