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
FFP IS FREAKING ME OUT MAN! Ok, I’m panicking. I’m freaked. And I need the optimism and positivism of Untold NOW!! FFP is out of here and even Arsene Wenger has seemingly given up on it. Jesus, what the f…? I thought FFP was going, you know, ok. Not fully fledged …
. Untold has been contacted by The Clare Balding Show, in association with BT Sport and BBC 2. They are having a special show next week Wednesday 27th May at 7PM where Clare will be talking about the FA Cup final. They haven’t yet confirmed the guests on the show, but they have asked if any …
Read More “Wanna be on the tele as they talk about Arsenal?”
By Tony Attwood I had hoped to get home around midnight, instead it was closer to 1am. That was frustrating and annoying. The cause, inevitably was the British Dig Up The Motorway Scheme For Congesting Traffic, that has been introduced by the Dept of Transport as an alternative to speed cameras. We’d hadn’t expected …
Read More “In the end it is only expectation that makes it horrible”
By Walter Broeckx For the first time since ancient times we had a few changes in the starting line up for Arsenal. Hence all bloggers, journalists and anyone involved typing till their fingers bleeding to write about the massive overhoul of the team. Well massive…. 2 changes in fact. That means that Koscielny recovered from his …
Read More “Arsenal – Sunderland, 0-0 only a complete disaster can keep us away from 3rd place.”
By Bulldog Drummond Laurent Koscielny has been ill. How dare he! Doesn’t he know that he’s got plenty of time in June for that? Mikel Arteta and Mathieu Debuchy are not fit to work, and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Danny Welbeck remain injured. For les chats presque noir (for thus is the name of those we play) Liam …
Read More “Arsenal v Sunderland: We’re unbeaten in the last 17 games played on a Wednesday”
. By Tony Attwood . “Arsenal have reportedly agreed a deal with Lens for striking starlet Yassin Fortune.” OK so it is reportedly which means when translated someone made it up and everyone else (like me I suppose) is copying it. Although the source does appear to be France Football which tends to get these …
Read More “Arsenal make signing, Cech is about to sign, Higuain is on offer, we’ll buy no one.”
By Tony Attwood Over the years of building and paying for the Emirates we’ve had a few experiences of players trotting off to other clubs rather than continue at Arsenal. Not all of them have enjoyed the experience but they have kept on doing it. Van Persie, Nasri, Cole, Adebayor, Toure, Hleb, Flamini, Clichy, Fabregas, …
by Andrew Crawshaw Our penultimate game of the season and the officials are :- Referee – Anthony Taylor Assistants – S Ledger and M Perry Fourth Official – K Friend So the sixth time this year that we will have had to endure the incompetence and downright bias that is Anthony Taylor – this …
Read More “Arsenal v Sunderland 20 May 2015 – Incompetence and bias. Yes it’s the Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood As has been apparent for some time Uefa are now certain to change the FFP rules in the favour of Manchester City, PSG, Monaco, Chelsea and a range of Russian clubs. The official view is that Uefa never wanted to stop what they call “owner investment” (what we call “pumping so much …
Read More “Farewell top level FFP; Football League it is up to you”
By Tony Attwood And the big question is – how will you occupy yourself in June (other than by watching Copa America)? Here are the dates. 30 May: FA Cup Final 3/4 July: Copa America 3rd/4th, and final 15 July: Asia Trophy (Stoke, Everton, Arsenal, Singapore) – two games 18 July: Asia Trophy: (ditto) – …
Read More “The big worry: did the summer holiday plans clash with the Emirates Cup?”
By Tony Attwood Consider this league table, if you will… Pos Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts Europe 1 Manchester United 38 25 8 5 74 34 +40 83 Champions League Group stage 2 Arsenal 38 23 9 6 85 42 +43 78 3 Newcastle United 38 21 6 11 63 48 +15 …
Read More “Arsenal: what comes next? If it is the same as last time, it could be fun…”
By Walter Broeckx The team at the start : Opsina, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Cazorla, Ramsey, Ozil, Alexis, Giroud. On the bench: Szczesny, Gibbs, Gabriel, Flamini, Rosicky, Wilshere, Walcott. Both teams looking to attack but apart from a shot from Young from far that went well over no real goal mouth scenes in the opening …
Read More “Man U – Arsenal, 1-1 the point that brings us at least third place?”
