The fixture list is fixed: finally a little bit more of the truth comes out.

Posted on by Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood

In November 2016 we ran the story “Arsenal in November.  Exactly how bad are we year after year?”

It was a piece that examined one of the regular adages that had become beloved of lazy football journalists – a simple explanation as to why Arsenal are so awful as a football club.  Like having more red cards than anyone else, having more injuries than everyone else due to Mr Wenger’s training methods, carrying lots of players who are not “up for it,” like having too many youngsters in the team because “you don’t win anything with kids”.  All the stuff we’ve had year after year.

In this case it was the argument that Arsenal always bottle it in November because we have a load of fancy dan players who don’t like the cold English November and so can’t play their tippy tappy football then.  Thus we lose more games in November than in any other month, with the implication being it is only Arsenal who suffer this November dip year after year.

Oh yes, and it was Wenger’s fault because he would not address the issue and fix it.

The “November syndrome” turned out to be untrue just like the rest; simplistic journalism without the research or evidence.  But it did turn up something else.   For in the 13 Novembers we looked at, in six of them we have played Man U and five of them Tottenham.   However if the games across the season were drawn out randomly we would expect to play each team either two or or at most three times.

So we asked “Is that just a quirk, or after the computer has drawn out all of the league fixtures, is someone mucking around with the fixtures, giving Arsenal two of the games that bring an extra intensity?”

The fact that Arsenal don’t do worse than other teams in November was interesting, in that the media were saying it so regularly and with such strength (but without evidence) that it came to be believed.  But the fact that the fixture list itself was fixed was also a fascinating revelation, although not one that the media felt like taking up.

But in fact fixing the fixtures goes right back to the period after the first world war when between 1919/20 and 1923/4, clubs were drawn home/away against each other on consecutive saturdays.  In 1923 this led to a concern about player and crowd behaviour after a singularly violent Tottenham v Arsenal game was then due to be played out again, at Highbury, the following week.  One Tottenham player was banned for a month.

Such was the uproar about the behaviour of the players in the first game that after just one more season of the home away experiment it was abandoned and the notion of random fixtures was introduced.  You can read the story of that month in an article on the Arsenal History Society blog and if you do you’ll see that hidden below the surface that year was another issue.

Not only were the match dates openly fixed in terms of the home/away routine, but Arsenal (who had only just escaped relegation the season before) played the top four from the previous season, home and away, in their first eight games.  Talk about a difficult start to a season!

Now Ben Rumsby in the Telegraph has picked up on the issue (a couple of years later, but better late than… well, you know) and said, “The Premier League fixture list is engineered to stop the biggest clubs playing each other on the final day of the season, it can be revealed.”

They’ve seen a document which “contains an entire section on the scheduling of what are called ‘Top 6 Club Matches’ and ‘Top 8 Club Matches’.”

So what we came up with from a statistical analysis in November 2016 (covering lots of bits of paper and no computer work as I recall) to conclude that fixtures were manipulated, is now verified by a newspaper and so is now officially true.  The document the Telegraph reveals stipulates that “not less than one Top 6 Club Match shall be scheduled to be played as part of twenty-six different weekend fixture programmes during that season (which weekend fixture programmes shall always exclude the opening weekend fixture programme of each season, the final fixture programme of each season and the weekend on which the FA Cup semi-finals are scheduled to be played)”.

It doesn’t go as far as the evidence we found across 13 seasons, but it’s a sort of vindication of that little bit of work.

The revelation nevertheless raised eyebrows among fan groups, with the chief executive of the Football Supporters’ Federation, Kevin Miles, saying: “This arrangement is certainly news to us and we look for to holding discussions with the Premier League about the pros and cons of it.”   Ah well, if they read Untold, they’d have known.

The Arsenal Supporters’ Trust were apparently surprised too and are quoted by the Telegraph as saying “Every Premier League club should be treated equally and the same.”

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23 Replies to “The fixture list is fixed: finally a little bit more of the truth comes out.”

  1. Always thought the last day of the seasons fixtures were a let down, now I know why.
    Sad news regarding Laurent, surgery and six months out, ouch.

