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 Tony Attwood The roar that greeted the arrival on the pitch of Bukayo Saka said it all – many of the fans who were at the game last night had probably never seen him in the flesh before, and he didn’t disappoint them, with a peerless display. The same crowd didn’t give quite such …
Read More “Arsenal beat Wimbledon in style, and finally the club sort out security”
By Bulldog Drummond If ever there was a cop out on teams it is the Express today which runs an article “Arsenal vs AFC Wimbledon: Prediction, kick off time, TV, live stream, team news,” and its entire team news is “With no Europa League this season, this competition may provide Mikel Arteta with a rare …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon: the proposed team and the issue of Xhaka”
by Tony Attwood This is obviously an Arsenal site, but if you are a Wimbledon fan and have got here deliberately or by mistake, please stay for a moment because there are security issues going on at Arsenal which affect all fans. If you are a regular reader you will know that I have been …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon – special security issues and the inclusion of a surprise player?”
by Bulldog Drummond One of the interesting things to notice about AFC Wimbledon is that while they have not been much of an away team in recent years, this season, so far, they have reversed that trend. Here is the league one table taking only away games into account. Pos Team P W D L …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon home and away, the injured, statistics, and Lge Cup history”
By Tony Attwood As you may know, I have occasionally been a little critical of Arsenal’s administration in terms of the way in which admission to the ground is being handled. I have suggested that perhaps some of the people in charge of such matters are possibly not up to the job, and also that …
Read More “Arsenal now tell fans to arrive at the ground BEFORE the stadium opens!!!!”
By Bulldog Drummond OK, let’s get the technical bit sorted. We are playing AFC Wimbledon, which is the reincarnation of Wimbledon FC who played at Plough Lane (into which I think Wimbledon have just moved or have partially moved are about to move), not the old Wimbledon who upped sticks and moved to Milton Keynes …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon for the first time since the split”
By Tony Attwood The point that we have been putting forward for a couple of seasons now is that the way clubs are treated by referees differs considerably. Our explanation for this is not that there is wholesale corruption going on, although we can’t rule this out, but rather there is a bias in the …
Read More “Chelsea are tackling with near impunity: the tackles / fouls / cards table.”
By Tony Attwood There is a story being propagated at the moment that Arsenal are willing to sell Bukayo Saka for just €50m. Following this comes the usual shock horror stories about incompetent Arsenal, and how the current employees and the board members are not fit to run a drinking session in a location that makes …
Read More “Arsenal contract error means Saka can walk for just €50m. Or maybe not…”
By Tony Attwood Our view is that Mr Arteta introduced a radical new approach last season, after Arsenal finished 2019/20 with an astonishing 86 yellow cards – the highest of any team in the league. This very high number (averaging over two a game) not only influenced the way players played after they had been …
Read More “According to refs, Arsenal’s fouls are twice as bad as Liverpool’s this season!”
By Tony Attwood One of the constant themes of football journalism and blogging is that the fans know more than the manager. It is a theme encapsulated within phrases like “Odegaard has operated as a no.10 this season with Emile Smith Rowe dropping to the bench, but Arteta started both against Burnley to show their …
Read More “What do the first five games tell us about the rest of the season?”
By Tony Attwood We are told that the FA are investigating a spot of argy bargy as it used to be called, at the end of the match at Turf Moor. If you have been there you will know that apart from the addition of seats (which are by and large ignored) little has been …
Read More “Fan problems break out at Burnley, after Arsenal players behave unexpectedly”
By Tony Attwood So now our we are out of a run of league form that is the worst since… oh… let’s check… Actually it was January 2012 Date Match Res Score Competition 2 Jan 2012 Fulham v Arsenal L 2-1 Premier League 15 Jan 2012 Swansea City v Arsenal L 3-2 Premier League 22 …
Read More “Do other big teams ever get three defeats in a row or is it just Arsenal?”
