By Tony Attwood There was an interesting article recently by Nick Hornby which looks back at the past season and says, “We used to blame Wenger and the kinds of players he liked, the technically gifted, physically unimposing attacking midfielders who seemed to occupy every position on the pitch. Torreira, Granit Xhaka and Sokratis Papastathopoulos …
By Tony Attwood Every summer for the last few years we have charted the names of players who are touted by the newspapers and radio stations to be coming to Arsenal, and those who are leaving. Each year the total has got to over 100, with on average no more than 3% of the predictions …
By Tony Attwood Looking back, as one does at this time of year, it was interesting to see how quickly the build up of excitement and enthusiasm in the media concerning the Champions League final dissipated. And it wasn’t just a feeling of regret that surrounded the Tottenham v Liverpool match in the media, it …
By Tony Attwood . The last three posts have been talking about corruption in football. Where corruption is taking place on a major scale it ought to be possible to predict who is going to win the league, and have already mentioned in an earlier post that at the start of the 2018/19 season, Untold …
By Tony Attwood So far in this series: Is football fixed? Part 1: The logical reason why we might well think so. Is football fixed? Part II: why we need to have change I had already written the two previous “Football is Fixed” articles that appeared yesterday, when the news came in that the match …
By Tony Attwood This article concludes the discussion on why change is needed in the way football is run in the Premier League. As the Guardian pointed out, when Southampton were beaten 6-1 by Manchester City, the expected goals result suggested a 2-2 draw. And we say, ah well, stuff happens. Or we might …
By Tony Attwood There are two answers to the notion that football is fixed, which journalists and bloggers like to trot out over and over again. The first is that the people who suggest football is fixed are simply loopy – that they go around wearing tin hats, believe that the BBC is the universal …
by Blacksheep I must say, from the start, that I started this past season with low expectations. I thought we’d miss out on the top four (when Tony often said we’d make it). I expected we’d do better in the Europa League than last season because, well, history tends to suggest that a little …
By Tony Attwood In the 15 years since Arsenal’s unbeaten season – an event which has not yet been emulated of course – only four teams have won the Premier League: Manchester City, Manchester United, Chelsea and Leicester City. Noting this I thought it might be worth asking the question, “Does that mean that the …
By Sir Hardly Anyone It seems that a few people took a look at my recent little amble through the backwaters of what is laughingly called football journalism and thought either we were making it up, or that we took these tales seriously. So a quick explanation: each year for the past few years we …
It goes without saying that unless you’re English, you’ll have no clue of the immense passion that is deep-rooted in the sport of football, which has become ingrained in the nation’s culture over generations. In this article, we have listed some of the essential tips that non-native English football attendees need to know before they …
by Tony Attwood As we know, last season the difference between Chelsea in third and Arsenal in fifth was just two points and two goals. So in the simplest of terms we could argue that Arsenal just need a small adjustment to get back into the top four. Team P W D L F A …
By Tony Attwood Prior to the Europa final an article in the Guardian contained the comment, “…it is difficult to overstate just how critical this match is to Arsenal. Returning to the Champions League after a two-year hiatus has been their No 1 aim all season. No one is under any illusion about the perils …
By Bulldog Drummond All told it has been a far from happy build up to the Europa League final, although just as the FA always shrug off problems at Wembley cup finals and carry on doing their own thing, I am sure Uefa haven’t even noticed that fans are not ecstatic about the journey nor …
by Bulldog Drummond This decade has been a good one for Chelsea, with three doubles: 2009–10: League and FA Cup 2011–12: FA Cup and UEFA Champions League 2014–15: League and League Cup In addition they won the League in 2017, the Europa League in 2013, and the FA cup in 2017–18. Whatever we might think …
By Tony Attwood Summer is always the time for a bit of a meander around the subjects we’ve plodded through during the past season, looking for bits we’ve missed and issues that maybe we could take a bit further. And of course it is also a time for taking a deeper look into what other …
By Tony Attwood The notion that a lack of English players in the Premier League is bad for England, bad for football, and quite probably bad for Brexit, is standard fare in terms of what England managers say. And it is noticeable that they never give any evidence of why this is the case. It …
By Sir Hardly Anyone The window hasn’t even had a key inserted in it, let alone has it been opened but we already have 32 players coming to Arsenal this summer. And eight of these are new in the past few days. We also have one new player who is on his way out making …
By Tony Attwood It may seem hard to believe but there was a time in the latter part of the 20th century when the Football League Division 1 had a “big four” made up of Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool and Everton. Sometimes that was a big five, because Manchester United were included when they were …
By Nitram and Tony Attwood CHAMPIONS BLAST BACK VENDETTA The Sun’s coverage of the Manchester City story concerning whether or not the club has been engaging in financial activities that breach Uefa rules is something to behold. Of course given the way that the Sun presents stories, and given the literacy and intellectual level that …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Each year we gather together the rumours of players coming and going in relation to Arsenal, and then at the end look at how many we got and how many were correct. The normal figure is around 110 players rumoured to be coming and most of the existing squad leaving. The …
By Tony Attwood There is no doubt that a lot of readers who are critical both of Arsenal and of my approach to Arsenal, argue that it is dead simple to predict Arsenal’s results because the manager is a turnip who insists on playing players such as Mustafi, Lichsteiner, Jenkinson, Kolasinac, Elneny, Mkhitaryan, Ozil, Xhaka …
By Tony Attwood With the media awash with nonsense rumours about who Arsenal are going to sign I thought it might be worth looking back at the players we signed last summer and in January. Here is the table, with the values taken from Transfer Market, although quite how they calculate the market value of …
By Sir Hardly Anyone This week I met up with Poswinch McKillybody, to get the latest “Fleet Street” ravings. I must admit I thought he looked under the weather, looking somewhat like a halibut which had been asked by another halibut to lend it 20 quid till next Wednesday. When I mentioned this to another …
By Tony Attwood This is the time when newspapers do their summary of the league season, an exercise which is in part the offering of opinion (fair enough) but also an exercise in deflection. “Deflection” is known by many names but in essence it involves focussing attention on one topic while ignoring another, which is …