  2. Zam/PTO/Jax/Leon/etc. Insert disparaging comment here. Come on. You know you want to.

  3. Wouldn’t be good to know why the Premier League managements are fixing the Premier League match fixtures? And since there are allegations on the air on PL match fixtures fixing making the rounds in the blogs and in the media alleging the Premier League management board is engaging in PL match fixtures fixing, then, has it not become pertinent for the PL management board to clarify this alleged PL match fixtures rigging issue to possibly clear the doubts in the minds of many people concerned with footnall who are doubting the PL management board integrity as regards to PL fixtures fixing.

  4. So, it’s all change at arsenal.
    After 22 years we have a new manager about to arrive.
    Exciting times and lots to discuss, not least who the manager could and should be.

    Instead,you’ve decided to write about alleged fixture fixing which goes along with alleged match fixing and alleged anti arsenal bias in the press.

    This, after suggesting the other day that criticism of wenger made by Martin Keown and Graham souness was a result of some kind of psychological neurosis and/or projection.

    This blog is definitely left field. I’ll give you that.

  5. Let me try yet again Alexanderhenry to explain to you how these things work.

    We have published several articles about which manager might be coming to Arsenal. That’s it, we’ve done it. We’ve even published an article revealing a tiny bit of possible inside knowledge we picked up which if true would reveal who the manager is. I know that much of the media likes going over and over the same ground without anything new to say, but Untold tries to live up to the name “Untold” and not repeat for the sake of getting an audience. (And I know I sometimes slip and repeat stuff, but I try not to – that’s the point). I can’t think of what else to say (ok that’s just a reflection on me) but nor can anyone else offer us an article which covers some new ground.

    And all the media is covering is the same set of speculation over and over. What’s the point of us repeating it, when quite clearly from the correspondence I get, the reason that those people who do like Untold, like it, is because it tries to cover things that are not covered elsewhere.

    It’s “Untold”. Why is that so very hard for you to understand? We go back to old ideas when someone is able to write an article with something new to say. I’ve seen 20 articles listed in the last day alone speculating on Arsenal’s next manager. Why should we bother to join in when everyone else is doing it?

    Indeed why do you bother to read Untold when you clearly find yourself disagreeing with everything we do.

  7. Shouldn’t you welcome different views? It makes for better debate.

  8. Tony
    You say you dont repeat for the sake of it but constantly write articles calling referees and accusing them of cheating and bias..But i suppose thats ok because it fits your agenda to deflect away from the fact that the team has deterioated over the last few years.Now Wenger has said his farewell’s last weekend,surely this site should be concentrating on whats important at Arsenal and that is the new manager.

  9. Not sure what the issue is here since other leagues re-arrange their fixtures. The NFL give the Super Bowl winners a high-profile home game on the first day of the season and also give teams that do well fixtures against other successful teams. La Liga puts a high-profile game (though not the Classico) on the first day of the season. I’d imagine other leagues also do similar.

    The main surprise is that top 6 match-ups are kept away from the first day – would seem more logical to schedule one on the opening weekend to drive headlines.

    As long as we play everyone home & away there is surely nothing going on here. Until we find a 2nd away game at Old Trafford in the fixtures then this story is a load of hot air.

  10. Do you find it funny to go over the same things that others have covered so often that there is an article on the page helpfully titled “Comments”? Or do you just not bother to read up on what this site is about?

    But as this obviously causes difficulty I will, for perhaps the 100th time spell it out. I set up Untold Arsenal because I felt that there was a legitimate view about Arsenal in particular and football in general that was not being heard. My thought was that the mainstream media and the blogs of the day were all ignoring key issues, and therefore I wanted to have an outlet for these ideas. It struck me quite quickly however that there was little point in representing the dominant view on these topics as well, since these dominant views were already being expressed in almost every other outlet, and arguing the point with those who did not believe in the position taken here, was taking up a lot of time that could be put to better use.
    Besides which I quickly realised that no matter how often one argued about the validity of facts and statistics against opinion and belief, those who value opinion and belief and, as one group said quite often “the evidence of my own eyes” no one was going to change their point of view.
    I have published a number of articles that have argued against the view primarily expressed on Untold and will continue to do that when in my view they offer a perspective that is well argued and coherent, but I simply can’t see the point of endlessly rehashing arguments already heard before.

