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 There was a factor highlighted through last night’s match that none of the media seems to have picked up on. Arsenal displayed the latest range of incredibly talented young players who have been escalated from the under 18s to the under 23s and now into the first team. And yet at the …
Read More “How Arsenal really are doing something right after all.”
By Bulldog Drummond With the attempts to undermine the very fabric of Arsenal continuing minute by minute across the blogs and newspaper websites there must be a little relief for the players who have been selected in the squad for the opening Europa game against Eintracht Frankfurt. Of course players become immune to some degree …
Read More “Europa starts again: can Arsenal overcome the continuing media assault?”
By Tony Attwood Virtually every Arsenal headline is currently ultra-negative, so it is hard to pick out one that is wilder, whackier and sillier than the rest at the moment, but I particularly liked “Arsenal’s Current Defending Reminds Me Of The Early 1960s” from The Online Gooner for taking us into different territory. Being of …
Read More “The wildest and funniest headline, and why fans don’t focus on those really to blame”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Right let’s start with what you should not do – if you want Arsenal to do better on the pitch and rise up the table. You should not attack the players, because it never works in terms of making them better. If you feel this does work please do …
Read More “Arsenal are one point away from third. So what can we do?”
By Tony Attwood The hysteria is now off the scale and common sense debate, logical debate and reasoned argument has ended. (Although come to think of it actually it ended in the summer with the stuff about Arsenal only having a budget of £40m because some “accountant” analysed the books and said so). So, I …
Read More “So just how badly are Arsenal really doing, and what should we do now?”
by Tony Attwood To discover how much information the current league table gives us as to how the season will work out ultimately, I’ve taken a look at how the table has looked after five games in the last few seasons, in each case going down as far as need be to incorporate all of …
Read More “Why winning the first five games of the season is usually bad news”
By Tony Attwood I didn’t have to look up the top stories in the aftermath of the draw with Watford to know what they would be, but I did anyway. And I was pretty much right. ‘Sack Emery’ and ‘sell these’ – These Arsenal fans react to ‘disgraceful’ performance vs Watford (CaughtOffside) ‘Garbage’, ‘Unreal’: Some …
Read More “And so the anger starts again, but will negative comments ever do any good?”
By Bulldog Drummond What’s our prediction? The Daily Telegraph predicts a 1-1 draw, as does the BBC. The Telegraph’s explanation is that “Given the strength of Watford’s squad – especially in a midfield that contains Roberto Pereyra, Abdoulaye Doucoure and Etienne Capoue – they should be doing better than they are.” Certainly Watford have been …
Read More “Watford v Arsenal. Pre match thoughts and the predicted teams”
By Bulldog Drummond The last in our little series of seeing just how much information we can get out of a blog or newspaper commentary with the reviews selected from the most popular pieces about Arsenal found on the internet. First, the Daily Cannon with “Unai Emery gives baffling Nicolas Pepe update” Rankings out of …
Read More “The nonsense ratings: what the bloggers are saying ahead of Watford v Arsenal”
By Bulldog Drummond Watford have lost both their home games so far, while Arsenal have won one and lost one of their away games. A win, and with other results going our way, would take us up to third. Leicester are away to Manchester United and Palace are away to Tottenham, so defeats in both …
Read More “Watford v Arsenal: how have Watford been doing; how will Arsenal respond”
By Bulldog Drummond What we are doing in this little series is looking at various blog and newspaper commentaries and previews and through using four simple focal points trying to evaluate if any of them actually say anything meaningful or helpful at all. In the first review of three previews it was difficult to find …
Read More “What they are saying about Watford v Arsenal. Rating the journalists”
By Bulldog Drummond In this little piece we look at a few current headlines concerning Watford v Arsenal and consider if they are actually worth publishing or merely a load of blather. In each case we consider the writing against four fundamental criteria: the headline, importance, discovery of new facts, and truthfulness. 1: What Unai …
Read More “Watford v Arsenal: How helpful and accurate are these journalists’ commentaries?”
