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 Sir Hardly Anyone From the mountains of Rutland in Englandshire, home of the nation’s finances and wealth, I can now give you an indication that this is going to be a record year for rumours of Arsenal transfers. In the summer of 2016 we reached a grand total of 115 transfer rumours by the …
Read More “It looks like being a record year for Arsenal transfer rumours as we reach 115”
by Tony Attwood There is no doubt about it: Arsenal have a rare collection of extremely talented young players available for the coming season. While everyone last season would have known about Eddie and Maitland-Niles now we have a plethora of names to add to those giving us a list that looks like this… Konstantinos …
Here is the line up for the match, I hope. Different “outlets” are outletting all sorts of strange stories but I think this is the right one Starting XI: Leno; Bellerin, Sokratis, Mustafi, Kolasinac; Guendouzi, Elneny; Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Iwobi; Aubameyang That looks rather good fun. If it is right, great to seen Guendouzi again, …
By Bulldog Drummond Update: ESPN are showing 19 Bernd Leno 20 Shkodran Mustafi 5 Sokratis Papastathopoulos 31 Sead Kolasinac 2 Héctor Bellerín 10 Mesut Özil 4 Mohamed Elneny 29 Matteo Guendouzi 14 Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang 17 Alex Iwobi 7 Henrikh Mkhitaryan Foot Lond are saying that we “will get to see Mesut Ozil, Alex Iwobi and Mohamed Elneny for the first time in pre-season, while summer signing …
Gathered and preserved by Sir Hardly Anyone and the man behind the bar at the Rutland Pug. STORY ONE: Guess who? FootLon that website owned by the Daily Mirror that loves to put forth 40 tales a day has a new tactic with the headline “Arsenal news live: Star ‘shakes hands’ on deal, Gunners contact …
Read More “The Top 10 Arsenal stories of the day and no mistake!”
by Tony Attwood Finding out about players who Arsenal have signed and who are not already super starios can be difficult. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of websites with the same headline “Matteo Guendouzi: all you need to know about Arsenal’s new signing” and they don’t tell me anything like I need to know. Like …
Read More “Why was Matteo Guendouzi so inexpensive? Is this Gilles Grimandi up to his works again?”
by Tony Attwood There used to be a programme on TV in the UK called the Fast Show which featured Ron Manager the TV commentator on football. In case you never came across him here he is And amazingly Premier Sports 1, which is showing the current pre-season tournament in the UK brought him back …
Read More “Arsenal v Atletico Madrid; Ron Manager returns!!!”
By Walter Broeckx The line up fort his first match in the International Champions cup against Atletico Madrid is: Leno, Bellerin, Mustafi, Holding, Kolasinac, Ramsey, Guendouzi, Nelson, Smit Rowe, Aubameyang, Lacazette. So one could say some experience at the back and up front and Ramsey with the kids in the middle. A really troublesome start …
Read More “Pre season friendly : Atletico Madrid – Arsenal 1-1”
By Bulldog Drummond Ahead of Arsenal’s game which kicks off shortly we now have the first league table to emerge out of the ICC tournament thus far and it reminds us of the special arrangements being made in this competition. Indeed it makes rather interesting, if occasionally bemusing, reading . For what it brings home …
By Sir Hardly Anyone So here we are again, with the top ten tales from the “outlets” as they call each other. And I’m back with Albert Blizzard of the The Buzzard who was bemoaning a complaint from his editor. “He told me,” Albert announced after tucking into his pint and whisky chaser, “that my last …
Read More “The 10 biggest Arsenal news stories in the last 12 hours, all on one page.”
