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 Tony Attwood It has, both for those people who play fantasy football and for the journalists who base their regular commentaries around fantasy football, while nicking their news stories without checking from wholly unreliable news stories, been a bit of a topsy turvy season so far. One minute Arsenal is in total meltdown and …
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader of Untold you must be sick to death of me referring back to the article I wrote five years ago about why England is so rubbish as an international football team. I refer back to it because it is evidence based, it shows in clear stats …
By Tony Attwood Lionel Messi tax charges dropped in Spain shouted the Daily Telegraph, always keen to lend a hand to the very rich and famous – although you can always tell when they know they haven’t checked the facts properly because the article was attributed to “Telegraph Sport”. Lionel Messi tax fraud case: Barcelona …
By Tony Attwood You may have seen on a number of other sites an analysis of the last 38 league games played by Premier League clubs. It has turned up without attribution on a number of sites but I think it originated with @goonerdesi. If I’ve got that wrong my apologies. Anyway, it was …
Read More “The “last 38 match” table – Arsenal and Man C neck and neck to take control.”
Triumph and Adversity: a review of progress since the last interlull By Tim Charlesworth The second interlull is upon us, and it’s another chance to step away from the hurly-burly and review how our season is going. Just after the first interlull, I had a look at a series of tricky fixtures ahead, and suggested …
Read More “Triumph and Adversity: a review of progress since the last interlull”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw (senior weaponry advisor to Professional Game Match Officials Ltd) The secretive organisation, PGMO, which is believed to control football refereeing at the professional level in England, have long been rumoured to be closely associated with the Italian Mafia, and it seems that the influence of their patrons is spreading. …
Read More “PGMO ready to recommend that all league referees should be armed during matches.”
By Tony Attwood. One of the great consquences that there might be if Fifa falls is that the FA, a big supporter of Fifa, of Jack Warner and of Platini, might fall down into the hole with them. It doesn’t matter whether it has been the FA’s inability to deal with Richard Scuadmore’s sexist commentary …
By Tony Attwood Just how good are Arsenal players in relation to those of other clubs? Obviously one answer is to look at the league table, and I will come to that in a moment, but there is another source of such information: the analyses of the type put out by WhoScored.com One of the …
Read More “Just how well are Arsenal doing on a player by player basis?”
. By Tony Attwood. . How to be a millionaire – 1. Be a billionaire and start an airline. How to be a millionaire – 2. Be a billionaire and buy a football club. . Same old same old. You’ve almost certainly heard one or probably both of those before. But such …
Read More “Why big clubs are no longer being bought and sold: re-interpreting the evidence”
By Kev The sad rise of the Fantasy Football Manager So Brendan Rogers is the latest casualty. After failed attempts to destabilise Arsenal and manoeuvre Wenger closer to the exit door, the FFM get their other man. But who is the FFM? Saturated TV coverage, Dream Team Competitions and computer games consoles have created a …
By Tony Attwood This week I heard someone interviewing two guests on TV. They disagreed over some point or other and the interviewer said, “That’s what we like about football – everyone can have an opinion.” And yes of course in a moderately open democratic society everyone can have an opinion. That opinion might be …
Read More “Where does Liverpool sit in relation to evidence based football analysis?”
By Tony Attwood You know the world has gone even madder than it was yesterday when you wake up and see the Daily Telegraph (that most sneering, jibing anti-Arsenal of papers) has done a double somersault and turns itsself on its head (if you see what I mean). Of Arsenal against Olympiakos they said, “little …
Read More “What are they smoking at Anfield? (And Fleet Street)”
By Bulldog Drummond I rather like the new phrase on Untold Arsenal: “Evidence based football reporting”, and as anticipated a survey of the media this morning shows very little of it. Endless opinion of course, but very very few stats. Indeed the few that I have found seem to involve journalists knocking Arsene Wenger …
Read More “Arsenal v Man U: the evidence based preview of the game”
The Referee Preview by Andrew Crawshaw Following Usama and Walter’s review of the Chelsea game Ref Review : Chelsea – Arsenal. How Mike Dean & Co screwed an entire game… here is the updated table of shame Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 7 Red Cards 0 6 Penalties 0 …
Read More “Arsenal vs Manchester Utd. Expect elbowing and wrestling with impunity.”
