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 The aim in this little piece is to compare how Arsenal are doing after 29 games this season compared with recent seasons. And as you can see from the headline, it turned out to be a rather negative analysis. When it started it seemed like a really simple thing to do, but …
Read More “This is Arsenal’s worst position for over a quarter of a century.”
By Tony Attwood A while back the Telegraph carried an article by Julie Burchill, in which she called the political commentator Ash Sarkar – a British-Bangladeshi journalist and left-wing political activist who teachers at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam – a paedophile-worshipping Islamist on social media. And what, you are asking, does this have to …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Newspaper men and blogging “outlet” scribblers mostly dwell in Docklands public houses, working in a putrid atmosphere of their own making. They have an insufficiency of light, a total lack of ventilation, a lot of chocolate cakes with cream which junior reporters are forced to down in one, and an aloofness …
Read More “After all the talk of new arrivals, the lads at the Toppled Bollard give their verdict”
By Tony Attwood In the theory of cognitive dissonance, if we try and hold two contradictory beliefs or ideas at the same time we feel discomfort. So we attempt to reduce this dissonance by ignoring one of those ideas, even if it is obviously true. Thus journalists and some bloggers overcome this by removing one …
Read More “Arsenal’s serious financial woes and the media’s demand for more spending”
By Tony Attwood More news on the Norwegian protest against the world cup in Qatar – a country in which slave labour has been used to build the stadia. If you are a regular reader of Untold you’ll know we’ve been campaigning on this for years – now it is really coming to life. With …
By Tony Attwood For me the news that Erling Braut Haaland and Martin Odegaard and some other players from Norway wore t-shirts with the slogan ‘Human rights, on and off the pitch’ was extraordinary, and incredibly welcome. If you are a regular Untold reader you might know that I have been arguing for quite a …
Read More “Odegaard speaks out against world cup in Qatar; a country built on slavery”
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Guardian about the return of crowds to football grounds. The essence of it is that clubs can’t take the season ticket income for next season for granted, and that is fair enough. But the article includes the line, “Typically reserved pensioners bawl from main stands, be …
Read More “Journalists who can’t get their basic facts right should not tell clubs how to behave”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Looking at the avalanche of transfer news each day it is easy to miss the fact that the reporters of Arsenal’s transfer tales work to a set pattern of activity, known in the trade as the “Eight Point Plan.” This plan was invented both to help journalists and bloggers keep track …
Read More “The transfer process: the 8 point plan that turns fantasy into news”
by Tony Attwood You may have come across the Football Observatory, not least because its reports are often quoted in the media as a source of independent, quality analysis of what is going on. And quite reasonably too, because The Football Observatory is a research group within the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES), an …
Read More “Revealed: The report on football the media are desperate you don’t see”
By Tony Attwood We are currently six points and three places below sixth position in the Premier League – and sixth, although not a trophy does mean entry to the Europa League. We might also win this year’s Europa League which would give access to the Europa League. But there are two other ways of …
Read More “How coming 8th and not winning the Europa means Euro football next year”
By Tony Attwood We’ve not been able to cover this season of the women’s game in the way that we have done in the past, and indeed there have been times when we’ve wondered if the WSL wasn’t teetering on the brink as we’ve not been the only ones who have had trouble getting information. …
By Tony Attwood I wouldn’t have guessed it but looking at the stats it seems that Arsenal had 62% of the possession and there were 10 goal attempts for each side. Arsenal had six on target to WHAM’s five. But the most noticeable statistic I think is that West Ham fouled Arsenal 15 times, to …
West Ham v Arsenal: Match facts and teams, and the top club in London this season WHAM v Arsenal: tackles, fouls and yellow cards, penalties and the last 25 games. WHAM v Arsenal. Recent events and the injuries ahead of the game By Bulldog Drummond This rather jolly picture shows the WHAM players celebrating winning …
Read More “West Ham v Arsenal. All the things you don’t need to know”
By Bulldog Drummond The story so far: WHAM v Arsenal: tackles, fouls and yellow cards, penalties and the last 25 games. WHAM v Arsenal. Recent events and the injuries ahead of the game The BBC is predicting a 1-1 draw which would be somewhat disappointing given our record against WHAM across the years and …
Read More “West Ham v Arsenal: Match facts and teams, and the top club in London this season”
WHAM v Arsenal. Recent events and the injuries ahead of the game Why is the FA still in control? What the Europa draw means for Arsenal: a battle and racism perhaps Why Arsenal supporters should support Tottenham’s fans’ push for a new manager Tackles, fouls yellow penalties We are used to seeing it now, but …
Read More “WHAM v Arsenal: tackles, fouls and yellow cards, penalties and the last 25 games.”
