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 Sir Hardly Anyone The idea of many bloggers and journalists is that there is no real planning going on by Arsenal when it comes to transfers. All this business about having thousands of hours of video recordings which are analysed by computers and then people to find exactly the right player – that all …
Read More “Number of players tipped to be coming to Arsenal reaches 100! The full list.”
By Tony Attwood To summarise where we have got to… five years ago several clubs began finally to realise that there were two factors in each football match that they had not been taking into account in the past, but which if taken into account, could give them the edge. One was which referee they …
Read More “How Arsenal’s 40% decline in tackling over the past five years has sparked the revival”
By Tony Attwood In my reviews of this last season, I have made much of the fact that Arsenal cut their yellow card rate by almost half compared with the previous season, while cutting their tackling rate considerably. But I wanted to go further and see how Arsenal’s figures compared both to Arsenal’s past record …
Read More “How Arsenal learned from PGMO and so climbed the table after Christmas”
By Tony Attwood It was 31 December 2018 that we published Andrew Crawshaw’s groundbreaking article “How four clubs commit fouls with impunity, while others constantly get punished” Since then we’ve been looking constantly at the issue of fouls and the way referees treat Arsenal, and so it was probably inevitable that we’d be the people …
Read More “Shocking new referee statistics suggest outright bias against Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood “Arsenal have grand ambitions to strengthen Mikel Arteta’s squad this summer and technical director Edu is hoping to wrap up several new signings before the 2021/22 season begins.” And so Football.London are telling us that Arsenal have signalled their interest in signing Sassuolo midfielder Manuel Locatelli by tabling their first “official bid” …
Read More “Arsenal: from escaping the disaster through exciting plans”
by Tony Attwood I have often argued that talk of our needing a new defence is ludicrous as we had the third best defence in the league last season. So let’s look at the attack. This table is ordered by goals scored (marked in bold) and here we can see Arsenal were only three …
By Sir Hardly Anyone The completed transfers are thought to be those of Nuno Tavares (pictured left) and Albert Sambi Lokonga. More on those below, but first the question of slowness for slowness is the accusation every transfer window, we go slow, dither about, argue over terms, don’t buy when we could, and then lose …
Read More “Arsenal’s first two transfers appear to be complete. But are we being slow?”
by Sir Hardly Anyone You’ll have perhaps seen our last list of 91 transfers already “announced” by the media and in just a few days we’ve found more so here we are at 99 players – or at least we thought we did but an eagle eyed reader corrected us so we have had to …
Read More “The 99 players the media has said Arsenal are considering signing this summer”
By Tony Attwood To almost all the other bloggers and the journalists who cover football, the answer to the question about what Arsenal have to do to get into the top four is blindingly obvious: get rid of at least half the team and buy better. Indeed with this in mind The Athletic have “revealed” …
Read More “New facts reveal how Arsenal will become a top four club again”
by Sir Hardly Anyone So the craziness goes on – with 99 players now tipped to be in negotiation to come to Arsenal, and the first signing tipped for today, 29 June. “Mikel Arteta’s side needs some fresh faces after a poor season that saw them miss out on a European spot. The Spaniard is now …
Read More “First Arsenal signing tipped for today – but who will it be?”
by Jabin Thearm As entry to and from various countries around the world becomes more and more problematic, and the numbers of infections in the UK rise once more (daily case up 5592 from last week) it is good to know that Uefa are doing their bit by demanding that all their free-loaders and hangers …
Read More “Here comes the Uefa Variant (and it’s not a player)”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is the story every summer. Arsenal are in for around 120 players but only manage to buy five or six. And of those only half turn out to be any good. Below you will find the actual numbers of purchases (including free transfers but excluding loan arrangements and players moving …
By Tony Attwood If you ever see a film of Mr Arteta while at Manchester City you’ll see him sitting still, rarely reacting to the play but instead making notes. Of course I have never had access to those notes, but I think that by looking at the past four seasons we can work …
Read More “Exactly how did Arteta turn Arsenal around after Christmas last year?”
By Iver Pound-Note Caughtoffside recently wrote, “Arsenal have had so many problems over the years when it comes to contracts and extensions: The main issue has been handing out huge long-term deals to those who aren’t worth it while the contracts of their stars have been allowed to run into the final year, so there …
Read More “Kroenkes don’t spend enough on Arsenal: the evidence”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Of course it is not surprising that the media are inventing Arsenal transfer stories right, left and centre. They cost nothing and with over 115,000 professional players in the world to choose from there’s still plenty more to name. And the back is, as Caughtoffside said, “Arsenal have had so many …
Read More “With 20% of the transfer window gone, 91 players tipped to join Arsenal”
By Sir Hardly Anyone “Ben White to Arsenal transfer claims dashed as well-placed source reveals cold, hard truth” That uncomfortable headline came from Team Talk. And it was uncomfortable because a lot of “sources” have been telling us the opposite. As with the report from Team Talk (yep the very same) that White was already …
By Tony Attwood As we know, last season, with no crowds present for most games, the traditional balance between home and away wins was upset. Only 38% of games ended as home wins while 40% were away wins and 22% were draws. The average across the Premier League years before this past season was 46% …
Read More “Will home advantage (and referee bias) return with the crowds next season?”
by Chips Dinero There’s a very curious thing in the papers at the moment. Journalists (and their coat-tail bloggers) are calling for Arsenal to buy more and more players. But at the same time they are telling us that so many of the players Arsenal have bought in the past have lost value because the …
Read More “How much is Arsenal’s first team worth? The full data.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone “Bukayo Saka could be set for a shock Arsenal exit this summer as the Gunners frantically look to raise transfer funds. Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta will be forced to consider selling the academy graduate if the club fail to qualify for next season’s edition of the Champions League.” Now that story …
By Tony Attwood We’ve been getting bits and pieces of the pre-season fixture list although no one really seems that minded to put the whole thing together – largely because it emphasises just how little break quite a few players will get. Nor indeed do the football authorities want to spell out just how much …
Read More “Arsenal’s full six match pre-season fixture list revealed”
by Tony Attwood You’ll perhaps know that the central theme on this blog this summer is that Arsenal underwent a revolution last season, dramatically changing the style of play of the team, and that as a result the last two thirds of the season saw a dramatic improvement in form. The argument has been …
Read More “Bellerin reveals how the revolution at Arsenal came about”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. 87 players tipped to sign, Including seven names that have appeared for the first time this week. But here’s a thought. Supposing all clubs deliberately put out false stories about who they are going to buy, to protect discussions with the real purchases that are actually going on. This would fit …
Read More “87 players already tipped to be joining Arsenal. 427 to go.”
By Tony Attwood We are receiving more and more messages saying that the notion that the latter part of our season was not good, because we had an easy run-in at the end of the season. I’ve answered this several times but I thought it might be easier to stop the discussion by publishing the …
Read More “Arsenal only did well after Xmas because the fixtures were much easier”
By Tony Attwood By and large it is agreed that the European Super League was a terrible mistake, but it’s all resolved now, the clubs have paid their fines to Uefa for breach of rules and some fans are demanding seats on the boards. Except… in football nothing is ever quite what it might seem. …
Read More “The European Super League II; how it is being built, and by whom”
By Tony Attwood All summers are weird, in that journalists and bloggers have the job of writing their columns, but without any actual football to write about and so mostly resort to making stuff up. But this one is turning out to be particularly odd, because this summer there are so many big stories …
Read More “The 10 things they don’t want us to think about, concerning Arsenal”
