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 There is a general certainty that Arsenal have got the 1-2-3 of transfers sorted. The Stephan Lichtsteiner deal is all done and dusted and by and large there is agreement that the Sokratis Papastathopoulos signing will be announced in July once the club have reached agreement with him on how his …
By Bulldog Drummond In the early days of Untold Arsenal we regularly ran a match preview looking at the betting deals on offer and where the best offer was. But sadly our correspondent moved on, for wholly understandable reasons (and remember, Untold doesn’t pay its writers, so eventually most of us decide they’ve done their …
By Tony Attwood There was a time – quite a long time in fact – when anyone daring to write or say something positive about Xhaka would be howled down. So great were the howlings at times that vampire slayers would gather around the east end of London at dusk in the hope of a …
Read More “Would you believe it? After 2 years of hating Xhaka the media change their minds!”
By Tony Attwood For some players, the first game they will play after the world cup is going to be… an international for their country. This insanity comes about because of the scheduling dominance of Fifa over all else. Assuming that players do get a month’s holiday in the summer as they are supposed to …
Read More “Some players 1st game after the world cup will be… an international match”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Figures compiled by the Guardian newspaper show that thus far the Premier League is outspending its four main rivals in terms of new players, but not but quite as much as has happened in the past. Here are the figures in pounds… Premier League: £286.4m Bundesliga: £232.50m Serie A: £228.5m La …
Read More “Arsenal secure 7th biggest transfer of the window in “£50m swoop””
by Tony Attwood A totally corrupt organisation holds a big event in a country that has been cited repeatedly for interfering in elections elsewhere, killing people on foreign soil, and other dubious stuff. Meanwhile a taxpayer funded body in England prepares to throw money at the whole thing by pitching to run the event itself …
by Tony Attwood There are some truly frightening stories around at the moment, the most awful of which is the notion that England are preparing to bid for the world cup finals again. Not content with having throw millions of pounds of taxpayers money at Fifa last time around, and clearly aware that Fifa remains …
Read More “Funny ol game: crazy Fifa bid, clubs breaking up, fans order new manager, Jack ponders”
By Tony Attwood It is always interesting how things go around; a couple of years ago we had a big debate about how Arsenal always did badly in November – the press were full of it at the time. There is also this year a fair old recognition (for a change) that maybe it is …
Read More “Are our fixtures bent against us and Palace enter a time warp for a couple of minutes.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Here is the list of ins and outs for the clubs that came in the top six positions in the PL last season as recorded by the Guardian on the constant chart of such things. As can be seen they count Torreira as being signed already, this being the general …
Read More “Who’s going where, and what the Jack the Ripper crew are making of Chelsea.”
By Camilla Hallam It has been a somewhat surreal feeling in North London these past few weeks since the announcement of Arsene Wenger’s departure from the Gunners. The suave, sophisticated Frenchman has been something of an institution at Arsenal and helped bring the club into the 21st century both on and off the pitch. Wenger …
By Sir Hardly Anyone And the number of players who are definitely absolutely and completely certainly joining Arsenal is growing by the minute as website after website now report that in addition to Lucas Torreira (age 22, and of Uruguayan nationality) from Sampdoria for £26.4m Stephan Lichtsteiner age 34 attacking right back or wing back …
by Tony Attwood “According to the press” (that most wonderful phrase that makes one think, “what self-serving rubbish will come forth now?”) Arsenal have agreed to buy Lucas Torreira (age 22, and of Uruguayan nationality) from Sampdoria for £26.4m (akin to 30m euros). Allegedy terms are now being discussed with the agent in Milan. Or …
Read More “Proceed with extreme caution but we may have just bought another player”
by Sir Hardly Anyone I guess the logical follow on from the earlier article today is to suggest we are going to sign Jack the Ripper. Actually now I’ve written that, what’s the betting some sports web site thinks that is the nickname of a contemporary player and follows it up. In fact we have …