By Bulldog Drummond At home West Ham are very much the team of the day, second in the league if we just consider home games. Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts 2 West Ham United home 14 8 3 3 23 15 8 27 11 Arsenal away 14 6 2 6 …
Read More “WHAM v Arsenal. Recent events and the injuries ahead of the game”
By Tony Attwood In 2016 Untold ran a piece that began, “In recent years the UK has been swamped with details of a huge number of child sexual exploitation cases.” We didn’t report all the details but mention Jimmy Saville, the Rotherham gangs, Gary Glitter, and Rolf Harris, before we moved on to the story …
by Tony Attwood; picture by Krzysiu Szymański It is Slavia Prague in the quarter finals with us at home in the first match. After that, if we get through, it is Dinamo Zagreb or Villareal in the semi final, with our home game as the second match. One thing is quite clear – Slavia Prague …
Read More “What the Europa draw means for Arsenal: a battle and racism perhaps”
By Tony Attwood Obviously, with matters Tottenhamish, we sit in the wings watching a club that has traditionally used quite different methods from Arsenal in its drive for success. Watching to see if anything can be learned from their approach – which has over the course of this century been quite different from Arsenal’s and …
Read More “Why Arsenal supporters should support Tottenham’s fans’ push for a new manager”
By Bulldog Drummond Mikel Arteta has allegedly “drawn a line” under what we are now learning to call “the disciplinary situation” surrounding Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. What we don’t know is if Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has “drawn a line” under the “disciplinary situation.” As the old song says, “It takes two to draw a line under a …
Read More “Auba, Olympiacos, discipline, past results, and being undefeated in five”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal equalled a UEFA Europa League record by making it 11 away games in the competition without defeat as they beat Olympiacos 3-1. Following their defeat by Arsenal at home, Olympiacos won their next fixture, 1-3 away to Larissa. That was no particular surprise since Larissa are currently bottom of the league …
Read More “Arsenal v Olympiacos: a Greek tragedy, and a rather pleasing video”
Text by Tony Attwood; Picture by Walter Broeckx Today, Dominic Cummings, the former chief adviser to the UK Prime Minister, gave evidence to the Commons science committee about a new UK research funding agency. Today, Lee Bowyer became the latest manager at Birmingham City who has been trying to revive the club which is owned …
Read More “Wenger / Emery / Arteta compared and the thoughts of Dominic Cummings”
By Iver Tail 100 historic Arsenal videos free online Yes rumours are really, really so last year. So last decade. So last century. The new rumour is the conspiracy, because as the blogs show us, football is utterly packed jam solid with solid jam. Or failing that, conspiracies in which clubs plot with each other …
Read More “Welcome to the Arsenal Conspiracy Centre: 7 conspiracies currently on the loose”
By I M Tellingyou Discipline is important in team sports; of course it is. But handling players who are on contracts worth anything upwards of £1m a year, by telling them to do as they are told, is a tough call and quite often not very successful. Aubameyang, according to reports, had discipline issues in …
Read More “For Arsenal discipline is not everything; managing players is.”
By Tony Attwood It has long been the policy of newspapers and websites to rate players after games. But I am not sure if anyone in England gives referees ratings. Why is that? Probably because the statistics are so alarming; maybe because PGMO have told them not to. And they might have done that for …
Read More “Are some referees out to get Arsenal? Ref stats compared and it makes bad reading”
