Author: Tony Attwood

By Tony Attwood Such is the state of the media, it is getting hard to find many Arsenal players who have been with the club for a while who are considered worthy of driving the lawnmower to cut the grass on the pitch, let alone turn out for the team. Leno is considered an absolute …

Read More “Xhaka has covid and has refused vaccination. So should we blame him?”

By Tony Attwood In the end it was 134 players who we noted as being predicted by the media as coming to Arsenal this summer.  Exactly the same number as last summer.    Of these the journalists got six right, which is a success rate of 4.5%.  If a footballer or a club ever failed …

Read More “Predicting Arsenal’s transfers: journalists score 4.5% accuracy rate”

By Tony Attwood “…the Arsenal hierarchy seem to have opted for a different, almost riskier approach, investing in six young talented players who will no doubt take time to bed in and flourish in red and white. “The risk stems from the fact that Arteta, along with technical director Edu, have opted for a long-term …

Read More “How half of last seasons top 8 are tackling more but fouling less!”

By Tony Attwood The great fear that I personally had for this window was that Mr Arteta would repeat his unwelcome trick of dropping players from the squad, without arranging a loan or a transfer for them.  But rough and ready calculations by Untold (always notoriously unreliable when it comes to sorting out the 25 …

Read More “Edu has done a brilliant job in handling the “25”, and apologies to him are needed”

By Sir Hardly Anyone Since 1 January, all players transferred from EU countries to English clubs have required an endorsement from the Football Association to be granted a work permit, and English clubs have been banned from signing under 18 year olds from foreign lands. This, it was feared, could have had a major impact …

Read More “How PL clubs spent less this summer and yet still bought more players”

By Sir Hardly Anyone In the end we bought six out of the 134 players tipped by journalists and bloggers to be joining us, a success rate for the journalists and bloggers of about 4.5%.  That was their highest ever success rate in tipping transfers since we  started counting – mostly brought about by a) …

Read More “Takehiro Tomiyasu makes us the top spenders, and most went on the defence”

By Sir Hardly Anyone (and an abacus) “Arsenal [are] paying price for Mikel Arteta’s disastrous £140million spending spree”. “Why are Arsenal not spending despite having £400m in reserves?” Those quotes emerged just four years apart.  If Arsenal spend a lot then it is a “spree” suggesting it is done without care.  If they spend little …

Read More “This is only the 8th most expensive Arsenal transfer window in the last 10 years.”

By Tony Attwood Discussing the treatment of clubs by referees is made quite difficult by the fact that anyone who tries to claim their club is poorly treated by referees is simply told that this is just an excuse.  Our 160 game analysis went a long way to resolve that debate by presenting video evidence, …

Read More “This season each Arsenal foul is earning a much stiffer response from refs”

By Sir Hardly Anyone When Arsene Wenger first came to Arsenal in 1996 he bought in four players.  Indeed such was the oddity of Mr Wenger taking over the club but staying to see out his contract in Japan, some of the players arrived before he did. Those four were Patrick Vieira, Nic Anelka, John …

Read More “Just how many new players can Arsenal bring in over three summers”

By Tony Attwood Does being bottom of the league after three games really mean anything?    Presumably the people who write newspapers and blogs want their readers to believe that it does.  They don’t spell it out, but the implication is always that how the table looks after three games is an indicator of how …

Read More “Does being bottom after 3 games actually tell us how the season will end?”

By Tony Attwood It is more than likely that you’ll know the Arseblog website; a blog very highly rated by many within the literate section of the Arsenal fan base.   And yet I find to my surprise that in a recent blog, the writer can say, in questioning why Kolasinac was playing, “Reportedly he spent …

Read More “It is the failure to ask one simple question that is causing problems for Arsenal”

By Tony Attwood Arsenal by the end of last season was still operating at a level below that achieved by Mr Wenger in his final season – the season in which he was forced out of the club.  We did for a short while under Mr Emery reach a higher level of achievement, but then …

Read More “It has taken 3 years and we are still not back at the level of when Wenger left”

