Arsenal Ladies 10 Tottenham Ladies 0; FA Cup fifth round – a good end to a bad week

by Andrew Crawshaw As I said in my preview Spurs would have felt good at reaching this stage of the Ladies FA Cup having beaten Brighton (newly promoted to the WSL2) in the fourth round.  Spurs currently play in the third tier of Ladies Football – the FA Women’s Premier League South against teams including …

Referees’ organisation repeats its 98% accuracy claim: but how on earth do they get that figure?

By Tony Attwood Since our two reviews of referee decisions across the first 160 Premier League games of this season, complete with the links to video evidence the PGMO (the highly secret organisation that runs refereeing using the approach that led to the Italian refereeing scandal of 2006) has been preparing to make a riposte. When we …

Arsenal and the broken phone. Welcome to the 12th round of 125 years of fighting.

By Tony Attwood This is not the first time Arsenal has suffered from relentless attacks from the mass media, and the “broken phone” metaphor seems to be utterly apt for the regular fights that have beset Arsenal over the years.  In fact it seems to happen every ten years or so, which in a way …

“How do you beat a team who are better than you? – a lament to the passing of football.

by Andrew Crawshaw This weekend I watched a football team who rely on playing football on the ground, with skillful players who know each other well and are normally free scoring be beaten by three goals to one by a team who in general were nowhere near so skillful. How did this happen? The less …

Arsenal and the broken phone: what happens next

by Blacksheep Sitting here listening to Liverpool !! vs Citeh on the BBC whilst reading Untold reminds me that I’ve been trying to think of an article to write for the site weeks without inspiration.  Like Tony and Walter, and most if not all of those that write for Untold, I am an Arsenal supporter …

The biggest problem will only hit Arsenal after Mr Wenger leaves

by Tony Attwood Perhaps the biggest problem for all single issue campaigns of the Wenger Out type is what they do after they have got their way.  There is a second biggest problem, but I’ll come to that in a moment.  I like to try and keep problems in an orderly queue. The movement that …

WBA v Arsenal: would you support Arsenal if Pulis were made manager?

By Bulldog Drummond The question on everyone’s lips is would you support Arsenal if Pulis were made manager? Actually it isn’t on everyone’s lips as I just made that up.  But I find it an interesting ponderable (a new word it seems, but I reckon there needs to be an opposite of imponderable.)  Would I …

Ten things to watch out for this weekend in the match at West Brom.

By Tony Attwood Every weekend the journalists who have spent a little too much time in the saloon bar the night before and haven’t come up with a semi-decent invention to parade before the fake football news department of the paper for whom they work, generally slink away and cook up their “Ten things to …

WBA v Arsenal: Arsenal take on Pulis, the anti-Arsenal mob, the media, and 11 WBA players – all at once.

By Bulldog Drummond West Brom under Pulis have pulled themselves up the league somewhat, and have maintained their position in the last few weeks… (stats from Statto.com as always). Game Date Opposition Venue Result Pos Pts 22 21.01.2017 Sunderland home W2-0 8 32 23 31.01.2017 Middlesbrough away D1-1 8 33 24 04.02.2017 Stoke City home …

The Untold Analysis of Refereeing in the first 16 weeks of the 2016/17 season – all matches

Earlier this week Untold presented its review of referee performances in the first 160 weekend games in the Premier League this season.   That is 42% of all the games played this season – an analysis level far higher than one would see in virtually any other statistical and analytical enquiry. That introductory report links …

West Brom v Arsenal Sat 18 March 2017 – The Match Officials

by Andrew Crawshaw After the FA Cup Quarter Finals last weekend the Premier League returns to what passes for normality with a full programme of 10 games this weekend.  Arsenal start things off with an away trip to West Bromwich Albion and an early 12:30 start. Interestingly Liverpool have Michael Oliver in charge of their …

What would Arsenal be like now if the club had dumped Wenger and brought in Pep Guardiola

by Tony Attwood Last season Paul Merson wrote an article for the Daily Express in which he said that Arsene Wenger must be sacked if the Tiny Totts or Leicester win the Premier League. It was a most curious piece in that it seemed to imply that all the clubs near the top of the table …

The Arsenal Ladies Update and Preview of their FA Cup Match on Sunday

by Andrew Crawshaw The Arsenal Ladies start their competitive season this coming Sunday with an FA Cup Fifth round match against Spurs.  The match is at Borehamwood and kicks off at 14:00.  The full draw is :- Manchester City v Reading Notts County v Yeovil Town Liverpool v Everton Arsenal v Spurs Sunderland v Aston …

After the first suggestions that referees might not be ok, will the media turn on the pundits?

By Tony Attwood Of course we need to be clear here: referees have been protected by the media for years because of the fact that the media will always put their own self-interest ahead of the need to report reality. Thus ever since the 1970s TV has been in the business of promoting football as …

New manager negotiatons, players to return, injury boost; record beaking deal

By Sir Hardly Anyone M.Sc, PhD, (Burk). It has been a breathless few days on Planet Earth what with yesterday being pi day (March 14 – 3.14 if you see what these maths bods mean.) And indeed breathless on Planet Arsenal too, and again for a mathematical reason – in this case expotentialism.  In order …

Premier League 2 – Arsenal v Manchester City the Match Report

by Andrew Crawshaw One of the requirements of the Premier League 2 competition is that some matches must be played at the clubs main stadium rather than at a training ground or secondary stadium.  The match between Arsenal and Manchester City played on Monday night (13th March) was held at the Emirates with the lower …

Nine and a half things we learned from the media this week

By Sir Hardly Anyone For the past year or two the media has filled up blank spots on its web sites with a range of articles that began with “Three things we learned this week”, and then not to be outdone by a rival became “Five things we learned this week” which soon mutated into …

This season the refereeing of 160 PL games was analysed in detail with video evidence. This is what we found.

A summary of the research by the Referee Review team 160 games researched in detail It is commonplace for occasional visitors to Untold to write sarcastic comments about referees and our views thereon.  The view, usually expressed very simply, and occasionally rather rudely, says “you always blame the refs when it is obvious to anyone …

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Barcelona/PSG was the moment football finally changed.

By Tony Attwood Of course having a bent foreign referee overseeing a match full of foreigners in a foreign place with a crowd made up of foreigners isn’t exactly big time news in England.  Rather the scenes of BT Sprout commentators being ordered by the producer to get up and leap about, (instead of wonder …

Is it really so hard to ask “why?” in football, rather than always jump in with the answer?

By Tony Attwood Just a couple of days back I raised the notion that maybe, just maybe, the football media was taking the first tiny, tiny steps towards recognising one of the the core problems in football: that they not only have viewpoints they also set the agenda.  They decide what is an “issue” in …

Right now, who would you kick out of the club?

by Tony Attwood Imagine you are paid to report football stories and likely rumours.  Not weird made up tales but stuff that could well be true. Now imagine that you were doing this job 18 months ago and your boss said, “I want you to write a piece about who will win the domestic trophies …

Stewarding must be a rotten job, but that’s not an excuse for not doing it properly

By Tony Attwood I was talking to friends on the way back from the game, about their experience of the match in the family enclosure. They’d got tickets for three adults and four children in the lower tier, clock end, positioned next to the Lincoln supporters, and I was rather sorry to hear that it …

The only question that remains is, was the ref bought or was he just incompetent.

By Tony Attwood Ewan Murray is the Guardian and Observer’s golf correspondent, with added responsibility for overseeing coverage of Scottish football. Ewan’s outside interests revolve around his own substandard golf game and Vladimir Romanov’s stewardship of Heart of Midlothian. So by and large he is not the man you would put at the top of …