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
Fancy something a little less statistical for Christmas Day? Try Christmas Day at the Untold Office. By Tony Attwood The notion of playing football matches on Christmas Day does not go back to the very start of league football in England but rather was introduced in the second season of the football league. The first …
Read More “Christmas Day schedules for Arsenal: when Arsenal regularly played on 25 December.”
How many blue whales can you fit into a Boeing 747 before lunch and what your dog’s barks mean Last thursday, I went in to enquire about getting a dog collar to give as a Christmas present to one of my chums who had recently taken a creature from the local Animal Rescue Shelter. …
Read More “Christmas Day at the Untold editorial offices by the office dog”
It’s Christmas, Goodwill to all men By Tim Charlesworth (@Timc1972) The dislike or fear of ‘the other’ is a natural instinct and none of us are immune to it. We almost seem genetically programmed to seek out differences and set up conflict. The tribalism of football is, of course, a fairly harmless manifestation of this …
Read More “It’s Christmas. Goodwill to all men, and a time to end the anger and prejudice”
By Tony Attwood I drove north up the A1 last night to Newark for a little bop around the dance floor and listened (I guess rather stupidly because it always gets me wound up) to various journalists and “experts” (I use the word lightly) commenting on who was going to buy whom this January. What …
By Tony Attwood Maybe before matches we ought to do manager previews as well as referee previews. Especially when it comes to Tony Pulis. Tony Pulis. I’m embarrased to share a Christian name with him. But here goes. As a player Years Team Games Goals 1975–1981 Bristol Rovers 85 3 1981–1982 Happy Valley (Hong …
By Tony Attwood Paul Wilson writing in the Guardian recently made this comment… Referees do not always make the right decision on the spot, and sometimes they make the wrong decision for the right reasons. But with time, hindsight and replays, the disciplinary commission should be capable of sorting all that out. Now on the face of …
Read More “A perfect and total example of how our perception of football is being manipulated”
“Arsène Wenger” (CC BY 2.0) by Ronnie Macdonald Arsenal have made a strong start to their bid to end their Premier League title drought after 13 years. The Gunners have previously enjoyed impressive openings to previous campaigns, only to fall away in the second halves of seasons, none more so than their failed challenge last term when they …
Read More “Arsenal Need to Maintain Away Form to End Title Drought”
By Tony Attwood The Telegraph has published an article, “Every Premier League referee ranked and rated by Keith Hackett”, so what I have done is taken the refs rankings by the Untold team and compared with the Telegraph rankings. We’ve ranked refs in two ways – their major wrong decisions and their correct major decisions. …
By Tony Attwood Take your average premier league centre forward and you will find that at various times he goes through the season without scoring. It is called a barren spell and is considered normal. Indeed if it is Jamie Vardy, then even a sending off during a whole season that is poor by his …
Read More “What’s up with Ozil? Actually nothing much. In fact he’s still at the top of his game.”
by James Burnett Although Arsene Wenger has admitted that he thinks Arsenal are still in a weaker financial position than rivals Manchester City, he maintains that his club has come a long way from the days when their best players were departing for the Etihad Stadium. Between 2009 and 2014, Wenger lost five of his …
Read More “Arsene Wenger Still Believes Arsenal Has What It Takes Despite Being Financially Weaker”
THE MAKING OF A REFEREE…………….Don McMahon A recent article on the Footballroar website caught my attention and after reading it, inspired me to write this article. Here is the link to that article The premise of this article is that former professional footballers are well placed and suited to become premier league officials because of …
By Sir Hardly Anyone, and a friend. One can read the situation in any way you wish – both Meust and Alexis are going to leave because Mr Wenger is an absolute failure and they want to get out of the club as fast as possible, or both players want to stay because both realise …
Read More “If Alexis and Ozil depart, Arsenal have plans to replace both of them with one player!”
