By Tony Attwood Try this headline for size Preseason shows Arsenal committed to back three but need attack options Now this pre-season involved travelling around the world, playing in ludicrous humidity, food poisoning, and our top scorer from last season not present, plus a match in which the authorities refused (for a while) to …
Read More “The one-liners that are killing football: what journalists say about Arsenal and others”
By Tony Attwood Untold is unremittingly critical of the way TV, radio, newspapers, websites and blogs report football. You’ll know that. I’m personally very critical of the Guardian, because it gets much of the rest of its work on its blog and its printed editions right. And some of its football reporting is good too, …
Read More “Beyond the media; how to take back football from those who tell us how to think.”
By Walter Broeckx Now is everything. That is how things look in this world. I think this is what we could call modern times as it is more and more the norm in society. But in football this is really rising to ridiculous heights. Because of my interest in Arsenal and football in general, if …
Read More “How You Tube has destroyed all sensible football debate”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Before I go on, you might recall our little commentary about a story in the Metro about players Mr Wenger said he wasn’t selling, and then sold. Well, it has cropped up again on Sportskeeda – only to ensure that they are not doing for breaching copyright in the original article, …
Read More “Arsenal shortlist for the final signing of the season, and high praise from the Guardian!”
by Tony Attwood Arsenal, as we all know, get the most injuries of any club playing in the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy. We know this because S Robson esquire and a guy who once coached Wales have told us over and over and over again. Now we are about to find out how …
Read More “Daily Telegraph reveals the true cost of injuries … or maybe not.”
by Tony Attwood There is an article in the Metro which is drawing a lot of attention. It opens… “As rumours continue to swirl surrounding Alexis Sanchez’s future, Arsene Wenger has been very clear that the Chilean [Alexis] is not for sale. But there’s a problem. He has taken that stance on countless occasions in …
Read More “Did Wenger really promise that Henry would not leave, and then sell him?”
By Tony Attwood We’ve now had four games in which Arsenal have been involved, which is enough time to give us an idea as to where the journalists are going to take the issue of Arsenal on TV, in the newspapers, and in the various bloggettas that newspapers have now set up to try and …
Read More “The five things we have learned about this season’s reporting of Arsenal, so far”
by Tony Attwood Arsenal now have two players out on loan with Marc Bola having gone to Bristol Rovers following the announcement of Takuma Asano’s continuation at Stuttgart. In terms of number of loans out Chelsea are in a league of their own. They already have 13 players out on loan already, and may beat …
Read More “Arsenal have two players out on loan opposed to Chelsea’s 13. Why the different approach?”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal : Ospina, Maitland-Niles, Mertesacker, Monreal, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ramsey, Xhaka, Bramall, Ozil, Iwobi, Lacazette Arsenal substitutes: Martinez, Bielik, Koscielny, Kolasinac, Coquelin, Elneny, Nelson, Malen, Nketiah, Giroud, Welbeck Chelsea with a long ball and as Maitland-Niles is beaten Per has to stretch out one of his long legs to prevent further danger. Chelsea with …
Read More “Arsenal – Chelsea: 0-3”
By Bulldog Drummond 足球 (That’s football in Chinese) Chelsea’s pre-season has been rather different from that of Arsenal, in that aside from a match against Fulham held in secret (Chelsea reportedly won 8-2) they have not had a pre-season on the pitch. As we will see below they have had a pre-season in the office …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea – not really a friendly. The teams, and the transfers”
By Bulldog Drummond The media will always present games against Chelsea as a foregone conclusion: a Chelsea win – even though Arsenal have won the tie more often than Chelsea. “Ah,” they say (for they like saying “ah”) “that’s because of the 1930s. If you take recent results you will see Chelsea are way ahead.” …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: the preliminaries, the food poisoning, the stories”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal didn’t do too badly when it came to the Africa Cup of Nations last time around – Elneny was called up to play for Egypt, but as he wasn’t seen as central to the team at the time, it wasn’t a departure that was keenly missed. But it hasn’t always been …
Read More “Cup of Nations to be moved; Man City in further tapping up allegations”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal used graduates from their academy more than any other Premier League side last season, a study by the Press Association has found – with the graduates taking part in a tiny fraction under one fifth of the Premier League minutes played. 6,628 of Arsenal’s total Premier League minutes – which to …
Read More “Arsenal’s use of academy players; club transfer comparisons; use of teenagers.”
