By Chayasai Very early in the season Arsenal played Chelsea and Man City without those players who are the backbone today. And, in hindsight, with the great advantage of having training under Emery, and getting immensely better, physically, mentally and tactically, Arsenal can justifiably believe that they are a completely different team right now from …
By Tony Attwood Over the years when it comes to football, newspapers, broadcasters and most recently bloggers have merged their own thoughts and prejudices with the facts, to produce their version of reality. And for years that version of reality has been one in which Arsenal make more mistakes than anyone else as well as …
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Arsenal’s upturn in form, in the guise of winning every single match in every single competition since the opening two games of the season, has caused some commentators a problem. Their whole approach to Arsenal is that Arsenal is a failure. If Arsenal win then it is by chance …
By Andrew Crawshaw I met Mark at Hammersmith Station just after 11.00 giving us plenty of time to walk to Craven Cottage. For those of you who don’t know the ground it is rather old fashioned and, for the Premier League, quite small with a capacity of some 25,700; so less than half of that …
by Sir Hardly Anyone and Marianne Trench. Our complete update on the really big stories this evening that are showing us what a huge thing a football is. But first, something no one actually said about Fulham but might have While they were content to peck cautiously at the ball, the never spared themselves in …
By Tony Attwood As we speculated a while back, Arsenal’s next kit sponsor will be Adidas, with the deal worth £60m a season. This is roughly double the size of the last deal (that’s the one that I’ll always remember as Puma released a video to commemorate the launch, which included a good five seconds …
By Bulldog Drummond If a manager changes his tactics from one match to another he is either flexible and tactically aware, or unsure what his best line up is. But it has to be one or the other because everyone has to have an opinion. Because opinions, even when there are limited facts available and …
By Bulldog Drummond Nothing too dramatic in the injury news so far: Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has recovered from his illness and is available for the game. Of the rest of the injured, there is not much change – just some general progress… Ainsley Maitland-Niles expects to be back to full training in about a week. Petr Cech …
By Bulldog Drummond We’ve talked so much about Arsenal’s current run of form, let’s have a look at what it has been like for our next challengers. Fulham at the Cottage. Here’s their form thus far… Date Game Res Score Competition 11 Aug 2018 Fulham v Crystal Palace L 0-2 Premier League 18 Aug 2018 …
by Tony Attwood “It feels like a new club,” said Héctor Bellerín in a recent interview. And I am sure he is right in many respects. Obviously I’m not there with the players, but Héctor comes across as a very intelligent and deep thinking young man and I can’t imagining saying that if he didn’t feel …
By Tony Attwood OK, let’s set the context. Arsenal have just won nine in a row. If you don’t want to count the FL Trophy, eight in a row. If you don’t want to count the League Cup or the Trophy, seven in a row. If you don’t want… well, that’s getting ridiculous. Seven in …
by Bulldog Drummond Here’s the quiz. One point of utterly nil value for each right answer. 1: OK let’s start where we start, and ask the question no one asks… “Where is the game being played?” The Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium 2: What is the nickname of Qarabag? The horsemen. So when four of them …
By Bulldog Drummond There are two types of vision of football at the moment. One is to bash Manchester United in article after article, and the other is to say that Arsenal are flattering to deceive or to put it in techno speak “Arsenal’s underlying numbers suggest results are running ahead of performances.” In short …
By Bulldog Drummond One of the many annoying things about Arsenal having slipped out of the top four for the last two seasons is that when one looks for news about the club on the websites of the English newspapers one finds the articles dominated by pieces about last season’s top four. The week’s European …
By Tony Attwood Just as the Mirror has told us that Arsenal are travelling without a backup keeper but with Ramsey, so other sources are telling us Ramsey has not travelled. It really is all very confusing. After all if we can’t trust our newspapers who can we trust? (That’s irony. The opposite of irony …
by Bulldog Drummond There is the strangest thing on the Sky site today (at least at the moment I write this) in which they have a page which they proclaim as covering the recent results of Arsenal and Qarabag. What it should be called however is a “selection of results from the two clubs with …
By Sir Hardly Anyone These stories have all “broken” this morning. I thought you might enjoy seeing some old favourites. 1: Arsenal get more injuries than anyone else but now Tottenham are overtaking them Headline: ‘Nightmare’, ‘Turning into Arsenal’ – Some Tottenham fans react to reported season-ending injury. Source: This Is Futbol The tale: Luke Amos …
By Tony Attwood I like statistics, and use them a lot. But they have to be statistics that are realistically related to the real world. Consider this for example from Statsbomb “Arsenal are conceding an eye popping 1.50 expected goals per match. The only five teams with worse defensive numbers than Emery’s team are Brighton, …
By Walter Broeckx This is the fourth and final part of our series on Arsenal’s training centre. The earlier articles were: Untold Arsenal (and Arsenal Belgium) get the VIP treatment at London Colney Arsenal players exposed to temperatures of minus 160 degrees. London Colney Arsenal training centre: virtual reality and tales of past recoveries …
By Tony Attwood I don’t get to see that many under 23 games since every Arsenal first team home match involves a 175 mile round trip in the car, plus a train journey at the end, but when the game is not too far away and there’s someone else to go with then yes, I …
By Tony Attwood Two of us went off to watch Arsenal at Coventry recently in the Checkatrade Trophy. Now its time to go and see the club in the under 23s league, known as Premier League 2 as tonight they are playing at Leicester. I occasionally use these games as a riposte to people who …
Recently Walter Broeckx, Untold’s regular correspondent and chair of Arsenal Belgium was invited by Arsenal to look around London Colney. The first parts of his reports appeared here Untold Arsenal (and Arsenal Belgium) get the VIP treatment at London Colney Arsenal players exposed to temperatures of minus 160 degrees. London Colney part 2. Now the …
By Marianna Trench, our in depth investigator What anyone reading a report of a match in a newspaper or on a blog has to realise is that football reports contain a lot of editing. And the editing is not so much of the copy that is published, but of the reality that preceded it. “Arsenal …
By Tony Attwood As you will know we have won seven League, Europa League and League Cup games in a row. Or just in case you didn’t know here’s the list… Date Game Res Score Competition 25 Aug 2018 Arsenal v West Ham United W 3-1 Premier League 02 Sep 2018 Cardiff City v Arsenal …
By Bulldog Drummond There are some newspaper and blog headlines that are so bonkers it is hard to know if they are deliberately funny or just the result of a bot going haywire. Take this for example Arsenal v Watford preview: Gunners can leapfrog high-flying opponents Now this whole notion of leapfrogging the high-flyers raises …
