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 You may have noticed that over the summer we were enjoying ourselves (or being incredibly prattish depending on your perspective) by writing brief commentaries about the supporters of all the clubs in the Premier League. They all appear in the “Watching Supporters” section of the web site. Here’s what we wrote …
Read More “Arsenal v Bournemouth: their supporters, the journalists, AFCB’s in and out,”
By Bulldog Drummond According to some in the media Mr Wenger is contemplating changing the formation against Bournemouth, to a back four. There’s no real evidence that he will do this, beyond the fact that in pre-season the manager said that he would keep the players practising both three and four at the back, …
Read More “Arsenal v Bournemouth: Mr Wenger’s commentaries and press speculation ahead of the game”
By Bulldog Drummond. And now back to the real thing, and the first point to look at must be Bournemouth’s activity as an away team. Here’s their performance away from home last season Pos Team Pld W D L GF GA GD Pts 10 Everton 19 4 6 9 20 28 -8 18 11 …
Read More “Arsenal v Bournemouth: home and away prognostications, and injuries”
By Tony Attwood Ian Wright, Martin Keown, Paul Merson, Thierry Henry, Tony Adams and Lee Dixon have, as you may have noticed, all been having a go at Arsenal of late. Which has become rather dull and boring, not least because none of them have been successful club managers, as far as I know. …
by Tony Attwood It was in 2015 on one of my trips to Australia to see my daughter that I visited Melbourne City FC and was astonished to see how much it was being re-designed to look like Manchester City. It was a surprise because a couple of years before that I had predicted that …
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw If you are a regular reader you will know just how pesky injury numbers can be. Reports can claim that Arsenal have players out injured who were actually injured on loan (and therefore not really an Arsenal player, since if uninjured the player would not be playing for Arsenal …
Read More “The extremely pesky business of counting the number of players injured”
by Tony Attwood Here’s the original… Y LLEGA EL MOMENTO EN EL QUE TE CANSAS . Te cansas que te critiquen con razón y sin razón, te cansas de que te quieran ver derrotado , te cansas de decirte a ti mismo “una vez más me levantare” después de llorar tras una derrota, y te …
by Tony Attwood Each year for the past eight or so years I have written a booklet on one period of Arsenal’s history, which is published by the Arsenal Independent Supporters Association in the early part of the new season. This summer the booklet was on the early years of the reign of Bertie Mee, …
Read More “Players wanting to leave and youngsters wanting a chance: same old Arsenal.”
By Tony Attwood As you will of course know we are playing in Group H against … BATE Borisov Crvena zvezda Köln The squad has now been announced. Here are the rules… Clubs can name a maximum of 25 players on their primary list, known as List A. Eight places are reserved for home-grown …
Read More “Arsenal’s Europa League squad named: 42 players named in all.”
By Andrew Crawshaw First off, the injured players. Santi we all know about. Dayan Iliev has been out for two years following knee surgery, I would be very surprised if he makes any first team appearances any time soon. He will almost certainly be in goal for some of the U23 games to build …
Read More “Arsenal’s four teams to cope with seven games in three weeks.”
By Tony Attwood As you will of course be fully aware, we’ve only got three points out of the first three games. And I was pondering, as one does, whether this had happened before in recent years, and if so, what it meant. So I just doodled away a spare half hour making up a …
Read More “What do the first three league games of the season tell us?”
Latest in the wild and wacko world of football By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw While in the world cup France played a goalless draw with Luxembourg with Giroud starting and Lacazette taking over, it is being said elsewhere that the Spanish League wants Uefa to investigate Manchester City’s spending, and to expand the ongoing …
By Tony Attwood Two simple answers to that question come from two teams last season going from four to three central defenders: Chelsea and Arsenal. Chelsea had had three defeats in four, including the 3-0 at Arsenal, and then changed. Arsenal had lost eight in 12 when they changed. The only complaint that can be …
Read More “Changing formats and player positions: when has it ever worked?”
by Tony Attwood The Premier League have now announced the eight players who are in the short list for the August 2017 Premier League 2 Player of the Month. The eight players shortlisted for this month’s award have been drawn up following PL2 Managers nominating the best individual performance from each of their opposing teams …
Read More “Premier League 2 Player of the Month, plus it wasn’t all England in the transfer window.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone That headline is based on one that is currently running in the Telegraph: “Of course Arsenal players are keen on Alexis Sanchez going – they don’t want anyone challenging culture of mediocrity”. It is of course a silly construct – as if the players want the club to be mediocre. …
You might also like the Latest in “Watching Supporters” : West Ham United fans and their link with Napoleon. . By Sir Hardly Anyone And so the transfer window failed to live up to last year’s level when around 114 players were tipped as coming to Arsenal. This year 92 were tipped and two actually turned …
Read More “If it is in the media and about Arsenal there is a 98% chance it is untrue.”
By Andrew Crawshaw and Tony Attwood This appears to us to be the list of players that Arsenal now have on their books and below that the list of players who left us this transfer window. In the status column Y – first team player, T= Transfer, Sch = scholar. In the status column players …
Read More “Arsenal: the complete squad, the 25, the loans, the leavers, the homegrowns”
By Sir Hardly Anyone At times the transfer window almost read like one of my columns containing as it did the notion that there might be something there in that makes sense, but for the moment it is hard to see what it is. No one new was signed, and the Arsenal directors and owner …
Read More “In the end we got a few laughs as transfer window remains open but action is needed”
By Sir Hardly Anyone This really is a perfect message for people who argue that Wenger is an idiot, Arsenal are slow, and any and every other manager this side of Sirius B could complete the deals that Arsenal need. Here we go. Arsenal have agreed a deal with Monaco for Lemar for £92m But …
By Tony Attwood Apparently the Ox has signed for Liverpool, and that takes me back to a comment that several writers sent in yesterday following our regular update on the transfer rumours Who cares about how many players the press thinks are leaving or joining arsenal. More importantly, have you actually got anything to say …
Read More “The tale of the sale of the ox, and how Arsenal played the market”
By Tony Attwood When these little themes emerge they tend to flourish like wildfire. Here’s one from “Suburban Gooners”, a blogetta. Sorry about the odd punctuation, I’ve copied it exactly. I support Arsenal: I have been lied to Hello. How are you doing? Hopefully you are holding up ok? Given the circumstances? After all, three …
Read More “Today’s theme of the day: Arsenal feeds fans lies! We have proof!! Shock Horror!!!”
By Tony Attwood There was a moment, when Manchester City were found by Uefa to have broken FFP rules, when it looked very much as if the club could not believe it. Which I guess is to be expected if the club is part of the personal fiefdom of the rulers of a phenomenally wealthy …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes the list now covers 40 players who are apparently leaving the club. And I’d better reassure you straight away, that not all of them actually did leave. What is interesting however is that several players have left without ever once being mentioned by the wild ravings of journalists either in …
Read More “The list of every one of the 40 players tipped to be leaving Arsenal this summer.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. The pundits and tipsters, and the drunks at the bar, have made a pretty fair hash of predicting who Arsenal are signing and selling this summer, but with just a short while to go one might hope their information might at least be right by now. And yet, I suspect maybe …
Read More “Six (yes really, six) new players about to sign for Arsenal”
by Tony Attwood I was invited yesterday by one reader, to express my view on what I would do about Arsenal following the start to the season of one win and two defeats. In one sense I wanted to say, “read Untold Arsenal and you’ll see what I think,” but then I thought I would …
Read More “What is wrong with Arsenal, what is wrong with football and how to put it all right”
