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 Bulldog Drummond The Guardian is running the headline “Arsenal ready to compromise under Arteta to get result at Liverpool” which contains the thought that “Mikel Arteta has admitted he and Arsenal have to compromise on some of their footballing principles to get results against the Premier League’s bigger clubs.” And yet despite the word …
By Tony Attwood Two stories in the media caught my attention today. One is the reporting of Understat’s xG table which apparently shows that in the 22 league games played under Mr Arteta, Arsenal has gained (the implication is “luckily got”) nine points more than the data would expect. The newspaper didn’t quite go back …
Read More “Arsenal are over achieving, and are due for a fall.”
By Tony Attwood Each year as the transfer window meanders its merry way towards its conclusion I make various ill-advised attempts to work out how we are going to squeeze the players we have and the players we want into the 25 positions that there are available. And each year (it has become something of …
Read More “Arsenal’s 25 players list is over-full – we must lose some before we can buy”
By Sir Hardly Anyone You may be excused if you didn’t know, but Fifa has just held its 70th congress. The Fifa Congress is the supreme legislative body in football but the UK media won’t report on it because… well, its a bit dodgy and because FA pours money into Fifa via its membership fees, …
Read More “Infantino speaks at Fifa’s 70th Congress, but don’t tell the UK media”
By Tony Attwood Chelsea have so far in this transfer window had a net spend of £152.4m according to the Guardian. Supposing Mr Abramovich was suddenly taken out by a Russian mafia agent, and his funding of the club dried up overnight, would the rest of the Premier League feel moved to offer financial support …
Read More “Why Premier League spending should be much more carefully controlled”
by Tony Attwood The 2019/20 Women’s FA Cup quarter-final between Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur will be broadcast live on BBC Two and the BBC iPlayer with a kick off at 17:15 BST on saturday. An early version of this article suggested Friday – a typical slip by me. Sorry. This game should have taken place …
Read More “Watch Arsenal on TV, and there’s no match fee to pay”
By Tony Attwood We have had seven domestic cup ties without defeat. In our last 11 games of last season we won eight, lost one drew two. This season it is four straight wins (five if you include the FL Trophy victory). But let’s leave that one out. We are currently on six straight wins, …
Read More “Athletic: if you a commenting on the law, please look at the law”
Logging on to the website Carabao.live was a lot easier than logging in to Now TV which was a nightmare. Here is the team Leno Holding Luiz Kolasinac, Maitland-Niles, Elneny, Willock, Saka Pepe Nelson Nketiah Subs Runarsson, Bellerin, Saliba, Ceballos, Xhaka, Willian, Lacazette No team information on the actual TV site however, which is …
Read More “Arsenal stroll past Leicester … Watching it for a tenner.”
by Bulldog Drummond Today’s Leicester v Arsenal league cup match will not be televised live in the UK, but you can watch via the carabaocup.live website. The fee to watch on line is £10. Let’s hope their system works better than the utterly appalling NowTV service with its recent fiasco. We couldn’t get a …
Read More “Leicester v Arsenal: the predicted teams and the end of football as we know it”
By Bulldog Drummond As we have mentioned before, Arsenal are suffering a multiplicity of injuries at the moment – only Crystal Palace has more, and this situation has been running since the season started. While some clubs linger on one or two players out, we are consistently near the top of the injury table… Crystal …
Read More “Arsenal injury list makes a mockery of old anti-Wenger jibes”
By Bulldog Drummond Traditionally Premier League clubs don’t put out their first team squad to play in the league cup, as they did in days of yor, so working out what is going to happen in tomorrow’s game is going to be somewhat difficult. There having been no draws in the Premier League thus far, …
By Tony Attwood Looked at so far the season has been a rather jolly affair… Date Match Result Score Competition 29 Aug 2020 Arsenal v Liverpool W 1-1 (5-4) Community Shield 08 Sep 2020 Ipswich Town v Arsenal W 1-2 Football League Trophy 12 Sep 2020 Fulham v Arsenal W 0-3 Premier League 19 Sep …
Read More “Video of the recent game for Arsenal’s youngsters, ahead of the Leicester match”
By Tony Attwood What crisis? How can there be a crisis? Just look at the money being spent, and the transfer window still has two weeks to run (and you know what the last night before the window “slams shut” is like – at least on TV). Currently the net spending (ie the amount spent …
Read More “There is a crisis in football and PL adopts different rules from Europe”
By Tony Attwood The story so far… Self-evidently Untold Arsenal does not have its “man in Switzlerland” with inside knowledge of the multiple issues facing Fifa at the moment. All we do is look at Swiss, German and French newspapers and report (with the help of our European friends) what they are saying. And this …
Read More “Fifa starts to implode, and the strange case of lack of UK interest in events”
By Tony Attwood A UK exclusive for Untold! Back in the old days ex-US Justice Minister Loretta Lynch and the Swiss Federal Prosecutor Michael Lauber worked together to tackle corruption. As Attorney General of the USA, Loretta Lynch was keen on this idea of a united approach to fight the corruption that was obviously endemic …
Read More “Amazing unbelievable development in the Fifa battle; sadly not on UK news”
By Tony Attwood Today the Talk Sport web site says “A week on from their public bust-up at Fulham, Dani Ceballos and Eddie Nketiah combined to earn Arsenal victory over West Ham. Nketiah tapped in a goal late on – from Ceballos’ pass – to seal a 2-1 win for the Gunners at the Emirates …
Read More “It’s tough being a football journalist: what are they to say when Arsenal win?”