By Don McMahon My heart is heavy and my mind in turmoil after having read Mesut Ozil’s scathing attack on racism in German football and in Germany itself. I lived in Germany for two years and really enjoyed being there, especially for the football. However, after reading his exposé about mistreatment and bigotry on the …
by Tony Attwood How could changes in tactic lead to each club’s tactics will affect their position in the top six? As always with analyses of tactics, we need to consider the effect of actions. For example goal kicks or throw ins being intercepted by the opposition are frustrating, and can be called “errors”, but …
Read More “Next season’s top six: how tactical changes will affect each club’s position for 2018/9”
By Tony Attwood Sports Keeda today say, “The Gunners start their campaign on August 12 against reigning champions Manchester City at the Emirates, before making a short trip to London rivals Chelsea a week later. If Wenger was still in charge, most supporters would have expected precisely no points from these two fixtures.” This is either realistic …
Read More “Which teams will make the top four next season, and how will we line up?”
by Tony Attwood OK let’s try and weigh this up. My view is that we are not going to buy any more players because a) the budget was £70m and that has gone. b) Arsenal have far too many players to fit into the artificial “17” and “25” limits, and so need to sell or …
Read More “The ghost that wins football awards. Amidst the gibberish, some truth about Mesut.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is a most curious coincidence that when a big story (such as Mesut finally having had enough of racism in Germany) breaks, it always happens just at the moment when the transfer tales dry up. I mean it couldn’t be that these fellas down the public house are actually making …
Read More “The new transfers and the full list of the 110 players coming our way this summer.”
By Tony Attwood Football is instant – players, clubs and managers are only as good as their last result – or for those with a long term memory, the last three results. Which has been rather damaging to Arsenal across the last ten years if we look at the results. Season W D L Pos …
Read More “If we have lowered expectations for the start of the season that can only be good.”
By Tony Attwood And so Mesut Özil has removed himself from international football. I’m glad he has and can only wish he had done it earlier. Mesut is one of those players who not only has a choice of which team to play for, but also which country to play for and he chose the country …
Read More “Mesut Özil takes the right step: but international football will always be racist”
The Arsenal anniversary series appears daily on the Arsenal History Society web site – except it can’t this weekend as we’ve been upgrading that site from http to https – and something has gone amiss. So until we get that fixed, I’m posting the daily list of anniversaries on Untold. Hopefully the History Society, both …
Read More “When Arsenal signed a cup winner for £2m and a lot of “fans” sneered”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The figures show we need to sell or loan seven before we should be buying any more, but still the pundits urge the club ever more forward with desperate cries for more and more buys. Indeed you know things are desperate when players are not longer spotted at the airport but …
Read More “Should Arsenal sell seven players now, or buy? Summer is a-coming in.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone As appropriate to one of my name, there are hardly any rumours to report anymore. The media is seems have given up on Arsenal and are now focused on Tottenham, where such mongering of rumours is easier given that they have signed no one as of the last time I looked. …
Read More “Translating the current Arsenal rumours into English while going wild.”
Every day on the website of the Arsenal History Society, there appears a list of Arsenal (and a few non-Arsenal) anniversaries for that day. We are currently in the process of converting that website (blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk) from http:// to https// which is a technical thing I don’t understand but those people who charge me lots of …
Read More “Arsenal anniversaries for 21 July (posted here as the History site is broken)”
Bulldog Drummond So now we know what’s what. For the International Champions Cup Arsenal have these hearty young men representing them… Monreal is still not back from the world cup whatnot, so we’ll have to do without him. But otherwise the list is nearly complete. Here’s the list… In Goal: Cech, Leno, Martinez At the …
Read More “Arsenal’s tour squad, who’s leaving, who’s loaning, & the oldest ground”
by Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw. University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. Arsenal have appointed Mikhail Zhilkin as a data scientist working under the direction of the director of high performance Darren Burgess. Allegedly his remit will include analyzing injury data. And as the newspapers get around to covering the story so we …
Read More “The old “Arsenal get injuries” game returns with the same old fake stats.”
By Tony Attwood The International Champions Cup has been kicking around for six years in what has often appeared to be a fairly incomprehensible format which leads to confusion as to who, if anyone, actually won the trophy each time it is played. This summer, it is held in the USA, Singapore and parts of …
Read More “Arsenal in the International Champions Cup: how on earth does it work?”
By Roger Miller Arsenal could be shorn of the services of fan favourite Nacho Monreal after he was heavily linked with a move back to Spain. The left-back was one of the few Gunners stars to emerge with any credit from a dismal 2017/18 campaign as he impressed with some solid displays. He has been …
Read More “Is Monreal really leaving? A lack of alternatives could be worrying.”
