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 What is the difference between being ruled by the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and being ruled by Fifa? Well Fifa don’t arrange or allow the execution of many people, nor do they send them off to Siberia. But they do steal other people’s money, are utterly corrupt and have …
Read More “Life under Fifa: the misery of living under the yoke of incompetent tyranny”
By Tony Attwood The emergence of Iceland as a footballing nation capable of getting to the European Championship finals made me wonder how they had done it. Or rather, I wondered if the notion I put forward in 2010 (and which has now regularly been copied by others) as to why England do so badly …
Read More “How come tiny and modest sized nations achieve so much more in football than England?”
Mathieu Flamini – Levulinic Acid King by Andrew Crawshaw There have been a number of reports recently in the Press that our Mathieu is doing extremely well for himself outside the world of football. In 2008 he founded a company, GF Biochemicals, in Italy with a friend Pasquale Granata. This has been kept very …
By Tony Attwood So just another interlull week in terms of football news (although of course certainly not in terms of anything else). Using the lovely archaic language that the press indulge in these days, Cesc Fábregas’ statement that Chelsea’s season is fucked was described by one over-extended journalist as a “foul mouthed rant”. An interesting …
By Tony Attwood If we take a look at the league table at this point last season (that is, after 12 games – the 12th game last year coming after rather than before the interlull last year) and then compare with the final league position of the club (the last two columns) we can see …
Read More “Do the first 12 games tell us just how the rest of the season will go? Apparently yes.”
By Tony Attwood Well ok, not quite a big debate, but it is getting a bit of an airing. In the coming weeks we will find out whether we are playing in the Champions League, the Europa or neither. And the question is, should Arsenal play to their strengths in every game and try and …
By Tony Attwood What makes a perfect transfer? First, you have to abandon plausibility. There has to be no link with reality, no link with what the team needs, who is available, who might come to the club, whether the player has said no, whether the player is in prison on suspicion of blackmail, whether …
Read More “The perfect transfer story: Arsenal’s approach for two new players”
An in-depth and historical study of solastalgia in North London . PART 1 . From – The Brickfields Gunners Blog . Before you of the other lot start to comment or click the dislike buttons, hear me out . While admitting to a somewhat perverse pleasure in baiting Spuds fans , I do …
Read More “Scores of Spurs supporters suspected of suffering from severe Solastagia”
By Tony Attwood Naturally we focus on Arsenal, and sometimes the Wenger out mob – the aaa, their allies in the AST (who do those “surveys” each year in which people are asked questions in a funny way which gets answers such as 94% want the increased revenue from broadcasting and commercial deals to help …
By Ian Jose Mourinho – we were down to 10 men, you can’t have chickens just crossing roads, we need them on the pitch. The chicken will never play for us again. Harry Redknapp – he saw Rosie in the park, they are close friends. Chicken asked me once for some tax advice, I …
A TALE OF TWO ARTISTS……….Don McMahon If you are a regular reader of Untold you may recall my earlier writings, and from those find me something of a football fanatic, former professional referee and marginal footballer. But as with most Canadians, my first and principal love is ice hockey. Football became a passion to …
Read More “A tale of two artists – how analysis and learning can transform the way a game is played”
By Tony Attwood Let us never forget, let us never ever forget, let us never, ever, ever, ever forget that through this summer the manic hysteria of demented wildcats howling under the full moon told us constantly that Arsenal had to buy-buy-buy-buy etc etc. We were the only THE ONLY team this side of Lesser …
Read More “Now even the media is starting to recognise just how amazing this Arsenal team really is”
. By Stephen Wales . Football 2030/31 season . Welcome to the start of the 2030/31 season in the new Super Euro Premier League, last season’s Super Euro League division A was disbanded after corruption allegations were made against a number of Russian clubs. This season we are proud at BT Fox sports to give …
Read More “Welcome to the new world: Football 2030/31 season”
By Tony Attwood There have always been some people who like to leave the ground early, but this strange and eccentric habit seems to have got worse and worse and worse in recent years. I suppose it was harder to get out when we had a ground that had large standing sections, and for those …
By Sir Hardly Anyone; Our Head of Blogetta and Spoof-man of the century is down the pub. GOOD NEWS: Wenger Reveals Return Date For 6 of the Injured First Team Players So shouts “GunnersCity” who helpfully print the list 21st November – Bellerin, Oxlade Chamberlain, Ramsey. 29th November – Walcott. 13th December – Wilshere. But then we …
Read More “Wenger confirm(s) super signing will be made; Mourinho sacked; Blogetta roundup”
By Tony Attwood So it wasn’t just me who picked up on Damien Comolli’s suggestion that the injury crisis in football is not all down to Arsenal, but is down to nationality. The Telegraph today tells us that more than a quarter of the Premier League’s 142 English players unavailable for international selection because of …
Read More “Why Arsenal players are getting injured. Finally we are getting some insights.”
. By Proudkev It seems a day doesn’t go by when someone, somewhere tries to discredit Arsene Wenger’s record. How many times has it been repeated that George Graham handed Arsene success with that back 4? This is a regular weapon in the armoury of the Wenger Out Brigade and is often repeated in the …
Read More “Did Wenger owe his success to George Graham, as we are often told?”
By Tony Attwood I really do want to start with my thoughts about the Armistice commemoration at the Ems yesterday. I have stood for so many moments of silence to show sympathy, understanding and thanks, that in the end the silence can (for me) start to lose its meaning. Not always, of course: when I …
By Bulldog Drummond Mesut Özil does ‘the hardest part of football’… has the Arsenal star finally silenced his doubters? That was a headline in the Daily Mail this week followed by the usual bullets… Mesut Özil has more assists, and chances created, than any other player in the Premier League this season Chris Waddle says …
Arsenal v Spurs Sunday 8 November – the Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw No updates to the Table of Shame for this week. Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 11 Red Cards 0 7 Penalties 0 8 Goals 0 3 Total 0 29 Possible Cost in Points 0 6 …
Read More “Arsenal v Spurs Sunday 8 November – the Officials. Are you reading Mr Atkinson?”
by Tony Attwood I know many fans have a whole plethora of pictures of Arsenal in their homes. I’ve got a lot of books, which of course I use as reference material for the Arsenal History Society articles I write, but there is only one Arsenal picture. It is the cover of a Highbury programme, …
By Tony Attwood As we all know Laurent Koscielny could have played against Bayern but was left on the bench. It is a fairly obvious conclusion given that if he was on the bench he could have played. That’s that, nice and simple, although it didn’t stop the inevitable “Koscielny could have played against …
Read More “The Koscielny dilemma: play him or keep him out of the international week?”
By Tony Attwood Olivier Giroud’s record for Arsenal this season is simple to understand. He has played 16 games and scored 8 goals. 50%. If we just take league games it is six in 11. Similar to last season in the league where he scored 15 in 28. . But throughout the summer …
By Tony Attwood It is amusing to see the way the media twists and turns in its opinions, as if somehow we won’t remember what they said yesterday, let alone last week. And dare I suggest that a small number of the scribblers are at least getting someone else to read Untold for them, if …
Read More “Why we will win the league no matter what happens against Tottenham”
By Tony Attwood TV pundits have it easy. For unless we keep a collection of their ramblings on hard drives, or make notes as the programmes run, their wild comments about who is going to win the league and who will struggle are lost for all time. TV stations don’t do re-runs of their pundits …
Read More “Just how well have the journalists been doing with their pre-season predictions?”
