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 One of the interesting facts in the referee summary published earlier today is the comment that The teams with most decisions in their favour are United (31) Spurs (25), Watford (23) and Leicester (21). While… Arsenal continue to be the team most affected by wrong decisions against with 31. Which means we are …
Read More “Arsenal v Watford: the team (and the silly stats about runs and stuff)”
by Tony Attwood Having heard that Tottenham have put up posters all over the London Underground selling their Premium Packages with the word “premium” spelled wrongly twice, I have some sympathy. I can’t spell either – as of course you will have noticed if u lok ocasionaly @ wot i right. Mind you there are …
Read More “Arsenal v Watfurd taktiks. And Premum Premiun seats at Totteringham too”
By Tony Attwood It happened on 25 January 2003 and is still recorded in most history books as Farnborough 1-5 Arsenal. But in fact the game took place at Highbury, switched there to help Farnborough get additional revenue. Arsenal donated all the income from programme sales for the day to Farnborough, and as the teams came …
Read More “Sutton v Arsenal: will the tie be reversed to be played at the Ems?”
By Tony Attwood Watford and Arsenal are in two very different places. Yes I know, one is in Hertfordshire and one in North London. But apart from that, they are in two very different psychological places. In the FA Cup Walter Mazzarri made seven changes to the Watford side for the game against Millwall on Sunday …
Read More “Arsenal v Watford: will the Ox get the defensive midfield slot in place of Ramsey?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone, Prince of the Make Believe. Just when we thought it was safe to conclude that Alexis was ready to walk away from Arsenal having had a big fall out with Arsene Wenger over money, position on the pitch, minutes played, tactics and how big the banner about his dogs should be, …
Read More “Arsenal face new midfield injury chaos as transfer window gets ready to shatter.”
by Tony Attwood At the first away match of the season a group of aaa’s attending the game organised a chant of “Wenger out” followed by the usual one about the need to spend some money. Of course chants are very short and don’t leave much room for reasoned debate on issues such as who …
Read More “Why being a thick-and-thin positive supporter who takes exercise is better than moaning.”
by Bulldog Drummond In the Cup we have progressed from 16 of the 20 FA Cup fourth round ties contested under Mr Wenger, losing only to Leeds (1996/97), Leicester (1999/2000), Bolton (2005/06) and Stoke (2009/10). Better still we have won the last five away FA Cup matches in a row – although we have never …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal: the Cup runs and the teams”
By Bulldog Drummond The Top Scorers Chart in relation to the Southampton v Arsenal match (or as the Telegraph had it yesterday, Arsenal v Southampton) is interesting. Arsenal have three players in the top 27 while Southampton have one in Charlie Austin – who is out of the team until April. Their next highest is …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal: top scorers and comparing the clubs’ style and approach”
By Tony Attwood As you will probably have seen Arsène Wenger was given a four-match touchline ban by the Football Association following the Burnley game. Arsenal have said they will not appeal and so the ban starts today. Mr Wenger can sit in the stand and communicate with Steve Bould by telephone, or should the line …
Read More “Mr Wenger v The FA – the full 20 year history. And the world of the fake innuendo.”
By Bulldog Drummond According to the X Files (remember them?) the Truth is Out There. Now we have Jose Mourinho telling us that the result of the match against Hull wasn’t a win for Hull because the ref made a mistake, so their unbeaten run continues. (Which means that Arsenal’s unbeaten run wasn’t 49 at …
By Bulldog Drummond Now this is all very curious indeed. According to the Independent, as we saw this week, Arsenal have more injuries than the rest of the league put together and are way out in front of everyone else, largely because of the introduction of the 56 week year and counting injuries of …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal: something must be wrong with the injury tables.”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal suffered more injuries than any other Premier League team last season – costing the club £15m in wasted wages, according to a report on the website of the Independent dated 24 January 2017. The report goes on to quote Talk Sport and “Dutch fitness coach Raymond Verheijen” and suggests “The numbers could raise …
Read More “The Independent claims Arsenal suffer most injuries after using obviously faked data”
By Tony Attwood We know all the stories. Arsenal don’t spend money in the transfer window. Arsene Wenger insists on using youngsters all the time. Other clubs never do this, it is only Arsenal. If we had a different manager who brought in proper players we’d be ok. New managers always work. So do transfers. …
Read More “Why the Tiny Totts are so called, and why Arsenal can’t win anything with youngsters.”
