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 “After six Bayern Championships in a row, the competition is looking for an antidote. And some motivation.” So (roughly) translates the headline in SZ, Germany’s largest circulation daily, and the newspaper published in Bavaria – home of Bayern Munich. And it tells a story that we might be considering here in a few …
By Tony Attwood An article from the CIES Football Observatory raises an interesting point: “Barcelona and Real Madrid top the rankings for the longest average contract duration of first team squad members. Six out of the eight top ranked clubs are still competing in European Cups. This illustrates the relationships between long-term planning and success.” …
Read More “Does the length of player contract equal chances of success? Most certainly not.”
By Tony Attwood Keith Hackett has written an article in the Telegraph, in which he says “If you want proof of why no English referee will be represented at this summer’s World Cup finals in Russia, look no further than Martin Atkinson’s performance at the Etihad on Saturday.” It is a fairly bizarre and convoluted …
Read More “Manchester City miss equalling Arsenal, and the things money can’t buy.”
By Tony Attwood Sitting in the stands looking down on Mo Elneny being sent off all I could say to my chums sitting either side was, “Why has he sent Elneny off”? And no one knew – at least we guessed it was for pushing, but then, everyone seemed to be pushing. It used to …
Read More “Gross refereeing incompetence and vengeful corruption? Why Elneny was sent off.”
By Bulldog Drummond And so we come to the Sky sports which announces, “Lucien Favre on Arsenal shortlist to replace Arsene Wenger,” while Arsenal Fever runs with “Mislintat orders another raid on Dortmund, Arsenal to move for £40m midfielder.” This relates to trying to get defensive midfielder Julian Weigl to transfer to Arsenal. But of course …
By Bulldog Drummond So continuing from the first part of our preview of Sunday’s game, (Arsenal have won 5 in a row, BUT PLEASE DON’T TELL ANYONE) as we are playing Southampton, let’s see how they are getting on, and of course as we normally do the last ten, that’s what we will compare. Date …
Read More “Arsenal v Southampton, what the formbook tells us – and the injuries”
by Bulldog Drummond Recently Arsenal lost four games in a row. Arsenal have just won five games in row but while you must have known the first (if you follow any media at all) you might be excused not knowing – and not for the first time. The four losses in a row was a …
Read More “Arsenal have won 5 in a row, BUT PLEASE DON’T TELL ANYONE”
by Sir Hardly Anyone Here is the list of all the Incoming Players for the summer of 2018. Yes we are almost halfway to our target of 110 transfers and the transfer window hasn’t even creaked open yet. Amazing! Here’s the list No. Player From Source Information 1 Yacine Adli PSG Sport Review. Talk Sport …
Read More “51 players tipped to be joining Arsenal this summer. We’re almost half way there.”
By Chayasai . Mesut Ozil , Lacazette , Aubemeyang and Mkhitaryan . Without these four world class players , Arsenal would have been competing with West Brom as to which one of them, in the 2017-18 EPL, would be the first to fall into the Championship. This was the first thought that came to …
By Tony Attwood So the downside is that Mkhitaryan is out for Sunday and the upside is that Ramsey scores goals of quality in important games – although I think we knew that from the FA Cup Final. But as I was driving home last night I thought of something different; of how complex running …
Read More “Reducing football to simplicity says more about those who do it than about football”
By Bulldog Drummond Speaking of the position of Lacazette Mr Wenger confirmed that he felt the club was ready to see the best of him, “because I realise now that he was not himself for a while. That explains why his goals dried out. He was always adamant – ‘I’m OK, I’m OK’ – but …
Read More “Arsenal vs CSKA Moscow: the final roundup and the teams.”
by Tony Attwood The issue of a club being responsible for the behaviour of its fans is one that has been debated by Arsenal and its supporters since the early days of Arsenal as a league club, for as you will know if you follow the reports and anniversary series published by the AISA Arsenal …
By Bulldog Drummond We have risen dramatically up the injury table since I last reported on it… # TEAM How many down Last man to fall What he done 1 Crystal Palace 9 C Wickham Groin Strain 2 West Ham United 8 J Hernandez Illness 3 Watford 7 M Britos Illness 4 Everton 6 I …
Read More “The Russians are coming: and thoughts on the intellectually challenged gym teacher.”
