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 This article continues from “Why do we keep pointing out errors in what the media says” ——————- Here is an interesting thought, published in the Guardian in an article headlined, “Are Burnley a rough team? Their red card record suggests not.” The piece makes the point that their last red card was …
Read More “How gaslighting excuses Burnley’s tactics, and knocks Arsenal’s reputation”
By Tony Attwood In the last article Have Uefa and CAS finally had enough of club trickery in avoiding FFP? I reported on the way that Uefa and the Court of Arbitration in Sport seem to have had enough of the way Manchester City are using the rules in order to escape punishment in the …
Read More “Here’s a turn up: CAS are supporting Arsenal against Fifa”
By Tony Attwood This article answers the question raised in the July 2020 article “What will Uefa and the clubs that obey FFP do now that FFP has been wrecked?” In recent months and indeed years both Uefa and the Premier League have required that Manchester City hand over documents and give information that is …
Read More “Have Uefa and CAS finally had enough of club trickery in avoiding FFP?”
by Tony Attwood “Scoop” recently wrote a comment on this blog relating to our regular pieces on what some of us consider to be wholly misleading articles in the media about football. Scoop expressed the opinion, which is often heard here, that “calling it out here is not going to change anything at all, and …
Read More “Why do we keep pointing out the errors of what media says when everyone knows?”
by Andrew Crawshaw The matches within the four groups that form the last 16 of the Women’s Champions League commence this week The clubs involved are:- Group A Group B Group C Group D Chelsea Breidablik Kopavogur Arsenal Bayern Munich Juventus PSG FC Barselona BK Häcken FF Servette FC Chēnois Real Madrid HB Køge Olympic …
Read More “TONIGHT: Arsenal Women in the Champions League. Group Stage preview”
By Tony Attwood I have often noted that European commentators on football have a vision that goes far beyond that available to English sports commentators. Indeed I can’t imagine too many publications renaming the idea of the holding of the World Cup every two years into “Biennial World”. Nor can I imagine them running the …
Read More “Biennial World: Europe unites in opposing the commercialised bi-yearly world cup.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone As we know Arsenal has the youngest set of first team players in the League. But who has the costliest? The Football Observatory has just produced a chart showing how much each team in the Premier League is currently worth. So it is not recording how much each club’s players cost, …
Read More “The big six are still the big six when it comes to squad values”
by Tony Attwood It is time to return to the fraught issue of tackles, fouls and yellow cards. If all was equal, then there would be a common ratio between the number of tackles that would result in a foul being called, and the number of fouls before a yellow card. If all things were …
Read More “Why WHU can foul 3 times as much as Brighton before getting a yellow card”
By Tony Attwood I have regularly argued that the football media in this country regularly refuses to tackle certain issues, such as the oddity of the way refereeing is organised in the Premier League, and issues of corruption. Instead the media use the “gaslighting” technique of turning the conversation to something else in order to …
Read More “Tim Sherwood, football management’s grand failure, says Arsenal are no good!”
By Tony Attwood One of the great problems within football is the problem of gaslighting – the refusal by those who talk and write about football to engage with certain issues. Indeed on this site you’ll find a six part series on gaslighting in football reporting concerning the refusal even to engage in discussion concerning …
Read More “Is football seriously corrupt? It depends on your starting position”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Here’s a strange statistic. For six of the seven league games played this season, Arsenal have put out a team younger than any other team used by any other club in the Premier League. For the only exception to this approach this season Arsenal put out a team that was notably …
Read More “Arsenal are constantly putting out the youngest team in the League. Is that a good idea?”
