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 This story broke in the Daily Telegraph and then was re-run by Football.London. Both “outlets” claim the plan has been proposed by Manchester United and Liverpool FC. In essence it says that 1: The Premier League should have fewer clubs The Premier League could be reduced to 18 teams from the current …
Read More “Man U & Liverpool come up with new plan to “rescue football””
by Tony Attwood What to do with football? The youngsters playing in under 14s leagues and the like are still struggling to find decent pitches to play on, largely due to FA mismanagement of Sport England funds. The championship clubs are either keeping their books balanced and struggling to keep up, or are spending far …
Read More “Football is teetering on the brink, but no one will admit it’s their fault”
By Tony Attwood The Swiss prosecution service has called for prison sentences against the president of beIN and the ex-number 2 of Fifa, Jérôme Valcke. You might recall that Untold, alone among UK publishers has been following these various stories, while the UK media utterly refuses to acknowledge that these cases are even happening. The …
Read More “Swiss prosecutors demand prison for beIN & PSG president and ex-Fifa No 2.”
By Tony Attwood There is a chance that you might have heard of IFAB (the international football association board) of late – having never heard of them before. A highly secretive body that changes the laws of football when it wants to… As such they are the people who have changed the handball rule, in …
Read More “IFAB vs PGMO vs Fifa… who is the most secret (and damaging) of them all?”
By Tony Attwood It has been quite clear for some time that the Athletic has something against Arsenal. But now it is reaching such heights it is getting a bit silly. For under the headline, “How do you feel about clubs laying off staff then spending big on players?” we find written… “Consider, for a moment, …
Read More “The endless bashing of Arsenal: Dial Square FC and farewell Gunnersaurus,”
By Tony Attwood It is a long time since Arsenal were fourth (or better) after four games. In fact the last time we had nine points after four games was 2013/14, when we finished the season in 4th. And although that season we were second after four games, we had an identical set of goals …
Read More “Our best start in seven years; our most confusing Europa League ever”
by Tony Attwood You may have noted that I have, several times, made the point that we have too many over-21 foreign players in our squad and we need to drop two of them. The Europa squad has now been announced and Arsenal have dropped Ozil, and Sokratis. Rather amusingly Caughtoffside tells us that Saliba …
Read More “The players who will not play football: and why we are stuck with them”
By Tony Attwood Below is a table of money spent in the last three transfer windows. In the table a figure such as £90m means Arsenal spent £90m in that window overall, taking into account both the money spent, and the money received for players who have been sold. Therefore, rather obviously, a minus number …
Read More “Arsenal have spent more than other top clubs in the last 3 transfer windows”
By Tony Attwood Journalists as we know, live on transfer rumours. Reporting them takes no time or effort, no money needs to be spent (except for the cost of booze in the Toppled Bollard public house where the journalists gather to exchange inventions), and anyone can do it. Make up a rumour and you are …
Read More “Arsenal’s new first choice line up, and what happens next”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Arsenal had a net spend in the window of £67.8m – considerably more than most pundits were saying at the start. Indeed the standard theme (and there are always standard themes because these journo types love to copy each other) was, as the Mirror put it “Arsenal must sell before they …
by Sir Hardly Anyone Today Arsenal, along with all clubs playing in Europe, have to hand over their list of players for the Europa League and Champions League games this season. As ever the list is in two parts. The A list of 25 players who are over 21, of whom a minimum of eight …
Read More “Arsenal about to show who is being dropped as we create the “25””
By Tai Emeka Obasi Whoever is still an Arsenal fan needs commendation. In the modern craze of ‘get rich quick’, being an Arsenal fan has that subconscious assurance that one can be relied upon in areas of patience, diligence and conscientious living. Liverpool fans come close in this regard. From 1996, when I followed …
Read More “Partey: It Feels Great To Continue Being An Arsenal Fan…”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Astonishing? well yes. We need to get rid of two senior players in order just to get down to 25 before we start bringing anyone else in, otherwise we will be left with players we can’t get rid of and will have to pay. Guendouzi has gone, but he is not …
Read More “Arsenal’s astonishing transfer window. 2 players being paid not to play.”