By Bulldog Drummond It seems that a home game cannot come along without there being an in-depth enquiry into the number of people who actually attend, with bloggettas constantly putting up complaints about the “laughable” number of tickets sold – even though there is not the slightest bit of evidence that this number of false. …
Read More “What will the Moscow fans be like, where are the fans, and what counts as success”
By Bulldog Drummond Undoubtedly the best place to start any preview of this game is with the wonderful Calvert Journal which opens its review of Russian football thus: Despite breakneck “Europeanisation”, Russian football hasn’t lost its trademark authenticity: managers still struggle to string words together at press conferences; no one knows any foreign languages, even …
Read More “How have CSKA Moscow been doing of late? And “Give us a P””
By Tony Attwood Suddenly it seems Chelsea is in total chaos and crisis (according to the media, not according to me that is) because (oh my goodness they have just realised) if Chelsea don’t make it into the Champions League that will reduce their income. Now of course Chelsea have had this sort of thing …
By Sir Hardly Anyone At least you shouldn’t believe them because as the last two summers have shown only one in 33 of all such rumours is true and we’ve only got eight here. But still, there ain’t much other news around so let’s do a quick round up. 1: Max Meyer Max is reportedly …
Read More “8 Astoundingly astounding transfer stories you really shouldn’t believe unless paid to.”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. There are some jolly headlines around on a day which is a public holiday in England, and thus a day without too much news. The Telegraph has “Tottenham would have been reduced to nine men with VAR” …
Read More “Lies, damn lies, and a total lack of concentration and research”
By Tony Attwood “It shows well the state of our society that, when people are generous, we are surprised,” Mr Wenger said after the match. “We are even more surprised when it is footballers and strikers.” He was speaking about Aubameyang giving up the chance of a hattrick with the final penalty, to help Lacazette …
Read More “A pigeon flies across the sky. Why the media employs vegetables as experts.”
By Tony Attwood Driving back from the match today I heard the Stoke City manager, a Mr P. Lambert, state on BBC radio that the first Arsenal penalty should not have been given because his Stoke player had got the ball. The radio interviewer did not challenge or question this interpretation and his silence on …
By Bulldog Drummond It’s an early start for those of us who live outside London so I am writing this piece quite a few hours before kick off, and thus I may be missing some late breaking news in terms of what sort of team we might put out against Stoke Neanderthals. But still the …
By Bulldog Drummond It seems almost years ago that we had the ceaseless, continuous wild ravings of those who took their lead from the frankly deranged Stewart Robson who ceaselessly claimed that all Arsenal injuries were caused by Arsene Wenger’s training methods. Yet there are still aspects of the media that will give him time and …
Read More “Bizarre news for injury prone Arsenal. What will Steward Robson say?”
by Bulldog Drummond The run against Stoke has not always gone as well as we might have wished… for the last ten games (all in the league) have only yielded six wins, and a draw, when we might well have hoped for more. Date Match Res Score 02 Feb 2013 Arsenal v Stoke City W …
By Bulldog Drummond I must admit that I have never once understood how people at Stoke City can boo Aaron Ramsey for “getting himself injured” as I have heard some of them put it. It is something so incomprehensible to me that I can only continue to see those Stoke City supporters who engage …
By Tony Attwood Reputations, like football accounts can be funny things. We’ve had endless arguments on this site about what has happened to the extra money Arsenal have made from having almost paid off the cost of the Emirates Stadium, and why that money hasn’t brought more than the the three FA Cups. Those wins …
Read More “Reputations are not related to reality, but once broken are hard to repair”