By Tony Attwood The big threat facing Premier League football today is not so much from the failure of referees to follow the rules of the game, or from the activities of the ultra-secretive PGMO, but from the persistence of immature football journalism that fails to examine these topics properly. I thought on this today …
. By Tony Attwood Data from OuLaLa and from Statto Saqnti Cazorla has not played since mid-October after injuring an Achilles in Arsenal’s 6-0 Champions League win over Ludogorets on 19 October. Immediately the news of just how serious the injury was, the press got very excited. “Santi Cazorla injury will derail Arsenal’s season – unless …
Read More “Shock news: We do better without Santi Cazorla than when he plays. But why???”
Fans challenge new police powers… and win – and do a great service to all travelling fans. A father and son have successfully challenged the police over the use of new powers – setting an important legal precedent for fans and winning compensation in the process. The Football Supporrters Federation covered the story, and …
Read More “Police abuse of Section 35 of the Anti-Social Behaviour Act successfully challenged.”
By Tony Attwood Listening to TalkSport’s commentary on the Manchester City game at the weekend I was struck, not for the first time, by a very simple point. It was the failure of the commentators to ask “why?” The particular situation was the Kyle Walker push on Sterling and the failure of the referee to take …
Read More “How football could be improved forever through one simple adjustment.”
Spare a thought for the disenfranchised By Tim Charlesworth (@Timc1972) So Donald Trump has been inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States to a chorus of generally gnashed teeth, the world over (although the world still seems to be turning). Trump puts me in mind of the apocryphal Roman emperors Nero and Caligula. …
Read More “Trump, Piers Morgan, Caligula, post-truth football, post-Wenger Arsenal.”
“I didn’t see Arsene Wenger sent off” “Neither did he”. By the front row, Block 110, and the Untold Team Hysteria and humour seemed to be the main response to yesterday’s game. Humour with the comments and headlines above, and hysteria of such proportions from the Telegraph that one begins to fear for the well-being …
Read More “Steve Bould’s managerial career begins with a victory”
By Bulldog Drummond For days on Facebook I have been seeing adverts showing pictures of somewhat eccentric Arsenal supporters (one large guy holding an Arsenal scarf above his head with the words upside down, another large gent with a bald head tattooed throughout with Arsenal motifs, that sort of thing) followed by the slogan “91% …
By Bulldog Drummond Burnley let us not forget, were there at the start. At the very start of organised league football in England and fairly near to the start of FA Cup football. Six years before Royal Arsenal made it to the first round proper of the Cup for the first time Burnley were there …
by Tony Attwood In February 2015 the Premier League announced that it had sold the television rights to its games for a record £5.136bn, 71% above the amount it gained three years before. Sky paid £4.2bn for five of the seven TV packages while BT Sprout paid £960m for the other two in the record …
By Bulldog Drummond. Hmmm… bit of an early slot for me, a Thursday, but there’s news so time for an early early preview. A preview of the preview in fact. Or a preview of the pre… [Get on with it – Tony] Carl Jenkinson has decided that he will NOT play for the Very Large …
By Tony Attwood A comment made recently on Untold had me pondering the statistics issue again. I had written about Arsenal’s finances vis a vis marketing income, and noted how the marketing income was rising, while patting myself on the back for having predicted this while an eminent economist had suggested it would not happen. …
Read More “Why are statistics such a problem in football? After all, the facts are out there.”
By Tony Attwood Warning, this article includes a bit of crowing… although with a certain degree of caution. Having been caught out saying that I had an exclusive yesterday, when seemingly I didn’t as Arseblog beat me to the particular story by half an hour, I take today’s piece with caution. However the point about Untold …
Read More “Untold’s “Money League” predictions concerning Arsenal’s finances come to pass”
