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 media are certain: Arsenal need players, players, players and more players. Loads of players need to be shipped out too, although it is interesting that since we revealed that Xhaka is the player in the squad with the best playing statistics, demands for him to leave at once have been somewhat …
Read More “What changes can Arsenal make now to salvage our season?”
By Tony Attwood The decline of Arsenal over recent years has not, as some like to suggest, been a smooth slip into mid-table, but rather a very bumpy ride. For at this stage in the season in 2018 we were fourth in the league with a league record very similar indeed to 2015, the last …
Read More “The fall of Arsenal: How far behind are we, and what is the solution?”
By Tony Attwood I don’t normally have cause to mention the magazine “New Scientist” on these pages; I subscribe to it because quite a bit of my education and work is science based and I like to keep up with developments. But it is not the place one might expect to find too many stories …
Read More “Someone is trying to fake football stats – and doing it rather well.”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal had 11 players picked to be part of squads playing in world cup matches during the the run up to today’s match, although thankfully a modicum of sense was shown and the South American games were called off because of travel restrictions. Not everyone played of course because of selection options …
Read More “Eight Arsenal players up for sale; so who is left to play this evening?”
By Bulldog Drummond Football commentators love themes – when a new one emerges almost all the journalists jump in and accept it as the central point of their commentary for a few days. This gives readers, watchers and listeners a feeling that the approach must be true because everyone is talking about it. Take for …
Read More “Arsenal v Liverpool trends and stats, and maybe one that is wrong”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal this season have committed fewer fouls than any other team in the Premier League. You won’t read about that in the media because the media doesn’t do positive stories about Arsenal, but it is a fact. And it is interesting, given that it is 85 fouls fewer than Manchester United. Again …
Read More “What the stats tell us about Liverpool’s style and the refs’ reactions”
By Bullldog Drummond Having remained resolutely outside of any discussion about the fixtures different clubs have for the rest of the season Football London has suddenly jumped into the topic with an interesting if somewhat confusing chart. In this they take the average league position clubs’ opponents. I think this means the average league position …
Read More “Arsenal v Liverpool, and Liverpool’s bizarre home/away record this season”
By Tony Attwood Joe Montemurro, manager of Arsenal Women’s team, has announced that he will leave Arsenal at the end of this season. He called it the “hardest professional decision” of his life, adding, “I absolutely love this job and this club, the club I have supported all my life. I’m hugely grateful to the …
By Sir Hardly Anyone It might be a good idea to avoid reading the blogs and online newspapers this morning if you haven’t already started, as there isn’t too much good stuff around, as far as Arsenal is concerned. The Evening Standard captures the mood of the day by telling us that “Injuries to both …
By Tony Attwood As we’ve been investigating during the interlull, the chances of us getting into the top six to get a place in Europe next year don’t look too good. However we have noted that because of the curious European rules lurking around it is possible that cup winners’ places might not be taken …
Read More “How Arsenal might still make 6th, although we’ve left it a bit late.”
“Arsenal FC Warm Up” (CC BY 2.0) by Kieran Clarke A number of Premier League clubs, including Arsenal, were linked with a move for Bruno Fernandes while the midfielder was still in Portugal. While the Gunners, and others, dithered, Manchester United finally made their move and we know what happened next. The lack of …
Read More “Four Midfielders to fill the Fernandes Role at Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood Ask any of the journalists and fake news peddlers who write about Arsenal while urging Arsenal to change everything, simultaneously ignoring the enormous progress that the club has been making since Boxing Day) and the chances are they will start writing about the players we MUST MUST MUST sell because they are …
Read More “Who is Arsenal’s best player, and who should definitely be sold? The stats?”
By Tony Attwood Yesterday we published a piece Arsenal’s results are on track for top four finishes – from next season. In case you missed it, it shows the extraordinary difference between Arsenal’s results in the first half of the season played thus far, and the second half. The dividing line is Christmas Day – …
Read More “How one journalist decided to turn the truth about Arsenal upside down.”
By Tony Attwood One of the things I enjoy about going to Arsenal is the chat with the guys who sit either side of me in the stadium. And I’ve really missed that, which is why this weekend I reached out to Steve who sits on my right and we had a 90 minute chat …
Read More “Arsenal’s results are on track for top four finishes – from next season.”
By Tony Attwood Tottenham Hotspur were beaten by Arsenal this afternoon 0-3 in the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. The game, which was shown on the FA Player on the internet, meant that although Arsenal stayed in fourth position. They now need to win their game in hand in order to overtake Manchester United and enter third …
Read More “Arsenal women make light of Tottenham and stay on course for Europe”
By Tony Attwood The aim in this little piece is to compare how Arsenal are doing after 29 games this season compared with recent seasons. And as you can see from the headline, it turned out to be a rather negative analysis. When it started it seemed like a really simple thing to do, but …
Read More “This is Arsenal’s worst position for over a quarter of a century.”
By Tony Attwood A while back the Telegraph carried an article by Julie Burchill, in which she called the political commentator Ash Sarkar – a British-Bangladeshi journalist and left-wing political activist who teachers at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam – a paedophile-worshipping Islamist on social media. And what, you are asking, does this have to …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Newspaper men and blogging “outlet” scribblers mostly dwell in Docklands public houses, working in a putrid atmosphere of their own making. They have an insufficiency of light, a total lack of ventilation, a lot of chocolate cakes with cream which junior reporters are forced to down in one, and an aloofness …
Read More “After all the talk of new arrivals, the lads at the Toppled Bollard give their verdict”
By Tony Attwood In the theory of cognitive dissonance, if we try and hold two contradictory beliefs or ideas at the same time we feel discomfort. So we attempt to reduce this dissonance by ignoring one of those ideas, even if it is obviously true. Thus journalists and some bloggers overcome this by removing one …
Read More “Arsenal’s serious financial woes and the media’s demand for more spending”
By Tony Attwood More news on the Norwegian protest against the world cup in Qatar – a country in which slave labour has been used to build the stadia. If you are a regular reader of Untold you’ll know we’ve been campaigning on this for years – now it is really coming to life. With …
By Tony Attwood For me the news that Erling Braut Haaland and Martin Odegaard and some other players from Norway wore t-shirts with the slogan ‘Human rights, on and off the pitch’ was extraordinary, and incredibly welcome. If you are a regular Untold reader you might know that I have been arguing for quite a …
Read More “Odegaard speaks out against world cup in Qatar; a country built on slavery”
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Guardian about the return of crowds to football grounds. The essence of it is that clubs can’t take the season ticket income for next season for granted, and that is fair enough. But the article includes the line, “Typically reserved pensioners bawl from main stands, be …
Read More “Journalists who can’t get their basic facts right should not tell clubs how to behave”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Looking at the avalanche of transfer news each day it is easy to miss the fact that the reporters of Arsenal’s transfer tales work to a set pattern of activity, known in the trade as the “Eight Point Plan.” This plan was invented both to help journalists and bloggers keep track …
Read More “The transfer process: the 8 point plan that turns fantasy into news”
by Tony Attwood You may have come across the Football Observatory, not least because its reports are often quoted in the media as a source of independent, quality analysis of what is going on. And quite reasonably too, because The Football Observatory is a research group within the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES), an …
Read More “Revealed: The report on football the media are desperate you don’t see”
By Tony Attwood We are currently six points and three places below sixth position in the Premier League – and sixth, although not a trophy does mean entry to the Europa League. We might also win this year’s Europa League which would give access to the Europa League. But there are two other ways of …
Read More “How coming 8th and not winning the Europa means Euro football next year”
