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 average number of penalties awarded to teams in the Premier League so far this season is fractionally over two per club. That is around one every four games this season. But there is one club that is getting awarded penalties at a rate of four times as many penalties as you …
Read More “Last season we found weird tackle statistics. Now penalties have gone crazy”
This is a series of articles about the Football Association and some of their misdemeanours in terms of handling football in England. Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform or we close you The FA scandals part 3: hiding racism and …
Read More “The FA scandals: a history of the destruction of football: 4 Wenger v FA”
By Bulldog Drummond There is much talk now about this being our worst start to a season since… and there you can fill in the year of your choice. But it is worth noting that Arsene Wenger himself had several bad starts to seasons over the years – and recovered. Each of these led to …
Read More “Wenger had just as bad a start to a season as Arteta; and found a way out!”
By Tony Attwood This article is part of a series on the appalling behaviour of the Football Association in recent years, and the complicity of the media in allowing it to continue. This piece continues from Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The minister …
Read More “The FA scandals part 3: hiding racism and appointing idiots”
By Sir Hardly Anyone You might have noticed from time to time that Untold is a trifle critical of other outlets (or drainpipes as we prefer to call them) in the way they handle their predictions concerning transfers for each “window”. You will also recall that we currently have two players on our books who …
Read More “New restrictions on transfers will apply from January transfer window onwards”
By Tony Attwood The nonsense from the FA in terms of their top dog saying utterly inappropriate things reminded me of some of their other great outrages, so I thought I would gather together a little series of them. Thus we started with Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration …
Read More “The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform or we close you (2016)”
by Tony Attwood It is getting quite hard to work out who the real crazies are in football at the moment. Is it the bonkers FA with their wild and out of control chairman, now thankfully gone, or is it the bloggers and journalists who refuse to ask the most obvious and simple question: how …
Read More “Clarke’s other job; Arsenal’s transfer decisions, who leaves the “25” and a laugh”
By Sir Hardly Anyone After the summer transfer rumour table reached record proportions, I thought that even the most rabid “buy buy buy” website would realise that maybe just buying more and more players doesn’t work. Getting the players bedded in and working with the team, is also a major part of the equation. Yet …
Read More “Are Arsenal really going to keep on buying new players?”
By Tony Attwood This is how the Guardian reports today’s story about the Football Association… “Greg Clarke was forced to quit as FA chairman in ignominious circumstances on Tuesday after a series of offensive gaffes to MPs left the reputation of his organisation seriously damaged. “The 63-year-old is to vacate his role immediately after his description of …
Read More “Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration”
By Tony Attwood I have no doubt that patterns are the key to understanding football. Indeed if you have been looking at our series on tackles, fouls and yellow cards, you’ll appreciate exactly how this can work. It is not just a case of how the team is playing, but also how the referees are …
Read More “What exactly should Arsenal do now in order to climb the table?”
By Tony Attwood As I mentioned last week, measuring the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards each club gets and then searching for the relationship between them, is something that only Untold does. Quite why no one else mines this rich vein of data I don’t know, but we do it, and the results …
Read More “Fouls, tackles and yellow cards. These figures are getting seriously weird”
By Tony Attwood “One goal – a penalty – in their previous four Premier League matches paints a depressing picture.” That is one of the miserable headlines from the media today. So what can Arsenal do to put things right. Here are some solutions: 1: Play Joe Willock That comes from the Guardian who point …
Read More “What now for Arsenal? The 8 strategies Arsenal could use to get out of this mess.”
by Bulldog Drummond The Shortfuse obliges us with a team prediction… Leno Holding Gabriel Tierney Bellerin Partey Elneny Saka Willian Lacazette Aubameyang and goes beyond that by also giving us a beach consisting of Nicolas Pepe, Granit Xhaka, Eddie Nketiah, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Shkodran Mustafi, Dani Ceballos and Alex Runarsson Now this is exactly the same …
Read More “Arsenal v Villa: the projected team from around the media”
By Bulldog Drummond According to most pundits Aston Villa started the season like a bullet from a gun with a fair amount of primer and gunpowder helping it along its way… Date Game Res Score Competition 21 Sep 2020 Aston Villa v Sheffield United W 1-0 Premier League 28 Sep 2020 Fulham v Aston Villa …
Read More “Arsenal v Aston Villa: how Villa’s “missing” games changes the outlook”
By Bulldog Drummond I don’t normally present the injury news for every team, but this is so extraordinary I’ve includef the full injury table rather than just the few clubs above Arsenal in terms of players injured. Here we go… Figures as always from Physioroom.com Wolverhampton Wanderers: 2 Manchester City: 3 West Bromwich Albion: 3 …
Read More “Extraordinary injury news from Arsenal and what Pépé and Eddie must do”
By Tony Attwood Our next match is again going to be on Pay TV with Sky at £14.95. The protests continue, money is being sent to local foodbanks, and the dreadful Sky and the BT Sprout continue with their doomed venture although this might be the last weekend of it. But whereas with football there …
Read More “The desperate need to sort out Arsenal’s away form”
By Tony Attwood Back in August as this season was about to get under way, the Guardian published the article “Home advantage prevails despite absence of fans.” You might think that pretty well does it for the approach that Untold has been taking which is that a) The home benefit has vanished b) The reason …
Read More “Despite media denials, away advantage now outweighs home advantage”
By Tony Attwood That was a fine roll out by our second XI I thought, and there are several players there who are obviously making their way solidly towards the first XI. Joe Willock stands out for me but is certainly not the only one. And while I am not a fan of the Europa …
Read More “Why Wenger and Ferguson could only happen in the Premier League”
By Bulldog Drummond “Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has confirmed that David Luiz will return to the squad against Molde in the Europa League on Thursday night according to Sky.” So says Sports Mole but they don’t give us a team sheet prediction. However they do say “Arteta is expected to name a much stronger lineup to …
By Bulldog Drummond The first thing to report is the rather helpful note that appears on the Wiki sites about today’s opponents, telling us that they are not to be confused with Mold FC – a club that coincidentally was formed at the same time as Arsenal. Mold is a Welsh team, and we are …
Read More “Arsenal v Molde; Ole, referees and football in Norway.”
By Bulldog Drummond As yesterday’s research paper showed, and of course all the other research papers that we have come across which have built up to this point, referees from different countries have responded in different ways to crowdless grounds. All are favouring the away teams more, but by how much differs from one country …
Read More “Arsenal v Molde and the implication of the new referee research”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Here we are again. And before we commence with the commencement let us recall what was said yesterday. For on that day around this time the top five stories were 1: Elneny is an undroppable. 2. What Pochettino said about Arsenal and Tottenham 3. The magic of Nikolaj Duus Moller – …
Read More “The top six Arsenal stories doing the rounds today”
By Tony Attwood As you will know if you are a regular reader, Untold Arsenal conducts its own research into the way football is refereed, such as our famous 160 games series in which the first 160 games of a season were reviewed and the results presented complete with video evidence. The analysis, which is …
Read More “Home advantage has vanished: referee competence blown wide open”
By Tony Attwood Measuring the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards each club gets is something that only Untold does. Quite why no one else mines this rich vein of data I don’t know, but we do it, and the results continue to be extraordinary, and bizarre. It was an idea that emerged last …
Read More “Fouls, tackles yellow: how one club is getting away with murder”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. 1: Elneny is an undroppable. The Sunday Express tell us that “Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has found three new undroppables in addition to Aubameyang.” These three, as you will probably have guessed are Thomas Partey and Gabriel Magalhaes, and Mohammed Elneny. A slight tap on the back for Untold since we …
Read More “The top six Arsenal stories doing the rounds today”
