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 Since we started keeping a track of the tackles, fouls and yellow cards of each club in the Premier League it has been clear that Arsenal are being very heavily penalised by referees. Arsenal are getting fouls and yellow cards called by referees for tackles, far more readily than most clubs. …
Read More “Arsenal v Manchester City: Arsenal now tackling less than any other PL club”
By Tony Attwood We live in a world of bland excuses. Indeed in the UK if one listens to the news on the radio, that’s what one hears politicians offer all day long. The broadcaster points out that we have 4.2 million children living in poverty in the UK, and the government replies it is …
Read More “The unbelievable excuse Facebook and Twitter offer for allowing racism on line”
by Tony Attwood Not every professional footballer is a member of the Professional Footballers’ Association. Some players may be members of the trades union for their own country, but many are not members of any union. Which might be a shame if they work in England because although the PFA is contacting all its members …
Read More “EU footballers warned: your time at an English club might well be up”
By Tony Attwood If you read the blogs or the newspapers, or listen to radio stations like Radio 5 or TalkSprout or watch TV stations like Sky Sports or BT Sport you’ll know one thing for sure: transfers are important. So important in fact that they determine how well a team will do. Indeed listening …
Read More “Arsenal: the 3rd worst club in terms of the effectiveness of its transfer spend”
By Tony Attwood Between 2003 and 2011 Arsenal were the only leading club in the Premier League to make money from buying and selling players. In that time Arsenal received £21 million more than they have spent in player deals. At the same time Chelsea and Manchester City each spent well over £400 million. …
Read More “Setting up Arsenal to fail: telling the club what it must not let happen”
By Tony Attwood You might have noted that in our last article I quoted a piece from Goal.com about how gloriously wonderful and clever Benfica have been, in which they said, “There is no club in world football that has perfected the art of selling better than Benfica. “Over the past 10 years, the Portuguese giants …
Read More “While awaiting Benfica, here’s a shocking story not revealed by the media”
by Bulldog Drummond There is an interesting comment on Goal.com today in which they say, “There is no club in world football that has perfected the art of selling better than Benfica. “Over the past 10 years, the Portuguese giants have sold 393 players and brought in a fraction short of £1 billion ($1.4bn) …
Read More “Benfica v Arsenal: The Arsenal line up and confirmed predictions”
By Bulldog Drummond Interesting headline on the BBC football website which says “Reaction as Man City go 10 points clear and Europa League build-up” which does not have a single word about Arsenal in the piece. But then it is interesting that on its football home page the Guardian hardly has a word about Arsenal. …
Read More “Benfica v Arsenal: what the media is saying ahead of the game”
By Bulldog Drummond Here are the injuries from Physioroom.com… Thomas Partey is out with a thigh injury which makes it seem that he won’t be ready for tomorrow’s game with Benfica but might just be ready for the Sunday game. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang was reported as being in severe pain from a “big kick” in the …
Read More “The injured players concerns about the Benfica game & Benfica’s decline”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal do have a problem with recruitment. First we ended up with too many foreign players and players simply left out of the 25 listing – something I can’t ever remember happening before. Then we had the usual abuse of the players that we did have by journalists and bloggers. Mustafi took …
Read More “A recruitment policy that takes note of financial realities?”
By Bulldog Drummond The squads that clubs choose for their Europa game do not have to be the same as the squad for the Premier League. As has been the case for a few seasons now, clubs are allowed to register a maximum of three new eligible players to the squad in February. Since 2018/19, …
Read More “Arsenal’s squad for the Benfica game and our record in the Europa”
By Tony Attwood You don’t need me to tell you that football is out of control. It has been obvious for years, but now some fans are finding ways to express their anger. The Daily Mail’s headline “Ipswich Town forced to suspend training after supporters start a FIRE at club’s training ground during protests against …
Read More “As insanity rages we head off to Rome to play a declining Benfica”
by Tony Attwood Although no one has done an analysis on the subject there is quite possibly a link between covid 19 and watching football. Obviously people get covid 19 by being in close proximity with other people who get covid 19 and by no being vaccinated against the virus. But there is a lot …
Read More “Why football supporters might be more susceptible to covid 19”
By Tony Attwood “Revealed: expected goals being used in football’s war against match-fixing” That is a headline in the Guardian over an article by Sean Ingle, the newspaper’s chief sports writer. As far as it goes, it is ok, in that it admits that all is not right with football, but sadly it doesn’t seem …
Read More “After 12 years of pressure, the media suddenly awakens to the idea of match fixing”
By Tony Attwood In the article “What Arsenal need now” I wrote that “Defeats happen, we all know that. Defeats are not the problem. The problem is letting the occasional defeat become a series of defeats (occasionally interspersed with draws). “If you want the secret to how the Wenger teams consistently ended up in the …
Read More “Returning to goal scoring, but are Arsenal yet on top 4 or even top 6 form?”
