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 Bulldog Drummond Here’s a nice opening thought just in case you have some nerves about the game today: When we beat Reading last weekend, that gave us nine wins in a row. That is our best run since the Invincibles won 10 games in a row in 2004. The match that ended that run …
By Bulldog Drummond Mourinho will be defensive, and be happy with a draw. That’s what everyone seems to be saying, and it is probably true. It might not be worth the £1000 a ticket that is said to be the going price. We have been awaiting a Mourinho “voyeur” statement, or the production of a …
By Tony Attwood I do like it when football journalists let slip just how out of touch they are with the real everyday fans – the people who pay out of their own pocket to watch games, often being given grotty seats in stadia where the niceties of life such as actually obeying the Licensing …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: How to misunderstand football and its fans.”
Arsenal v Chelsea 26 April 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly following Walter’s review of the Newcastle game Ref Review : Newcastle – Arsenal: an overwhelming bias here is the updated “Table of Shame’ Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 19 Red Cards 4 16 Penalties 4 …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea 26 April 2015 – The Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood The aaa spent much of the early part of the season saying that we should have gone out and bought more players. My answer was the same: it ain’t that easy. You have to ask Does the player want to come Does his agent like the deal If non-EU can we get …
Read More “Who you can buy depends an awful lot on who you have got.”
By Tony Attwood “Wenger can signal power shift to Arsenal – but only by ending his Mourinho hoodoo” screamed the Telegraph this week. They and the rest of the press will follow this up with a piece that says “Five things we learned this weekend.” It is all nonsense of course, based on the childish …
Have the referees been any better in Arsenal games recently? by Andrew Crawshaw This question arose as Tony, Blacksheep and I were having a drink in a bar before the Cup Semi-final. The essence of the conversation was that both of them were convinced that the refereeing had improved in more recent games. I was …
Read More “Have the referees been any better in Arsenal games recently?”
By Tony Attwood The new financial analysis of clubs’ finances for the season 2013/14 makes familiar reading. Manchester United with its world wide marketing earns the most and spends the most on salaries. Indeed the clubs vying for the top four places in the Premier League earn the most and spend the most on wages …
Read More “High wages do not ensure victory… but they can help”
By Tony Attwood Sometimes it seems like screaming at a concrete bunker. Those odd campaigns that Untold takes on, when few other people want to notice. We keep on plodding away, reporting each bit of news, in the hope that in the end the story will unfold and people will get interested, at least for …
Read More “At last, our complaints about state aid for football are heard”
By Tony Attwood When Untold gets its teeth into a story we like to dig in deep, and not give up until we’ve got to the bone. OK, perhaps not the best idiom when I am about to talk about injuries, but I’m sure you know what I mean. You’ll remember the era when we …
Read More “Bayern’s medical team resign, and the forgotten cause of injuries”
Women’s Super league – Arsenal’s start to the season By Andrew Crawshaw The WSL is now well under way, all eight teams have played three games, here is the table :- Pld Pts W D L F A G.D Pts Chelsea 3 9 3 0 0 7 1 6 9 Arsenal 3 7 2 1 0 …
Read More “Women’s Super league – Arsenal’s start to the season”
By Tony Attwood I’m not sure that Arsenal actually needed any additional publicity among the football playing fraternity in order to ensure that the players the club wants, want to come to the club, but if they did, then achieving the FA Cup records they have just gathered ought to do it. Everyone must know …
Read More “It’s not who we can afford to buy, it’s who we can fit in”
By Tony Attwood It is, by any standards, a grotesque and appalling place, made worse by the avarice of capital and the incompetence of inefficiency. But its foundations show something far more sinister and dispiriting. In a week when we learned that British industry and commerce is now so inefficient that the French as a …
Reading v Arsenal FA Cup Semi-final – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw The Officials for the two semi-finals are :- Reading v Arsenal Referee – Martin Atkinson Assistants – Michael Mullarkey and Gary Beswick Fourth Official – Andre Marriner and for completeness, Aston Villa v Liverpool Referee – Michael Oliver Assistants – Stuart Burt and …
Read More “FA Cup semi-final: It is Mr Atkinson. He doesn’t like us, but there is some good news.”
