Transfer table update: the 23 players Arsenal are tipped to be buying

By Sir Hardly Anyone I am not sure there has ever been a transfer window like this with such a paucity of transfer news as we have in this one.  Normally by now we’d expect to have 40 to 50 men coming to Arsenal, but this January, its very poor.   Very, very poor.  Just 23, …

Arsenal could win the league, if only the club would listen to its critics

by Sir Hardly Anyone I have been arguing for a long time that football journalists, far from being the experts they claim to be, actually have no more idea what is going on than anyone else, and are thus completely redundant.  Except for the fact that they run the football agenda by controlling what goes …

Quid pro quo: how the laws of football are arranged to enable game manipulation

Untold Updates videos We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews Football corruption and scandals. Why is it all so under reported? Part 1 Football corruption and scandals. A few stories that did get reported. Part 2 Football corruption and scandals.  How we tipped off Fifa and other unlikely tales.  Part …

Transfers for the big spenders are not working, so why does the media want more of them?

Untold Updates and solving the mobile problem: We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews Football corruption and scandals. Why is it all so under reported? Part 1 Football corruption and scandals. A few stories that did get reported. Part 2 Football corruption and scandals.  How we tipped off Fifa and …

Football corruption part 3: how we tipped off Fifa, and other unlikely tales

  Untold Updates We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews Football corruption and scandals. Why is it all so under reported? Part 1 Football corruption and scandals. A few stories that did get reported. Part 2 Moving on from the issues of corruption and scandal that we have looked at …

Crystal Palace v Arsenal: injuries, teams, wild vacuous newspaper fantasies, yellow percentages

By Bulldog Drummond Untold Updates and solving the mobile problem: We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews   Driving home on Thursday night I heard the headline news on BBC Radio 4 that there was trouble at the Palace.  Curiously there didn’t seem to be any mention of football at …

Crystal Palace v Arsenal and the question: do transfers take clubs up the league?

By Bulldog Drummond   Untold Updates and solving the mobile problem: We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews   It is time I think to consider once again how much value the top spending clubs of the last transfer window have got for their £££m. As we reported earlier in …

Football corruption and scandals. A few stories that did get reported. Part 2

 By Tony Attwood   Untold Updates and solving the mobile problem: We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews   In the last article on football corruption and scandals (Why is it all so underreported part 1) I reached the point of noting that scandals, corruption and illegality exist aplenty in …

Football corruption and scandals. Why is it all so under reported? Part 1

By Tony Attwood   Untold Updates and solving the mobile problem: We’re back with our videos: do take a peek at Untold GoonerNews   Compared to some areas of society in the UK football is left pretty much alone by journalists when it comes to investigating potential scandals and I have often wondered why. First, …

Have you ever felt that football journalists are treating you like an idiot?

by Sir Hardly Anyone You may have noticed that of late there has been a major shift among the newspapers and websites over Arsenal transfer news.  Up to last summer there was some sort of attempt in most journalistic reports to link the headline to the text of the “story” as it is known in …

Why, as Arsenal fans, are we constantly criticising the media?

By Christophe Jost and Tony Attwood A lot of writing and broadcasting about football obviously consists of personal opinion.  When such commentary is done well it tends to be backed up by examples, comparisons and facts.  When it is done poorly one of these three elements – the examples, the comparisons and the facts – …

Where next for football on TV? More of the same, more of the same.

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 …

Reffymandering: the new football word to describe the game in the third decade

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 …

Arsenal v Leeds: the history between the clubs and the team news

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 …

Arsenal v Leeds United: home/away form, plus levels of fouls and cards

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 …

Arsenal have won the FA Cup more than any other team – but no one will celebrate

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 …

Arsenal players must be sold as new tactical approach revealed, but no money

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 …

Evaluating The Athletic: does the new magazine have a new vision of Arsenal?

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 …

How football is seen so differently beyond the concrete walls of PGMO

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 …

All 16 players that Arsenal are being tipped to sign this month!

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% …

After 21 games this season: it’s not the defence that is the key problem.

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 …

The transfer window – the 12 players who we are going to sign

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 …

Why is the issue of the number of fouls that lead to a card, being kept secret?

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, …

Are referees biased? Further strangely suggestive figures….

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 …

Arsenal v Man U injuries, the projected team and yellow cards per foul

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 …