By Tony Attwood There is an interesting article today in Süddeutsche Zeitung – the Munich newspaper, and one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany which has the headline “How praise helps people out of the crisis.”It is a piece that rather interestingly links to this morning’s article on Untold Another fine victory for the anti-Arsenal Arsenal. But …
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw. On the A52 road in Derbyshire there is a sign that says “Street lights not working”. Most people just drive past it, seemingly without giving the sign much thought. However those people who have the more inquisitive brains tend at this point to ask the question, “why?” In fact …
By Tony Attwood There is an article on the Guardian website today that begins “It has been eight months since the inferno tore through Grenfell Tower, killing 71 people and forcing hundreds from their homes. Of that number, 152 households are still to be rehoused, despite a promise from the prime minister that the process …
by Bulldog Drummond There’s general agreement about the make up of the team tonight; we know Ospina is definitely in goal, and Welbeck plays in attack along with Mkhitaryan. Beyond that there is a fair amount of agreement from those taking guesses with a back four of Chambers, Mertesacker, Holding, Kolasinac regularly mentioned, and Iwobi, joining Mkhitaryan …
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw. Head of psychology at the University Hospital of the North Circular Road. As you will know, if you have followed our coverage of PGMO, the high secretive organisation that makes the Masons look at a come-all-ye at the local pub, the refereeing control body does not talk to outsiders. …
By Tony Attwood The trick these days is simple: find five people who use Twitter and who send out negative tweets and then claim they represent Arsenal fans and quote their tweets to set up whatever negative story you have in mind. So it is with Ramsey. The bloggers say he probably won’t be ready …
by Tony Attwood Rumours and fantasies about Arsenal and its players have undoubtedly reached a new low with the emergence of the story of Bellerin and the fake phone message. I say it is fake with some force because the story is emerging in blogs that endlessly tell us that a deal is being …
By Bulldog Drummond In a sense I rather relish the notion of all attention being turned away from Arsenal, with the focus being on the goings on at Wigan, Sergio Agüero considering pressing charges (although I am not quite sure against whom that might be) and West Ham being charged over breaches of anti-doping rules. It’s …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Up until now, the nonsense transfer news churned out by the national press and their camp followers has been a bit of a laugh. A case of us recording all the gibberish, putting it in a chart and then showing the results. Results such as that we found last season when …
By Tony Attwood For some people an examination of the way language is used in reporting football is a matter of supreme tedium. I know this cos I get lots of emails telling me so. But I stay with the topic because I do completely believe that anyone who wants to manipulate thought and opinion …
By Tony Attwood If you have been reading the twice (occasionally thrice) weekly adventures of Henry Norris on the Arsenal History Society website you will of course know the answer to the question above. If not, and yif our answer is that he was a guy who owned Arsenal at one time and was a …
By Tony Attwood If you have a loooooong memory and you tend to read my ramblings on the subject of corruption and finance in sport you might recall my rant about a tiny company in a tiny Swiss town that gained the broadcasting rights to World Cup matches across a swathe of central and South …
By Sir Hardly Anyone So let us start with the silliest insult of the day. There are of course many to choose from but having had a look through a mindblowing selection I give the award today for “Under Wenger, Arsenal have become boring”. A bit of an odd statement really having had Alexis and …
By Tony Attwood On the most general level, if one sees something that one feels is wrong in any way (be it corruption, deliberate lies, something that harms some people, criminal acts or anything else) one has a choice. To turn away and do nothing, to do something once and then let it pass in …
By Brian Strachan Since his £53 million transfer from Lyon, Alexandre Lacazette has netted just nine times. He got off to the perfect start, netting against Leicester on debut but the goals have since dried up and the Frenchman has found himself playing second fiddle to January signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Source: Dan Critchlow via Twitter …
By Tony Attwood As you may have read Sky and BT paid less this time round for their TV coverage, but still charge their customers the same. But one would hardly expect anything else. However given that they appear to have an insatiable desire to charge more and more for less and less I wondered …
By Sifarzone After reading on Untold Arsenal Tony’s “It may not be something you are encouraged to try, but a sense of perspective can help” and AKH’s “Another ‘old codger’s’ sense of perspective”, I thought a millennial’s perspective would complete the set articles, given that the issues of viewing football with perspective has been …
By Bulldog Drummond As is becoming the norm now, by lunchtime before an Arsenal evening match there is no preview in the mainstream media, rather more articles looking back to previous games. So up to us to come up with something other than the story doing the rounds that Jack Wilshere is off to Juventus. …
By Tony Attwood Much has been made about the fact that after reaching the second highest consecutive run of entries into the Champions League in the history of the competition, we are now out and playing in the Europa League. But it is worth pondering what that achievement meant, both positively and negatively. If we …
By Tony Attwood I am not sure if it is a deliberate ploy and I don’t recall seeing it before, but under the headline “Three ways Arsenal could line up v Ostersunds FK after Alexandre Lacazette injury blow” we have this wonderful illustration of an Arsenal lineup… But I should add those of a delicate disposition …
By Sir Hardly Anyone. The latest invention from the Telegraph’s Charlie Eccleshare is the alliterative phrase “Tedious Trophy Talk”. By this they mean the chatter from certain ne’er do wells that Tottenham cannot be called a team of significance until they win significant stuff, and in the past 20 years they have just won the …
By Bulldog Drummond Whatever one’s attitude and style, reality can always be a problem. If one tries to write for a blog based on analysis, logic and statistics, there is always the chance that there simply aren’t any new analyses one can do in order to bring light on a situation. If one tries to …
by AKH September 1957, the month of my 8th birthday and a birthday treat. My very first Arsenal football match at Highbury. Arsenal v Everton. I have little memory of the game itself, (I think arsenal lost ) but this was the beginning of my support for the team and club. Like Tony Atwood, I am …
By Tony Attwood My thesis, if you have had the staying power to follow my rambles through its tortuous evolution, is that most of the football related “information” we are given day by day through the mass media, the blogs and the bloggettas (those tiny blogs that have two lines of unverified information sandwiched between …
By Tony Attwood There is a lovely article in the Guardian in relation to American football which begins, “Sports forecasts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.” Well yes, I think many of us will go with that. And when it comes to, “The problem with predictions in this space is that they are comically flawed,” …
