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 I reported last week in the Index update how surprised I had been throughout this first ever effort to chart the transfer rumours week by week, how quickly the rumours dry up. The first Arsenal Transfer Index was run on 20 April, ten weeks before the transfer window opened (and of …
Read More “Balotelli to Arsenal and the 62 players listed this summer as joining him”
By Tony Attwood I don’t normally run too many video clips on Untold, but I am very happy to make an exception here. Do you remember how Ooooooooooooospina was criticised for one error? “Arsenal legend Ian Wright blasts Arsene Wenger for selecting keeper David Ospina following Champions League defeat” screamed the Mail at the time. …
Read More “Watch David Ospina; man of the match and making an unbelievable penalty save”
By Tony Attwood Huge gatherings of sports fans for international events. Great fun. Big TV event. Why not? Well, if the current round of huge gatherings is anything to go by, the answer is because they can be rather troublesome. We have the Euros in France organised by Uefa, a body that is renowned for …
By Sir Hardly Anyone (whose claim for overtime is in the post) . FACT 1: Henrikh Mkhitaryan will not extend his contract at Borussia Dortmund, the club have confirmed. This certainly does seem to be a fact, in that every report that mentions this, confirms the point. He’s got one year left on the Dortmund contract, …
By Tony Attwood There are many people – I suspect it is a majority in England – who believe the world and what makes it work, can be understood by common sense. “The evidence of my own eyes” as one correspondent wrote recently on Untold. In this view you can look at anything in the …
Read More “Football in the shadows. Why the great game isn’t all that it seems.”
By Tony Attwood Premier League academy teams will be allowed to play in the EFL Trophy next season after plans to change what was once known as the Johnstone Paint Trophy were agreed. As part of the deal the PL has put up £1m to create a total prize fund of £1.95m, with bonuses awarded …
By Tony Attwood Granit Xhaka made more passes (116) and had more touches (130) than any other player in the first round of fixtures in the Euros. So what does that tell us about where he plays? And what does it tell us about who plays around him in the Arsenal team next season. The media, …
Read More “Revealed: next season’s line up: and it raises some question marks.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Sepp Blatter has suggested that some European draws were fixed by placing certain balls in the refrigerator before the draw, so that person pulling the balls out of the box or bag knows to pick a big name or small name club or country. A Uefa person reacted by saying, “Allegations …
By Tony Attwood The Arsenal Supporters Trust (of which I am not a member but was associated with – if that is the right term – when the Fanshare scheme was running) does a survey each year, and this year on reading its results through I find I have have a few doubts about its …
By Walter Broeckx Today the new fixture list was made public. And believe it or not… we will have to play each team twice. Once away and once at home. Have you ever seen anything like this before? Of course you did as this is how it always goes. Well not for each team all …
By Tony Attwood The alleged transfer of Jamie Vardy to Arsenal which emerged and then vanished again like a puff of cigarette smoke has taken another turn after the Daily Mail published pictures which shows Vardy carrying a supply of legal, but dubious, drugs. This comes at a time after Uefa turned its back on …
By Sir Hardly Anyone, As you will know we have discovered to our alarm that the invention of new Arsenal rumours has ground to a halt, with all the people who normally make up new rumours each day simply re-cycling old rumours. We desperately need new rumours to feed into the machine, otherwise the machine …
Read More “To all Arsenal fans: your club urgently needs your help. Now.”
By Tony Attwood How do you know if a club is making progress or not? Well, in one sense the answer is probably totally obvious. If the team came 14th one season and then third the next, we might see this as progress. But was it real progress? And is it sustainable? These are tough …
Read More “Are Arsenal making sustainable progress or are we standing still, or drifting back?”
by Andrew Crawshaw With all of the referee reviews for the season now published (and my broadband re-connected by BT) here is the final Table of Shame Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 1 49 Red Cards 2 17 Penalties 3 33 Goals 2 11 Total 8 110 Possible Cost in …
Read More “The season end Table of Shame & Best and Worst Referee of the Season”
By Walter Broeckx I know I can sometimes be a dreamer. I sometimes dream of all people living together in harmony. Where all people can live in peace. Not afraid of being put in prison or being killed for having another but “wrong” religion or for having no religion at all. As John Lennon used …
By Tony Attwood I am not sure anyone has ever charted the ebb and flow of transfer rumours through the summer before – if they have I haven’t been able to find the analysis, which is why Untold has chosen to take this task on with the Arsenal Transfer Index. The Index aims to chart …
Read More “Arsenal transfer rumours take on a new and unexpected twist”
By Tony Attwood …weeping children in replica shirts stumble about with their frightened parents looking for nonexistent transport, peering down side streets, plotting escape routes from the sudden spurts and burps of violence that flared again through the night. The Métro was running, but not the stop near the stadium, and without any guidance on …
Read More “The English media and government are directly responsible for the violence in Marseille”
By Tony Attwood Of course if you enjoy football on Sky, the BBC, ITV or BT Sprout you’ll disagree with my headline, but I do find broadcast media’s commentary on football – be it live matches or in discussions or reviews of games – completely unrelated to my experience of football as an actual spectator …
By Tony Attwood We live in a world of blame. And not just any old blame, but instant blame. Blame for the last minute of the last game. Blame for violence. Blame for the economy. Blame for the fact I sneezed just as I was going to start writing – it must be the fields …
By Tony Attwood There is a lot of talk about what seems to be Vardy’s rejection of Arsenal. “Vardy ’80 per cent’ certain he will snub Arsenal” says the Independent. And to rub it in, “Arsenal transfer plans face disruption over Vardy delay” in another article in the same paper. Typical bloody Arsenal, …
Read More “Why is it that when Arsenal goes for a player something always goes wrong?”
By Tony Attwood If you occasionally read my ramblings on Untold you might know that I get just a little fed up with what journalists say about Arsenal, Arsenal management, Arsenal players, and Arsenal fans. Everyone can have an opinion of course, but when there is nothing but opinion and not a single back up …
Read More “Memo from editor: It’s the Euros. Make sure you knock Arsenal and its fans at every turn”
By Tony Attwood If you cast your mind back you may recall that before the “Wenger Out” and “Thanks for the memories but…” spell we had the “spend some fucking money” period. And it is clear that many people who comment on Arsenal’s finances, and do so with far more financial knowledge than I …
ARSENAL vs. ASTON VILLA COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 38 DATE: 15th May 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Mark Clattenburg 1st LINESMAN: John Brooks 2nd LINESMAN: Andy Halliday 4th OFFICIAL: Roger East First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 07:10 …
By Tony Attwood I am not enough of a cultural expert to know if it happens in other countries, but it long struck me that in England one of our prime pastimes is that of sneering and laughing at others. We highlight their errors, and if they are not making errors we give them errors, …
by Tony Attwood Normally speaking the World Anti-Doping Agency is considered to be the king-pins, the law makers, the absolute arbiters. They say a drug is a performance enhancer, and then it is. No argument, none of this “I just took it to relieve a headache and didn’t know” type of excuse. Take it and …