by Tony Attwood A couple of days back, police in Spain say arrested Ángel María Villar Llona, the president of Spain’s football association, Real Federación Española de Fútbol, on suspicion of embezzling funds. It is an interesting move because Villar Llona is also a senior vice-president at Fifa and Uefa those two gloriously clean and untarnished organisations …
Read More “President of Spain’s FA arrested. And behind the corruption, there are stories of referee fixing.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Certainly things have slowed down of late, and one can only assume that the volume of journalist alcohol consumption has risen past the level where even semi-coherent thought might burst through and find itself on the blog page or even in print. But there are six new names on the …
Read More “The Fairy Stories: 83 players tipped by journalists to join Arsenal this summer. The Transfer Index vol 15.”
By Walter Broeckx Bye bye Wojciech Szczesny. So it seems. I’ve seen a video of you entering what appears to be the place where you would do your medical to join Juventus. I must be honest and say you that I will miss you. Even though you have been in Italy for 2 years I …
Read More “Bye bye Wojciech Szczesny: the great Gooner who loved Arsenal more than some of the “fans”.”
By Tony Attwood I must say I think Arsenal.com and via them the club as a whole did us all rather poorly over the match against Bayern. Licensed to an obscure channel through which one had to pay for a month’s football to watch one’s match, and know that they will put the credit card …
Read More “Poor show from Arsenal; but still we have the grand Alexis plan – and it could work rather well.”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal : Cech, Bielik, Mertesacker, Monreal, Maitland-Niles, Coquelin, Xhaka, Kolasinac, Ozil, Welbeck, Lacazette Arsenal substitutes: Giroud, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Iwobi, Martinez, Elneny, Malen, Nketiah, Walcott, Bramall, Nelson, Ramsey. A last minute change in the starting formation as Per was sick prior to the game and so we had Elneny in his place in the team. That …
Read More “Arsenal – Bayern : 1-1”
By Bulldog Drummond Bayern have played one friendly so far this summer – against Erlangen Bruck, a team that plays in the Landesliga Bayern-Nordost, the sixth tier of German football. Erlangen Bruck has a ground capacity of 1000, and they lost 9-1 to Bayern. As far as I can see other than that, this is …
Read More “Arsenal v Bayern Munich in Shanghai. The teams, the mind games, the TV options.”
By Tony Attwood Our correspondent in Switzerland has just come up with the calculation that the English players in the top level of the academy at Arsenal outnumber the non-English by two to one. The suggestion is that there is some serious forward thinking going on, judging by the way the transfer market …
Read More “Are we now in a two tier price structure when it comes to buying players?”
By Walter Broeckx After a long period in which I had been unable to write for several reasons I hope to be back in action for Untold Arsenal. And no better subject to start with as….the VAR. During the confederations cup the Video Assistant Referee or VAR has been used in each match. And I …
Read More “The Video Assistant Referees are on their way, well in other countries is, but not all….”
By Rowley Birkin MBE Before we begin, allow me if I may to introduce a new element in the annals of Untold. The “Bonkers notion of the Week”. This appears on the ESPN website and reads thus Perhaps Wenger sees Lacazette playing behind Giroud — especially if Alexis Sanchez does end up leaving the club — …
Read More “Alexis tipped to move to 8 different clubs, and the complete index of all 28 players leaving Arsenal.”
By Tony Attwood There is a problem with the way football is reported in England and it is this. There is always an assumption that how things are now will be how things are next year. Only bigger. It is curious because serious journalists working in other areas of reporting rarely fall into such a …
Read More “The Premier League finances are utterly unsustainable. But will Arsenal survive?”
by Tony Attwood Four things are going to be apparent in the team next season: First, a continuation of the five at the back that was so extraordinarily effective last season, although with the option of suddenly changing, if that seems a good idea. Second, three creative forwards at the front. Third the Xhaka – …
Read More “How Arsenal will line up next season: the 4 key tactics that we now know.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone There have been three big events for Arsenal over the last three days: one good, one amusing, one bad. 1: Elneny On the good side Elneny has turned out to be a more than decent centre back. Since the media has been screaming about how we leaked goals last season conceding …
Read More “Two Arsenal deals finally done – but one is utterly bizarre. Some good player news & some awful news.”