by Bulldog Drummond The BBC confirms that we will be without Thomas Partey, who has a strained hamstring and Kieran Tierney who has a leg injury. Bernd Leno and David Luiz are of course available. That site also reminds us of the earlier meeting at Elland Road when Nicolas Pepe was sent off in a …
By Bulldog Drummond As we have noted many times, the problem this season is not at all to do with defence – we have one of the best defences in the league. Our problem is entirely in attack. The league table of Premier League clubs arranged by goals scored (created at 5.30pm last night so …
Read More “Arsenal v Leeds: the Arsenal problem with goal scoring.”
By Bulldog Drummond As we saw in the last article Arsenal are caught in a perfect referees’ trap for Leeds match. Our one hope is that as with the Leicester’s expansions of the tackling and penalty-gaining rules, now the negative way Arsenal are being treated is exposed the referees know they have been rumbled, and …
Read More “Arsenal v Leeds: the home/away split, and the gaslighting influence”
By Bulldog Drummond In our post on 12 February we showed that Arsenal, are undertaking a tiny number of tackles compared with Leeds United… 278 by Arsenal; 424 by Leeds so far this season. And Leeds, remember have played one game fewer than Arsenal. But why on earth would Arsenal tackle so much less than …
Read More “Arsenal caught in a perfect referees’ trap for Leeds match. But will the ref change?”
By Tony Attwood It looks a little as if the publicity we have given to our regular chart which compares tackles, fouls, yellow cards and penalties might be having an impact. This table (a new edition is at the end of this article) is unique – no one else has ever looked at such things …
Read More “New fouls and yellow card data suggest refs are reacting to club ploys.”
By Tony Attwood We’ve been discussing from time to time how Arsenal let young players slip through their fingers and go elsewhere. The implication in the media is that it is always Arsenal’s fault, and no other club makes the same cockups as Arsenal. And indeed it is interesting that one player we held on …
Read More “It’s not just Arsenal who buy players that flop, but it’s always Arsenal’s fault”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal buy the wrong players, pay over the odds when we do make a signing, and let brilliant youngsters slip through their hands and can’t keep our youth players who are always being poached. Right? Well that is certainly the story put about by the media, and encouraged by bloggers. Hundreds of …
Read More “Folarin Balogun: Is Arsenal’s transfer team the absolute worst in the country?”
By Tony Attwood Defeats happen, we all know that. Defeats are not the problem. The problem is letting the occasional defeat become a series of defeats (occasionally interspersed with draws). If you want the secret to how the Wenger teams consistently ended up in the top four in the Premier League, this is it. In …
Read More “What Arsenal need now is so simple that surely everyone can see it.”
By Tony Attwood Although the media didn’t note it at the time, because they never note anything that is not sanctioned by PGMO, the introduction of VAR gave us one of the more amusing moments from PGMO’s history. It was Sky Sports, one of the most solid upholders of PGMO’s god-like status, who in a …
Read More “Revealed: PL referees are not 98% accurate but actually just 75% accurate”
by Tony Attwood If you want to encourage people to attack a specific group there is one simple way to do it. You make the group secret and select, while you make it clear that group has power. At once people become resentful and angry. They feel excluded, and start blaming the secret group for …
Read More “Abuse of players and referees is in part at least, PGMO’s own fault.”
