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 James Bailey Arsenal midfielder Alex Iwobi has said that he is amazed by the level of support there is for his football team at home in his native Nigeria. Speaking to the Evening Standard, Iwobi revealed that during an international match, supporters were shouting out his team’s name – rather than his! Arsenal …
Read More “Why Arsenal Is Nigeria’s Favourite Football Team”
. by Blacksheep FIFA (in their infinite wisdom) have decided that the remembrance poppy is a ‘political symbol’ and therefore should not be sported by players of England and Scotland in their forthcoming World Cup qualifier. Not surprisingly, as this game takes place on the 11 November (the traditional day of remembrance of those who …
Read More “Fifa and the poppy debacle: the poppy just like Fifa is a “political act”.”
By Tony Attwood It was quite a move by the Daily Telegraph to publish its “kick them” article when speaking of how Tottenham could try and beat Arsenal. And there was some of that, but it was the elbow of Wanyama that really caused the concern. We could see Theo holding the back of …
Read More “The Telegraph advised Tottenham to kick Arsenal, but an elbow was as effective”
By Bulldog Drummond The joy of having a big squad – a squad of 25 players registered and five more youth players in serious contention – is that there is always choice. Those old days when a player would be risked, and more often than not (or so it seemed) get a worse injury as …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: trying to find the team for today’s match”
By Tony Attwood It used to be so easy in bygone days – I could write a piece about how many managers Tottenham had had in the past week, and we could all have a little laugh, and that would be the preview. Then we had the period when the anti-Arsenal-Arsenal mob put forward the …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: trying to find the future of the Tiny Totts.”
By Tony Attwood (and his abacus) According to the Guardian today (in a more upbeat mood than of late it must be said), “Arsenal have actually lost only once in their last eight matches against their bitter rivals, and have not succumbed at home since 2010.” In the bloggettas the story is somewhat more downbeat. …
By Tony Attwood Against Leciester away, earlier this season, a group of supposedly Arsenal supporters started to chant “Spend some ****ing money” (**** = not offending NxNow) and “We want Wenger out” etc. Of late I have not heard much from them, as they have left the complaining to the journalists who are always happy …
Read More “The danger of asking for simplistic change at the start of a season.”
By Tony Attwood When you think about transfers, abuse of the transfer system, and the hoarding of players probably the first club that comes to mind is not Arsenal. While we all know about Chelsea and Manchester City having large numbers of players that they buy and then loan out and never get back, …
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Head of the Dept of Psychiatric Medicine, University Hospital of the North Circular Road We don’t normally start previews for a Sunday game on Thursday but matches against the Tiny Totts do require a little more chit chat than most, and there are always one or two things worth …
By Tony Attwood “The chairman of the LLDC, owners of the London Stadium, has resigned after an inquiry was opened into the soaring costs to the taxpayer to run the venue.” The Guardian “Tottenham have now lost each of their ties at the national stadium – they were beaten 2-1 by Monaco in September”. The …
By Tony Attwood There are two things we know about players who have played for Barcelona. One is that they have been in a club that engaged for multiple years in child trafficking. The second is that they employ or have employed a number of players who have been found guilty of tax fraud …
Read More “Alexis’ time at Barcelona catches up with him as he is accused of tax fraud.”
By Tony Attwood On 2 September we bade farewell to the great Arsenal Transfer Index – a listing of all the players we could find who were allegedly leaving the club or coming to the club. In our final analysis we noted 115 incoming transfer rumours – almost all of them wrong 22 players who …
By Tony Attwood If you want to skip my chit-chat and usual rambling just scroll down the page, the video is below. But if you have a moment to spare, do consider this…. Driving home from Heathrow Airport last night I heard someone on BBC Radio 5 announce that his “worry” was that Arsenal treated …
By Bulldog Drummond Seems there is a bit of a debate going on about Arsenal’s line up today with Mr Wenger being at his most enigmatic. We know that Monreal, Cazorla, Bellerin and Walcott did not travel. Mr Wenger said of the two last named players “both are ‘more or less’ injuries”. I’m not …
Read More “Ludogorets Razgrad v Arsenal. “Our destiny lies in the minds of the players””
By Tim Charlesworth So here it is – November. Halloween brings genuine horror for Arsenal fans, because the day after Halloween is November 1st and that is something for us all to be scared of. Every year I convince myself that November is an absurd irrational superstition, and every year it delivers on the horror. …
Read More “Here comes November: a time of horror or success for Arsenal?”