By Tony Attwood Poor Thierry. Last week he slaughtered the odd bods gathered in the studio to pick the meat out of Burnley v Arsenal, he turned Coquelin into the Police Officer, and showed just what those funny digital screens they have are actually there for. With a breathtaking analysis of how Arsenal controlled the …
Read More “Spare a thought for Thierry as Sky take their revenge”
By Tony Attwood Over the years of building Stadium Wenger, we’ve got used to players deciding to move on. Robin van Persie, Samir Nasri, Bac Sagnay, Ashley Cole, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Alek Hleb, Cesc Fabregas, Gael Clichy, Alex Song… Some have done well, some have quite simply taken the money and run, some have …
By Tony Attwood “When we beat Arsenal, we have to wait four weeks after our last league game to play the Cup final.” Steve Clarke, the Reading manager, in his last pre-match press conference. We are the cup holders and in the semi-final again, so it is not surprising to see the statistics …
If you were a football supporter in England in 1985, you will remember the Bradford stadium fire in which 56 people died. At the time we were reminded of the appalling state of many of the lower league grounds that we went to in those days. Indeed I recall a book of football stadia, which …
Read More “The Bradford Stadium fire alleged to have been arson”
By Tony Attwood Manchester City were bought by Sheikh Mansour, with an estimated individual net worth of at least £17 billion with a family fortune of at least $1 trillion, in September 2009. He removed Manchester City’s accumulated debt of over £300m and has since worked, and is continuing to work, on the infrastructure of the …
Read More “The press are telling us Arsenal can win the league. But why can’t Man C?”
By Tony Attwood Having celebrated the record breaking of Mr Wenger and of the club in terms of reaching the most FA Cup semi-finals, and noted that alongside Man U we are the top performers in the Cup (we’ve each won 11 and been runners’ up seven times), I thought I’d move on to this …
Read More “Arsenal v Reading: Reading’s recent form, and other past meetings.”
By Tony Attwood It’s getting a bit boring talking about our record of WWWWWWWWWWW or whatever it is these days so I thought I might try and fill in a bit of time this week by building up to the little ol’ game at Wemberleeee on Saturday. Meanwhile, and speaking of which, although the press …
Read More “Arsenal v Reading: Arsène Wenger extends his FA Cup record”
By Tony Attwood In retrospect it was a pretty dumb thought. One of my dumbest in fact. For it was based on the notion that something which was within the ambit of the semi-skimmed kamikaze-by-proxy fruitcakes who run football would be sensible. And yet somehow after this season’s tough start with players drifting back over …
Read More “Why 2nd and 3rd are more of a trophy than 4th, especially in 2015”
Ladies FA Cup Quarter final. Arsenal v Chelsea By Andrew Crawshaw A report from a sunny but windy BorehamWood ground. Attendance 964 Arsenal Kelly Smith (C), Emma Byrne (GK), Alex Scott, Emma Mitchell, CaseyyEmma Stoney, Vicky Losada, Jordan Nobbs, Danielle Carter, Leah Williamson, Natalia De Pablos Sanchon, Jemma Rose Arsenal and Chelsea were the …
By Tony Attwood Now here’s a thought I missed: David Ospina has a higher win ratio that any other player in Premier League history. It’s been 12 games, with 11 wins and six without a goal again. That is a win percentage of 92 per cent. “No other player in the history of the …
Read More “Columbo and the Columbian; and how a word from Untold can sort out the press.”
By Tony Attwood We have won 16 of our last 18 games in all competitions so we are consistent. We have won eight league games in a row – and you can’t really do better than that. We might well also get Champions League qualification for an 18th consecutive season. These are not bad runs. …
Read More “It’s hard to knock 8 out of 8, and 16/18. But journalists find a way.”