The actual team is Leno Bellerin Gabriel Holding Tierney Xhaka Ceballos Saka Willian Lacazette Aubameyang Talk sprout led the way approaching the game with their prediction of Leno Holding Gabriel Tierney Bellerin Elneny Ceballos Maitland Niles Willian Lacazette Aubameyang It is the first prediction from any of the so-called professionals that has actually managed …
Read More “Arsenal v WHAM: the team and who predicted it right…”
By Bulldog Drummond The end of last season saw Arsenal go through what was, by any measure, a very decent run of results in which we scored 21 goals in the last 11 games, those games running up to and including the cup final. We scored in every game except the Aston Villa away match …
By Bulldog Drummond The start of the first campaign under Mr Emery seems such a long time ago. Two defeats in the opening games against Chelsea and Manchester City, and those who had clambered for years for Mr Wenger to be kicked out, still blaming him for the results. Then along came 12 straight wins. …
Read More “At last it is Arsenal who are settled, and today’s visitors who are in a mess”
By Bulldog Drummond In their final match before the lock down West Ham lost away to Arsenal – a result which meant they only won one of their last ten pre-lockdown. Thereafter they won three, two of which were against fellow stragglers in the league, lost three and drew three. Date Game Res Score 20 …
Read More “WHAM BAM how are they doin’? WHU v Arsenal: the prelude”
By Sir Hardly Anyone According to the Daily Mail, home of the truth and purveyors of all things real, “Arsenal agree £1.6m deal with Dijon for goalkeeper Runar Alex Rúnarsson with Iceland international due in London for his medical… but why are they interested in a shot-stopper who has let in 61 goals in just …
Read More “Arsenal reportedly sign utterly useless Wenger-hating goalkeeper”
By Bulldog Drummond Yes this is the world of post-fact football. A world in which facts are just irrelevant, unnecessary and so last-century, because now we have OPINIONS. As all football journalists now openly acknowledge, facts get in the way of the free flow of beautiful prose. Facts are too complicated for football supporters to …
Read More “West Ham Untidy v Arsenal in the world of post-fact football”
by Tony Attwood The huge Fifa trial currently running is important, I believe, because the FA is a member of Fifa, and pays funds into Fifa. The FA gets its money from the government, which gets its money from the tax payers, like me. Mugs like me who live in England and pay their taxes …
Read More “The Fifa court cases continue, more corruption, more scandals and the FA says…”
By Sir Hardly Anyone There is a story in circulation that says that nine players in the BVB Dortmund squad are aged under 21 and all are serious members of the squad. Which is interesting given that while it is written into the German constitution that Bayern Munich win the league each season, BVB Dortmund …
Read More “Should Arsenal be using more youngsters? And Aouar”
by Tony Attwood Last season we looked at the inter-relationship between fouls, tackles and yellow cards in Premier Legaue clubs. Untold did it because, as with so many other topics, this is something that is an absolute no-go land for the media and football commentators. Even after we showed how bizarre and extraordinary the Leicester …
Read More “New figures show a third of all referee decisions were wrong before last season”
