How are our predictions doing for who will win the top European leagues

By Tony Attwood Before this season began Untold made a series of predictions as to who would win certain European Leagues.  Those predictions were… England: Manchester City Spain: Barcelona Scotland: Celtic Italy: Juventus Germany: Bayern Munich France: PSG My point here was not to suggest that I was particularly clever in coming up with these …

The great transfer race. 10 players Arsenal already tipped to sign this summer

by Sir Hardly Anyone We have done it for the last three years and it gained some interest.  Plus it made a point: 97% of all transfer rumours are gook.  Not gobbledegook but just plain gook.   So can the media johnnies raise their inventive game and get it up to 98% of their tips utterly …

Arsenal v Napoli: what Napoli have been up to, and the team for tonight

by Bulldog Drummond We know that Arsenal results can be more or less predicted by simply looking to see if Arsenal are playing at home or away.  So it is worth looking to see if we can gain a similar perspective from Napoli.  Here are their last six away games. Date Home team  Score Away …

Why we can’t stop racists in football in England?

by Tony Attwood Of course as a regular football supporter who is not a criminologist I can’t give you a definitive answer to that question in the headline.  But I can raise a point that I think is sometimes missed in the debate. At the moment racism in football in England is big news.   “Resurgent …

From the beloved Ashley Cole to outraged footie journalists getting all worked up

By Tony Attwood There is a sponsored article being advertised on one or two newspaper sites which tells the tale of the richest players who have played in the Premier League.  These sponsored pieces are generally not very exciting – the whole point is to get you on the site in order to sell something …

Everton v Arsenal: the predictions, the stats and the teams

By Bulldog Drummond After a poor run of form in January, Everton have picked up of late… Date Game Res Score Competition 02 Feb 2019 Everton v Wolverhampton W L 1-3 Premier League 06 Feb 2019 Everton v Manchester City L 0-2 Premier League 09 Feb 2019 Watford v Everton L 1-0 Premier League 26 …

Three of the 15 most fouled players in the League are Arsenal men. Why?

By Tony Attwood Arsenal are the most fouled team in the Premier League – by quite  a way.  At least that is “most fouled” when the count is taken of fouls awarded by the referees. The table that shows this is provided by Footstats.co.uk.  I’ll comment a little on the sources of the data in …

How the table will look come the final day of the season

by Tony Attwood In the last article – Why Arsenal and Tottenham will end up with identical points this season  – I started to outline the idea that one can use home and away tables in order to predict final outcomes for the season. Continuing the theme here are the home and away results of …

Why Arsenal and Tottenham will end up with identical points this season

By Tony Attwood Take a look at Arsenal’s remaining league fixtures and what do you find? Away to Everton, away to Watford, home to Palace, away to Wolverhampton, away to Leicester, home to Brighton, away to Burnley. Nothing too frightening there surely.  At least no other top six clubs to worry about.  And there is …

What missing out on the top four would mean to Arsenal and the rest

By Tony Attwood (part way through packing for the journey across the world tomorrow) It struck me, peering at the league table from the far side of the planet, just how the league has divided itself into groups in a way that it has not done before.   I might be wrong in that memory and …

When the media comments on a referee BEFORE a match maybe things are changing

By Tony Attwood The Guardian newspaper, in common with other British newspapers, is not known for criticising referees, obeying, as it does, the dictates of PGMO that commentary on referee errors should be kept to a minimum and always considered as individual referee mistakes.   Analyses of how many “errors” referees make, and what types of …

Arsenal v Newcastle Utd: the prediction based on this season’s analyses.

By Tony Attwood This is going to be another match I’ll miss what with being in Australia for a few more days before flying home.  But of course it is still possible to see how our prediction system of analysing the home and away performance of each club comes up with a result.  And it …

How come England are getting better at football all of a sudden

By Tony Attwood In terms of reporting on football, by and large I doubt that anyone has much expectation that we will ever be better informed about what is actually going on than we are now.   Jounalists, bloggers and newspaper editors choose what is and what is not news, and report it in their own …

There is no football news – only a choice of stories. Arry the Red and other affairs.

By Tony Attwood It was on one of my earlier trips to Australia to visit my daughter that I heard the news that Harry Redknapp had been found not guilty in a high profile court case.   Now, with myself being in Oz doing the visiting once again I find Arry is also in the news …

When you deal with countries with different values, you can expect different values.

by Tony Attwood The directors of Dreambox, Dreambox TV Limited, and Digital Switchover Limited, have now been jailed in England for offering illegal access on TV of matches involving Premier League clubs. The League might be feeling a bit jolly about that, but is perhaps less happy knowing that BeoutQ is still broadcasting Premier League …

Why are the scandals involving football so often removed from most of the media?

By Tony Attwood I have written many times before about the child sex abuse scandals in English football, and my dismay at the way that the media has been handling them.    If you want a quick re-run there is an article at https://untold-arsenal.com/archives/61818 – there have been a fair number since. Football doesn’t want …

Computer predicts final league placings, but how good is the computer?

By Tony Attwood When I see the words “super computer” used in a football blog I tend to shy away from the report, simply because I have no idea what “super computer” means in terms of anything, let alone football. I mean, the little laptop I am using to write this while in Australia is about 1000 …

Arsenal and Napoli: it is going to be very close in the Europa League

By Tony Attwood Following Arsenal from the far side of the world (Sydney, Australia to be precise) is something of an odd affair.   The games don’t appear to be shown live (at least not in the bars that I can find) and anyway does one really want to follow football in the middle of the …

Untold about to get more erratic than usual

By Tony Attwood If you have been with us for a year or more you may recall that each spring I take a break from UK and head to the other side of the world wherein lives one of my daughters.  Depending on all sorts of complexities which I won’t bore you it can be …

The curious issue of what managers say about their players

By Tony Attwood I am about to toddle off to the other side of the world so I may not be able to clear all the comments that come in – more on that in the next post.   But first here is a little thought that popped into my head. Mr Emery is mostly very …

Arsenal continue to confound: it is not Arsenal that is in chaos.

By Tony Attwood “This topsy-turvy season continues to confound,” says the Guardian in an article today in relation to Arsenal.  Which I’d say isnt really totally accurate. For the last couple of years we’ve been focussing on the difference between Arsenal’s home and away form, and for quite a few games making predictions of matches …

Arsenal v Manchester United the teams and the home v away form

By Bulldog Drummond I’m having to write this some way in advance of the match, because of my convoluted travel arrangements to the game, but even though there will have been a result on saturday evening after my writing of these notes the general point still applies. While Arsenal and Manchester United remain one point …

Arsenal lose, and thus we are back to the land of abuse.

By Tony Attwood The headlines revealed in the aftermath of the Arsenal defeat in the Europa league tell a story of their own.  They include… Arsenal are out of Europa League because of one player – fan theory Daily Star Arsenal flops abused at airport by their own fans after Rennes defeat Metro.co.uk Ben Arfa: …

And so, the investigation into Manchester City has begun.

By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you might remember that over four years ago we ran the story,   Man City decides to take on Uefa; the result will finally decide who runs football.     We’ve come back to that from time to time until back in November last year we ran …