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
Two unrelated stories by Josif When AC Milan signed Leonardo Bonucci from their rivals Juventus last summer, it was seen as the final statement of intent from the new owners of the Italian and European giants. Bonucci, one of the best central defenders in the world and a member of famous BBC-trio in the …
Read More “Things don’t always work out as expected… From AC Milan to Everton”
Arsenal’s golden triangle provides plenty of optimism Arsenal’s golden triangle provides plenty of optimism It’s been a varied few years for Arsenal, despite lifting three FA Cup titles in the past four years and making cup history in the process, and missing out on a top-four spot for the first time in Arsene Wenger’s tenure …
Read More “Arsenal’s golden triangle provides plenty of optimism”
by Tony Attwood Quite often, when a manager moves on, his background team are also removed, and the new manager brings in his own men to work alongside him. For example, when David Moyes took over at West Ham to deliver them from the reduction in the cost of running the London Stadium (their rent …
Read More “All change at Arsenal as the background revolution continues”
By Tony Attwood “It is not just Tottenham that struggle to compete with the big sides away from home. We need many things – we need to win trophies, we need to build the new stadium, we need to build a good squad, we need to play young players.” Thus sayeth the Tottenham manager in …
by Tony Attwood Mauricio Pochettino announced after the match that it was referee Mike Dean who did it all, with two mistakes. Although, as Walter pointed out in his post-match review, only one of the goals could have been offside, Mr P wanted to go further and say that the free kick involved in the othergoal …
Read More “Arsenal didn’t beat Tottenham, it was the referee’s fault, according to Mr Pochettino.”
By Tony Attwood Having had the exhilaration of being at the Emirates this afternoon, followed by the push and shove to get on the Underground, the walk back to the car and then the tedium of the drive home (85 miles up the M1 in case you are interested) broken only slightly by the tedium …
Read More “Arsenal 2 Tottenham Hotspur 0. Even the tiny details of commentary can be misleading”
By Bulldog Drummond It is interesting that with the first team seemingly fixed on three at the back, with two full backs helping them, the under 18 side is playing with a back four in a 4-2-3-1 formation – or at least that is how it seemed as they were beating Norwich 3-0. However there …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: The teams, and the need to kill off under performing players”
By Tony Attwood It is now six Premier League games since we beat Tottenham, a pretty shocking run. In fact as far as I can see it is the worse run that Arsenal has ever had in either the PL or the 1st division in terms of playing Tottenham. Of course the figures are a …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: the tragedy of a journalist’s pathetic lack of knowledge”
By Darren Stinsman Arsenal go into a crunch North London derby on Saturday lunchtime knowing that defeat would leave them seven points behind their bitter rivals. Tottenham are in fine form at the moment and will be full of confidence following their recent 3-1 victory over European champions Real Madrid at Wembley. Arsenal were in …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: return of the triumvirate, the battle of the midfield.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Sincere apologies for the lack of posts through some of today. We suffered another attack, and it took a while to recover. This time it was different – the site was still visible and comments could be posted but we were unable to put up new posts for a while. If …
Read More “Apologies for our down time and here’s some tittle tattle”
By Bulldog Drummond It seems many of us have different definitions of fairly ordinary words. “Objectivity” I take to mean working hard to take out any sort of bias. “Perspective” I think means in the context used, “a point of view”. Which is how one person can say to another, “You’re approaching the problem from a completely different perspective.” It is …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham. Objectivity and perspective, not quite the same thing”
By Bulldog Drummond I don’t have any difficulty in admitting that Tottenham have been doing well of late, not do I try to deny the utterly obvious. That, for example, last season for the first time in a number of years (quite a large number of years in fact) Tottenham came above Arsenal in the …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: a little bit of perspective”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes it was in June 2015 that we first pronounced upon the fact that Nabil Fekir was about to sign for Arsenal, and we knew that because the bloggettas were full of it and full of it and full of it again. He turned up again in the following month, but …
by Tony Attwood Imagine your ran a business. You were trading with a company and suddenly you find a whole stream of its senior people being hauled into court and charged with corruption in general and taking millions of pounds worth of bribes in particular. One after another they are charged and they eventually plead …
by Tony Attwood Whenever we cover the dodgy doings by football clubs on this site, we get emails saying “your club is just as bad” and “why don’t you just write about your club” and then a few things that are not really repeatable. So we’ll take those as read, and remind everyone that …
Read More “Leicester City; the sound of chickens coming back to roost”
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”
