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 For some people an examination of the way language is used in reporting football is a matter of supreme tedium. I know this cos I get lots of emails telling me so. But I stay with the topic because I do completely believe that anyone who wants to manipulate thought and opinion …
Read More “Arsenal stars risk being solid, and other oddities of football lingo”
By Tony Attwood If you have been reading the twice (occasionally thrice) weekly adventures of Henry Norris on the Arsenal History Society website you will of course know the answer to the question above. If not, and yif our answer is that he was a guy who owned Arsenal at one time and was a …
Read More “What do you know about Henry Norris? And how do you know it’s true?”
By Tony Attwood If you have a loooooong memory and you tend to read my ramblings on the subject of corruption and finance in sport you might recall my rant about a tiny company in a tiny Swiss town that gained the broadcasting rights to World Cup matches across a swathe of central and South …
Read More “The very strange case of the secret deals involving English football rights on TV.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone So let us start with the silliest insult of the day. There are of course many to choose from but having had a look through a mindblowing selection I give the award today for “Under Wenger, Arsenal have become boring”. A bit of an odd statement really having had Alexis and …
Read More “Bonkers insults, semi-skimmed headlines and the 10 players Arsenal are going to sign.”
By Tony Attwood On the most general level, if one sees something that one feels is wrong in any way (be it corruption, deliberate lies, something that harms some people, criminal acts or anything else) one has a choice. To turn away and do nothing, to do something once and then let it pass in …
Read More “What Bellerin said, Toddler Brain Habits and making money from criticising Arsenal”
By Brian Strachan Since his £53 million transfer from Lyon, Alexandre Lacazette has netted just nine times. He got off to the perfect start, netting against Leicester on debut but the goals have since dried up and the Frenchman has found himself playing second fiddle to January signing Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Source: Dan Critchlow via Twitter …
Read More “When he recovers Alexandre Lacazette still desperately needs an injection of confidence”
By Tony Attwood As you may have read Sky and BT paid less this time round for their TV coverage, but still charge their customers the same. But one would hardly expect anything else. However given that they appear to have an insatiable desire to charge more and more for less and less I wondered …
Read More “How football on Italian TV is revolutionary, leaving Sky and BT Sprout way behind”
By Sifarzone After reading on Untold Arsenal Tony’s “It may not be something you are encouraged to try, but a sense of perspective can help” and AKH’s “Another ‘old codger’s’ sense of perspective”, I thought a millennial’s perspective would complete the set articles, given that the issues of viewing football with perspective has been …
Read More “Arsenal, a millennial’s sense of perspective, and my friend’s father’s Mercedes”
By Bulldog Drummond As is becoming the norm now, by lunchtime before an Arsenal evening match there is no preview in the mainstream media, rather more articles looking back to previous games. So up to us to come up with something other than the story doing the rounds that Jack Wilshere is off to Juventus. …
By Tony Attwood Much has been made about the fact that after reaching the second highest consecutive run of entries into the Champions League in the history of the competition, we are now out and playing in the Europa League. But it is worth pondering what that achievement meant, both positively and negatively. If we …
By Tony Attwood I am not sure if it is a deliberate ploy and I don’t recall seeing it before, but under the headline “Three ways Arsenal could line up v Ostersunds FK after Alexandre Lacazette injury blow” we have this wonderful illustration of an Arsenal lineup… But I should add those of a delicate disposition …
Read More “Sweden match uncertain as temporal anomaly hits Arsenal plane and entire squad replaced.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. The latest invention from the Telegraph’s Charlie Eccleshare is the alliterative phrase “Tedious Trophy Talk”. By this they mean the chatter from certain ne’er do wells that Tottenham cannot be called a team of significance until they win significant stuff, and in the past 20 years they have just won the …
Read More “Arsenal buying 21 players, 7 are leaving and we are getting 3 new managers”
