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 Sir Hardly Anyone As we expected things have slowed right down in the World Cup era as the writers keep going around in circles talking about players in Russia rather than making up rumours. What a bunch of slackers! If they wanted to do something really useful they could count our boys back home …
Read More “The 96 players Arsenal have been tipped to sign this summer: the complete list”
By Sir Hardly Anyone In the part of the independent kingdom of Rutlandia whereupon I have my castle, we tell children not to make things up. “Don’t tell fibs” is what mater and pater say, and jolly right they are to say it too. But when I said just that the other day after returning …
Read More “Latest Arsenal rumoids: ten stories that you really might not believe – but you might!”
By Tony Attwood The name “Untold Arsenal” was chosen over 10 years ago to represent two ideas: to cover Arsenal in a positive manner which supported the club, and to cover the Arsenal stories that the mainstream football media and the blogs that imitate them would not cover. One of those story lines has been …
By Tony Attwood We’ve been emphasising of late the need to keep an eye on the total number of players that Arsenal can register – not just the “25” players aged over 21 who can fit into the squad but particularly the number of Non-Home-Grown players which is limited by PL rules to 17. With …
Read More “Arsenal’s transfer problem: Who leaves in order to fix the “17” issue?”
By Bulldog Drummond As you may recall I have been posting about predicting possible England results in the World Cup through looking for sequences, and following a few emails and comments decided to take the plunge and expand this approach further. You might also recall that the process is very simple: it focuses on the …
Read More “Uruguay v Russia in the world cup might be more interesting than you think.”
By Tony Attwood There was a lot of comment when the fixtures came out for the coming season over the fact that we start with Manchester City at home and then have Chelsea away. That seems a little curious but could of course just be the way the fixtures came out of the hat. However …
By Tony Attwood It is said that Article 54 of the Fifa disciplinary code outlaws the “provoking the general public”, an offence that carries a two-match ban. Clearly Fifa have not been following their own disciplinary code since I can think of a whole range of events and incidents of Fifa, not to mention the …
Read More “The size of Brazil, Bellerin’s diet, and provoking the general public.”
By Tony Attwood One of the problems with transfer rumours is that they tend to be confined, in the reporting thereof, to issues relating to an individual player, and not to the team as a whole. It is not always thus, but this is the tendency. If we take Lucas Torreira he is variously described …
Read More “Arsenal’s four big signings: how they fit in the squad and the HG rules”
by Sir Hardly Anyone There has been a major change of late in pundit reporting as we have moved from “linked to” to “serious talks in progress” within their endlessly inventive minds. In terms of players leaving, the pun-dits have now had a major issue removed from their discussion sheets as we all know Jack …
Read More “Transfers – more Arsenal activity on the way? The punditry certainly think so although..”
By Tony Attwood It was upon this day last year that Walter and Blacksheep combined to hi-jack this site and publish a birthday greeting to me, so it was with a fraction of hesitation this morning that I opened the trusty laptop to check the site. But as I suspected both gentlemen have more style …
Read More “Arsenal’s first team for 2018/19, and why have Arsenal sacked the travel manager?”
By Bulldog Drummond Having predicted the England score correctly for the nation’s first World Cup match in the finals, I am emboldened to try it again, using the very simple system we’ve used over the last couple of seasons of looking at runs of results. All runs come to an end of course, so the …
Read More “England v Panama. Can the Untold system predict the score”
By Chayasai Two of the top three targets that can be achieved at Arsenal this season are, if not winning the EPL, that they must finish in the top 3 and secondly, must win the Europa League and finally, the third target: the F A Cup. Let no one tell us that all these are …
By Tony Attwood, with data from Andrew Crawshaw I suspect most Arsenal fans have a particular affection for players who come up through the club from a young age and make it into the first team. Perhaps doubly so when they are so evidently Arsenal born and bred as Jack Wilshere. Which is what makes …
Read More “The Arsenal youngsters destined to become household names”
By Tony Attwood So Jack is on the way out, after a long wait before confirming. He leaves in 10 days time. He is said to have stated that he was leaving because, “playing time would be significantly reduced” under the club’s new manager, Unai Emery. Fit and at his best he was an utterly …
Read More “In out in out: Arsenal’s 25 starts to take shape; but sadly, Farewell Jack.”
By Tony Attwood The general consensus is that Arsenal have signed Bernd Leno for an initial €22m, from Bayer Leverkusen. As we have noted before he is not in the current Germany squad although was in the squad for the Confederations Cup last year. It is reported that he will sign a five-year contract with Arsenal. Here …
Read More “Arsenal get their keeper and pundits behave like 10 year olds”
By Bulldog Drummond If I may, I shall repeat my conclusion from the last gambling article… “Up to you of course but I think I’d go for 2-1, with a secondary bet of 2-0 – in both cases an England win.” My exact words. No editorial fiddling. Straight from the mouth of the horse, as …
Read More “Untold predicts England’s score exactly using simple but slightly scientific method”
By Tony Attwood Of course the workings of journalists is a law unto itself. But consider this. If VAR is used four times in a match and accurately corrects the referee twice, then it means the accuracy of refereeing the game has gone up. But that isn’t good enough for some people, who seem to …
Read More “Why is VAR being criticised so thoroughly, but the lack of FA refs not being mentioned?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is a vintage week for updating previous rumours with more rumours: but tougher going in terms of finding new players to add to the list. Surely it couldn’t be that having rushed so far ahead at the beginning of the window we are not going to reach the 120 player …
Read More “Powered by fantasy: the media’s list of 95 players Arsenal are going to sign.”
by Sir Hardly Anyone There is a general certainty that Arsenal have got the 1-2-3 of transfers sorted. The Stephan Lichtsteiner deal is all done and dusted and by and large there is agreement that the Sokratis Papastathopoulos signing will be announced in July once the club have reached agreement with him on how his …
By Bulldog Drummond In the early days of Untold Arsenal we regularly ran a match preview looking at the betting deals on offer and where the best offer was. But sadly our correspondent moved on, for wholly understandable reasons (and remember, Untold doesn’t pay its writers, so eventually most of us decide they’ve done their …
By Tony Attwood There was a time – quite a long time in fact – when anyone daring to write or say something positive about Xhaka would be howled down. So great were the howlings at times that vampire slayers would gather around the east end of London at dusk in the hope of a …
Read More “Would you believe it? After 2 years of hating Xhaka the media change their minds!”
By Tony Attwood For some players, the first game they will play after the world cup is going to be… an international for their country. This insanity comes about because of the scheduling dominance of Fifa over all else. Assuming that players do get a month’s holiday in the summer as they are supposed to …
Read More “Some players 1st game after the world cup will be… an international match”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Figures compiled by the Guardian newspaper show that thus far the Premier League is outspending its four main rivals in terms of new players, but not but quite as much as has happened in the past. Here are the figures in pounds… Premier League: £286.4m Bundesliga: £232.50m Serie A: £228.5m La …
Read More “Arsenal secure 7th biggest transfer of the window in “£50m swoop””
by Tony Attwood A totally corrupt organisation holds a big event in a country that has been cited repeatedly for interfering in elections elsewhere, killing people on foreign soil, and other dubious stuff. Meanwhile a taxpayer funded body in England prepares to throw money at the whole thing by pitching to run the event itself …
by Tony Attwood There are some truly frightening stories around at the moment, the most awful of which is the notion that England are preparing to bid for the world cup finals again. Not content with having throw millions of pounds of taxpayers money at Fifa last time around, and clearly aware that Fifa remains …
Read More “Funny ol game: crazy Fifa bid, clubs breaking up, fans order new manager, Jack ponders”
