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 In the UK we get most of our football on TV via four channels: the BBC, which is free to air and covers occasional live games but mostly focusses on highlights after the match, ITV which at the moment focuses on international games, Sky and BT Sport – these last two being …
Read More “Where next for football on TV? More of the same, more of the same.”
By Tony Attwood What is in a word? Quite a lot sometimes if it allows us to express something complex in a simple way. The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was invented by a writer on the Boston Gazette in 1812. It was used when the electoral boundaries in Massachusetts were redrawn to help the …
Read More “Reffymandering: the new football word to describe the game in the third decade”
By Bulldog Drummond It may seem hard to recall this as being the case but there was a time when the Arsenal v Leeds games were the biggest grudge matches of the campaign, and the rivalry between the supporters of each club out ranked that of most others. Much of this arose from the 1970/1 …
Read More “Arsenal v Leeds: the history between the clubs and the team news”
by Bulldog Drummond Arsenal’s home form is still very much mid-table but had we not beaten Man U it would have been relegation form – we are that close to the edge at the moment. Here’s the table… home games only. Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Liverpool 11 11 0 …
Read More “Arsenal v Leeds United: home/away form, plus levels of fouls and cards”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal have won the FA Cup more than any other team. They have also appeared in the final of the competition more than any other team except Manchester United, who have 20 final appearances – exactly the same as do Arsenal. Arsenal also have had the manager – Mr Wenger – who …
Read More “Arsenal have won the FA Cup more than any other team – but no one will celebrate”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Having more or less run out of players to tip as being the men about to join Arsenal, the media have reversed their strategy today and are now looking for players that they can claim are about to leave. Unfortunately one of the pre-requisites for being a football journalist these days …
Read More “Arsenal players must be sold as new tactical approach revealed, but no money”
By Tony Attwood It’s quite possible that England has never had a football magazine like The Athletic before. It is serious, it is adult, there is a lot of it, you have to pay for it, and it is online. So you read it on your “device”. Also the articles are long – more like …
Read More “Evaluating The Athletic: does the new magazine have a new vision of Arsenal?”
By Tony Attwood I have often argued that although we all get the idea that football is handled differently in Europe from the way it is worked in England, there is a feeling put out by the alliance of the media, the League and PGMO that this is just because the funny foreigners don’t quite …
Read More “How football is seen so differently beyond the concrete walls of PGMO”
by Sir Hardly Anyone If you are a regular reader you’ll know we regularly carry lists of all the players being tipped to come to Arsenal during each transfer window. Normally the accuracy level of these newspaper and blog predictions is dreadful – about 3% – or to put it the other way around 97% …
Read More “All 16 players that Arsenal are being tipped to sign this month!”
By Tony Attwood There is something of a feeling of elation after the win against Manchester United, as indeed there should be. For after five games without a win and indeed just one win in 16, a win against a traditional “top six” club was very welcome indeed. After all it stopped what seemed an …
Read More “After 21 games this season: it’s not the defence that is the key problem.”
Sir Hardly Anyone And so it seems that with no one noticing much, the window is actually open. So who are we buying. 1: Firmino Talksport are so excited they seem to think that he has actually signed. Or at least in their headline they ask “Has Firmino signed?’ In fact it is a typical …
Read More “The transfer window – the 12 players who we are going to sign”
by Tony Attwood It started on 19 December when Nitram’s article on this site noted that “Three sources suggested in the post-match comments after the Man C game that Arsenal could learn a lot from how the opposition approached the game with their approach to fouling.” “We might perhaps remember,” Nitram continued, Man C staff, …
Read More “Why is the issue of the number of fouls that lead to a card, being kept secret?”
By Tony Attwood This article continues from the articles two days ago relating to how many cards each team gets. This table below shows the number of cards per game involving different clubs. The club with the most cards per game is Arsenal with 4.90 cards on average. The lowest is Manchester City with 2.40 …
Read More “Are referees biased? Further strangely suggestive figures….”