By Tony Attwood . Gary Neville has written a little piece in the Telegraph about how the only thing that Arsenal need to change in order to win the league is their preparation before a match. . As is the way with the modern Telegraph article it is a piece full of pictures (because we …
Read More “Gary Neville the telepathic footballer, and the drive towards evidence based analysis”
By Tony Attwood When Arsène Wenger arrived on his first day at work at Highbury, he found, somewhat to his surprise, that there was a large gathering of journalists on the steps of the Marble Halls. Enquiring within why they were there, he was told that no, this was not how press conferences were held …
Read More “At last, after years of our waiting, Arsène Wenger changes his approach.”
By Tim Charlesworth So the Goonersphere is full of hysteria and disappointment again. Olympiacos was a horrible game and a horrible performance, however you look at it. We’re all full of blame and recriminations. The hysterical attacks on Wenger for picking Ospina are plain silly, as if to imply that it was predictable that …
Read More “Hysteria and disappointment: the defence of Piers Morgan”
By Tony Attwood Platini is no revolutionary but a hindrance to true change at rotten Fifa That headline from the Daily Telegraph marked an interesting moment in the history of commentary on Uefa and Fifa, one of the first articles that turned against Platini in the English press, and which started to question Uefa. And …
Read More “It looks like Platini and the FA are made for each other.”
By Tony Attwood Theo Walcott has scored 12 goals in his last 13 Premier League starts. It is the sort of scoring that takes the mind back to someone like the incredible Jack Lambert who in Arsenal’s first ever league winning season scored 38 league goals in 34 games. That was in 1930/31, and I …
Read More “As the entity behind shouted “You’re useless Walcott” a dark despair overwhelmed me”
By Tony Attwood So for the second Champions League match running we are playing a club whose ownership is deeply involved in scandals and corruption allegations. Oh well, so it goes. Funny that the press in the UK don’t seem overly concerned. Why is that I wonder. But at least we have our banner …
Read More “Football Should Be An Art: Tonight’s match against the rather dubious Olympiakos”
By Tony Attwood On a day when yet more illegal activity swirls around Barcelona (even more than I managed to cover last night in what I thought would be a full review of their activity – as Gord pointed out in comments on yesterday’s article), and on a day when we play a club whose …
Read More “FOOTBALL should be an ART. The Untold Banner is unveiled tonight at the Emirates Stadium”
By Tony Attwood Catalonia didn’t actually hold a referendum on independence recently; it held elections to the regional assembly. As a result the main separatist alliance and a smaller nationalist party won 72 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament. So they won most of the seats, although they didn’t get half the vote. Such …
Read More “Barcelona to be excluded from Spanish League; Neymar assets frozen, Messi injured”
By Tony Attwood “A willingness to attack, a high velocity, and sophistication.” That is by and large what today’s Guardian report on on Arsenal says. But I am going to highlight a handful of other things that can out of yesterday’s game. First the number of shots. Arsenal have more shots than anyone else per game. …
Read More “The exact reasons why Arsenal came good – so very good at Leicester”
By Tony Attwood Yes we sure did our bit. As of saturday morning over 102,000 people had signed the petition demanding that Dean never again can do an Arsenal game. Now we shall see what PGMO does. If you still haven’t signed the petition is still there. Follow the link from the home page. The …
Read More “The lovely Tinkerman against the Arsenal as Dean petition passes 100,000!”
By Tony Attwood As expected the Swiss authorities have started criminal proceedings against Sepp Blatter. Just as expected Platini has been asked to provide information. Here’s the statement… “On the one hand, the OAG suspects that on 12 September 2005 Mr. Joseph Blatter has signed a contract with the Caribbean Football Union; this contract was …
Read More “Slowly the finger points at England over Fifa corruption”
