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 Bulldog Drummond There has been quite a bit of commentary in the media about the fact that with around 15 minutes to go before the final whistle in their cup semi-final, Tottenham fans began to leave Wembley, even though scoring twice in 15 minutes (it actually turned out to be 14 as the ref …
By Tony Attwood OK you are an Arsenal supporter and you know that the last time Tottenham finished up in the league above Arsenal was 1994/5. If this happens again (which it will if Arsenal do not win on Sunday) then it might well seem a tragedy. If you are a Tottenham supporter it will …
Read More “How you contemplate the possible end of the St Tots run depends on where you are placed.”
by Tony Attwood I am not sure that it was covered by that much by the media in England at all, but FC Barcelona President Josep Maria Bartomeu is, it seems, only one step away from being found guilty of corruption. His latest appeal in the case of the transfer of the Brazilian striker Neymar in …
Read More “Corruption news: 43 footballers, 8 agents, 12 clubs, Barcelona, and Tony Pulis.”
By Tony Attwood I made mention in a little piece yesterday (Who are the most fouled players?) that fouls reported by referees are most likely not the total picture when it comes to behaviour on the pitch, because, for various reasons that I laid out in that article, referee engagement with fouls is not a …
Read More “Tottenham v Arsenal preview: will it be a dirty game?”
By Tony Attwood There is an article on the Telegraph web site at the moment with the headline “The top 20 most fouled Premier League players of the season – can you guess the No 1?” It’s a beguiling idea – an analysis of which players are kicked to death and which don’t get the …
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Have you ever wondered where the people who make up transfer stories get their make believe from? Or indeed how one can tell if one story out of the hundreds that circulate is actually true. Well, I’m going to show how it is done, with an outrageous example from a blog …
By Bulldog Drummond Of course some news comes in at most inconvenient moments. Here am I about to prattle on concerning the line ups for tonight when we get the announcement that Newcastle Utd and West Ham United were raided this morning by HMRC concerning suspected criminal tax fraud in professional football. That is what …
By Bulldog Drummond If it is an Arsenal match, then it must be time to talk about Alexis Sánchez leaving and going to, well, anywhere, everywhere, you name it. Except this time Arsène Wenger has said there is no way that Alexis Sánchez will leave Arsenal this summer even if it means going on a free …
Read More “Arsenal v Leicester: how exactly do the teams compare with our position last season”
By Bulldog Drummond The very early indications on injuries that we have for the game tomorrow is that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain was not seriously injured in the cup semi-final and that Lucas Perez has now recovered from his injury that kept him out of the weekend game and is back in full training. Whether the Ox …
Read More “Arsenal v Leicester: a shocking home and away comparison, and excellent injury news”
By Sir Hardly Anyyone It has been something of an erratic week for the football fiction writers as Mr Wenger has wrong footed them twice – once by changing his line up style and once by beating the glorious Pep. However this has not stopped the scribblers noting some more players who will be …
By Tony Attwood When managers come in, their job is to do better than the last man. that is the sort of basic requirement most people lay down although some go for winning the title each season or at least challenging for it until the last few weeks. Of all managers Pep Guardiola was the …
Read More “Supposing we’d sacked Mr Wenger a year ago and brought in Pep Guardiola”
by Tony Attwood Barcelona are continuing their attempt to move football into a completely new arena for not only have they played out a game in which the activities of the referee caused even the most solid “there is nothing wrong with the referee’s so stop whinging” media to turn pale and re-consider their approach, …
Read More “Barcelona take football into new territory with appeal against red card to CAS”
By Tony Attwood It is funny just how difficult a lesson it is to learn, both by football supporters and by journalists but somehow the reality never gets through. When looking at the actions of officials, it is no good taking one or two (or even three or four) incidents and then blaming the ref …
Read More “Record beating manager, record beating club, maybe its time to revive Lucky Arsenal”
By Bulldog Drummond. Looking, as we usually do, at the injury table we find that Liverpool are the team not to beat – way out ahead according to the Physioroom charts with no less than nine injuries. Man City are on four, Arsenal five. # TEAM TOTAL INJURIES LATEST PLAYER INJURED INJURY 1 Liverpool 9 …
Read More “Arsenal v Manchester City: a win pays Arsenal’s salaries for a week and a half.”
By Tony Attwood It is not something that you are likely to read much about in the papers, and not something that social media want to tell us but it is true: Arsenal are this weekend becoming the most successful team in FA Cup history, and Arsene Wenger the most successful FA Cup manager of …
By Tony Attwood On 15 July 2016 Untold covered the case of proceedings against Mamadou Sakho of Liverpool by Uefa following his being found to have taken a banned substance. The proceedings were stopped and the case dismissed after Uefa stated that the drug should not have been on the banned list. Now in reporting …
Read More “The weird story of Uefa attempting to by-pass world doping rules is finally resolved.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Part 1: The Frightening (Daily Mail) OK, the Daily Mail with its daily hate campaigning is always frightening, but this is very frightening. They claim that “Bookies slash odds on Chelsea captain John Terry joining Arsenal next season from 33-1 to 5-1.” A large number of bets were placed in the …
Read More “You really really won’t want to believe who Arsenal are on the verge of signing”
by Tony Attwood The story at first was that Arsenal season ticket holders were in revolt and were not buying tickets for the FA Cup semi-final this Sunday. But as per 2014 and 2015, the tickets were sold fast enough, once the sale was opened up to those holding season tickets without any away …
By Tony Attwood Of course I would love to see Arsenal in the Champions League once again next season, difficult though that is going to be to achieve. I’ve had the good fortune to go to most of the Champs League home games we’ve played (and had a good night out most times, despite the …
Read More “Why any return to Europe next season will bring Arsenal fear and trepidation”
By Tony Attwood Football journalists can be most annoying people, and this for three reasons. They don’t tell us what’s going on, except when they do tell us and then they get it wrong. And they can’t count. Fortunately occasionally someone emerges who while still not telling us what is going on, does at least …
Read More “Jon Toral, pure filth, Bjorn Engels, and journalists who forget and think we do too.”
Betting Myths to Get Rid of about Football Year after year, there are certain betting myths that simply refuse to die, leading to many fortune-seeking individuals with half-true information and a lot of confusion. These types of myths are often taken completely at face value just because they sound fairly logical, but can cause you …
By Tony Attwood There are, we know, some people around who want Arsenal to lose matches so that the board are forced to refrain from offering Mr Wenger a new job. But it struck me the other day that even for the most hardened anti-Wengerian pro-aaa pro-AAA person there must be a limit somewhere. …
Read More “What could make your worst Arsenal nightmare worse?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The Great Transfer Index is a listing of all the players that the English media suggest that Arsenal are about to sign. The great joke is that last summer it only had an accuracy rating of under three percent. In short around 107 players nominated to be coming to Arsenal …
Read More “The 18 players already ear marked to be coming to Arsenal this summer.”
by Tony Attwood There was an incident in the first half last night in which a Middlesbrough player grabbed hold of Oliver Giroud in a rugby styled tackle in the penalty area and held on to him for several seconds, stopping him getting to the ball. It was clearly shown on the live footage, so …
By Bulldog Drummond We know most of the match facts by now – especially those that set out Arsenal in a bad light along with the fact that Middlesbrough have failed to win any of their last 14 games in the Premier League, and have failed to score in six of their last eight league …
