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 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”
By Tony Attwood We’ve discussed several times the fact that just at the time when the media put in bids to show English football matches that were way above anything previously seen, so TV audiences for football have come down. Several reasons have been mentioned. For example there is the undeniable fact that tastes endlessly …
by Don McMahon Don is a retired referee who worked at NASL and international level That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. I recently read an article about the France-Spain friendly played last week and its successful use of video refereeing technology. There were numerous comments from pundits and retired …
Read More “Ambiguity vs certainty and Talksport’s campaign to undermine video refereeing”
by Tony Attwood Writing about other team’s new stadium is always tricky, and can often bring abuse. My little piece about Everton’s stadium for which Liverpool Council are giving financial guarantees in order to get the cost of lending down, brought a lot of comments (not all of which were published here) to the effect …
By Tony Attwood Robbie Savage predicts that games will go on long into the night. The Daily Telegraph says that “Doubts remain”. But video technology is finally, after years and years of attempts at delay, going to happen. It won’t mark the end of incompetent refereeing, nor of match fixing, but it will be a …
Read More “Finally confirmed: video technology to be used in some games from next season”
By Tony Attwood All organisations need to have standards. Football clubs need to obey public safety standards and the special rules that apply specifically to football matches. They also have to obey the laws on finance and accounting, on employment contracts, as well as football rules such as that relating to not taking youngsters across …
Read More “Why referees should be under the control of an outside body”
by Tony Attwood I won’t deny it, it’s been a really naff week for football news. Take this headline for example… £50m Chelsea raid, Liverpool defender swoop, Man United talks, Arsenal exit wanted You have to plough through quite a few adverts and bits of tittle tattle to get to the “Arsenal exit wanted” bit …
Read More “If today’s football news teaches us nothing, perhaps can we learn from Arsenal’s history”
by Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw. With England as we have long since learned, it is different. Somehow the standards demanded are, well, not to put too fine a point on it, lower. Lower as in, below floor level. Lower than that in fact. Sub-basement, although that still seems a bit high. Having lost any …
Read More “No hints of progress from those who (unlike most of us) were paid to watch England.”
by Tony Attwood I recently ran a little article here about Granit Xhaka which was taken from a Swiss newspaper and it created a little bit of interest I felt, not least because it gave a different interpretation to the piece from the way in which it was handled by the English media. (Although …
Read More “Mesut Özil speaks about his childhood and his life in football”
By Sir Hardly Anyone and an abacus. During international weeks there are 14 potential football stories for the media to play with and invent. They fall into three simple groups: the managers of PL clubs, the players of PL clubs, and the internationals themselves. Because the internationals always come out with the same stories, the …
Read More “In case you have been in hibernation during the the interlull here’s what you missed”
By Tony Attwood One of the multiple problems with the way the mass media reports football is that it does it by themes – or what some journalists like to call “talking points”. These themes are said to be the issues that are on everyone’s lips and so they are hammered away at until either …
by ARSENAL 13. A quick google of the words subjective and objective will give you this: “An objective perspective is one that is not influenced by emotions, opinions, or personal feelings – it is a perspective based in fact, in things quantifiable and measurable. A subjective perspective is one open to greater interpretation based on …
By Tony Attwood What is going to happen to Arsenal for the rest of the season? One of the interesting factors in the recent debate about the management and ownership of the club is that many people do present the view that they not only know what will happen in the next game against Man …
Read More “Predicting the future is a lot easier when you are certain you know what’s happening.”
By Tony Attwood One of my regular arguments about the media and their handling of football is that they first select the agenda, then second warp it in some way, and then finally deliver their answers. Those who see things from a different perspective never get a look in. Nowhere is this clearer than in …
By Tony Attwood Everton look to become the latest Premier League to benefit from state aid. West Ham, Liverpool and Manchester City have paved the way in terms of stadia deals that have been supported by greater or lesser amounts from tax payers money; now Everton have been promised part of the cash that English …
By Tony Attwood There’s been a bit a bit of a fuss about FA Cup semi-final tickets as Emirates Airlines are offering tickets for the semi-finals and final at Wembley in exchange for 15,000 air miles. Given that I fly from time to time to Australia to see my daughter and have used Emirates on occasion, I …
By Tony Attwood Granit Xhaka has given an interesting interview to the Swiss newspaper, “24 hours“, the title of which translates into Xhaka: “I was made to look like a mindless idiot” In the article Granit is called “The heart of the Swiss team” and it notes that Granit “has been very much criticised in England …
By Zuruvi Change is often good. Change is sometimes bad. Change can bring new excitement. Change can bring great despair. Change (like taxes and death) is a constant feature in our lives. What can change bring to Arsenal? Arsene Wenger has stated that Top 4 is NOT Arsenal’s target. He stated at the beginning of …
