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 league table of players bought and the money paid has changed quite a lot in the past week as the top five for numbers of players and money spent shows: Pos Club Money Spent Number of players 1 Manchester City £172m 4 2 Manchester Utd £106m 2 3 Everton £86 10 …
Read More “All the purchases so far: who has done the most business?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Desperation. You can smell it. The old certainty in which a child in the bedroom can create a blog calling Wenger an idiot, and get people to read, is being challenged. Not because people won’t read any more but because the bedroom bloggettas have gone professional buoyed by the ready made …
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw Now this is getting seriously weird. I mean, for years the summers have been first odd, then strange, then very strange, then weird, but now this. This is, well, probably seriously weird is not enough. Which ever way you look at it. The BIG story for weeks and weeks …
Read More “Is this the weirdest Arsenal summer ever? Even so the Europa plan sounds fun.”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal: Ospina, Koscielny, Elneny, Monreal, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Ramsey, Xhaka, Maitland-Niles, Iwobi, Lacazette, Giroud Subs: Martinez, Mertesacker, Kolasinac, Bielik, Bramall, Coquelin, Willock, Nelson, Ozil, Nketiah, Walcott A first start for Koscielny and Ramsey in this match. Maitland-Niles playing in the left wingback position and The Ox at the right hand side. Elneny playing in the centre …
by Tony Attwood Western Sydney Wanderers were formed in April 2011 with the idea of having a club with a strong community focus. In their first season they won the A League, which by and large is not a bad start. They currently play at Stadium Australia and Sydney Showground Stadium while their permanent home ground of Parramatta Stadium is in …
Read More “Arsenal v Western Sydney Wanderers. The teams, the opposition, the food, the transport”
By Tony Attwood This summer I have been trying to look at how Arsenal compare with other clubs in terms of the way various matters are handled. The first example has been the transfers in – looking to see if it is true that Arsenal always dither and never manage to get the deals done, …
Read More “Just how do Arsenal compare when it comes to loaning players out?”
. By Sir Hardly Anyone now in a new colour. . Part 1: Genius found . 1.1: ‘Natural’ Reiss Nelson among Arsenal kiddies ‘very, very close’ to playing for the first team. In the good old days (before robots took over newspapers) when a player came back from a long injury he would be …
By Tai Emeka Obasi Arsene Wenger is a name that draws all manner of emotions. While some love him because of his as-a-rule dedication to the beautiful game, others hate him for virtually same reason. But love or hate him this astute French football manager is a unique character for Oscar flicks, a bestselling …
By Walter Broeckx Well the least you can say about the starting line-up is that is rather newish looking. Arsenal XI: Cech, Bielik, Mertesacker, Kolasinac, Nelson, Coquelin, Willock, Bramall, Ozil, Walcott, Welbeck. Now arsenal.com lets get this stream working will you please. A good start from Arsenal leading to a free kick. The ball bounces …
By Tony Attwood Trying to pick a line up before the first friendly of the summer is tough going. For example, I have no idea which of the keepers will get a game today, but I suspect we will have one in the first half and a different one in the second. Cech and …
Read More “Sydney v Arsenal. The teams, the opposition, the stadium, the Sydney fans.”
by Tony Attwood As you may know, if you are a regular reader, Untold takes quite an interest in football finances, and we’ve covered a large number of clubs whose financial matters don’t seem to be 100% as they ought to be. Leeds, Cardiff, Portsmouth… well if you’ve been with us, you’ll know. In the …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Things have slowed down a bit, not least because Arsenal has revealed their hand over who stays and who goes, through their selection of the 25 players to go on the Australia and China tour. Taking a player there and then selling him seems unlikely to say the least. Of …
Read More “The Out Index: the 26 (yes 26) players said to be leaving Arsenal this summer.”
By Tony Attwood TV money to Premier League clubs was 45% higher last season than in 2016/17, which explains why every club is, or is expected to be, buying players for prices never previously seen. In this regular column I try to keep tabs on where exactly that money is going – along with seeing …
by Tony Attwood The Independent has today published a piece reviewing all the transfers made by different clubs (another web site to copy our idea), but they have gone a bit further – because they have a little note for each club headed “Still needed”. In the case of Arsenal, “still needed” is a central …
Read More “According to one report Arsenal need another central defender. But why?”
Apologies for the problems in reading Untold this morning on some computers. It was a tech fault which I think has now been fully resolved. This morning’s article is of course still available – there is a link to it at the foot of the page. THE 10 COMMANDMENTS- Don McMahon Many of us …
Read More “THE 10 COMMANDMENTS: how to run a football club.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone There has been a major shift in the transfer rumours this past week. Suddenly we have stopped seeing the wild and wacky tales of signing a reserve keeper from Leeds when we’ve already got too many of our own. Likewise reports about Bellerin’s transfer request and his new house in Barcelona …
Read More “Suddenly the media all focus on the same man for Arsenal’s next transfer.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone This is part 13 of the Arsenal Transfer Index; the record of all the players that Arsenal are buying – and we know that it is true because it is in the papers and on the bloggettas. But are the Commentariat concerned they are overdoing things a bit? Not in the …
Revised at 2.50pm Tony Attwood has now been taken to lie down in a darkened room, and the revisions are produced by Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Squad details for the friendlies before the season begins won’t tell us everything that is going on in the manager’s mind, but they give us a few clues …
By Blacksheep I noticed a thread on Twitter the other day that interested me. One or more people were tweeting in reaction to Arsenal’s acquisition of the French forward, Alexandre Lacazette and changes to the backroom staff. Someone named @KennyKen1972 posted: AFC being seemingly active in this transfer window, apparent changes behind the scenes, funny …
By Tony Attwood OK, of course I don’t know who is going to win the league this year. But I just wondered what recent history might tell me. So I took a look at the last eight years, to see if that would give me some insights. Retention: In the past eight seasons no team …
Read More “Who is going to win the PL this year: what history and statistics tell us”
by Tony Attwood Suggesting that Arsenal has the most injuries each season of any Premier League squad still happens, but it is on the wane – maybe, just maybe, because we’ve been pointing out how wrong these figures are for years. Raymond Verheijen, a man utterly unqualified in the world of injury prevention and treatment …
Read More “Which PL clubs were most affected by injuries last season: you might be surprised.”
by Tony Attwood If you are a regular Untold reader you’ll know that we run the Arsenal Transfer Index which tracks all the players Arsenal are tipped to be signing this summer. The latest edition showed 70 players tipped to come to Arsenal, and 19 said to be leaving. For comparison last season the final …
Read More “Unlike the rest of last year’s top seven, Tottenham have signed no one. Why’s that?”
by Tony Attwood The comparative transfer table started about a week ago, and came about because I wasn’t sure that I had a full grasp of which clubs were the most and which the least active in football transferring. We all know that Arsenal were always accused of being “too slow” – and indeed rather …
Read More “Which clubs have been the most active in bringing players in so far this transfer window”
An article by Zuruvi I am really happy that Arsenal has listened to some of us who have been publishing articles and comments here on Untold Arsenal requesting that Le Prof Arsene Wenger acquires a top clinical central striker to complement the efforts of Giroud. Giroud is a good player but we wanted an …
Read More “Alexandre Lacazette. Why him? Did Arsenal really need a clinical striker? “
By Sir Hardly Anyone In my earlier note (see links at the foot of this piece) I took a look at a range of players we are about to sign “allegedly”, and so now here is part two: all the players we are losing one way or another. 1: Per Mertesacker The story is that …