Looking behind the ceaseless avalanche of anti-Arsenal propaganda. By Tony Attwood It is hardly a novelty to note that the concepts of “truth,” “logical analysis,” “evidence” and even “checking facts before giving opinions,” are not exactly prevalent in football journalism, be it on blogs or in newspapers and their websites, in podcasts, or on radio …
Read More “The art of telling untruths when talking about Arsenal”
By Bulldog Drummond There was a very interesting piece this week by Jason Burt, the Chief Football Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on the topic of Watford and their new manager Quique Sánchez Flores in which it is said that “Flores was the best defensive coach they had employed and one who could organise them …
Read More “Watford v Arsenal: defence v attack and the injuries”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road and chief consultant to the Moscow Metro system. It really isn’t that hard to see. In fact most of them do see it. It is just that they are so keen on knocking Arsenal minute after minute, …
Read More “The four incredibly simple factors all the pundits are missing this season”
By Tony Attwood The headline on the Daily Mirror’s website was worrying in the extreme: Former Arsenal striker convicted of stalking ex-girlfriend and mother of his son Stalking is a frightening and generally terrifying experience, and it is quite right that any man who stalks a woman – or worse stalks an ex, her mother …
Read More “The most dire anti-Arsenal football journalism we’ve seen”
By Tony Attwood If you have been with us for a while you will maybe remember that during the summer we ran a series celebrating Arsenal’s 100 years in the top division of English football – something no other club has come anywhere close to achieving. Obviously in doing this I recognised that many anti-Arsenal …
Read More “History shows Arsenal are on course for a top four finish”
By Sir Hardly Anyone If you are a regular habitué of these parts you will know that in June each year we start recording all the players who are mentioned in the media as being about to be transferred to Arsenal. The summer total always ends up as being between 90 and 115 players. However …
Read More “Web site reveals Arsenal’s next summer’s transfer target 10 months early!”
Get to know your teams Before placing a bet, you need to know your team inside out. Their strengths and weaknesses play a very important role in their evaluation. You should be able to learn their home and away records. You also need to pay attention to each individual player for getting to know …
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, chief psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. Sometimes the mind wanders a little and I find myself in a land of “what if”; a land of beautiful dreams and enchanted forests, a land of… well another land. A land in which following an undercover …
Read More “Far beyond the real world, the pundits profess the awfulness of Arsenal”
by Bulldog Drummond The new season of the Women’s Super League opens today with champions Arsenal playing West Ham. The game is live on BT Sport. Last season’s table was a joy to behold not just because we were at the top with a seven point margin over the megamoney Man City, but also because …
By Sir Hardly Anyone We have all got so used to the stories that knock Arsenal at every turn that it is rather hard to get adjusted to a sudden switch to the positive stories. In the past it has not just been that we have bought the wrong players, but also that talented youngsters …
Read More “What’s all this? Positive Arsenal stories? Yes – a whole stream of them at once!!!”
Former Player Alex Scott Takes to the Dance Floor in Strictly It’s that time of year again, when the days get shorter, the weather gets colder, and Michael Bublé is played on repeat in every shop in the country. It’s also the time of year when our TV schedules are filled with reality TV contests like …
Read More “Former Player Alex Scott Takes to the Dance Floor in Strictly”
by Tony Attwood Just as the Premier League has its quaint regulations concerning players in PL matches, with the list of 25, the home grown list, and quite probably a few other quaint lists as well, so Uefa has its own little regulations that we have to go through each year. What we haven’t yet …
Read More “Arsenal’s Europa list and the curious case of the Salisbury goalkeeper”
By Tony Attwood There were some huge variations in the amount of money being lashed out this summer – and indeed in the amount of money being received by clubs for players sold. Each year different sources quote different sums of money being spent, and so as per previous years I have limited myself to …
Read More “Who spent the most money this summer and has it done them any good?”
