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 After the shock of the closure of the Premier League the bloggettas and newspaper websites went silent for a day. But only a day. Now they are acting as if nothing is happening and are back with stories of the players that Arsenal will buy for next season. Which means it …
Read More “The players Arsenal will buy immediately the corona virus crisis is over”
By Tony Attwood In the last set of figures presented via annual accounts, the 20 clubs in the Premier League were shown to have a turnover of £4.827 bn. Which is quite a lot of money. Their wages bill was just over half that. 58% to be (more or less) exact. Now obviously the virus …
Read More “Premier League: No one seems to have planned for anything to go wrong.”
By Tony Attwood Next season is due to start on Saturday 8 August. And according to the standard contracts operated by the Premier League and by the English Football League, players are entitled to “five weeks paid holiday to be taken at a time or times determined by the club – subject to the club’s …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Quite clearly the Premier League is in a state of flux, and with Arsenal’s manager having the virus, and players out of action now for a couple of weeks, even if the season continues Arsenal are going to be behind in completing the fixtures. But it turns out, that is only …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal locked down, Arsenal fans locked out, government and horse racing says “carry on, carry on!” See also… What do the terms and conditions of my season ticket say about coronavirus? Everywhere shuts down, except England. No one knows what to do except President Trump who knows everything because he’s clever. Or …
Read More “Arsenal in lockdown, football not in lockdown – horse racing says “tally ho!””
by Tony Attwood Here are three things that probably won’t surprise you in the slightest. First, I’ve never read the terms and conditions relating to my Arsenal season ticket. Second, from what I know generally, terms and conditions are not actually written in my favour. Third, there is no mention of pandemics in the Arsenal …
Read More “What do the terms and conditions of my season ticket say about coronavirus?”
by Sir Hardly Anyone The central theme of the football journalist is simple to spot: he (or occasionally she) knows. The correspondent can identify the major issues, and can talk about them knowingly. He knows a non-issue when it slaps him around the face like a wet kipper, and he doesn’t mention it. Because of …
Read More “The campaign against expertise: how the media is manipulating football to its own ends”
by Sir Hardly Anyone That headline is certainly implied via an article in The Athletic recently which reflected on the Atletico Madrid 1-0 defeat of Liverpool last month. Pesky foreigners; no telling what they get up to. Can’t trust any of them! And of course there is nothing new in this. England as a footballing …
Read More “Is it only nasty foreign people who cheat at football?”
By Dr Billy the Dog McGraw, senior psychiatrist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. The stories below appeared within a single 3 hours 30 minute spell prior to the Manchester City game being called off. Of course not every blog followed this approach, but there appeared to be a concerted attempt …
Read More “A concerted and shocking attempt to attack Arsenal from every side.”
by Bulldog Drummond A look at the league table shows something very odd going on Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Liverpool 29 27 1 1 66 21 45 82 2 Manchester City 28 18 3 7 68 31 37 57 3 Leicester City 29 16 5 8 58 28 30 …
Read More “Stats suggest that away to Man City, Arsenal might indeed have some hope”
SOURCE: Photo //CC BY 3.0 Richard Wright in more comfortable surroundings back at Portman Road It’s the year 2000. The millennium bug was merely a myth and Ipswich Town were ploughing their way back to the Premier League via the playoffs at Wembley. A mainstay of the Tractor Boys’ success was homegrown keeper, Richard …
By Bulldog Drummond Yes, extraordinary though it is and impossible though it must seem Arsenal have gone through the whole of December, January and February (which by my reckoning makes three months) without being defeated away from home. And they can add to that one away game in March as well. Date Game Res Score …
Read More “11 away games undefeated. What has got into Arsenal and can we have some more?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. A little while back, for reasons that will not become clear at this point, the Sun, an alleged “newspaper” of a fanatical right-wing persuasion, ran the rather bonkers headline “Gun-fusing”. Beyond that they had another headline reading Why are Arsenal nicknamed the Gunners? And they answered that with by saying, “The name …
Read More “When one simple football question about Arsenal fooled the Sun completely”
by Tony Attwood Yesterday we revealed how different the refereeing structure is within the Premier League from other major European Leagues. Specifically, with the way that certain highly influential referees are given many many more games than their colleagues, in the Premier League. This does not happen elsewhere, where all referees are kept on roughly …
Read More “The mysterious body that secretly runs Football in England”
By Tony Attwood This article continues from the findings in the previous piece: Why do Liverpool keep getting the same referees? Here is a simple chart showing refereeing statistics from the five major football leagues in Europe Country Teams in league Referees used Max game per ref England 20 21 25 Germany 18 25 …
Read More “Is Premier League refereeing very different from other major European leagues? YES!!!”
By Bulldog Drummond Physioroom has the injury list as below. Soares is now fit it seems, but needs to return to full training this coming week before being ready to play. Player Reason Detail Potential Return Calum Chambers Knee Injury Ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament of his left knee. August Sead Kolasinac Shoulder Injury Significant …
Read More “Arsenal v West Ham. The injuries and the team as predicted by the experts!”
By Sir Hardly Anyone I love it when the English media ignore a big story in Europe. Of course sometimes it is because the journalist assigned to the case spent too long drinking in the Toppled Bollard public house the night before. Sometimes it is because they think “English readers won’t be interested in this …
Read More “When the English media ignore a big story like this, you know something is up”
By Bulldog Drummond Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look The league table shows just how urgently more points are required. With Manchester City banned for Europe (pending an appeal), the 5th placed club is likely to qualify for the Champions League, meaning the teams …
Read More “Arsenal v WHAM and a look back to the last time we won fewer games in a season”
Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look By Tony Attwood Here’s a couple of Arsenal facts. Arsenal made a loss in its last set of reported accounts, and contrary to stories that will not stop doing the rounds, there is no hard evidence that it was …
Read More “Booing players is not the solution, nor is spending more and more”
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you may recall that for the past several years I’ve been banging away about the fact that there was not something fundamentally wrong with the Arsenal team in terms of its overall performance, but rather there was something very wrong with the way we were playing …
Read More “Arsenal’s new strategy emerges but the club faces huge difficulties from without.”
Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look by Tony Attwood A petition signed by over three-quarters of a million people which calls for curbs on the British media has been handed into the government. And while the motivation behind the petition has nothing to do …
Read More “The media should be “held accountable for the way they harass and vilify people”.”
by Tony Attwood About three and a half years ago Mikel Arteta, when assistant to Pep Guardiola was asked by a journalist if he felt anything needed to be changed in English football. Now the standard answer to this question is “no”, with the foreign interviewee replying that the Premier League is the strongest league …
Read More “Football gone wrong, and how the clubs could act if they wanted to”
By Tony Attwood “Arsenal are now one win from Wembley and two wins from, errrm, Wembley. They can start to smell success in a competition that has lit up their otherwise barren last decade and a half …” That bit of stupidity comes from the Guardian in relation to last night but it wasn’t the …
Untold Videos Our videos explore some of these issues in depth – do take a look By Bulldog Drummond In the 1920s and 1930s Portsmouth had a strong 1st Division team, and they did get a few victories over Arsenal, meaning that the head to head results look rather better for Portsmouth than one …
By Bulldog Drummond Portsmouth are a League One (ie third tier) team, chasing promotion. In this League, the top two are automatically promoted; next four compete enter into the playoffs (two semi-finals and a final), with the winner gaining the third promotion spot. Here’s the League One table at present. Team P W D L …
Read More “Portsmouth v Arsenal: how Portsmouth have been doing of late.”
