Untold Arsenal: Supporting the club, the manager and the team
"I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art." A Wenger
By Bulldog Drummond. So off we go again – and let us start with the tackles, fouls and yellow cards figures. Team Tackles Fouls Yellow cards Arsenal 230 145 22 West Ham United 240 144 17 Highest* 315 226 46 Lowest* 211 147 17 *Only taken from teams playing 16 games so far. So we …
Read More “Arsenal v West Ham United: Tackles, fouls, yellows and home / away bias.”
By Tony Attwood You may recall that during the earlier parts of the pandemic, Untold decided to follow up on research being undertaken by Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, who was on the board of Athletic Bilbao for seven years and is professor of management, economics and strategy at the London School of Economics – part of the University …
Read More “Wholesale referee bias returns with the return of the crowds”
By Tony Attwood Oh how the pundits love knocking Arsenal. Define the club as failing and that means the journos can justify their notion that Arsenal are now going to bring in a whole new group of players. Which gives them more and more stories to write without the expense of that annoying little activity …
Read More “Who Arsenal need to sell: the story according to the media.”
By Tony Attwood Suddenly, because of problems for Tottenham, there is talk about football in general having to “come up with more plans for the fixture list. The Premier League has so far successfully evaded any major schedule disruptions since Project Restart, but what happened with Tottenham Hotspur does serve a note of warning. “ …
Read More “Uefa is investigating game postponements and the outcome will tell us a lot”
By Tony Attwood Prior to yesterday’s match the Guardian newspaper kindly reminded us that new Australian referee Jarred Gillett has handed out 15 yellow cards in his three previous matches – figures that we didn’t have before. That is pretty amazing and I wondered just how far he would go in yesterday’s game. Two against …
Read More “Arsenal at home are fine, but after all that spending the defence remains a worry”
By Bulldog Drummond To get a prediction of how the game will be played out, the regular tackles, fouls and yellow card statistics generally gives quite a good measure. Indeed the only time it does not is in cases such as the recent game against Liverpool where the opposition deliberately set out to unsettle Arsenal …
Read More “Arsenal v Southampton: the tackles, the fouls, and the cards”
By Bulldog Drummond And so the negativity in the media rambles on. 90mins opens its preview of the match with “A club never too far away from a crisis, Arsenal welcome Southampton…” but when we look at the situation in reality terms rather than journalistic hobgoblin terms, we find that Arsenal currently have four players …
Read More “Arsenal injuries and an oddity in terms of the referee.”
By Bulldog Drummond Eight historic games against Southampton – the Videos The anti-Arsenal Arsenal hardly needs an excuse to go on the attack against the club, the players and the manager. But given an excuse they will get every knife out, and of course, the bloggettas will cut and paste and copy. And certainly, the …
Read More “Arsenal v Southampton: home/away form and the results so far”
By Tony Attwood “Not a single senior FA executive even so much as has their role scrutinised in the 129 pages of this review, commissioned and paid for by the FA” That is not me raving about the gross incompetence of the FA yet again, but actually a comment of incredulity from the Daily Telegraph. …
Read More “Why taxpayers should protest about their money being given to FA”
By Tony Attwood Football, as presented on TV, on the radio, on the internet and in print, feeds on one thing, and one thing only: controversy. But that controversy has to be contained. Only certain controversies are allowable. Through the game, at half time and after the game pundits ooze pleasantries about how good the …
Read More “Sanitisation of English football means the excitement is often elsewhere.”
By Tony Attwood According to the Daily Mirror today, last night’s game was “the same old story for Arsenal as they struggled to create goal-scoring opportunities.” The clear statement is that without more goals Arsenal will be in serious trouble. And yet that is not always the case. For example, we are currently on track …
Read More “Why Arsenal need more goals, but why it might not be that urgent.”
By Tony Attwood We regularly cover issues of racism and violence within football. See for example “Racist abuse, physical violence” in August this year. Back in 2018 we were asking “Should clubs be responsible for the behaviour of their fans inside and outside the ground?” We also know that there was a lot of bother …
Read More “The big football story in Europe that the English media will not seriously consider”
By Tony Attwood The problem with tactical rethinks is that they can take a while to get right. And we have perfect evidence of that with the first third of last season when the whole approach to defending was changed and we slipped to 15th in the league. I must admit I had hoped that …
Read More “Arteta’s latest tactical surprise – and is there one more to come?”
