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 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.”
by Tony Attwood While we have been trying to work out how Arsenal are going to get the squad numbers down to the requisite 25 players with no more than 17 non-HGs, most of the media has been continuing talking about who is going to be bought, without any regard for the regulations. And this …
Read More “Transfer window gone wrong: how PL clubs blundered with the early closure”
By Tony Attwood We have, to the best of my knowledge, four tour matches coming up… 26 July Atlético Madrid (National Stadium, Singapore) 28 July Paris Saint-Germain (National Stadium, Singapore) 1 August Chelsea (Aviva Stadium, Dublin) 4 August Sevilla (Friends Arena, Stockholm) That’s not the most of any club, as Liverpool and Man U play six such games, but …
Read More “Forthcoming games, the touring party, and what happens after we leave the EU?”
By Bulldog Drummond There are secrets and there are secrets, and there is Crawley Town vs Arsenal. Attempts were made by the media to do a preview as with the headline from Football.co.uk which says “Arsenal vs Crawley Town Complete Head to Head Statistics” The page is full of zeros. But I am sure we …
Read More “Arsenal v Crawley Town; the team for our 2nd game reveals for sure who is leaving.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal are taking part in the Checkatrade Trophy with “Matchday 1” or “the first match as it is known in English” being in the week commencing Monday 3 September 2018. After that there are occasional games played from time to time. The second set of games (known in modern parlance as “Matchday …
Read More “Arsenal in the Checkatrade. How it works is subject to Rule! error. Or so they say.”
According to reports – that old standby – it looks like we have just signed another player –Joel Lopez a man of many ages. As we come to update the list of players linked with Arsenal we find that now we have reached 107 stories during this transfer window. In today’s list we have 12 …
Read More “12 transfer updates, four new names. The 108 players rumoured to be coming to Arsenal.”
By Tony Attwood Jack Wilshere has gone as we all know, and there has been much talk of others leaving, but few players if any actually seem to be on their way out. Meanwhile there is still constant chatter about more and more and more signings being in the offing. So there’s four things I …
Read More “Arsenal needs to sell or loan out seven, just to be able to bring in one more player!”
By Tony Attwood It is a day of snippets, of bits and pieces, of oddities and vagaries. Like the fact that having finally had a summer where he has not been playing football all the way through and so has had a proper rest, Alexis Sanchez hasn’t been able to go to the USA with …
By Tony Attwood From the off Untold has argued that football reporting via the mainstream media is warped. Broadcasters agreed with football authorities not to cover certain issues, such as the quality of refereeing. Under pressure from the authorities all agreed and only one or two rocked the boat. Alan Green on BBC radio, and …
Read More “Dear Arsenal Supporter, you are being brainwashed”
By Tony Attwood Since the WC final there’s been a perfect example in the today of how different papers can take totally different positions when it comes to the same event. The Guardian has been full of headlines about how the French nation rejoiced at their victory in the world cup, and celebrated the arrival …
Read More “Seven fantasies, 11 nightmares and Ramsey’s agent tweets “keep making the stuff up”.”
By….Don McMahon Well its all over and done with…..France beat a courageous but outclassed Croatia, there were blunders galore, the pundits literally burst their seams with pointless and repetitive ¨observations¨ about who was and wasn’t the cock of the walk this particular match, etc. One observation I didn’t hear was about how peculiarly inept the …
Read More “All the things we didn’t learn from the world cup.”
By Tony Attwood What annoys me – and annoys me a lot – is when lazy journalism means that football stories are published without any reference to relevant context. For example, stories about Arsenal signing all sorts of players continue, even though the club has now reached the £70m limit that the media told us …
By Tony ATtwood Here is a list of PL clubs for the coming season showing the amount spent, how many players have been bought, and in the case of the top six clubs in the league last season, who has been bought. Club Amount spent No of players Names Arsenal £71.4m 5 Lichsteiner (zero) Leno …
By Sir Hardly Anyone A certain football journalist — for such men, I regret to say, do exist — has made the remark that my last column contained ‘all the same football transfer rumours stories but just with different players’ names inserted’. I have asked the secret police to do him over (once they have …
By Walter Broeckx It has been a (long) while but here I am finally back again in action on Untold. The first match of a new era and I must say I feel as excited as…. well as excited as I was each season when we started again with playing some real football. I couldn’t …
By Tony Attwood Please note that because I thought Walter would not be covering the match I tried to write a commentary as it went along, but believe me it is much much harder than it looks to do it. As with everyone else I lost the feed in the second half and so stopped …
By Bulldog Drummond In case you don’t get to matches at Arsenal Stadium, let me explain. As the game is about to get underway the stadium announcer announces, as announcers tend to do, in an excited voice, “Football is back in N5, enjoy the game!” so I thought we’d use it today, although it took …
Read More “Football is back in WD6 5AL. Enjoy the game! Here’s the Arsenal team.”
by Tony Attwood 2002/3 had been an ok year – we had ended up second in the league, five points off the leaders Manchester United but nine point above Newcastle in third. Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Manchester United 38 25 8 5 74 34 40 83 2 Arsenal …
Read More “Arsenal in the summer: why a poor pre-season could be just what we want.”
By Bulldog Drummond Trying to get background and history on this fixture is tough. For example, visit google and you find “Boreham Wd 0 – 2 Arsenal – Match Report & Highlights – Sky Sports” which takes to a page headlined Results Friday 13th July 2001 which contains nothing of the kind. Are they trying to …
Read More “Boreham Wood v Arsenal all the players we’ll see plus videos of recent encounters.”
by Andrew Crawshaw Recruitment at Arsenal has been going on for all levels at the Club, and we are starting to see some outgoings as well. Starting with the Scholars there have been some notable additions. Scholars are those players who receive a full education as well as their football training. Players enter the academy …
Read More “As the season starts: Update on Arsenal Youngsters, Women and the PGMO referees”
By Bulldog Drummond Apparently, tomorrow in Glasgow there will be a capacity 50,000 crowd at Ibrox for the match between Rangers and the might giants of Macedonia: FK Shkupi of Macedonia. There won’t be such a crowd for Arsenal’s opener against Boreham Wood but I think the match is pretty much sold out, and it …
Read More “Boreham Wood v Arsenal. Football’s coming home. At last.”
By Tony Attwood England has a population of 53 million. Croatia has a population of 4 million. England have a country co-efficient calculated by Uefa that puts them second in European standings. Croatia is 16th. Croatia has the problem of all their best players playing overseas. England was the only country in this WC that …
Read More “Supposing it had been Arsenal not England who lost to the minnows last night. What then…”
By Tony Attwood The activity figures are looking a bit more usual, but only a bit. As we shall see there are certain imbalances in spending which are different from anything we have seen before. Here is the chart for the top six clubs using such data as we can find across the media. Club …
Read More “The transfers of the top six clubs in the Premier League and across Europe”
By Bulldog Drummond It seems months since Arsenal last played a game, and it literally has been months. You’ll recall the end of Mr Wenger’s reign I’m sure… Date Game Res Score Competition 06 May 2018 Arsenal v Burnley W 5-0 Premier League 09 May 2018 Leicester City v Arsenal L 3-1 Premier League 13 …