By Bulldog Drummond . So here we go again. London v Cornwall. And just for fun here’s something from the old days… . Sir Alex Ferguson said once Manchester United had played the better football in one of the battles. Arsène Wenger said in reply when a journalist mentioned it, “Everyone believes he has …
Read More “Man U v Arsenal: everything you want to know and some things you don’t”
Manchester United v Arsenal 17 May 2015 – The Match Officials By Andrew Crawshaw First the ‘Table of Shame’ and as Walter hasn’t published any more Referee Reviews it remains the same as last week Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 19 Red Cards 4 16 Penalties 4 18 Goals …
Read More “Man U v Arsenal, the world famous ref preview. Well, the ref preview.”
By Tony Attwood Towards the end of 2014 Untold ran a series of articles under the general heading of “Football Betrayed” in which I tried to put forward the notion that there are a lot of at best unexplained, and at worst down right corrupt practices in football, which football journalists simply fail to address. …
Read More “Confusion, laziness or attempt to mislead? Why we need rigour in football journalism”
By Tony Attwood . So there we have it. According to one press report we have “won the race to sign Luton Town’s 11-year-old Charlie Patino at a cost of £10,000 in compensation.” . So this is where we now are: the signing of a child just out of primary school is VERY BIG …
Read More “Our new super short-trousered signing, and and injury worries”
The Untold Banner Tony and I have come up with a shortlist of FOUR slogans for the banner and so now we need you lot to vote on them. You can access the survey here https://eSurv.org?s=LNMMHK_e6094efa Please vote just once and for ONE slogan only Once we have agreed the slogan I will sort the …
By Tony Attwood Now here’s a funny one. Or rather a funny addition to a funny one. When Thomas Vermaelen played for Arsenal I thought he was a Good Thing (to use the technical term). He played 110 league games for us and everything about him looked good. But then he got a long term injury, …
Read More “Barca could owe Arsenal £3m, and other funny tales”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal cannot afford another timid transfer window – they need to get ruthless That’s from today’s Telegraph and refers to an article by Jeremy Wilson in the paper. And before we go into the detail it is worth asking, was the purchase of Ozil and the purchase of Alexis “timid”? And that …
Read More “Who will Arsenal buy and how will they do it? Two different views.”
By Walter Broeckx Sometimes the strangest things can lead to a new article for Untold. I was sitting in my chair the other day listening to the radio when the old song “Where have all the flowers gone” originally from Peter Seeger came on. For some inexplicable reason it suddenly sounded in my head the …
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you’ll know that I sometimes have a little snigger about the way the daily press in England pick up on our stories occasionally and then do a re-write of them – either covering the same ground, or being persuaded to set out an alternative vision by …
Read More “So exactly who has been Arsenal’s best keeper of late?”
By Tony Attwood How fast can you know that a player or manager is no good? Today the Telegraph has the headline “Has Guardiola finally been found out?” That implies that he has been tricking everyone all this time in some ill-defined way. He’s got three Spanish titles and two Champions League trophies, and he’s …
Read More “How to judge Arsenal: a touch of context, analysis and knowledge can help”
By Tony Attwood Enfield have lost their appeal against a points deducation which keeps them out of the play offs from their division. The appeal against an FA decision was organised by the FA, run by FA people, for the FA by the FA. The guilty party in the affair was at all stages and …
Read More “Enfield punished for FA total cock up; press happy to cover up the mess”
Chelsea and QPR have used different routes to get around FFP regulations. But are they going to succeed? By Tony Attwood Remember FFP? You might, but it seems the Premier League doesn’t. We should have known about the Premier League’s Financial Fair Play regulations a year ago, and still not a word. Indeed the only …
Read More “FFP: Uefa seems to have given up, but maybe the League will be more resolute.”
By Tony Attwood In the closing minutes last night a fellow Arsenal supporter sitting just behind me shouted out “You’re fucking useless Sanchez”. I felt the point he made lost something by a lack of detail and logical argument. But there it was. His opinion. But it was perhaps this comment that led to my opening a …
Read More “No new central defender; Wenger is rubbish, everything is rubbish.”
