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 There is little that excites the media more than crowd trouble at football matches – and the event of a fan being arrested after appearing to attack a Nottingham Forest player during the Cup match at their ground was no exception. And an analysis of the numbers in the Telegraph suggests what …
Read More “Why is fan disorder increasing? An Arsenal perspective”
By Tony Attwood Let’s assume for the moment that the only way to produce a team capable of winning either the title in England or a European trophy is by buying in players in the way that the Daily Mirror proposes hour after hour day after day. How much money would Arsenal need to spend? …
Read More “Just how far away are Arsenal from being a top spending club (and would it help?)”
By Tony Attwood Steven Gerrard once reportedly described Brendan Rodgers’ one-on-one management as the best he had seen. Such praise is in contrast to that afforded to Mikel Arteta at Arsenal, who when not being criticised for not buying lots of players, is criticised for saving the club a fortune by removing Aubameyang from the …
Read More “Praise and criticism in the Premier League. It’s a funny old game.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone There is a story circulating that Saka is going to run down his contract and then leave Arsenal on a free in the summer of 2023. Before you get too worried about this bit of inside information the source of the story is Kevin Phillips who spoke “exclusively” to Football Insider. …
Read More “Saka to leave on a free transfer? The real story behind the allegation.”
By Tony Attwood Fifa has just been dealt a significant blow in its attempts to take on direct control of all elements of world football after a critic of Fifa’s African takeover who was banned for 10 years for allegedly stealing Ebola funds (Issa Hayatou) has been overturned by Court of Arbitration for Sport. The …
Read More “Fifa’s partnership with African football comes under ever greater threat”
By Tony Attwood We’ve been looking at the simple notion that sacking the manager and/or buying new players will turn a club around. On their own, these approaches don’t deliver. However, there is a complication because spending on transfers does work in the sense that the top four teams in the league have in their …
Read More “Are the most valuable teams also the teams at the top of the league?”
By Tony Attwood We have been exploring over a series of articles what actually brings success to premier league clubs. Is it buying in new players, or is it endlessly changing managers? Or is it on the other hand stability? Or maybe something else? Our examinations of clubs and their purchases have suggested that spending …
Read More “Which PL club has had the most managers and the least success? Guess!”
By Tony Attwood It’s a bit of a treat on TV at the moment. Last night we had on Arsenal TV a wonderful victory over Chelsea in the under 23 league, leaving the table looking like this Team P W D L F A GD PTS 1 Manchester City U23 18 11 3 4 43 …
Read More “Arsenal women v Manchester United, live on TV. The table and team.”
Today’s tale from history: 5 February 1931: Leicester City 2 Arsenal 7 ————– By Sir Hardly Anyone After months of resourceless attacks on Arsenal it is rather pleasing to see a few other teams getting a bit of a media beating. “Antonio Conte delivers scathing review of Tottenham’s transfer mistakes” says the Guardian Meanwile the …
Read More “The team on the up with recent form (Arsenal) and the team most hit by VAR (Arsenal)”
By Nobo Dypays Much has been made of how Arsenal were so inept and stupid in the transfer window that they let Aubameyang go to Barcelona on a free transfer when they could have sold him for a lot of dosh. If only those clever people from the media had been on the case. Except… …
Read More “The real reason why Aubameyang went on a free transfer (which the media won’t tell say)”
By Tony Attwood There is an article about Aubameyang today in the Guardian in which he blames all his problems on Mr Arteta. Which is pretty much what you might expect both because of what we know about Aubameyang’s own problems, and the media’s desire to knock Arsenal. And what is interesting is that the …
Read More “The tricks they play in order to keep knocking Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood The idea developed on this site about transfers is not only that they seem to fail more often than they live up to expectation, but also that when they fail the result can be not just a club stagnating, but a club in decline. And that decline can be both in terms …
Read More “Do managerial and player changes work? Arsenal and Tottenham compared.”
By Tony Attwood OK Jack’s moment of balance came as he was talking to Arsenal Media so we are not going to get any criticism but even so it was good to read a positive comment after all the raging negativity being thrown at the club across the last week. Considering the young players who …
Read More “Jack Wilshere provides a moment of balance, while Saliba is setting them alight.”
By Tony Attwood One of the regular comments made against Arsenal is that there is no coherent plan. I disagree. In fact, I think the club has over the past two years had three plans. Plan A: to wrest back control of matches from PGMO This, we’ve been following for over a year. Cut out …
By Tony Attwood One explanation as to why we can’t beat other teams who are aiming for European football next season is that our defence has not yet got itself adjusted to the way they need to perform when facing Liverpool, Chelsea etc. In this regard, we were not helped by the fact that we …
Read More “Arsenal and the top six, why can’t we beat the other top teams?”
By Tony Attwood As the media continue with the view that signings are good and no signings are bad (which might seem reasonable if one doesn’t look at the impact the signings of last summer had) it is perhaps time to consider Arsenal’s season to date in a slightly different manner. And here, the point …
Read More “So far Arsenal have been on five different runs this season. What next?”
By Tony Attwood I guess it is time to put the transfer window to bed (even though some of the media want to keep it running, as with stories such as Four free agent bargains Arsenal can still sign after transfer deadline day disappointment which has just emerged from the Express. Not to mention Club …
Read More “Of course it is not just Arsenal that the media treat with such disdain”
By Tony Attwood Club after club, player after player, panic after panic: the media gave us the lot as a description of what Arsenal were up to. A desperate attempt to sign anyone who could kick a ball; yet no one in the media picked up on what actually was going on. That no one …
Read More “What Arsenal were up to becomes clear, and as ever the media were wrong”
By Tony Attwood So, a jolly night at the local dance club here is the East Midlands, and back home to find that the Aubameyang saga that was on off on off on off on off and so forth ended up on. Or was that off. No it was on, he’s left for Barcelona. The …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Of course I don’t allow the staff to sit around watching TV all evening long – its bad for morale and bad for the soul, and the lower classes, should in my opinion, be kept busy with the basic tasks of life, until they bed down with the horses in the …
Read More “Transfers update an inside revealtions of doings at Untold Arsenal.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Of course nothing in the crazy world of transfers is done until the details are confirmed by the club, and there seems to be no sign of anyone at the airport or the training centre or even getting lost on the Underground. One mover is Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang (1) who is going …
Read More “Arsenal transfers: The 11 players highlighted in the media on deadline day”
By Tony Attwood In the summer of 2021 Arsenal spent £156.8m on a new defence, more than any other Premier League club spent overall. And given the general point of view that spending money on new players is the only way to progress in the league, one might expect two things. First, that Arsenal would, …
Read More “How Arsenal bought a new defence and conceded more goals, but it’s ok”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Although, as we saw in the last article, the Guardian’s list of transfers does not seem to include anyone coming in for a fee, this is not how the rest of the media see the situation. As for example with ‘Done deal confirmed’: Romano says Arsenal have reached ‘full agreement’ to complete …
Read More “Why can’t Arsenal sign some more players? Here’s the answer.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is looking as if we might have annoyed the Daily Mirror just a little bit with our years of reporting the summer transfer windows, showing that the accuracy rate of media predictions of who Arsenal are going to sign, ranges from one percent to a record four and a half …
Read More “Who (or what) is to blame for Arsenal’s failure to sign players this window?”
By Tony Attwood According to the Swiss newspaper Le Matin, the Spanish prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into the management of Barça, focussing on the work of president Josep Maria Bartomeu, who resigned in October 2020. This follows a complaint filed on Wednesday by the current management of FC Barçelona, which has been under …
Read More “The prosecutor has just started work on Barça but why is football always like this?”
