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 I am not a psychologist, and so I have been asking people wiser than me in terms of explaining human behaviour, what the benefit is to Arsenal, or indeed to Héctor Bellerín, for him to be booed and jeered by some Arsenal fans. It has been hard to find an answer. There …
Read More “Middlesbrough v Arsenal. Booing Héctor Bellerín probably doesn’t help very much”
By Tony Attwood I am not suggesting, through that title, that “after me comes the flood” is a perfect way of forecasting what happens after a manager leaves a league club, but rather I’d like to suggest that changing managers at Arsenal does not result in an immediate change at the club. In a previous …
Read More “Après moi, le déluge: what happens after Arsenal change managers”
As the next season approaches, no one can know where Arsenal will end up but it is worth taking a look at the Europa League, just to get the feel of what might come along! They could wind up in the Champions League or the Europa League. These sorts of details can change very …
By Tony Attwood A while back a correspondent on Untold mentioned that he thought it was fair to expect that Arsenal should either win the league or be challenging to win the league each season. I produced some statistics to show how rarely this happened, not just with Arsenal, but with all clubs across all …
Read More “Are we seeing a major change to the list of clubs that dominate the Premier League?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes I will admit it; I have been saying that all the stuff about transfer rumours is rubbish given that there are round about 76 days to go before the transfer window creaks open and something of the order of 137 days before it slams shut and shatters into bits again. …
Read More “Despite all the negatives about Arsenal’s parlous state, Arsenal make a major signing”
by Tony Attwood I think most of us know what happened when Arsenal Wenger arrived at Arsenal and the way he was hounded remorselessly by the press with their disgraceful rumours, and then for years vilely attacked by Man U fans (whose appalling chants were then sold on CD via the club shop). If …
In today’s world, and never more so than in today’s footballing world it is hard to see beyond the immediate situation, the here and now. If things aren’t going our way we demand change. If we don’t like something, we get something else, something newer and shinier until we get bored of that and …
by Tony Attwood The problems with football are multiple, but ultimately, in my opinion they tend to focus on two key areas. First, football is run by a group of organisations that have their own agendas and are in essence answerable to no one. In this regard I think of the FA, Fifa, Uefa, and …
by Tony Attwood In a match which kicked off this morning Eddie Nketiah scored a hat-trick as Arsenal U18s beat Manchester City under 18s 4-3 at London Colney. Kwame Ampadu coaches the team and he put out a strong side of 2nd year apprentices, but Manchester City took the lead through Lukas Nmecha in the …
Read More “Eddie Nketiah scores a hat trick again – this time against Man City.”
By Tony Attwood I read a comment on Untold after last night’s match in which a correspondent said that he had “not renewed my membership to the club” having been watching the club for 50 years. I am not sure what the “membership” is that he has, and since the renewal notices for red, silver …
Read More “In the end just changing the manager is rarely enough, unless you want to do it a lot.”
By Bulldog Drummond Ahead of this match the Large One who manages Palace said, “When the bell starts ringing you know the time is running out” and who are we to argue with such finery? Now the factoids Crystal Palace have just two wins in league matches against Arsenal. Of the rest they drew nine …
Read More “The Palace v The Arsenal. The teams, the beach and associated items”
By Bulldog Drummond There is a phrase that the Telegraph is now dropping into anything that Arsene Wenger ever says, or anything that it imagines the club is doing. In each and every case they now claim that saying this or doing that “is likely to surprise many fans.” It’s a sort of instant knock …
By Bulldog Drummond In the build up to this match Arsène Wenger has been talking a little about Alex Oxlade Chamberlain and his importance to the club saying, “I personally think it’s vital that Chamberlain stays at Arsenal. We bought him when he was very young and built him up. He has a great mentality and a …
by Tony Attwood When Aleksander Ceferin became Uefa president he said his first job would be to reconsider plans to give more Champions League revenue to the larger clubs in Europe. It was a message more in keeping with Fifa’s self-generated headlines about reform than a serious attempt at real live change and so no …
Read More “Uefa and the Premier League get ready to fight it out”
By Tony Attwood In the last six games as you will know we have suffered three defeats, and gained a draw and taken two wins, and we are fifth. I just wondered how this compared to the last couple of seasons at this moment. Here is where we are at the moment. Full Home …
Read More “Arsenal after 29 games. Are we going backwards or staying the same?”
By Tony Attwood Imagine you had a son or daughter who was showing really great promise as a footballer. And imagine you were a lifelong supporter of Liverpool. Or Newcastle. Or Tottenham. You wouldn’t worry too much that it was 26 years, or 90 years or 56 years (as it has been for those three …
By Tony Attwood I have heard stadium protests against a referee before, but never on this scale. And it was utterly deserved for Martin Atkinson delivered the worst display of refereeing I have ever seen in a lifetime of going to football matches at grounds from Wood Green Town to Highbury, from Poole Town to …
Read More “Atkinson delivers the worst refereeing ever seen in the PL while State Aid fans fight”
By Bulldog Drummond Over recent years Arsenal have not done too badly against the team that used to be called West Ham, but which ultimately took advantage of the government’s misuse of tax payers money to take a stadium for its own, which they had not paid for. (And just to avoid any misunderstanding on …
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal team news: Wenger facing goalkeeper crisis, star playmaker trains ahead of West Ham clash So screams one headline. Yes it’s an Arsenal match and so it is shock horror crisis time. It’s not a game its a CLASH. But Mr Wenger is not so easily swayed. “Football today is a lot …
Read More “Arsenal vs State Aid United. If it is Arsenal it must be a crisis”
by The Referee Review Team According to PGMO 98% of all decisions made by referees are correct. Unfortunately they don’t give us access to their data to enable us to verify the point. So we have to do our own research – which is what we did by analysing the first 160 games of the …
Read More “Only 18% of Premier League referees manage to get more major decisions right than wrong!”
by Tony Attwood The 75 or 80 people who marched around the Ems Stadium with their banners before the game yesterday blocking the way of some supporters who actually wanted to get into the stadium, looked thoroughly angry, and I must admit, I wondered why. An estimated 100,000 people marched in London last month during …
Read More “Should Arsenal’s next manager be British? Probably best not.”
By Bulldog Drummond According to the Guardian Pep Guardiola was asked if he thought that securing Champions League qualification for next season would be as great an achievement as winning a trophy, Guardiola replied, “Here, yes. Definitely.” It is interesting that there has been little backlash from the fans of Man City. And remember he …
by Bulldog Drummond So here we are having the worst run ever under Arsene Wenger in the league and we are sixth in the table as things stand. The current run of league games (table amended from Statto.com) consists of Game Date Opposition Venue Result Pos 18 26.12.2016 West Bromwich Albion home W1-0 4 19 …
Read More “Arsenal v Man City, and bad Arsenal runs under previous managers.”
By Dr Billy McGraw In a wholly unexpected development it seems that Joe Lewis has been in touch with Stan Kronke to discuss what a source has called “areas of mutual interest in England”. Joe Lewis, who is 80 and said to be worth £4.5bn is a British citizen who lives in the Bahamas and …
Read More “Stan Kronke in secret talks with Joe Lewis over ending Tottenham stadium funding impasse”
By Tony Attwood This year much of the the membership of the Arsenal Supporters Trust appears to be anti-Wengerian in its dominant outlook. For some years this view was, I think, mollified a little by people like me who were members of the Fanshare scheme, and as a result were sent voting forms for AST votes …
Read More “Amazingly 22% of members of Arsenal Supporters Trust say Mr Wenger should stay”