By Bulldog Drummond Everton v Arsenal – the referee and past matches Everton v Arsenal: comparisons of the current state of the clubs Everton v Arsenal, the turmoil in the build up, the walk out by the fans. Everton v Arsenal: the tackles, fouls and yellow cards. What will the ref do? And now here’s …
by Bulldog Drummond If you have been reading Untold for a while you will know that uniquely, we’ve developed the process of comparing tackles, fouls and yellow cards for clubs, and have found it a great source of information in terms of how clubs set themselves up. And of course what the referees get up …
Read More “Everton v Arsenal: the tackles, fouls and yellow cards. What will the ref do?”
By Bulldog Drummond The referee is either Andre Marriner or Mike Dean, depending on which website one reads. Marriner we have not had at all. However last season we had him in charge of our games three times. Mike Dean we have had once for the game in October against Palace. Last season, six referees …
Read More “Everton v Arsenal – the referee and past matches”
By Bulldog Drummond I don’t think we’ve been in the position of writing previews of two major Arsenal matches in two days, but if you are looking for our coverage of the Women’s Cup Final today that is here 2021 FA Women’s Cup Final – Arsenal v Chelsea Sunday 5 December – Part 1 History …
Read More “Everton v Arsenal: comparisons of the current state of the clubs”
By Bulldog Drummond 2021 FA Women’s Cup Final – Arsenal v Chelsea Sunday 5 December – Part 1 History 2021 FA Women’s Cup Final – Arsenal v Chelsea Sunday 5 December – Part 2 – Match Preview With Andrew having covered today’s big match in detail (see above) all there is left for me to …
Read More “Everton v Arsenal, the turmoil in the build up, the walk out by the fans.”
By Tony Attwood On Radio 4 in the UK today there was a discussion of the events at Wembley for the Euro 2020 final. And yet despite a fulsome piece on the subject, the interviewer completely failed to ask a representative of the FA, “Why did you not realise this could happen?” The reason that …
Read More “Football in England is broken beyond repair. We need a new controlling agency”
by Tony Attwood Untold recently ran the series: The biggest scandal in football – the first part of the three part review is here with links to the other two parts at the end. The scandal is that there is no one single body looking after the well-being of children who are taken on by …
Read More “Of course football needs oversight because no one is protecting the youngsters”
By Tony Attwood In its ratings of Arsenal players last night the Daily Telegraph generally gave Arsenal players ratings of six out of ten apart from Ramsdale, Gabriel and Martinelli who all got seven. Which is another way of saying that we didn’t have a standout player who could turn the match and remotivate the …
Read More “At least with Arsenal we can see we certainly are improving”
By Bulldog Drummond I have to admit, getting news about this game has been tough since the media seem only to want to talk about Manchester United. And I know that normally on Untold we end our run of match previews with a prediction of the team – (which as you may have seen in …
Read More “Manchester United v Arsenal: why does no one want to report this stat?”
By Bulldog Drummond Perfidious is the only polite word I can think of for these journalist chappies. Consider this headline: Arsenal suffer injury blow ahead of Man Utd clash as three players could miss out It suggested that there has been a new injury in training, when it appeared this morning, but no – it is …
Read More “Manchester United v Arsenal: ludicrous alarms and the likely line up”
By Bulldog Drummond By and large football journalists know little about football tactics, and less about football supporters. But still they go on pretending that they know exactly what clubs should do, in the vague hope that this will then stir supporters into criticising their clubs, which will then give the journalists another story without …
Read More “The overwhelming arrogance of journalists is destroying football”
Dating back from 1976 to the present day we have a collection of Arsenal v Manchester United videos on the Arsenal History Society Website. It’s completely free, and hopefully will act as a nice warm up to Thursday night’s dramas. You can find the Arsenal v Man United videos index here But to consider the …
Read More “Manchester United v Arsenal – a variable history, but will a real ray of hope”
