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 Sport, as the EU recognises in its regulations, is different. There is competition within it – that is by and large the whole point – but that competition is different from that of firms competing in most open markets. The competitive route is structured in a particular way – primarily through having …
Read More “Monopoly suppliers need regulators or democracy. In football we have neither.”
by Tony Attwood Some time back, I criticised a book called The Numbers Game – which purported to reduce all football to a valid statistical analysis – and I was reminded of it again when another book appeared doing the same sort of thing: claiming it had analysed every aspect of the game and was …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal, as we well know, is left in disarray, tatters or chaos (sometime all three) when a player who was “on the radar”, “according to reports” says (allegedly) that he has no intention of going to London, not even for a shopping trip. The club is also in chaos when thousands of …
Read More “Chelsea’s technical director goes but Arsenal remain the masters of football chaos.”
By Tony Attwood The news that Sepp Blatter has been accused by Hope Solo, the USA women’s football team goalkeeper, of having sexually assaulted her at Fifa’s Ballon d’Or awards ceremony in January 2013 doesn’t really come as much of a surprise, simply because nothing comes as much of a surprise with Blatter. Or come to …
Read More “As long as we fail to ask “why?” in football, nothing will ever change”
By Sir Hardly Anyone OK here we go. Some stories that you have heard, plus a new name. How exciting! 1: According to Ozil, Arsenal is still the club he wants to play for. “Massive boost for Wenger: Highly-rated star confirms he wants to play for Arsenal”. That’s pretty much doing the rounds these days. 2: Arsene …
By Tony Attwood I notice Jonathan Liew has seemingly moved from the Telegraph newspaper to become Chief Sports Writer of the Independent web site. A change of publication, but not it seems a change of style, for today he has published this: “Henry Norris, the former Arsenal chairman, is perhaps best known as the man who hired …
Read More “How to knock the Arsenal without bothering to check a single fact”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. What, one may ponder, is the difference between fake news and headline writing? Indeed I think it is fair to say that in the public house lounge bars in the leafy shires, they speak of little else. Let us therefore ponder! Fake 1: Ozil’s future (Red London and the Metro) It …
By Tony Attwood As Germany looks to sort out the mess left behind from the chaos surrounding its refereeing system, they might choose also to have a look at the salary structure of referees in various leagues. And the first thing we have to note is that just as the PGMO have gone out on …
by Tony Attwood Headlines from German and French language papers about the current football crisis in Germany give a warning of the path that they might be tempted to follow The German Football League calls for a new order of referee structure in Germany after the recent chaos. An independent organization of refereeing should solve …
By Tony Attwood One of the problems with being in the fake news business, is that you not only have to keep inventing it, each piece of fake news has to outdo the previous bit. Thus we have the headline from ArsenalShorts which reads Wenger confirms 54 goal striker will play for Arsenal next season …
Read More “Fake news index: striker next season, striker we should have kept, horrific loans”
By Sifarzone Expected Goals are all the rage today and it is certainly a great addition to the toolbox we use in analyzing and understanding football. It gives an understanding to the match beyond just the ultimate results, goals. It values long term-performance over short-term results, since long-term performance will eventually return as results. …
Read More “Dear ESPN: Expected Goals do not account for refereeing errors”
By Tony Attwood The time will come when Arsenal need a new manager. I don’t know when, but it will happen. Three options are available: a promotion from within, bringing in a famous managerial name from elsewhere, or finding a person who (like Mr Wenger when he joined) will be unknown to most supporters, unless …
Read More “Who will Arsenal’s next manager be and what we can learn from Moyes?”
By Tony Attwood Oh this is so difficult for the British media. With the commentary that the refereeing of the Manchester City game against Arsenal was not all that it might have been, they went as far as they dared without having their licences from the PL revoked. Now they have scuttled away from …
Read More “How the evolving referee scandal in Germany is causing the English media problems”
By Tony Attwood A couple of changes were made to this article at 9am on 7 Nov after it was initially published I recently wrote a little piece How fake news came to dominate the reporting of football in all English media which traced the history of fake news in the media back 100 years. I’ve …
Read More “How fake news was used to manipulate the Man C story to avoid considering the issues”
by Tony Attwood The big problem in Premier League refereeing is silence. The silence engineered by PGMO, and only just, after years of missed opportunities, occasionally broken by the normally obsequious national media in England. It is this silence that reveals why we are still struggling to show something is fundamentally wrong with refereeing in the …
By Tony Attwood We first knew something was up when Alan Green, the BBC commentator, suddenly started laying off referees. He’d never suggested there was anything wrong in terms of bias, but constantly reported that they were making mistakes. Lots of mistakes. Lots and lots of mistakes. Lots and lots and… well you get the …
Read More “Our one hope: the media is suddenly realising there is something wrong with refereeing”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal injury news: Wenger confirms triple blow, trio to miss Man City clash That headline came from Ron Carne, an interesting variation for him, as his posts often have the word journalist in the headline, in the mistaken belief that if something is said by a journalist it is more likely to …
Read More “Manchester City v Arsenal. The league where Arsenal come bottom.”
by Bulldog Drummond While all the newspapers and their lapdogs in the bloggettas are predicting that Arsenal will sell Alexis in January, Arsène Wenger has said that he doesn’t think that will happen and that he anticipates Alexis Sánchez will stay at least til the summer. Of course the fake news outlets are all sticking …
Read More “Why Alexis won’t move to Man C after one Arsenal defeat in the last 9 between the clubs”
By Tony Attwood Certainly if you read many of the web sites on offer at the moment the notion you will get is pretty clear. Arsenal are pretty awful when it comes to playing other top teams in England. These top teams are generally defined as Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, and Tottenham Hotspur …
Read More “Are Arsenal really utterly appalling against other “top clubs”?”
by Tony Attwood Details of the various treatments undergone by Santi Cazorla have started to emerge, and the full extent of the horrific problems he has faced have been revealed – including the possibility of needing an amputation. But it seems all is over and he really is on the road to recovery. He is …
Read More “Santi Cazorla back in January, Mourinho admits the crime, Evra banned, Wenger on City.”
By Tony Attwood From what I saw, (and as with the commentary about Swansea supporters, people in the ground can only report what they saw), the Red Star fans were what away fans should be. Very positive, very noisy, no fighting among themselves, no flares. They didn’t exceed their ticket allocation in the number of …
By Bulldog Drummond So as we get to our final post before the game (given that it will soon be time to jump in the jalopy and gallop off down the M1, what about the jolly old injuries? Well that website that is having a go at challenging our regular reports on injuries, has now …
Read More “Arsenal v Red Star: the Jack conundrum, injuries, Europa records, teams.”
By Bulldog Drummond Supposing someone could read your mind. More than that, could read what you will be thinking in a few moments time. Would that be spooky? If you think so it is it might well be a good idea to lay off the bloggettas for the moment because one of the pop ups …
Read More “Arsenal v Red Star: Lemar, Mahrez, the atmosphere, and the teams first time we met.”
By Tony Attwood All the latest bits and pieces of the day include the rather exciting news that Jose Mourinho is due to be in court on Friday over the issue of tax fraud in Spain. It relates fairly obviously to his time at Real Madrid. The state claims that he owes them just …
Read More “Jose Mourinho in court on Friday, Lacazette leaving.”
By Bulldog Drummond As pointed out by a couple of correspondents very quickly the table below includes the Manchester City game played at Wembley. Sorry that slipped through in the cut and paste job of listing the games. I think that even without that game, there is still a record in the offing – but …
Read More “Arsenal v Red Star: a record at the Emirates approaches.”