By Tony Attwood Last weekend I attended an excellent lecture on Jack the Ripper which was put on as part of a literary festival. A literary festival, not a history conference, because the talk was about the way the media created and ran with the story of the Ripper. During the talk the speaker made …
By Sir Hardly Anyone 1: DONE DEAL. Sokratis L’Équipe is running the story that we really really have signed Borussia Dortmund defender Sokratis Papastathopoulos. Plans are being launched for the Arsenal programme to print the team sideways to allow for longer names. Actually I made that up, just as I think have L’Équipe. And given the …
Read More “Deals deals deals. Arsenal are signing players like there is no tomorrow”
By Tony Attwood Today is quite an important day in Arsenal’s history, and although I normally confine my Arsenal history comments to the website of the AISA Arsenal History Society I thought I’d stray into Untold just for a moment to correct some of the stories that often crop up around this time. And indeed …
Read More “Getting Arsenal facts wrong, on this day of all days”
by Andrew Crawshaw With the latest appointments and lists of retained players we now have a reasonable idea of the way the academy is currently heading. The picture certainly isn’t yet complete and there are quite a few gaps to be filled but the basic framework of the overall jigsaw is there. Here is my …
Read More “Arsenal Academy Update: who’s who in the Academy set up for 2018/19”
By Tony Attwood The fiasco of Liverpool signing Fekir but not signing Fekir despite all the papers being certain that he had been signed, has ended with little blame being assigned to Liverpool, reminding me (if no one else) of the lack of balance that there is in the way clubs are treated. However despite …
Read More “How the starting line up for next season is coming along at Arsenal”
by Tony Attwood BeIn Sports recently did an interview with Ivan Gazidis. Nothing special about that given the changes that are happening to the club this summer, but interestingly at 6 minutes and 38 seconds the interviewer attempts to quote our banner at the stadium, and indeed the slogan we still have on this site: …
Read More “Football should be an art: Mr Gazidis knows it, even when the TV interviewer stumbles”
By Sir Hardly Anyone We’ve had a look recently at how the media deal with transfers relating to Tottenham and Manchester United to see if there is a difference in style and tone from the way they report possible transfers relating to Arsenal. This isn’t meant to be a definitive approach; just a quick resume …
Read More “Continuing the contrasting styles of reporting Arsenal and other clubs. Today: Liverpool”
By Tony Attwood If you’ve been around Untold for a while you’ll know we’ve been watching refereeing in the PL for over ten years years, and we’ve taken on a whole range of projects, culminating in analysing the first 160 games of a season and working out how many referee decisions were wrong. With that …
Read More “The 10 Factors that make PL match fixing more likely next season”
By Tony Attwood In a year’s time it will cost around £1000 a year to subscribe to the three “outlets” (what a ghastly word) that will divide up Arsenal matches on TV for UK watches: Sky Sprout, BT Moan and now Amazon. I haven’t got a silly alternative name for Amazon Footie yet, but I …
By Tony Attwood As I noted in my last article, for the financial year 2016-17, we have one club that hasn’t filed its accounts and has been threatened with a winding up order (Crystal Palace), two clubs that made a loss (Chelsea and Sunderland) and 17 that made a profit. Clubs don’t have to report …
Read More “Where does Arsenal stand financially in relation to the other top clubs?”
By Tony Attwood It is a total tragedy that the bloggettas and the rest of the media largely ignored last night’s under 21 game between England and Scotland, or else if reporting it hardly registered Eddie Nkehtiah’s contribution of two goals and a perfect assist. The game was life and free on TV in England …
Read More “It’s Eddie Nkehtiah’s day, Villa won’t pay, Palace won’t say, Chelsea lose their way”
By Tony Attwood Eddie is playing and it is on live TV, and better still free. There’s a channel called Free Sports (it is available to Sky customers whether you subscribe to Sky Sprouts or not) and they are starting to pick up some interesting bits and pieces including the Toulon Tournament. The semi-final is …
Read More “Scotland v England live on TV and free. Now. (Eddie is playing)”