By Tony Attwood Last season Leicester City raced to near the top of the league and for a long time were looking dead certs for at the very least a top four finish, if not a runners’ up spot. And then they fell apart and slipped right back down the table. So, in our normal …
Read More “Tackles, fouls and yellow cards: the PL season so far”
by Tony Attwood In football reporting, every incident becomes a crisis, because every day needs a story. And yesterday we got two, with the defeats of Liverpool and Manchester United. Such things have happened all the way through football history. There are famous tales told of Arsenal losing 7-0 away to Newcastle in 1925 just …
Read More “Yesterday was great fun, but the scores alone don’t tell us much”
by Bulldog Drummond As we started to put this little piece together the story emerged that “Blades agree £23.5m deal for Liverpool striker Brewster”. That is from the BBC. Sheffield United have always been a difficult team for us to beat in the Premier League. We’ve played them eight times, won two, lost two, and …
by Bulldog Drummond The Telegraph seems to have got a clearer picture of things than the Guardian, for speaking of this weekend’s game they say, “The Gunners go into the match at the Emirates on a high after beating Liverpool on penalties in the Carabao Cup on Thursday, whereas the Blades have made an alarming …
Read More “Sheffield United visit Arsenal with an attack that hasn’t scored yet.”
by Tony Attwood Last season we started studying the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards each club received. And we found some extraordinary figures – figures which marked Leicester City out as the real outsiders in this regard, tackling far more than any other club, and yet getting very few yellow cards. And yet …
Read More “Comparative stats for Sheff U, Arsenal and industrial scale rotational fouling”
By Tony Attwood Allow me, if I may, to give an example of what I mean by bias. This comes from Nick Ames speaking of Sheffield United against whom Arsenal play this weekend. “Against Arsenal they will probably be required to go with what they have got, but the same goes for their opponents given …
by Bulldog Drummond Arsenal have been drawn against Rapid Vienna, Molde (not to be confused with Mold which is quite a different place), and Dundalk in the group stage of the Europa League. Here’s a preliminary look at what these clubs have been up to of late. Rapid Vienna have been playing regularly since August …
By Tony Attwood Last night’s match confirmed the turnaround in Arsenal’s fortunes, in the club’s approach, in the desire and willingness of the team not to give up, and the inventiveness of the manager in the way he can re-organise the team and galvanise the players. Between August 2015 and October 2019 our record against …
Read More “Beating Liverpool is far more important than beating Liverpool!”
By Bulldog Drummond Liverpool got away with their fairly blatant intimidation tactics in monday’s game with the two very serious fouls only getting yellows, while ensuring that Arsenal realised that they would likely get punished far more aggressively by the referee if they retaliated with fouls of their own. It is a clever tactic that …
Read More “Liverpool! v Arsenal again. The team, plus we sign an exciting youngster”
By Tony Attwood We have previously run the fact that Arsenal need to sell before the transfer window just to avoid having players on their books who need to be paid, but who cannot play. But I’m going through this again because most of the media is simply ignoring this, and talking over and over …
Read More “Arsenal have to sell two just to get legal; more if we sign anyone else.”
by Tony Attwood A couple of weeks ago Gianni Infantino head of Fifa, a man on trial for corruption in Switzerland, met (not for the first time) with US President Donald Trump. this was when Infantino attended the signing of the agreement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in the White House on …
Read More “Infantino looks sunk; but if he takes down Fifa as well, what replaces it?”
By Tony Attwood These are early days, but then again, early days can bring us a good warning of what is going to happen. Last season we saw Leicester develop – and for half a season get away with – a system of constant tackling without getting yellow cards. Then the system collapsed and their …
Read More “Which club is trying to emulate Leicester tackling game from last season?”
