Arsenal/Bolton; a quick review while the site is up!

By Tony Attwood

If you have been following us this past week you will know that the various sites we run have been going up and down like the proverbial.   So, I won’t take too long writing this, in case we lose service again, but here’s the quickie from last night.

If you want to know exactly what is going on, follow us on Twitter @UntoldArsenal

—————————————

Recently when I went looking for a newspaper report of the England under 21s win in which the Ox scored three, I was bemused to find it wasn’t there.   Last night, having been at a dance club rather than the game, I nipped out to hear the details of the match at 10 on Radio 5.

I got a comment saying, “I am not impressed with Arsenal” and a eulogy about how wonderful Bolton were and how they were on the way up.  There was then another comment out of nothing to the effect that “We all know how much Wenger wants to win the league cup”, which I couldn’t understand (was it sarcasm?  was it meant to be a truthful statement?  whatever it was it was incoherent since the meaning of the words was lost).

Then eventually the result was given, and I found they had won after all.  So I stayed to listen to the next half hour.  I had a lot of chat about how Manchester United responded perfectly to their defeat, a lot of Tevez, and some stuff about Palace.  But in that half an hour from 10 to 10.30 there was nothing on Radio 5 other than the one mention of the result about Arsenal.

I don’t know what the station and their allies in the press hope to prove by this sort of nonsense, but all it does is alienate me.  (Any attempt to complain is met with “we have so much to get in and we can’t cover everything”).

Yet the game at the Ems was important, and not just for the result.  The almost capacity sale of tickets (I am told we were let down by a low number of Notlobians but I am not sure if that was true) for what was effectively a reserve match, says a lot about Arsenal.

So did the game say a lot about Arsenal’s backup team, which can beat a lesser light in the EPL.

From what I have now seen Arshavin was as good as I was suggesting he had been in the last couple of home games I have seen, helped I guess by the fact that he could play through the middle rather than out wide.  Maybe he should do that more often.  The Ox showed that he has enormous talent, but isn’t yet ready to do it for every game throughout.  That’s no problem – it happens to most players.

Now we have had a proper look at Nico Yennaris, Park Chu-young and Francis Coquelin, and the reserve future continues to look bright.  In a sense what we were seeing is not so much a youth team as we had a few years ago, but a genuine reserve and rehab team.

—————————————–

The Christmas gift for the fan with (almost) everything

—————————————–

——————————-

Untold Arsenal – the (fairly) complete index

8 Replies to “Arsenal/Bolton; a quick review while the site is up!”

  1. I watched the game on Arsenal.com and it was refreshing to listen to commentators which did not go on through the whole game about how weak Arsenal is, what Wenger should have done in the summer, etc.

    We received much more negative press for our win against Sunderland than MU for their game against City.

  2. I see our old friend Kastrinakis is at it again in The Sun. In his great wisdom he reckons Bolton should have won.

  3. Oh they are all going crazy I think.
    Coyle stating on the BBC that Arsenal scored two goals from their 2 shots on target. It must have been in a different game that Bogdan made 3 good saves (two from shots from Park and one from Vermaelen)

  4. The Guardian gives us 55% of possession, 8 goal attempts 5 on target.

    Amazing that they still keep up the beating of Arsenal, when Tevez says he will sue his manager, Terry is accused of racism, Cesc is accused of racism, Villa suspend one of their players for bad driving….

    It is not as if there is no news.

  5. And added to that Tony, they seem bent on bringing down Untold website…

    It doesn’t surprise me that those idiots in the press keep on with their attack despite other more juicy news-worthy incidents. They have a seemingly large number of idiots believing & following them without thinking.

    I also want to point out, as I did on this site before, that not all who claim to be Arsenal fans are actual fans. Some are fans of other clubs, who realise that we have quite a considerable number of gullible fans, trying to destablise by pretending to be fellow arsenal fans and spreading untruths. I wrote on this site that I sat close to some such people at a restaurant some time ago. Well, I had an actual argument with a guy (and his friends) who pretended to be an Arsenal fan. He kept on regurgitating all the bile that had pervaded the news in recent times. Much as I tried to put some perspective on things and to have a proper debate, he just kept going like a CD with Repeat turned on (if the truth be told, he sounded more like a broken record). So I directed him down Arsenal History lane. He failed misrably; and stated to me that George Graham was the best manager Arsenal ever had. that set alarm bells in my head. Then I realised that his brother, who I know a bit, is a Liverpool fan. So I asked him about Liverpool. He almost instantly begin to salivate. He beamed like an overdressed christmas tree. I stopped him and his friends at that point. No point going on.

    So beware the pretenders.

  6. First of great result,take that all you arsenal haters! Now about the negative media that was mentioned by tony…..he is completley right,i thought i was getting paranoid but that doesnt seem to be the case,did anyone watch gillete soccer last night(forgive me for i have sinned:) if you didnt then let me sum up what happened.First bolton score…no mention of the goal…no screaming goal!! as is mandatory for sky “pundits”,two 5minutes later arsenal equalize…again no mention or descreption of the goal(the presenter just keeps talking about cardiff,scunthorpre,wimbeldon…?) then park gives arsenal the lead…after 5 minutes has passed since the red text has informed us of the goal the presenter goes to tony cotee/(or whoever he is) and informs us there have been three goals that hadnt been mentioned by anyone on sky…honestly….ive never seen this happen before( did i forget to mention that they went to aldershot every two minutes).Honestly arsenal are being treated like the child in the schoolyard with headlice and pedigree chum in his sandwich.Anyway rant over.

  7. I missed the match. Of course they were only showing manure over here. And to be honest, what a boring match it was. I was with a manure fan who was holding the remote, and she’s the one who changed channel after a few minutes. From the reports I’ve read, or match was far more entertaining, and that’s something I could have told you before we even played. 2 EPL teams go head to head in a CC match, vs manure walking all over some tiny team recently back form the dead… I know which 1 I would pick, every time…
    I’ll leave a decent comment once I’ve watched it, I just had to share my feelings of injustice at this blind loyalty to all things manure.

  8. C4 you’re totally right! And it’s not just the TV coverage, the day before the game I couldn’t even find mention of it in the papers or most sites, it’s almost as if there’s a concerted effort to make it seem the game didn’t exist.

    As for the match, I think Park showed us all what a talent he is. Apparently the only thing keeping him from the first team now is his difficulty with English.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *