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 Very unusually, the BBC picked no less than three Arsenal players for its team of the weekend. First off was Santi Cazorla, of whom the Corporation said, “Only team-mate Mesut Özil (five) created more chances this weekend in the Premier League than Cazorla (four). “After last week’s somewhat inept performance against the …
Read More “The Arsenal Golden Triple, double victories, perfidious journalists”
By Bulldog Drummond And so the FA Cup (won by Arsenal for the last two seasons and tipped by Untold – although probably no one else – to do it for a third successive season) has started with matches including the likes of Leicester Nirvana, Coventry Sphinx, Jarrow Roofing Bolden CA, and West Allotment Celtic. Meanwhile …
By Tony Attwood I don’t claim to be a fount of all knowledge, but in publishing Untold Arsenal with its audience of 1 million page views a month I do feel the need to keep up. And when the Benzema story first broke I felt a certain amount of unease. I felt, surely this is wrong. …
By Tony Attwood Last night Arsenal under 21s beat Fulham 1-0 at the Emirates. It was a terrific game full of the most amazing skills from incredibly talented players; an absolute joy to watch. It was one of those games where right up to the 86th minute when Zelalem scored there was a doubt if …
Read More “Arsenal 1 Fulham: but the low crowd suggests cost of entry isn’t the issue”
By Tony Attwood Tonight it is Arsenal v Fulham at the Emirates and I’m pleased to say I am able to pop along with Ian and his sons – not something I can’t often do, living out in the wilds of Northamptonshire and the fact that many games are behind closed doors. Quite what sort …
Read More “The Under 21s tonight: Arsenal v Fulham at the Ems”
Crystal Palace v Arsenal Sunday 16 August 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Referee – Lee Mason Assistants – S Ledger and E Smart Fourth Official – R Madley Last week we had the referee with the worst competence scores from last season, this week we have Lee Mason who, whilst not a …
Read More “Palace v Arsenal: 16 August 2015 – The Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood On 13 August Amitai Winehouse published an article in the Telegraph about the comparative strengths of various squads. It includes this paragraph on Arsenal… However, fitness troubles tend to befall the north London side with more regularity than any other team in the Premier League, with Tomas Rosicky, Danny Welbeck and Jack Wilshere …
Read More “Ospina CONFIRMS he is set to leave as injuries mount, but wait, what’s this? Wow!”
By Tony Attwood Sorry Untold Arsenal has been up and down like the preverbial. Please, if you do find us not here, (as it were) please do follow us on Twitter @UntoldArsenal, and/or go to our Facebook page www.facebook.com/untoldarsenaltolday where we will aim to keep the service running. But now, here’s the story …
Read More “FA up to their misleading news stories again. Don’t be fooled!”
By Usama and Walter First let me point out that this is only looking at the decisions of the refs and has nothing to do with how the teams played. If you want to comment on how the teams played you can do this in the other articles about the match. I welcome Usama on …
Sincere apologies to everyone about the amount of time it is taking us to get Untold Arsenal back up and running. At first it looked like the number of people on the site was our problem, but the difficulties have continued. We have now got some use of the site, although it is very much …
Read More “FA promises investment in grassroots football by copying Sport England proposal”
By Sir Hardly Anyone According to Goonersden, and currently the top story on the Goonernews.com news accumulator site Done- Benzema Completes Medicals, Welcome To The Emirates It was posted on August 10, 2015. The story is only accessible behind a gambling ad, with one of those tricky misleading “close now and read article” tabs that …
Read More “Benzema Completes Medicals, Welcome To The Emirates”
By Tony Attwood Blueberries are good for you screams the headline, so people rush to supermarkets and buy blueberries. Some idiot eats blueberries all the time, and in due course is rushed to hospital. “Blueberry poison.” scream the headlines. “No, blueberries are safe,” say “experts”. “No,” say other experts, “they are in …
By Tony Attwood I wonder when the notion that we can see one event and then generalise out from there, first started. Perhaps it is just something inside all our heads, the “if only I could just have one sign from God, then I’d believe” sort of thing. But by and large, although using single …
Arsenal v West Ham United – Sunday 9 August – The Referee Preview By Andrew Crawshaw Well at last proper competitive football and I will again look at the Match Officials, what Arsenal’s history is with them and attempt to predict what they will do during the game. For Sunday the Officials are Referee – …
By Tony Attwood Pre-season time is traditionally “lists” time, although the papers of late have taken us into the all-the-year-round-list of “five things we learned from the way the referee walked out of the tunnel” variety of late. But we are almost there – we’ve got the ref preview from Andrew coming up and the …
By Tony Attwood In my recent article on state aid for West Ham United, I made the point that not all the awful details of how the state (which means all of us who live in the UK and pay tax) is paying for West Ham’s ground had yet come out, although those that had, …
Read More “If you live and work in the UK, you pay for West Ham United, no matter who you support.”