Although measuring the results of games from the start of the season is ultimately what matters – obviously at the end of the season – measuring the last ten games as well as all the games so far this season, can give a better vision of where the team is vis a vis the rest …
By Bulldog Drummond Slowly, very slowly, others are catching on to the fact that if one wants to know how teams really are progressing one doesn’t just measure results from the start of the season to the end, but rather if you really want to know what is going on you should also take a …
Read More “Brighton v Arsenal: the teams and Arsenal’s progress since Christmas Day”
By Bulldog Drummond Brighton and Hove Albion joined the Football League with the creation of the Third Division after the first world war, moving with most of the Southern League First Division clubs into the 3rd Division, which then after one season became the 3rd Division (South). There they stayed until they won the league …
Read More “Brighton v Arsenal: the history between the two clubs”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal really do seem to be at the bottom of the Premier League for injuries! According to the Premier League injury site the ranking is (and for a change I shall move from the bottom to the top) Arsenal: 1 Tottenham Hotspur: 2 West Ham United: 2 Brentford: 3 Leicester City 3 …
Read More “Brighton v Arsenal: the injuries and the tackles / fouls / yellow ratios”
by Bulldog Drummond First up, an apology. The apology should be given by Tony, but he’s currently hiding under the sofa, far too embarrassed to come out. The fact is Tony proclaimed to a fanfare of trumpets and associated brass instruments the fact that across the last ten league games Arsenal were the second most …
Read More “Brighton v Arsenal: an apology, last 10 games, home and away, transfers”
by Andrew Crawshaw Wednesday evening’s 5-1 victory over Tottenham brought a close to a really good September for Arsenal Women. Please note that the embedded links are to the FA Player highlights, you will need to log in or create an account to view the footage. WSL Arsenal v Chelsea 5 September We started our …
Read More “Arsenal Women September 2021 review – with added video footage”
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you’ll know that we have become quite interested in the level of fouling that different clubs engage in – and the way it is treated by referees. Thus we have been analysing not just the number of fouls that clubs commit but how many fouls a …
Read More “How Chelsea were brought back to the average by European refereeing.”
by Andrew Crawshaw The FA had a problem with last season’s Women’s FA Cup. The pandemic caused a cessation of all non-elite level sport at a time when the early rounds featuring non-elite teams would have been taking part. Like the men’s FA Cup the competition is open to all clubs affiliated to the FA …
Read More “Women’s FA Cup 2020/21 Quarter final Arsenal v Spurs”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It seems like several hundred years ago that some fans gathered outside the Emirates to protest at the ownership of Arsenal, with multiple calls for the Kroenke family to remove themselves from the club forthwith. That protest movement, fully supported and to a degree orchestrated by AFTV seemed to be very …
Read More “What difference would it make if Daniel Ek and Thierry Henry took over Arsenal?”
by Tony Attwood I’ve spent a little while wondering how to write a review of “Over Land and Sea and Lockdown” by Darren Berry. And in wondering and pondering, the fact that there are two utterly different ways of looking at football sloshed me in the face like a wet kipper on a cold night …
Read More “Over Land and Sea & Lockdown: Arsenal 2020/21. Book Review”
By Tony Attwood As we know, the media find it impossible to admit that Arsenal are doing well. They couldn’t take the notion that we were the second best club in the last two thirds of last season, nor that we doing rather well in recent matches played Nor can they take it that Tottenham …
Read More “Why can’t the media admit Arsenal were wonderful on Sunday?”
by Tony Attwood The battle over Super League rumbles on, with the six English clubs that were part of the scheme, still having failed to remove themselves from the organisation set up to run it. Meanwhile a legal case continues ducking and weaving its way around various European courts – claiming that Uefa is a …
By Tony Attwood There is a little article in the Guardian today. It is by Daniel Harris. He has apparently written two books, On The Road, a journey through a season (currently unavailable through Amazon – although that doesn’t say much as most of my books are the same) and one on cricket. And he …
Read More “Knock, knock. How a newspaper publishes two anti-Arsenal pieces in one day”
It must be great being a technical director. You join a club, they give you a mobile phone and a budget of millions, then say go forth and multiply our playing squad. Of course, the role itself is a little bit more complicated than that, simply because the business of buying and selling players …
