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 Given that every day football is in the news, and given that this daily feed of news does not generally include any questioning of the actions of referees, the way journalists report the sport, the coverage of matches by TV, the behaviour of Fifa officials, the allegations that one club threatened to …
Read More “Is everything really ok with football or are we just following a blind faith?”
By Bulldog Drummond Here’s another stat about Unai Emery and his style of tackling football matches that we haven’t seen before: he has made 14 substitutions before the start of the second half this season, which is more than has happened at any other club. And it is working not only in terms of the …
By Bulldog Drummond Despite Arsenal being the dominant force when compared with Southampton, Southampton have nonetheless beaten Arsenal 20 times in all the meetings between the two clubs. There have been 26 draws and we have beaten them 49 times. Our recent problems against them started in September 2014 when we lost a home league …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal: “Do it quickly with patience””
by Bulldog Drummond Here are the details of Southampton’s home game results as revealed in the Home League Table Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts 15 Fulham 7 2 2 3 10 16 -6 8 16 Burnley 8 2 1 5 9 15 -6 7 17 Newcastle United 9 2 0 …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal: the analysis and the prediction”
By Bulldog Drummond Yes we all know that Arsenal is in a total injury crisis of mega proportions – a crisis so enormous that Arsenal need to go out in January and buy buy buy just to survive. In fact buy players no matter what their home grown status and throw them in the team …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal. Shock horror entire league in massive injury crisis”
By Tony Attwood The continuing undefeated run is quite something; no one (other that TV pundits) would disagree with that. But while we were shivvering watching the Thursday night game we started to compare this season with recent seasons, just to stop the cold eating too many brain cells. Here is the top six now …
By Jonny Greene Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang turned this month’s North London derby on its head with a stunning piece of individual brilliance that had Arsenal fans gasping in delight. He latched onto Aaron Ramsey’s square ball and fired an unstoppable 25-yard thunderbolt into the bottom corner with a nonchalant flick of the boot to level the …
Read More “Will Aubameyang’s goals be enough to take Arsenal to the next level?”
By Tony Attwood One of my big concerns about British society and the way the country of my birth is travelling, is the focus constantly on individual detail and not on the bigger picture. Sometimes the details are very big – like the failure of big projects to be delivered on time and on budget …
Read More “Football: a troubled country that just keeps rolling”
By Bulldog Drummond Of course we don’t know every club that will go through after tonight, but we’ve got an idea of some of the teams that will be appearing in the knock out stages of the Europa next year, alongside Arsenal In terms of the seeded teams, Arsenal are of course one of them, …
Read More “Arsenal new injury announcement and what happens after tonight in the Europa.”
By Bulldog Drummond There’s an interesting headline in the Guardian this morning ahead of tonight’s game in the Europa League. It reads “Laurent Koscielny to face Qarabag on Arsenal return amid injury crisis” So since we normally run an injury review ahead of each game I thought naturally that we should do the same now, …
Read More “Arsenal’s team tonight, Tony Adams new job, a misleading newspaper…”
By Bulldog Drummond Despite the oddity of Wikipedia’s Champions of Azerbaijan for the fifth successive year in 2017/18, (see Arsenal v Qarbag: we’re lucky we only play them twice ) Qarabağ are also competing in a Uefa group stage for the fifth season running, having knocked up three appearances in the Europa League and then a …
Read More “Arsenal v the Qs. Early thoughts on who’s in the team, and some of the records”
By Bulldog Drummond . Tomorrow of course it is the last group stage match. Despite the trek up and down the M1 (or if desperation strikes the A1 – but since both get shut at the same time I don’t really know why I bother with the alternative route) I’ve made it to the two …
Read More “Arsenal v Qarbag: we’re lucky we only play them twice”
By Tony Attwood Ah, Defenders. You know what they’re like. One falls over and the next thing you know we ain’t gone none at all. None. Well, ok we have Koscielny but he doesn’t count as he hasn’t played any proper games. So how is he going to play some proper games? Well, he has …
Read More “We ain’t got no defenders. It’s “make do and mend” time. Oh no it isn’t.”
By Tony Attwood It is very simple. Not something that will cause the good gentlemen (for there are no ladies) of the board any inconvenience. At least no more inconvenience than is caused to those of us who pay a fair amount of dosh for our season tickets. I would like one of these good …
Read More “What I would like the directors of Arsenal to do in the New Year”
By Gordon Haverland, with additional commentary within the article by Tony Attwood The question has been raised: why do teams generally do better at home than when they play away? There are many possible answers, but one is that the referee treats away teams differently from home teams, perhaps being more lenient with home teams …
Read More “The treatment of injured players: is there a home/away bias?”
By Tony Attwood It is one of the themes I write about a lot – perhaps beyond Arsenal itself it is the theme I write about most of all: that the way the media reports issues affects the way we see the world. For it is hard to argue that a particular topic is of …
Read More “Racism? What racism? The media denies any responsibility.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal were accused of three simulation attempts during the Huddersfield match, and each time a player was given a yellow card. Two of these events were shown in match of the day during the reprise of the game, and in discussion after the panel gave their view that they thought these were …
The Telegraph called Huddersfield’s display yesterday “impressively spirited and organised” perhaps forgetting that they had not one single shot on target. But this was to be expected because what we saw yesterday was the return of Bolton under Fat Sam (or as we had to call him when people objected to the word “Fat” – …
Read More “Fat Sam’s ghost returns with Huddersfield at Arsenal”
By Bulldog Drummond And so the general news. We have a new twisted headline which makes out that a Mr P. Guardiola has inside knowledge about Manchester City and their doings in terms of sponsorship. The result is headlines such as “Club won’t be banned says Guardiola.” What he actually said was, “We will not …
By Bulldog Drummond So now we know, Rob Holding will be out for the rest of the season with a ruptured cruciate ligament. What a tragedy for the young man, what a tragedy for the team. So now we have another English player out meaning that we will really have to be scouring the list …
Read More “The tragedy of Rob, but the game goes on. Arsenal v Hudders.”
By Bulldog Drummond It maybe something that the media does not like to admit but in effect it is the dominant issue in terms of reporting Arsenal: how to knock a team that has just gone 20 games unbeaten. Of course that run will come to an end sometime, and then we will be told …
Read More “Arsenal v Huddersfield: how the teams have been doing”
by Tony Attwood These are very tough times for the Arsenal knocking journalists. They have got the story that Rob Holding is clearly going to be injured for quite a long time, but that’s not really big enough for them. Ramsey’s injury was said to be minor so he might make the beach for saturday’s …
Read More “Arsenal are losers wracked by scandal, intrigue and a lack of discipline”
By Tony Attwood We all like to be talked about and of course being talked about is what spectator sports thrive on. If people are not talking about football then the level of interest declines, and the number of people attending matches declines. So people talk less and round and around we go. As a …
Read More “The centre half problem and the need for fan fury.”
By Bulldog Drummond I think the aposite phrase has something to do with knickers and twisting judging by the headlines. “What we need,” screams the sports editor, “are articles that explain Arsenal being on a 19 match unbeaten run, which doesn’t remind readers that we predicted that without a complete transformation of the entire side …
Read More “Teams, Man U’s recent run, mad dogs, fighting men and Merson tells Emery what to do!”
By Bulldog Drummond Here’s a novel twist: Perhaps Wenger left Arsenal in better shape than some may have wanted to see. It is a widespread mistake to assume Emery’s early success with this team reflects poorly on his predecessor, just as the agonies of David Moyes should reflect well on Ferguson. OK notice the opening …
Read More “Arsenal injuries, and maybe Mr Wenger wasn’t so awful after all…”