The story so far… Arteta is under attack for swapping keepers. But there’s a good reason to do it Arsenal v Burnley: injuries, home/away stats and crowd influence on refs Arsenal are 44% more likely to have a tackle get a yellow card than Burnley! 3 recent poor Arsenal results against Burnley don’t hide the …
Read More “Burnley v Arsenal: the team – Odegaard or Smith Rowe?”
By Bulldog Drummond Previously… 3 recent poor Arsenal results against Burnley don’t hide the general trend Arsenal are 44% more likely to have a tackle get a yellow card than Burnley! Arsenal v Burnley: injuries, home/away stats and crowd influence on refs So while the press have been making much of Arsenal’s woes – our …
Read More “Burnley v Arsenal: preparing for the game and lamenting the lost striker”
by Bulldog Drummond Burnley’s results are slightly worse than Arsenal’s this season in the sense that they knocked up a 1-1 draw with Leeds and haven’t won any games in the league. Like Arsenal they got through the League Cup away from home although only on penalties, and otherwise the two clubs have both been …
Read More “3 recent poor Arsenal results against Burnley don’t hide the general trend”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal are 44% more likely to have a tackle called as a yellow card offence than Burnley Now before we begin we have to go over something that has cropped up before. That one cannot compare the effect of tackles between clubs and claim that is because of the referees, because some …
Read More “Arsenal are 44% more likely to have a tackle get a yellow card than Burnley! “
By Bulldog Drummond Taking our figures from the Premier League Injuries table the Arsenal situation looks to be improving in terms of the number of injuries sustained. And although I’m sure we would all have preferred to have Arsenal in a Euro competition than out, the bonus for us is that without the midweek travel …
Read More “Arsenal v Burnley: injuries, home/away stats and crowd influence on refs”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The media are still attacking the Arsenal manager on a daily basis – the latest being attacks on the idea of dropping Leno and giving Ramsdale a game or two. Of course we don’t know the exact ins and outs of this but a few factors that are generally omitted from …
Read More “Arteta is under attack for swapping keepers. But there’s a good reason to do it”
By Tony Attwood It is now five days since the shocking scenes outside of Arsenal Stadium, where thousands of fans were shouted at by stewards and forced to queue incredibly dangerously on concrete stairways when trying to gain access to the ground. No apology has been made and no explanation has been offered to fans …
Read More “Arsenal refuse to acknowledge that entrance to the Ems was unsafe on Saturday”
Tony Attwood and Christophe Jost If there is one great benefit to Arsene Wenger’s proposal that there should be a world cup every two years it is that it has forced some serious re-thinking. Of course most of the comments that have been made are little more than a simplistic denunciations, saying, “it’s impossible” …
By Tony Attwood One of the key points I have been labouring away with is the fact that last December everything changed for Arsenal and as a result the club which measured by the first third of the season was 15th in the league, in the second two thirds of the season was second, beaten …
Read More “Arsenal training methods questioned? No, it’s just antiquated reporting”
By Tony Attwood One of the great problems with instituting a large number of changes in a squad across one transfer window, is that it then takes the incoming players a long time to adjust to at least some of these factors… a) living in a new country often with a different language b) working …
Read More “How is the drive to cut tackles, fouls and yellow cards going this season?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is not each individual attack on Arsenal and its manager that is particularly frustrating and annoying, especially when it is not backed up by the facts – or indeed based on utter falsehoods. But it is also the overall effect that is so worrying, for the newspapers by and large …
Read More “It’s the anti-Arsenal drip and the false “facts” that are so insidious”
By Tony Attwood The table below relates to the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards per game in the Premier League , with all clubs except Burnley and Everton having played four league matches. Those two clubs are on three games. The table is in descending order of fouls called by the referee per …
Read More “Fewer fouls than Liverpool but 3 times as many yellow cards as Liverpool!”
By Tony Attwood My point is staying with the story of the crowd chaos before the Norwich match (see On the basis of the Norwich game Arsenal stadium should be closed as unsafe) is not just to highlight this but to suggest that the safety team at Arsenal learned nothing from the events of 2017 …
Read More “The ten things Arsenal must do before the next game to assure us of safety”
