Arsenal News

This is a story of life and death.  And acting.  And celebration.
It is the story of a club from the Russian Premier League side FC Moscow which has gone bust just a short while after their oligarch owner, a man in the Roman Abramovich league, pulled out, having decided to switch sports.
And it is the [...]

Manchester United win things.  That is undeniable.  They have a big support (even if it is largely located in Cornwall) and they fill the ground.  That’s undeniable.  And they have an extraordinarily successful manager – something we have to admit even if we don’t like some of his behaviour.
And they are so broke it is [...]

To the Football Association, from Simon Bailey
Sir,
I am writing to you as a concerned supporter of both England and of a Premier League football team.
The history of football in England is rich and diverse, but at the root of it are the clubs that make up the leagues. Clubs that have existed more than a [...]

Trying to stay in touch with the financial morass that is the EPL, is tough.  In this article I am trying to pull together some of the latest facts, figures, and then conclusions.  I am hopeful that if there are factual errors these can be pointed out and I will produce an update a bit [...]

The argument about Aaron Ramsey runs roughly like this…
The media, with a mixture of traditional English dislike of success, plus a deep-rooted disgust at all things French, and a desperate need to create news out of nothing, constantly announce that the only way to beat Arsenal is to rough them up.  The story is perpetuated [...]

Many of us have been outraged beyond endurance by the assault on Ramsey on 27th February.   24 hours later I am still frustrated an annoyed in a way that is not a normal part of my nature.
If I may speak for once for Walter (who is of course more than able to speak for himself), [...]

18 English clubs owe 56% of the debt of the 732 European clubs licensed by UEFA
Manchester U and Liverpool liable to be excluded from Europe under new regulations

There is a secret UEFA report called “The European Club Footballing Landscape,” which reviews the finances of football.  The latest available edition is that which trawls through 2007/8.
It [...]

You don’t know what you’re doing
By Phil Gregory.
If you haven’t already read Tony’s cracking piece on football finance that went up on Monday, I’d recommend it before you read any further.
As a humble second year economics student, I’d like to share with you some of the insights my studies have given me in regards to [...]

Financial stability or ambition? Which do fans want?

Rhys Jaggar
Easy to answer that: BOTH. Fans want to know that their club can win something, but they don’t want the club to go bust.
Thing is: for many clubs, it mightn’t be possible. Arsenal seemed to manage it, but now it seems that stability has taken precedence [...]

The F.A. Forget To Bolt The Stable Door……Again.
Simon Bailey.
The fact that the Champions League is fast becoming the only prize worth having in club football has not escaped Michel Platini or UEFA. Staging this round over four weeks so as to maximise TV income is a clever move evidenced by the greater income 100million and [...]

If the EPL is about to go bust, what can we as fans do to resurrect it?
Rhys Jaggar

Sensationalism has been our diet on the back pages, on the internet and at fanzines for the past decade. Foreign ‘billionaires’ coming in, huge debts to pay off, great dreams of Kaka, Ronaldo or Zidane coming to [...]

There is a feeling in football that things really aren’t that bad.  In this article I will try to convince you that they are not just disastrously bad – they are actually far worse than that.  Football in England is about to explode.
I’ll start with something that we all know about: Portsmouth FC.  We all [...]

Before we begin, Untold Rumours now appear that end of the main article in each edition of Untold Arsenal.   Today, its our new goalkeeper, and the availability of season tickets.   Now onto the meat and two veg…
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I have been working on a piece for several days about the collapse of football as we know it, [...]

Arsenal, the cult of personality and the collective
By Brian Baker

Another week, another defeat, another round of Chicken Licken posturing from the Arse-blogosphere. I’m not going to dwell on the painful realities of the loss to Chelsea, here, but offer another long-term perspective of Arsenal’s situation. I will start with the cult of personality that informs [...]

In the aftermath of the two defeats against Man U and Chelsea there are the inevitable calls from change and an uprising from those who feel all is not right at Arsenal – not least because we get these calls even with Arsenal are winning.
But I’d like to put forward something else: an examination of [...]

London police have seized half a tonne of footballing equipment in buildings that they say were being used as a base by the terrorist football separatist group “KGB Fulham”
The discovery of the dump, which included shirts, boots, and grass cutting equipment, was made in the early hours of saturday morning.
Fake driving licences, cars capable of [...]

By Gf60
The recent finding by the Court of Arbitration for Sport that Chel$ki were not guilty of inducing a breach of contract by Kakuta was a surprise.
More of a surprise was the noting that the original contract between Kakuta and Lens was invalid. This raises more questions than it answers.
A few hours before this finding was released, [...]

Why Arsène’s Arsenal are hated (even by its own fans): a long perspective
By Brian Baker
I was prompted to write this following the extraordinary convulsions in the Arsenal blogosphere after the defeat to Manchester United.
Chicken Licken bloggers, one of whom claimed they could manage Arsenal better than Arsene, renewed their calls for Denilson’s head, Arsene’s [...]

I ended my last piece by saying, “So, if the system works as it has for 100 years, is there any reason for thinking it is different today from what people saw in 1910?”
As I have written my answer to that question, it has grown and grown, and I can’t put it all in one [...]

By Phil Gregory
I read a great book over Christmas, Michael Lewis’s Moneyball.
Despite my total lack of knowledge on the sport it is concerned with, I was fascinated because it’s actually a baseball book which follows a particular American team that consistently outperforms its rivals  despite severe financial constraints (see where I’m going with this [...]

by Simon Bailey
My mum hates football.
She loves racing, athletics, tennis, snooker, rugby, just not football. But within her dislike of football is her loathing of anything Manchester United.
Even as a dedicated non supporter of football, my mum, I am proud to say, is an ABU. Anyone but united. Whilst they were capturing the Asian markets [...]

Special advanced notice: although much of the commentary consists of mindless gibberish there is a bit of serious stuff part way through, which is all true.  You have to guess which bit it is.
Part the First: The Evil Empire
Bolton Wanderers, known as Notlob, make the Evil Empire look like a troupe of ballet dancers performing [...]

To recap and explain (or vice versa) Football 1.0 started when Preston North End were thrown out of the FA Cup in 1884 after a complaint from Upton Park FC that Preston had been paying their players.
As a direct result of this Preston got together with other northern clubs and formed the Football League wherein [...]

This is it: the big day.  The very big day.  The biggest day of biggest days of all biggest days.
For today is the day (the exact day, the very exact day, the precise day).  And already it has been celebrated by the most extraordinarily bizarre and eccentric radio broadcast about football ever.
Which is just right [...]

Well hi diddley dee do!  I have just spent 2.5 years screaming about the insanity of football in the EPL and how it will all end in tears, and what do you know?  It is all ending in tears!  (Apart from those down the pub where it all ends in beers).
There is so much happening [...]