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 has, I think, not been a transfer market quite like this one, and that for two reasons. One is that the Premier League summer market gets crazier every year, first because each year the media tries to do more and more to outdo whatever crazy things they got up to last …
By Sir Hardly Anyone What happens to the bloggettas owned by newspapers when their computers get overheated in the, well, err, heat? This morning, Wednesday 8 August, we find out as Foot Lond, the Daily Mirror’s endlessly automatic computer generated churning bloggetta, runs the story, “There’s less than a week left of the transfer window – …
Read More “Arsenal bid £100m for player in transfer rumour untouched by even The Hollow Men.”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, head of pyschology at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Arsenal’s new head coach Unai Emery could be an unmitigated disaster or a phenomenal success. We do not really know, and that alone is a radical departure from the past decade when …
Read More “How strange that Emery and Wenger should be so alike”
by Tony Attwood So Mr Kroenke has made an offer to buy the shares of Mr Usmanov in Arsenal, and it seems Mr Usmanov is willing to deal. Mr Kroenke will then own just over 97% of the shares. At this point, under English law all the other shareholders must be offered the same deal. …
Read More “What is the difference between Stan Kroenke and Henry Norris, and who’s to blame?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone And so as the word “slammed” is taken out of its cupboard and prepared to be given a massive overdose of multiple use by so-called journalists, we approach the last mile, the final furlong, the extra yard and the finish line which is not so much about to be passed with …
by Andrew Crawshaw Monday before the season gets underway this coming Friday (Man United v Leicester). No news yet on the PL website about which referees have been appointed to blow the whistles but there are some other snippets of news. STOP PRESS (or perhaps I should say STOP BLOG) – it is being reported …
Read More “Early Season Preview: The nine (yes 9) innovations we’ll have to get used to.”
By Tony Attwood During the last 10 years as you well know we have won 3 FA Cups, and this obviously was not good enough for some people who attended matches. And of course was wholly unacceptable for the media who jumped on this, as they often do with their perceived negatives when reviewing Arsenal. …
Read More “What has been Arsenal’s best period in history, and can Emery replicate that?”
By Tony Attwood As you will know, if you are a regular reader, the media and their tail coat hangers on, have created more transfer rumours in terms of players joining Arsenal, than ever before. (We’re not keeping a record of rumours of leavings since we had that summer two years ago in which every …
Read More “Predictions agree (!), attacking Bellerin, Chambers going, fighting the media”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes it is true, there have been more transfer rumours concerning Arsenal this summer than in any of the previous transfer windows we have measured. Not by much but we have got there. 116 players have been tipped to be coming to Arsenal (or in the case of Jack Wilshere, signing …
Read More “This summer’s Arsenal transfers reach an all time record!!!”
By Tony Attwood Ten years and a bit ago – in April 2008 to be exact, I wrote an eight part series on Reasons to be Cheerful. It’s not the only “Reasons to be Cheerful” series on Untold – I did another three in 2009 and there have been several since. I’m not going to …
Read More “Arsenal: Eight reasons to be cheerful ahead of the new season – and then some.”
