How the press use Untold Arsenal as a source of football news « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger in all he does

By Tony Attwood

You might recall I have been a bit miffed previously about the Guardian newspaper in the UK taking the occasional story from Untold.   Now the Observer is following suit.  (You might like to know that the The Observer is the sunday version of the Guardian and is Britain’s oldest newspaper still being published – and they proved themselves to be very anti-Arsenal during the unbeaten season).

The last time it (the nicking of an Untold story – not an unbeaten season) happened was with the piece we did about the cause of England’s poor showing in the world cup.   Untold analysed the number of people in the country, the number of pro footballers, and the number of clubs and coaches in five countries, and showed that it was the coaching to player ratio that was key.

The Guardian ran the same story a couple of weeks later, selecting the same countries, quoting the same figures.  No mention of Untold.

Anyway, yesterday’s Observer ran this story (it is now on the Guardian web site here)

“New from the 2018 bid process last week: leaked documents from the joint Holland/Belgium bid setting out what’s in it for Fifa. On the list: Fifa, its officials and partners will receive full tax exemption, covering “all revenues, profits, income, expenses, costs, investments and any and all kind of payments in cash or otherwise” for an “unlimited time period”. (Fifa’s estimated profit from this year’s tournament, via a similar tax exemption in South Africa and charitable status in Switzerland: £2.5bn.)”

If you are an avid reader of Untold, and particular Walter Broeckx’ pieces you might remember this headline on Untold on 4 august

FICK FUFA: Fifa demand their own car lane, no tax, and total control of clothing and street advertising

Walter’s article appeared here and it by and large tells the same story (although the Observer piece doesn’t give you the depth of analysis that Walter always does).

I’ve written to the newspaper and said they are welcome to run the rest of the article as long as they credit Walter as the author, and Untold as the publisher.   I’ll let you know if they reply.

But I would say that the Guardian’s report today on the match is good in that if centres on the insane black humour that passes for Match of the Day these days on BBC TV. Although come to think of it, maybe they picked that up from the comments in the “Welcome to Plan C” article.  In fact, maybe the paper’s journalists just read Untold first, and then writes up the stories.

Of course it is not the only accurate prediction here – we did

Untold Arsenal doesn’t do transfer predictions but if we did…

on August 19 predicting the transfer of Sébastien Squillaci along with a fuller biog and complete with the acute accent.   Most other blogs ran the story at the time so not too much of a coup, but they didn’t get the accent right in most cases – and it is the detail that counts.  Hello Sébastien with an accent.  I hope you enjoy it here.

In the meanwhile, you can rest assured that you get all the tasty bits here at least two weeks before they reach our ever valiant press corps.

————

More stories weeks before they hit the press

Stories that have never ever been in the press

A story that is politically so hot it will never ever be in the press.