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 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.”
By Tony Attwood Although it rarely makes the news in the British press these days in the United States and Switzerland the issue of the corruption of football on a global scale continues to make the headlines. And much of the time the story is the same: dozens of people and dozens of companies have …
By Bulldog Drummond Arsene Wenger has suggested Mathieu Debuchy could stay at Arsenal and play at centre back, which is a position he will probably take up again this Thursday. Given how much playing time he had missed and the fact that he is a full back not a centre back the performance in the …
Read More “Europa game 4. Early thoughts on the team and comparing with Man U’s approach”
By Tony Attwood Olivier Giroud is known in France for all sorts of things. For example, everyone in the country who follows football will agree it was his goals that were fundamental in getting totally unfancied Montpellier to become French champions for the first time in their history. They were also the launch pad for …
By Tony Attwood Each year I tell myself that I am not going to do another analysis of how much the top clubs in the PL spent on transfers and what they have got out of it – mostly because it seems to prove the same thing each year. And then something comes along and …
Read More “How much does it cost to buy a trophy these days?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone We’re not going to publish it but some of the abuse received by Untold following our various commentaries on the match against Swansea was really a little extraordinary and over the top. I mean, we’re used to getting it from some quarters but this was a little out of the …
by Croxley Rebel A game that will certainly not live long in anyone’s memory. The Swans parked the bus and that was Ki to their strategy. After 15 minutes of solid Arsenal pressure, it didn’t Clucas though the Welsh side would pose any sort of threat to the Arsenal goal, but up popped their ginger …
By Tony Attwood There is a bloggetta headline this morning that says, “Arsenal are now unlikely to finish in the top four and must prioritise Europa League – study”. I’ve read the “study” thing through but really can’t quite see how it is much of a study – it is in fact a computer model …
Read More “What does Arsenal have to do to improve the club’s present position?”
By Tony Attwood The violence that occurred in the crowd during the Arsenal Swansea match was shocking. It must have been particularly frightening for anyone close by who was not minded to be involved, and is always disturbing to see. But is it news? Obviously not for the BBC coverage and various press reporters in …
Read More “Arsenal v Swansea retrospective. Awful crowd violence”
By Bulldog Drummond And so to the final part of the match preview… and in case you missed the story thus far here it is Arsenal v Swansea. Mr Wenger on saints, billionaires and celebrity. Arsenal v Swansea City Saturday October 28 – The Match officials – a ref who makes a fool of …
Read More “Arsenal v Swansea: The injuries, the horrible negative approach, the form, the teams”
By Bulldog Drummond To start with the serious stuff – you might recall that at the start of the season we did a review of the supporters and location of virtually every club in the PL and published it day by day on our Facebook page. The whole list is still on this site, but …
Read More “Arsenal v Swansea. Mr Wenger on saints, billionaires and celebrity.”
