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 By and large the journalists agree, Arsenal need five or six new players this summer. As for example with Football.London saying, “Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta is understood to want to strengthen his squad with five new signings this summer.” And what they don’t want you to ask is “in what way …
Read More “We brought in 7 players last season and sank to 8th. So why buy another 6??”
By Tony Attwood Allowing Arsenal fans to have shares in the club, or perhaps giving a supporters’ group a golden share, is one of the key demands of some fans. Some also demand a seat on the board of the club to represent fans. Of course this is nothing new for Arsenal – because the …
Read More “Should Arsenal’s owners give out shares to the club’s fans?”
Each summer journalists and bloggers report over 100 players that Arsenal are planning to buy – and that number excludes players who the bloggers and journalists suggest Arsenal ought to buy. Usually only about three or four of these rumours turn out to be true. Also, usually, these truthful rumours normally only emerge a few …
Read More “The 58 players tipped to join Arsenal so far this summer”
By Tony Attwood Still puzzling over the anomalies of last season I’ve had a quick peek at the figures of Leicester, comparing them with Arsenal. And something rather interesting has cropped up. Looked at in the most obvious way, Leicester outdid Arsenal last season. Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts 5 …
Read More “How different clubs use the rules in different ways, with different results”
By Tony Attwood Over the last ten years Arsenal have won the FA Cup four times, and had a runners up places in the league, the league cup and the Europa. And that’s it: four trophies and three second places. F A Pts Pos FAC LgC Europe Eur 2011–12 74 49 70 3rd R5 QF …
Read More “How Arsenal resolved their problems while Tottenham carried on as before”
By Tony Attwood Seven teams have played in the Premier League in every season since it was founded: Arsenal, Chelsea, Everton, Liverpool, Manchester United, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur. Five of those clubs have won the Premier League at least once – the odd men out of course being Tottenham Hots and Everton. But although …
Read More “Prem League refs desire to wave yellow cards has been reduced by VAR”
By Tony Attwood In the days of Mr Wenger, Arsenal was regularly mauled in the press because of the number of players the club had out injured. Arsenal was rarely at the top of the injury league (except when one “outlet” managed to count some players twice) but the club was in the upper reaches. …
Read More “How Arsenal’s injuries were reduced to one third of the level of Liverpool injuries”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The journalistic and blogging world has been praising Aston Villa for getting Buendia as being exactly the man they wanted. At the same time Arsenal are being criticised for not trying hard enough. Buendia is a winger who scored 15 goals last season for Norwich in the championship. Now Norwich are …
Read More “Were Villa really bright and Arsenal really stupid about signing Buendia?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone “Aston Villa deal Arsenal huge blow as they close in on club record signing of Emiliano Buendia after agreeing £40m deal with Norwich… as midfielder has medical in Argentina after agreeing personal terms.” So sayeth the Daily Mail, and of course they have to say that because all through the last …
Read More “All 48 players tipped to be coming to Arsenal and 22 tipped to be going.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone If you have been here before you’ll probably have seen that we’ve spent ages researching and explaining the incredible tactical turnaround that Mr Arteta created last season at the club, which resulted in very poor results in the first third of the season as the change was implemented, and stunning results …
Read More “48 players tipped to join Arsenal? The media suddenly changes its mind!”