. By Fishpie To enjoy: to derive pleasure from, or take delight in, an activity or an occasion. And with the first-quarter stage of the season now completed, we’ve seen 15 competitive occasions in which Arsenal have endeavoured to play great football for us to enjoy. They’ve endeavoured and, in a good proportion of those …
Read More “Seeing the positives at Arsenal has been easy, so far”
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader of Untold, you may have noticed that of late I have been trying, in my normal bumbling manner, to point out ways in which newspapers deliberately mis-represent events in the game. At the start of the century there was the tale that Arsenal got more red …
Read More “Arsenal always do worse than everyone else in November, and other myths.”
By Fear N Panick There was a very strange comment made during Sky’s programme covering Sunderland v Arsenal. Niall Quinn told us, “It’s not the fan’s fault.” An interesting perspective, not because I think Sunderland’s predicament at having appointed a man who a week before his appointment said “the jury is still out on Ozil”, …
Read More “The Football journalists education programme. A public service commentary.”
by Bulldog Drummond The first bread slicing and wrapping machine in Britain was installed in the Wonderloaf Bakery in White Hart Lane, right on the boundary of Tottenham and Wood Green, in 1937 and was used to create the Wonderloaf. It was a white sliced loaf with all the natural goodness removed to produce something incredibly …
Read More “Wonderloaf v Arsenal. The preview, the teams, the stats, the score and the bland bread.”
By Tony Attwood There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Or so it is said (although usually without any data to back up such a claim). Ask a statistician however and he/she will tell you that there are statistics used properly and statistics used improperly or with incomplete data. Football, sadly, is fully of …
Read More “Why CIES data ranking clubs by the average age of their signings is not all it seems”
By Tony Attwood One of the things that fascinates me is that many people who pontificate on football (as I admit I do) often don’t look at the home and away form of the teams playing each other. I think that if one does that one can begin to make more realistic predictions about …
Read More “Arsenal to change the line up for Sunderland game: the tactical preview.”
By Tony Attwood The Telegraph is currently running a “Fan happiness index” via which they ask “Which Premier League club has given its supporters reason to cheer, or be sad?” It’s all invention of course – the bloke behind me in the east upper will be Very Very Angry every time Theo doesn’t put in …
By Blacksheep On Tuesday night I went to watch the Arsenal play Reading in the Football League Cup (the cup that is officially so uninspiring it hasn’t attracted a sponsor this season). I was out of the country when Arsenal beat Robin Hood Athletic away and what with the hectic schedule of work and domestic …
Read More “Reading in the library: watching the EFL cup from the posh seats”
By Tony Attwood You might recall a little piece I wrote about the outrageous allegations in the Telegraph about empty seats at matches at the Emirates. Using faked and misleading photographs the paper tried to make out that vast swathes of the ground were vacant during matches – even though the article admitted the number …
Read More “Empty seats at the Ems? You should try the Tax Payers’ Stadium!”
By Tony Attwood (and his French-English dictionary) It was back in August that the website Tribal Football came up with the headline “REVEALED: Usmanov ponders selling Arsenal stake and buying into Everton”. It was an article with the usual stuff about Mr Usmanov being “frozen out” of Arsenal, and no mention that he has been …
Read More “Alisher Usmanov makes his move – and it is not the one predicted.”
