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 Whichever way you look at it, Arsenal are currently outdoing Manchester United. We are unbeaten in the last five Premier League games against them, winning three, drawing two. Is that not worth a mention? Apparently not, because the Guardian in its report of yesterday’s match still needed to paint a negative. “It …
Read More “What do Arsenal have to do to get a good press? Play Partey and Elneny”
by Bulldog Drummond The Manchester Evening News gives us a headline of confirmed news, but no team, so it is back to our usual haunts in the search for insightful insights and other what-not. The Independent suggests, for the side they delightfully now signify as “ARS” Leno; Bellerin, Mustafi, Gabriel, Tierney; Thomas, Ceballos, Xhaka; Willian, …
Read More “Manchester United v Arsenal the team news, confirmed and otherwise…”
By Bulldog Drummond The injury league table continues to be frustrating for Arsenal. Here is the top of the table in terms of number of players currently out. Crystal Palace: 9 Everton: 7 Liverpool: 7 Brighton and Hove Albion: 6 Fulham: 6 Leicester City: 6 Arsenal: 5 Burnley: 5 Leeds United: 5 Manchester United: 5 …
Read More “Manchester United v Arsenal: injuries and the home / away conundrum”
by Bulldog Drummond Tackles are not the only way of committing fouls or getting yellow cards, but they are the most common so is a good place to start as we try to get a feel of which each team in this afternoon’s game is likely to get up to. Likewise committing fouls are not …
Read More “Man U v Arsenal: tackles, fouls, yellow cards. Who’s helping who?”
By Tony Attwood BeIN Media and PSG boss Nasser Al-Khelaïfi was acquitted on Friday in Switzerland in a television rights case, The one time Fifa deputy director Jérôme Valcke was found guilty but escaped imprisonment but was fined and now has a criminal record. This case was the first that has come to court in …
Read More “PSG & BeIN boss escapes imprisonment, FA and media sigh a deep sigh of relief”
By Tony Attwood It’s the Guardian, and its the weekend, so it’s time to run an article knocking Arsenal. Why they feel the need to go on and on and on and on doing this week after week after week, I don’t really know. You might have thought they’d have had enough of it by …
By Tony Attwood The British media, alone in most of Europe, have studiously ignored the dramatic series of court cases that have been engulfing world football – probably because they are having difficulty reconciling what we have discovered with all that they have said before in supporting Fifa, and English bids to host the world …
Read More “It’s judgement day (part 1). The result of the first case involving Fifa is due shortly”
By Tony Attwood It is not exactly my first choice for watching Arsenal, nor indeed my second, but as an option it will do. A ten minute drive from my village to the neighbouring (and at night, sleepy) settlement of Rothwell – a place where during the Bronze Age mourners buried their dead alongside offerings …
Read More “Arsenal win again; the village fails to stir itself”
by Bulldog Drummond In the last couple of years a number of newspapers have started to put up headlines which say “the confirmed teams” a day or two before the match. The details that follow are nothing of the sort – the club doesn’t actually confirm the team until one hour before kick off at …
Read More “Arsenal v Dundalk the unconfirmed confirmed confirmations of the teams”
By Bulldog Drummond Just in case you missed the opening game in the Europas, here’s a quick summary The injury league remains much as before with Arsenal still near the top, but not at the top. Crystal Palace: 9 Everton: 9 Liverpool: 7 Arsenal: 6 Brighton and Hove: 6 Fulham: 5 Leeds United: 5 Manchester …
Read More “Arsenal v Dundalk: injuries, the table and a video of last week’s fun”
by Bulldog Drummond The League of Ireland is a summer league, but this season, just half a dozen games in, the season was stopped due to the virus. It only resumed on 31 July. In the early games after the re-start, Dundalk, whom we play tonight, had three defeats and two draws, including getting themselves …
Read More “Arsenal v Dundalk: the first ever meeting with a side from Ireland”
By Tony Attwood There is a lot of doom around at the moment following the defeat to Leicester, as if supporters expected that after winning the FA Cup and Community Shield Arsenal would storm ahead and at least get into the “fourth is not a trophy” spot from the off. But life in the league …
Read More “Good runs, bad runs, manager changes. How’s Arsenal doing?”
