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 season we have been looking at some statistics that seem never to become headline news in the media, but which, when we look at them really give us pause for thought. This is the table we have gradually been building as the key issues have arisen. Exceptional numbers are in bold. …
Read More “How the top clubs foul with impunity – this week’s statistics analysed.”
By Tony Attwood And so we have now had the first suggestion that we should get rid of Mr Arteta and bring in… Brendon Rodgers. That’s the media’s idea of course, I’ve no idea what other Arsenal fans think of it. Not something I’d like to see. But it goes on and on. We got …
Read More “As Arsenal sink lower changing the manager again is not the answer”
By Bulldog Drummond We enter the fray as we have been for much of this season so far, on a mountain of negatives. Dani Ceballos and David Luiz are said to have come to blows – but of course no one knows. Aubameyang spent the night on the floor of an airport ahead of an …
Read More “Leeds v Arsenal: the team selection from across the media.”
By Bulldog Drummond Games between Arsenal and Leeds are shown as being surprisingly balanced in the records: 47 wins to Arsenal, 41 to Leeds United and 32 draws. But these figures hide some interesting features. To begin they don’t include matches between Arsenal and Leeds City – which was pretty much the same club as …
Read More “Leeds v Arsenal: when we were the greatest of rivals and the away win issue”
By Bulldog Drummond Compared with the week before the international nonsense the number of players who are now injured is utterly outrageous. Why the top clubs allow this to continue is completely beyond me. However they do, so here is the top of the injury league as supplied by Physioroom.com Liverpool: 10 Brighton and Hove …
Read More “Internationals inevitably mean injuries and here they are all lining up”
By Tony Attwood Of late I have been trying to get a handle on the very curious statistics that started to emerge in the Premier League last season and which are continuing this season. These in particular include tackles, fouls, yellow cards and penalties (given and received). Much of the discussion has of course centred …
Read More “Arsenal v Leeds: tackles, fouls, penalties, yellows… what to expect”
by Tony Attwood It was Arsene Wenger who once said (and was then severely censured by Uefa for saying it) that international managers are like car thieves. They take your vehicle, use it however they want, in ways that are often completely unsafe, and then hand you back the wreck with orders to have it …
Read More “International managers are like car thieves. And football’s fake news”
By Tony Attwood It is quite amazing the lengths journalists will go to, in order to knock Arsenal. Like running two articles on unsuccessful stadia moves just so they can end with Arsenal’s move to the Emirates. In doing this they place Arsenal alongside Sunderland, Derby, Oxford United, Darlington, Coventry City, MK Dons, Cardiff City, …
Read More “The lengths some journalists will go to, to attack Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood Taking certain referees off the rota is just one of the things we have campaigned about for years in relation to PGMO – the ultra-secretive agency that handles refereeing in the premier league. We’ve also questioned the regional bias of the referee group, the fact that we have far fewer referees in …
Read More “Referee changed after Liverpool demand; even the excuse makes no sense”
By Tony Attwood My little series on FA cock ups and disasters has reached part 8. We have published enough FA stories of this sort to go on for another 15 or 20 articles, but we’re heading towards the resumption of proper football in a couple of days, so I will make this last one …
Read More “How the FA have manipulated the stats in order to try and gain more power”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Leicester are different for two reasons. One is that their statistics suggest they play a tactical game in a completely different way from other clubs. The other is that they are rather neatly changing their tactical game from time to time, depending on whether the referees have tumbled what they are …
Read More “Could Arsenal adopt Leicester’s tactics and follow them up the table?”
This is a series of articles about the Football Association and some of their activities over the years. So far we have had 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 …
Read More “Tracking the fun things the FA have got up to over the years. Part 7.”
by Tony Attwood By and large football journalists don’t criticise each other, and that for one simple reason: most of the time most of them make up what they write. If one criticises another he or she can then be criticised back, simply because everyone is writing about fantasies. The difference between football journalism and …
Read More “When football journalists fall out, there’s something nasty exposed beneath”
By Tony Attwood This is the sixth part of a series of articles reviewing the catastrophe that is the Football Association and the total inability of the UK government to stop funding it with tax payers money Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The …
Read More “The failures of the FA: Part 6 – if we don’t communicate it is your fault”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Journalists and bloggers do have a hard time of it, lacking technical and detailed knowledge but at the same time trying to make a story out of a snippet, in order to draw in readers. Take for example the headline “Edu ‘finds another Martinelli’ for Arsenal after being given work permit …
Read More “A second Martinelli, selling a “flop”, Arsenal’s huge error: the big Gunnerstories”
This is the fifth part of a series of articles reviewing the catastrophe that is the Football Association and the total inability of the UK government to stop funding it with tax payers money Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform …
Read More “The crimes of the FA: failing to deal with Fifa and with discrimination”
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”