By Blacksheep Tony asked me if I could think of writing a sort of review of the year article about Arsenal, perhaps in the spirit of prize giving (best goal, worst referee, most exciting match etc). After this week of disappointment (spoiler alert if you recorded the Everton and Manchester Airport games) I must say …
By Tony Attwood Football has a habit of lurching from crisis to crisis, from headline to headline, from coverup to coverup. But just because until now it has somehow it always got through each disaster and struggled on to the next doesn’t mean this can go on forever. The crises are coming faster and faster …
Read More “Football in England is at the crossroads and its future hangs in the balance”
by Don McMahon As you may know, I am a retired educational psychologist, so I know a bit about psychological evaluation, assessment, interpretation and behaviour management, to name a few items. The term ¨psychology¨is bandied about far too often by people who have little or no idea about what psychology really is. They confuse it …
By Tony Attwood Arsène Wenger’s comments about referees after yesterday’s match were largely ignored or treated as more bleating by a man who won’t face up to his own team’s failings. And this was inevitable given the fact that the media has refused to engage in the debate as to why the PGMO (which organises …
Arsenal XI: Cech, Bellerin, Gabriel, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Xhaka, Walcott, Ozil, Iwobi, Alexis Subs on the beach Ospina, Holding, Gibbs, Elneny, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Lucas, Giroud By Tony Attwood Walter is having another of his Arsenal Belgium sessions so I’ve been roped in for this one. Only one team change from Bulldog’s predictions – Iwobi starts …
By Bulldog Drummond Despite the feeling around that Manchester City are a bit of a difficult team for Arsenal, recent results show this is far from universally so…. Date Game Result Score Competition 8 Apr 2012 Arsenal v Manchester City W 1-0 Premier League 23 Sep 2012 Manchester City v Arsenal D 1-1 Premier League …
Read More “Man City v Arsenal the teams, the recent history, the sequences, and some stuff.”
By Bulldog Drummond Here’s a thought: Manchester Airport’s problems come because their ceaselessly praised manager has bought the players he likes rather than the players they need, and he keeps making changes to the team. Here’s another thought: Arsenal’s problems come because a much derided manager has not bought enough players and refuses to make …
Read More “Guardiola doesn’t do tackles, doesn’t know who to buy, and dithers. Or is that Wenger?”
By Tony Attwood Arsène Wenger finally told the assembled football media what we have been saying for years – they are tedious, repetitive and unimaginative. OK he didn’t use those words exactly but he did say they lacked creativity, and how utterly, utterly right he was about that. They agree a theme between them, and …
Read More “Man City’s problem is that they are no longer able to steal players from Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood As predicted after the Everton game, the aaa are back. uMaxit – a website I’d not come across before although I am sure it has been there for a long time, has a huge audience and the fault in not seeing it is entirely mine – having told us after the Stoke …
Read More “Man City v Arsenal: a change of tactics is predicted, and the psychological game”
By Tony Attwood Now here is a twist and a half. It is being reported in some of the stranger quarters in the footballing world that our Mesut is saying that for him to sign a new contract Arsenal will have to sign Julian Draxler of Wolfsburg. Of course it might be the case that …
Read More “Özil asks Arsenal to sign Draxler as part of contract deal and other tales”
By Tony Attwood Imagine that you go out of your front door tomorrow morning and find armed police and the military patrolling the streets where previously there was no such activity. Carefully you drive to work, noting the army digging bunkers and erecting barricades, patrols at every junction. You slow down to look for …
Read More “Football journalism has become a walled wonderland inherently incompatible with reality”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is often said that Einstein commented that the definition of madness is doing something, finding it fails, and then doing it again. Einstein never said any such thing, but that doesn’t stop people claiming that he did over and over without checking the validity of their claim. It is in …
Read More “All the Arsenal transfers you might have missed and some that may yet happen”
By Tony Attwood All it took at the start of the season was a defeat by one goal at home to Liverpool and a goalless draw away to the champions (at that point yet to fall from their perch) for the aaa to orchestrate their “Wenger out” chants at Leicester. Which means despite all …
Read More “It’s not the defeat that counts, it’s what happens next”