By Tony Attwood This summer Manchester City has brought in three players: Darío Sarmiento, Jack Grealish, and Kayky.   I am not sure how many more lawyers the club has brought in so far this summer but I do know they are still looking for at least four more, because in the legal press at the …

Read More “How the PL clubs’ legal teams have started to become more important than the players”

By Bulldog Drummond “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”  John Stewart Mill. The Guardian which runs the quote above in an article on Arsenal today, considers today’s game to be of such little importance that it doesn’t even have a mention of …

Read More “Today’s team, and how four of the “big six” ended up in the bottom seven”

By Tony Attwood Moaning about the club one supports is part of the process for many football fans.  As far as I can tell, it happens in a lot of clubs, no matter how successful the club is.  I mean, I heard Celtic fans complaining about their club after they had just won the Scottish …

Read More “What Arsenal really needs is fans without a sense of entitlement.”

By Bulldog Drummond The Arsenal under 23 game against Tottenham has reached half time and it is goalless, as I write this – if you are an Arsenal member you should be able to watch it on Arsenal.com or your phone – however you have registered your membership.  It’s really interesting to watch – there …

Read More “Manchester City v Arsenal; portents, team news and the under 23s v Tottenham”

By Bulldog Drummond We have often quoted the fact that in the last two thirds of last season Arsenal were the second best team in the Premier League using this table as evidence. P Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Manchester City 24 20 0 4 62 20 42 60 2 …

Read More “Arsenal are more than twice as dirty a team as Southampton – according to refs”

By Bulldog Drummond Just to get yourself in the mood, and before we start the normal rundown, you catch one of the previous games – just click on “Watch the video” Knocking in 3 against Man City away. Watch the video Interestingly this game which is at 1230 on Saturday, seemingly hasn’t sold out.  The …

Read More “Manchester City v Arsenal: video of our last victory and news of Saturday’s game”

By Sir Hardly Anyone Arsenal’s 25 man squad is complete – in the two senses that we have 25 men in the squad and only 16 of them are foreign grown, the rest being either home grown.  We also have a few who are not included in the 25 because they will be classified as …

Read More “The 18 players leaving Arsenal, and who’s left in the 25 man squad.”

By Tony Attwood So we are playing AFC Wimbledon at home in the next round of the cup – something that none of the media wanted to see (although the club’s website speaks of “draw delight”).  Not because they don’t like Wimbledon of course, but because it means Arsenal were not beaten by West Bromwich.  …

Read More “Preparing for Man City who have made their worst start to the season since…”

By Bulldog Drummond “The worst ever start to the season” is one of the most common phrases that one reads about Arsenal at the moment, but why is it important? It would be important if losing  the first two matches in a campaign meant that we then got relegated, but this is not so.   The …

Read More “The worst start to a season: why is that so important? WBA v Arsenal – the team”

By Bulldog Drummond The league cup can hardly be called our favourite competition as we have only won it twice and have been runners up six times.  Those wins were 1987 and 1993.  The last final was 2018, and that was interesting in that the referee was noted as playing considerably less time added on, …

Read More “WBA v Arsenal: WBA tactics on and off the pitch.”

  By Bulldog Drummond As you might expect our record with West Bromwich Albion across the last 10 years or so (since the start of 2011/12) is quite good.  We have played them 18 times – 17 in the league and once in the League Cup.  That league cup game was a draw, as shown …

Read More “West Bromwich v Arsenal: head to head and the history”

By Tony Attwood There are quite a few calls around for Mr Arteta to go, with as always, some fans being swayed by press commentary.  The notion of the bumbling buffoon who didn’t know what he was up to was promoted in the Guardian’s headline Arsenal fans need Mikel Arteta to work out what he …

Read More “Does changing managers actually work, when it comes to Arsenal?”

By Bulldog Drummond  WORST ever start to a top-flight campaign screams the Daily Mail, carefully noting that in 1895/6 we lost the first three games in the season, but were in the second division at that time.  So that means a defeat against West Bromwich Albion could then give them another shock horror. The funny …

Read More “WBA v Arsenal: Arsenal injuries reach epidemic proportions”