By Tony Attwood We are receiving more and more messages saying that the notion that the latter part of our season was not good, because we had an easy run-in at the end of the season. I’ve answered this several times but I thought it might be easier to stop the discussion by publishing the …

Read More “Arsenal only did well after Xmas because the fixtures were much easier”

By Tony Attwood By and large it is agreed that the European Super League was a terrible mistake, but it’s all resolved now, the clubs have paid their fines to Uefa for breach of rules and some fans are demanding seats on the boards. Except… in football nothing is ever quite what it might seem.  …

Read More “The European Super League II; how it is being built, and by whom”

By Tony Attwood All summers are weird, in that journalists and bloggers have the job of writing their columns, but without any actual football to write about and so mostly resort to making stuff up.    But this one is turning out to be particularly odd, because this summer there are so many big stories …

Read More “The 10 things they don’t want us to think about, concerning Arsenal”

By Tony Attwood It was indeed just two months ago, in April 2021, that the story appeared that “Arsenal will look to sell at least four players this summer in a bid to raise funds for new signings, football.london understands.” So not https://www.connectpcsupport.co.uk/even that we had a budget at all, but instead “a bid” to …

Read More “How did Arsenal move from no budget to quarter of billion in 2 months?”

by Tony Attwood Untold has published over 10,000 articles, and one of my favourites remains Switzerland take a greater interest in Fifa – at last It was the story that reported that Switzerland had changed its law to remove the legal protection previously offered to people who were visiting Switzerland to attend meetings of international …

Read More “Uefa make it quite clear to UK government: “We are above your laws””

By Sir Hardly Anyone The key message in the media is invariably that when it comes to transfers Arsenal are invariably too slow, and make ludicrously low bids because Arsenal want everything on the cheap. So it is a bit of a surprise to find an exclusive in 90min to the effect that “Arsenal are prepared …

Read More “Arsenal to spend quarter of a billion; all going to happen (according to reports)”

By Sir Hardly Anyone. “Stan Kroenke ‘approves £250m Arsenal transfer spree’ as Mikel Arteta eyes five signings” so says the Express who add that Barcelona are having a “fire sale” to solve their financial crisis.  They give us three players – Philippe Coutinho (“a decent alternative to Odegaard”) and two new names: Sergi Roberto  Roberto “the …

Read More “82 players tipped to join Arsenal this summer in £250m spending spree”

by Tony Attwood The notion of a home grown rule came into force after the Bosman ruling in 1995 and was introduced by Uefa as a way of coping with the implications of that ruling.  However because of the free movement of people regulations within the EU the rule does not focus on nationality but …

Read More “Last season a quarter of PL clubs failed to list 25 players. Why?”

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”