By Tony Attwood The Daily Telegraph is reporting this morning that Manchester United have announced that they will allow fans to buy shares in the club. Shares that will have full voting rights. Which I am sure will make some Manchester United fans claim a victory and some Arsenal fans who support the Arsenal Supporters …
Read More “Man U in meaningless share sale; Tottenham jogging along with the debts”
By Tony Attwood The differences between Mr Wenger and Mr Arteta seem so obvious: Mr Wenger was a player of modest proportions who had had significant experience and success as a manager before coming to Arsenal. For Mr Arteta there was success as a player in Scotland and England. But people forget, Arsene Wenger knew …
Read More “Wenger and Arteta: two revolutionaries each under ceaseless attack”
by Tony Attwood Speaking generally, there are two ways to express an opinion on a football club. One is by providing lots of facts and comparing how the club is doing with other clubs. That’s the traditional method. The other is the Trump method, which is simply to assert something and then just treats it …
Read More “How the English media followed Trump as a way of attacking Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood More details are being added to Arsenal’s summer, and the summer break looks shorter than ever before. Players involved in the Euros should be back in training by the time the season starts, but whether they will be fit and ready to play is a different matter. Worse we could lose some …
Read More “Here comes insanity: Arsenal likely to lose players galore at start of season”
By Bulldog Drummond They don’t come much better than that. Edu takes his shirt off. With American owners it is not too surprising that our pre-season tour for 2021/22 will start in the USA. In this case in Orlando, where we shall be playing a game against Inter Milan and then one of either Everton …
Read More “Season starts next month with a game against Inter. This video brings back memories!!!”
By Tony Attwood As we have seen of late Arsenal have been working on a stunningly revolutionary approach to football in the past 18 months. One that involves cutting our yellow card haul in half, creating what throughout the whole of last season (not just the last two thirds) was the third best defence in …
Read More “The enemies of Arsenal, and how they are attempting to bring about our fall”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Ask most people what they thought of maths at school and they will tell you it was boring. Or they hated it. Of course some quite liked it, but these people generally keep quiet about that, because they get to be called nerds and are told (by people who have no …
By Tony Attwood One of my arguments about blogs and newspapers, not to mention radio and TV stations, is that the commentators seize on an idea and run with it. So the idea grows that Arsenal have a rubbish goalkeeper and need to replace him. Also Arsenal “needs to trim a hefty wage bill.” That’s …
By Sir Hardly Anyone If this were a traditional war, this would be the moment when a significant amount of hunkering down into bunkers would be taking place. And I say that because although no one is shooting at anyone else (at least not as far as I know) there is not the slightest sign …
Read More “A bumper summer for Arsenal: 39 players arriving, 18 going.”
By Tony Attwood Last season is one that investigators into the oddities of football will probably dwell on for a long time, because it gave us a unique insight into the influence of the crowd upon referees. Of course it’s not something PGMO encourage their pals in the media to talk about, but… I wondered …
Read More “Last season revealed significant referee home bias, but what about penalties??”
By Tony Attwood As we have been noting the media absolutely will not touch the story concerning Arsenal’s dramatic tactical switch which reduced the level of tackling by the club last season and so reduced the yellow card level for the season by 45%. To achieve this Arsenal were engaged in a major change in …
Read More “Media move on to regular insults against Arsenal to hide the real data”
By Tony Attwood The last post here was Arsenal’s yellow cards dropped by 45% last season. How? Why? And how did it help? That was the second statistical bombshell of last season – the first being that a club like Arsenal could slip down to 15th in the league by Christmas and be looking like …
Read More “How Arsenal used research into ref behaviour to rise up the league”
By Tony Attwood In 2020/21 Arsenal reduced their yellow card tally for the season by almost half compared with the season before, cutting the number of cards received from 86 down to 47. It was an extraordinary achievement by Mr Arteta, and was an approach that clearly took a while for the players to …
Read More “Arsenal’s yellow cards dropped by 45% last season. How? Why? And how did it help?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone One of the prime reasons for the media wanting to tell us that Arsenal is in crisis, and that the fact that the last two thirds of the season was not a brilliant period for the club, is because it gives them plenty to write about. We’ve noted here how some …
Read More “29 players are looking to sign for Arsenal and 18 are tipped to leave this summer”
By Tony Attwood In a recent commentary on the article The anti-Arsenal conspiracy. Here’s the evidence. Kingsmuf said… “Surely it’s where Arsenal are at the end of the season that’s important. There’s no trophy for being good for two thirds of the season. One thing is certain, 8th isn’t good enough for Arsenal. Also, we’re …
Read More “Is development important or is the end of the season all that matters?”