By Walter Broeckx Starting XI: Leno, Lichtsteiner, Chambers, Holding, Maitland-Niles, Xhaka, Torreira, Nelson, Iwobi, Lacazette, Nketiah Subs: Bellerin, Sokratis, Mustafi, Mavrapanos, Elneny, Mkhitaryan, Ozil, Guendouzi, Smith Rowe, Aubameyang A first start for the new boys Lichtsteiner and Torreira and the return of Xhaka for his first match. Holding and Chambers is the central defensive pairing …
By Bulldog Drummond In my youth, on hearing that “the season starts today” (as it does for the championship etc, and of course Scottish football) old timers would say “it gets earlier every year”. To my utter dismay, on realising that the we were now only one week away from the Manchester City match I …
by Andrew Crawshaw I started today by updating my database of Arsenal players and adding in the current estimated player values from Transfermarkt.com. I then remembered Tony’s predictions regarding the winners of various leagues across Europe (which I think he has got right) and thought I would provide the logic behind his predictions. The transfer …
Read More “A guide to who will finish where this season across Europe”
by Sir Hardly Anyone. It is, of course, most important to eat only in the best restaurants where one meets the right people and so the dinner which involved Ousmane Dembele and his chums at Arsenal has produced the wagging of tongues and the moving of mouths. For there was our new superhero Mattéo Guendouzi …
Read More “Aubameyang’s dad sets the transfer market alight”
By Sir Hardly Anyone These are confusing times in the transfer market, and indeed as my old chum and informant Sir Jasper Fish III said just last night in the Toppled Bollard public house off the Old Kent Road, as I pointed out yet more confusing reports of the comings and goings, “It just shows …
By Billy “the dog” McGraw Our weird news correspondent. And Trends Editor. With all the bits and pieces about who Arsenal are and are not signing, it is easy to lose track of some of the other events around football at the moment. But they are still worth taking a look at because individually and …
Read More “Nine weird stories, rows, twists and turns as the transfer window closure get closer.”
By Tony Attwood Here is a line up for the coming season that in popular among journalists and bloggers… Bernd Leno; Hector Bellerin, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Shkordran Mustafi, Nacho Monreal; Lucas Torreira, Aaron Ramsey; Alex Iwobi, Mesut Ozil, Henrikh Mkhitaryan; Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. And a variant Petr Cech; Hector Bellerin, Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Shkordran Mustafi, Sead Kolasinac; …
Read More “How Arsenal will line up in the coming season, and being a trends editor.”
Aubameyang leads the line Ramsey, Guendouzi and Elneny start in midfield Sokratis partners Mustafi at the back Cech (c) Bellerin Papastathopoulos Mustafi Kolasinac Guendouzi Elneny Ramsey Ozil Mkhitaryan Aubameyang Substitutes Leno, Chambers, Mavropanos, Holding, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, E. Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Nelson That’s the confirmed line up. Chelsea’s team W. Caballero, Azpilicueta (c), David Luiz, Rudiger, Marcos …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea in the ICC. The teams, the game, the commentary. ARSENAL WIN”
By Bulldog Drummond So here we are again in the next round of the ICC. We’ve drawn/lost one, and won one thus far, and here’s the league table. Chelsea’s previous game was a 1-1 draw with Inter which they won 5-4 on penalties. Pos Team P W WP LP L F A Pts 1. Tottenham …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: the predictions, the line up, the league table.”
by Sir Hardly Anyone Maybe it is the change of arrangements, what with bringing the end of the window back to mid-August – a bit like having an extension done to your house by making the garden bigger and the living room smaller. (Sorry that doesn’t quite work but I am trying to play with …
Read More “Transfer Window creaking closed not with a bang but with tedium.”
By Tony Attwood In recent articles I have been looking at what next season’s Premier League table might look like. In the first article we showed there was a link between how much clubs spent in the transfer window and whether they would go up or down. Then in the second article considered how this …
Read More “We’re predicting Arsenal will finish third this season. So how can it be done?”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw It is always rather encouraging when one hears managers of other clubs moaning, whinging and whining. Of course much of the time, the moaning is all made up to cover what is happening, but even so, there seems to be a certain level of uncertainty in one or two …
Read More “Why are two PL managers feeling miffed about the change in transfer window rules?”
By Tony Attwood Yesterday we unveiled our new prediction process in the article How much does it cost in transfer fees to take a club up one place in the PL? It looked at purchases for last season and showed how they resulted to rises or declines in the position in the league table. In short, …
By Chayasai Unai Emery has not only brought a load of confidence back to the squad after their poor finish – by their own lofty standards – last season , he has also instilled in them a sense of pride in playing in Arsenal Shirts , a heightened sense of discipline and that you create …
by Tony Attwood Initially, as the transfer window approached this summer, the story was that Arsenal would have a summer spending limit of £50m. Then a little later that was raised to £70m. So the first question I asked was where did that extra £20,000,000 turn up from. Of course I’m not privy to the …
Read More “How much does it cost in transfer fees to take a club up one place in the PL?”