  11. It is of course quite possible that my mind is going, but I don’t think I write articles accusing referees of cheating and bias. I have written a number of articles about the organisation of the PGMO and why I think it is wrong for the national refereeing organisation to be organised in this way, but I don’t think I write that many about referees saying they are biased or cheating.
    As for the site, as it says on the masthead and has said from the start, we support the team and the manager. The manager is Mr Wenger. When he goes I suspect we will support the new manager, although if it were someone like Allerdyce I might find that difficult.

  12. Tony, hat-tip for your work and dedication! But I really find myself wishing you could do more about a certain person taking multiple identities so easily. I mean, this guy has to be some sort of professional. WTF!

  13. Cyrano
    I agree entirely, give the blighter a red card.
    I go on two sites, Untold and Positively Arsenal and the one thing Pos A have definitely got right is their complete intolerance of the likes of Zam or whatever he calls himself today. He simply would not be allowed to comment in the way he does on Untold and I wish Untold would adopt the same policy and ban the Zam’s, they pretend to want to debate but clearly are only here to troll.

  14. Bit off topic I know, but I don’t think I have seen any news as to what will happen to Steve Bould or the other Arsenal coaches at end of season as no doubt the new man will bring in his own team.

  15. Watch Ken Friar’s interview about AW on Arsenal.com and you can see what a brilliant manager AW is.

    The best part of the interview was, when AW been advised of the transfer budget, whether it’s £5 million or £50 million he never complain or made a big fuss, he just accept and work with it.

    So I assume that the budget AW been working under all these years is £50 million maximum, it’s remarkable that under his stewardship the worst league position is 6th.

  16. In the top group (ignoring that Leicester outlier a while back), there are sometimes 1 unique score (all the top are statistically the same), 2 significant scores and sometimes 3 significant scores. In that sense, he has never finished below third. The top group has grown, and Arsenal have stayed in it.

  18. Interesting theory that the reason behind his going is the refusal to incorporate VAR. He fought against corruption in France perhaps he feels that the problem is worse here than any of us suspect.

  19. They were using a Google, Yputube, Instagram, Facebook, esque series of algorithms, based on revenue generation, which would generate the types of fixtures not we are seeing. Then Sky are manipulating the fixtures again, using the FA Cup, League Cup to breachwdulw games, its blike is getting Huddersfield last thing, we’ve picked up backnarkers after the rescheduling, at the end of things.

    All you do is use code to request high value fixtures, creating Super Sunday’s, some of vwhich are ridiculous, you then allocate security and policing Andy manipulate kick off times.

    The corruption in football is CL everywhere, but I do like the casual beau fools disregard the obvious, it’s ignorant at times, but a blot is aimed at causing misinformation, conjecture en masse and undermining the facts, which gives rise to Bryant conspiracy. But these fools are fools, this is how I build cases.

    The simple fact is our board are up to their eyeballs be cleqrnpy chips and that idiat Piers are a bit broker than they admit.

    IWIT

  20. Just for those that keep questioning this site : I am one of the commenters that accuse the PGMOL of being corrupt and cheats. I have good reason to do so.

    As for hot air, I love hot air so I spend 4 months of the season in warm climbs while my season ticket is used by one of my friends who is also an Arsenal supporter who has played football in the local Sunday leagues (and won several trophies). This despite the racism & biased officiating even in those leagues.

    There are many issues in sport & football that are untold because of the groups that suppress honesty. Despite those groups Untold will publish, and that is what attracts me to this site.

  21. Hi Untold

    Is it me or is this blog/writer coming across as incredibly bitter with regards to Wenger going? It also looks from past posts that you’re already wanting the new manager to fail in order to say “I told you so” and “be careful what you wish for”. Every Arsenal fan will have Wenger in their hearts but for pete sake man the guy was approaching 70, your love for Wenger seems to supersede your love for Arsenal. New chapter venturing into the unknown, can’t wait.
    Lets get behind the new manger?

  22. Joe P “It also looks from past posts that you’re already wanting the new manager to fail in order to say “I told you so” and “be careful what you wish for”. ” – Can you please supply one quote that sounds like it’s inferring anything like that.

  23. Jammy
    ‘Can you please supply one quote that sounds like it’s inferring anything like that’
    Of course he can’t because there aren’t any.
    Joe P either has a vivid imagination or is just another troll.

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