By Tony Attwood You might recall how the media went bonkers when Arsenal made some of its talent spotting staff redundant. There was as ever no comparison made with other clubs – Arsenal were simply singled out and hammered for several days in the press. And yet when Liverpool behave in a far, far worse …
Read More “The disgraceful way some football staff are treated, and how the media respond”
By Tony Attwood The journalists don’t exactly say that we are a lower form of life, but there is constantly something within the way in which they describe fans that suggests that we are, as a group, of low intelligence, limited attention span, and lacking in any ability to understand, discuss, debate, consider… We are …
Read More “Another Arsenal put down: why do journalists hate us so much?”
By Tony Attwood The match against Leicester looked pretty dispiriting on Match of the Day, as it sounded on Arsenal TV, so those who broke the boycott and paid their £14.95 didn’t get much for the money. But despite there being some protest breakers it looks like the protest might have been a success. There …
Read More “It looks like our protest against £14.95 a match was a success. Now what?”
By Tony Attwood This season we have the worst start to a season since 2011/12. In that season after six league games the table looked like this Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Manchester United 6 5 1 0 22 5 17 16 2 Manchester City 6 5 1 0 19 …
Read More “Does the league table after six games tell us much about the future?”
We’re back on Twitter (@UntoldArsenal) and Facebook (UntoldArsenalToday) By Tony Attwood The problem with most analyses of football is that we are repeatedly told that when a club is failing there are only two things that can be done: buy new players and change the manager. But that is a problem for Arsenal because …
Read More “It’s all been going wrong for a long time but doing more of the same won’t help”
By Tony Attwood This is the moment we have a little chance to fight back against the exploitation of fans both by the TV companies and by the clubs that bow down to them. The Untold team – little band that we are – are not paying £15 to watch the match. Those of us …
Read More “Arsenal v Leicester: the boycott game; we are saying “No!!!””
After quite a long lay-off we are back on Twitter @UntoldArsenal and Facebook@UntoldArsenalToday. Please do follow us. Untold Arsenal is fully backing the campaign supported by AISA – the Arsenal Independent Supporters’ Association to protest as best we can against the charging of £14.95 for supporters to watch today’s game against Leicester on Sky. We’ll be …
Read More “Arsenal v Leicester, the boycott game. The score and who’s playing with no one watching”
By Bulldog Drummond Last season we gained a major insight into the way football was being played in the Premier League by analysing three factors: the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards. Leicester we found had really weird statistics in these areas in the first half of last season, tackling way beyond anyone else, …
Read More “Arsenal: fewest tackles, fewest fouls, best defence. What next?”
by Bulldog Drummond Why are many of us boycotting this game? Quite simply because of the cost at £14.95. I still have a load of money in Arsenal FC, left over from the matches I couldn’t see last season and this season on my season ticket, so to ask me to pay more to watch …
By Tony Attwood As you will of course know, and indeed as is rather implied within the name, the “25 man squad” can be made up of 25 players. No surprises there. But Arsenal have only 22 players in the squad. And that’s after we left out Ozil. The reason of course was that we …
Read More “Arsenal’s squad list in comparison with others; and could Ozil legally walk out?”
By Tony Attwood Please note this article refers to academic research into referee behaviour – the links to the research are given at the foot of the article. The great thing about the debate concerning referees is that when Untold started out 14 years ago, the only evidence we had was what we saw on …
Read More “Media’s feeble attempt to explain away wins while ignoring the true research”
By Tony Attwood As you will know if you are a regular reader of Untold, there is a major crisis facing Fifa through the trial happening in Switzerland which pitches Infantino, the head of Fifa against the Swiss state. Now we have had the court decisions in Trinidad and Tobago in which for the first …
Read More “Could Fifa really be stopped? Is the unthinkable now actually possible?”
By Tony Attwood The point is that we have had a transfer window in which we have signed a fair number of players and spent a lot of money. These guys, along with some more of our youngsters, need to be introduced into the squad, and they need to get used to their team mates. …