By Bulldog Drummond Looking at the last 10 games between Arsenal and Manchester United we find Arsenal have won three and Manchester United have won four. And indeed it is possible to see something rather positive here in that in the last three league games we have had two draws and a win. Date Game …
Read More “Arsenal v Man U injuries, the projected team and yellow cards per foul”
By Bulldog Drummond Man U’s away form puts them at number 8 in the away league with three wins, three draws, and four defeats. Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Liverpool 9 8 1 0 20 5 15 25 2 Chelsea 10 7 0 3 24 18 6 21 3 …
Read More “Arsenal v Man U: how the referees have been treating each club this season”
Data and analyses from Andrew, and from Footballcharts.co.uk Commentary from Tony We have been discovering huge variations in the number of fouls per card given by referees and how these might be explained by the severity of the fouls, or the leniency or otherwise of the referee. But also there is another possibility here – …
Read More “Refs and yellow cards: is each club treated the same? Definitely not.”
This article follows from “If Premier League matches were fixed, how would we know?” Data and analyses from Andrew, and from Footballcharts.co.uk Commentary from Tony In the last article we saw that huge variations exist in the number of fouls it takes in games to get a card. But of course such figures as …
Read More “How can we know that strange “fouls per card” figures don’t come by chance?”
Data and analyses from Andrew, and from Footballcharts.co.uk Commentary from Tony. This is part one of a three part series on data that suggests match fixing might be happening in the Premier League, which is being published through the course of today. I started by asking myself a simple question: if something dubious was …
Read More “If Premier League matches are fixed, how would we know?”
By Tony Attwood A little while ago I reported on how much of Europe was discussing the admission by Uefa that it was unable to cope with match fixing and needed to engage outside help. The story was in many European papers but not in the UK. Indeed I wasn’t able to find any UK …
Read More “The Top 50 Clubs in the World League. But we don’t talk about it in England.”
By Tony Attwood Jonathan Liew is a journalist who I must admit, used to annoy me a lot when he worked for the Telegraph, for he appeared to have a brief of knocking Arsenal on a fairly regular basis. Then I think he worked on the Independent. Now he is back big time on the …
By Tony Attwood I don’t do many match reports these days; I’m at the games to watch and support my team, be with my mates and hopefully have a jolly time, and I’m certainly not making notes on how it goes. Indeed I often don’t remember the match accurately, as for me the emotion gets …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: structural faults extend beyond the South Bridge”
By Bulldog Drummond In theory this should be a game of goals since we have two of the top three scorers in the Premier League on view. Rank Player Club Goals 1. Jamie Vardy Leicester City 17 2. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang Arsenal 12 3. Tammy Abraham Chelsea 11 Also we can be helped by the fact …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: the teams, the promise of goals and what happened in history”
By Bulldog Drummond The last ten games against Chelsea include a Cup Final, the Community Shield, two league cup games and the Europa League Final Date Game Res Score Competition 04 Feb 2017 Chelsea v Arsenal L 3-1 Premier League 27 May 2017 Arsenal v Chelsea W 2-1 FA Cup 06 Aug 2017 Arsenal v …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea the recent games and injuries and our drop towards relegation”
By Bulldog Drummond It is indeed a long old time since Arsenal were below being even a mid-table club in terms of home form but that is certainly what the table shows now as we lurk below Newcastle, Burnley, Palace, Wolverhampton, Sheffield Utd and even Aston Villa. Yep, two promoted teams are doing better at …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: two teams with awful recent records.”
By Tony Attwood I have recently run a couple of pieces expressing my dislike of AFTV (see for example here), and although many readers have agreed with my view, as is always to be expected some disagree. Normally I’d leave things at that and carry on with Untold’s message of supporting the team and the …
Read More “Freedom of speech vs the need to support the team. AFTV in perspective”