The 10 key factors that seem to me to be of prime influence as we enter another season. by Tony Attwood 1: Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott Last season Thierry Henry was reported by part of the media to have said that Arsenal needed a “top, top striker” to win the league. The newspapers chimed …
Read More “How Arsenal will do this season and why there is no “winning mentality”.”
The Referees 2014-15 A quick summary by Andrew Crawshaw First breaking news from the referees announced for this coming weekend – the PGMO have introduced an additional referee who is not on their Elite List. Simon Hooper is to take charge of the Norwich v Crystal Palace game. It will be interesting to …
Read More “The Referees’ accuracy 2014-15. When it’s important you might as well toss a coin.”
By Tony Attwood This is the third and final part of the little series of articles answering the question “What determines if a club is well run or not?” The series began with my own personal view of how I feel about the club I’ve supported from childhood with 10 ways measure Arsenal. Then I took …
Read More “Does TV revenue make a club well run? Or is it just taking clubs to the edge of a cliff?”
by Tony Attwood I wrote in the last article about the issue of measuring club success. It strikes me that this is important because it gives an ideal of a feel supporters have for their club. It is perhaps hard to remember or recognise that before the Emirates and before Wenger, Arsenal was not always …
Read More “Measuring Arsenal’s success: asking silly questions, manipulating the figures.”
By Tony Attwood A recent article in the Telegraph sought to evaluate the best run clubs in England. I found that quite a challenging concept – and what made it all the more difficult to deal with was that the Telegraph produced tiny summaries of the clubs that were nominated for being among the “best …
Read More “How do we measure club success? 10 ways measure Arsenal.”
A FRIGHTFUL REALITY………Don McMahon There has been much written and posted about the PGMOL and its members. Lets be clear and rational about some aspects of these referees: 1) Where they come from probably doesn’t have much to do with how they officiate but who they support does. 2)What they are told to do …
Read More “A FRIGHTFUL REALITY: the world of Premier League refs is not all it should be”
2015-16 Referee Previews – An introduction to the Referees by Andrew Crawshaw The Official Web Page for the Barclays Premier League has the following to say about the PGMO :- “Led by General Manager Mike Riley, Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) is responsible for the training, development and mentoring of 79 referees and …
Read More “2015/16: An introduction to the Referees. Do not read this standing up.”
Wenger vs. Mourinho, Baker’s Dozen Failure, A Tale of Two Managers By Jerry As Arsenal prepared to face Chelsea on Sunday in the FA Community, everyone was aware (due to the usual media reminders) that Arsène Wenger has managed against the self appointed “Special/Happy One” José Mourinho on 13 (a baker’s dozen) occasions without a …
Read More “Wenger vs. Mourinho, Baker’s Dozen Failure, A Tale of Two Managers”
By Bulldog Drummond I have not noticed anyone mention, in the build up to today’s overture to the season, that since the spring of 2014 Arsenal have played five and won five at Wembley. 2014: Arsenal 1 Wigan 1 (4-2 on penalties) FA Cup semi-final Arsenal 3 Hull 2 (after extra time). FA Cup final …
Read More “Arsenal seeking sixth consecutive Wembley win since spring last year”
