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 Bulldog Drummond Physioroom now has us on six injuries – equal with Man City, Tottenham and Southampton and two behind West Ham. Burnley are on five. The latest news is Bellerin: a major doubt for now but probably back by Boxing Day Mkhitaryan: ankle injury – no return date set Kolasinac: a doubt for …
Read More “Arsenal v Burnley: injuries, Burnley recently, the problem of the end of a run”
By Tony Attwood Research appears to show that match officials in England are maybe seven times more likely to suffer verbal abuse than those in France and the Netherlands. I say “appears” and “maybe” because although some who are quoting this research are giving that figure as a fact, the research in England has been conducted …
Read More “New referee research is valuable but is still fundamentally flawed”
By Tony Attwood You might recall that I have often passed comment on the way that Football.London – the Daily Mirror’s website, churns out an Arsenal story every 10 minutes. I meant that as a warning, but sadly some have now taken it as a blueprint. This is the log this morning from the bloggetta …
Read More “There might be a clue here as to why we shouldn’t trust the media”
By Tony Attwood The rules are quite simple: anyone with a season ticket at Arsenal can apply for and get a ticket for League Cup games. The price is £10 to sit downstairs, £20 to sit upstairs, with a 50% discount for the over 65s. But despite the low price and the fact it is …
Read More “On not going to Arsenal v Tottenham, and do we really need journalists at matches?”
By Bulldog Drummond At the time of the third round draw for the FA Cup, there were still a couple second round ties unresolved – including of course the one to resolve who Arsenal would play. Now we know, as Blackpool have finally beaten Solihull Moors, and so we will play Blackpool for the second …
Read More “Arsenal get Blackpool (again) but first here’s the team against Tottenham”
By Bulldog Drummond Apparentlhy some of Arsenal’s squad posted selfies after their 4-2 extermination of Tottenham and the Tiny Totts manager said such activity as this should be saved for winning trophies. That must mean that they have only have two occasions for doing that in the past 25 years, although of course camera phones haven’t …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: the problem with selfies and the injury news”
By Tony Attwood José Mourinho became manager of Manchester United in May 2016. In five transfer windows he spent around £400m on 11 players. The media men on the inside say that in each case the choice of player was his. The Guardian is saying that not only are the results poor from the first team but that …
Read More “What’s £400m between friends? How some clubs have upped the game.”
By Bulldog Drummond And so the world of football rambles on. “How can a sport be worth billions and spend just a pittance on fighting racism?” asks the Guardian while “Police investigate allegation of historical racist abuse in youth team” at Chelsea. The Telegraph meanwhile has an exclusive telling us the Mourinho and the Man …
Read More “Criticising the clubs while whipping up a storm. Arsenal v Tottenham”
By Bulldog Drummond Apparently we have an injury crisis – in defence. Which seems to be the story we were running before the Southampton match – and wouldn’t you know, it is still with us. No one is out of action because of too many yellow cards but we are told that Shkodran Mustafi has …
Read More “Have you heard the one about the Arsenal team to face Tottenham?”
By Tony Attwood Well, that draw wasn’t too painful was it? We toddle off to Belarus to play Bate where our old chum Alex Hleb still plays I think. The first leg is away on 14 February and the second is on 21 February at Arsenal Stadium. The last time we played them we won …
Read More “It’s BATE again. Remembering the last time, and comparing with past seasons”
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?”