By Bulldog Drummond Whatever one’s attitude and style, reality can always be a problem. If one tries to write for a blog based on analysis, logic and statistics, there is always the chance that there simply aren’t any new analyses one can do in order to bring light on a situation. If one tries to …
Read More “Arsenal in Sweden: dealing with injuries in a meaningful and sensible way”
by AKH September 1957, the month of my 8th birthday and a birthday treat. My very first Arsenal football match at Highbury. Arsenal v Everton. I have little memory of the game itself, (I think arsenal lost ) but this was the beginning of my support for the team and club. Like Tony Atwood, I am …
By Tony Attwood My thesis, if you have had the staying power to follow my rambles through its tortuous evolution, is that most of the football related “information” we are given day by day through the mass media, the blogs and the bloggettas (those tiny blogs that have two lines of unverified information sandwiched between …
Read More “Football history is (more or less) bunk as long as you ignore the bits you don’t like”
By Tony Attwood There is a lovely article in the Guardian in relation to American football which begins, “Sports forecasts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.” Well yes, I think many of us will go with that. And when it comes to, “The problem with predictions in this space is that they are comically flawed,” …
Read More “How football telepaths embarrass themselves while one Guardian reporter speaks the truth”
by Bulldog Drummond The weather forecast for Östersund this Thursday evening is currently showing -5 degrees centigrade but taking into account wind speeds and humidity this is going to feel like -12°C. Or put another way about 10.5°F. Or put another way bloody cold. Östersund’s last match before the winter freeze was on 7 December when they …
Read More “Östersund away: the squad and the weather forecast: it might be worth wrapping up.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. So here we have it: the Laugh of the Week… Arsenal suffer massive injury blow as top four hopes take battering Yes that’s the horror headline from the bloggetta IB Times which appeared on many of the news accumultor sites. Click on it, and in HUGE bold letters it really looks …
Read More “The most hilarious Arsenal story of the week, transfers and what is “Bellering””
By Tony Attwood I am sure there will be many who will agree with a headline in the Daily Telegraph that reads “Arsenal are still exhibiting all their old failings with expensive new personnel” and another in the same paper today, “Harry Kane goal confirms power shift in North London”. Or in the Independent “Derby …
Read More “It may not be something you are encouraged to try, but a sense of perspective can help”
By Bulldog Drummond In case you have not seen it there is a wonderful comment following Andrew’s review of the referee, in which the reader goes on quite a little rant complaining that the piece was a waste of time, and that for our analysis to make any sense it should have contained a review …
By Bulldog Drummond. Tucked away in an article in the Guardian today about how wonderful life is becoming for Tottenham, is the fact that upon completion of their stadium Tottenham “will have banks debts of £400m to repay over a five-year period and they have pledged to find the rest of the required £850m themselves.” …
Read More “Tottenham v Arsenal: how has it gone in the past”
By Bulldog Drummond This game at Wembley is one that is going to require nerves to be held. A look at Arsenal’s away record in the league shows why for Arsenal’s away form is at the heart of this season’s slip back into sixth place. Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts …
Read More “Tottenham H v Arsenal. Tottenham have looked stronger, but is there an edge for Arsenal?”
by Sir Hardly Anyone Our Rutland resident with a rundown on reality Since our last flip around the players coming to Arsenal this summer (according to the media who know a thing or two, or well, a thing anyway) the list of new arrivals has slowed down this week, although we still have four new …
Read More “Six Arsenal departures this summer, 19 arrivals plus a new manager spotted.”
Text and graphic from Oulala Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has found the back of the net four times in four appearances against Tottenham, averaging a goal every 88 minutes. An impressive record in itself, however when measured against a number of Arsenal’s best scorers in the Premier League era, stats from daily fantasy football game Oulala.com show Aubameyang is …
by Tony Attwood Before Arsene Wenger arrived in England, but when he had been announced as Arsenal’s new manager, Tony Adams made the comment that many were thinking and others had said before him. Speaking of Wenger he said, “He’s French. What does he know about English football?” Well Adams learned quite quickly. And it …
Read More “Arsène Wenger on the English tendency towards nationalist bias”
