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 So how are we now doing after the Christmas and New Year rush, having played 21 games, compared with recent seasons? It’s a question that fascinates me, even if no one else wants to rush into the numbers. It seems to me to be a relevant question since the whole purpose of …
Read More “Now and then: Arsenal after 21 games compared with previous years.”
By Tony Attwood In our society there are many things that one doesn’t talk about. Notions that are considered so awful that they simply can’t be debated – at least not in public. Notions that, if we had the Thought Police actively working on the streets, would lead to instant arrest just for thinking about …
Read More “What we are not allowed to talk about concerning Premier League football”
By Walter Broeckx A few changes compared to our last match of last year. Lihtsteiner drops to the bench and Koscielny comes in the team to play in a 3 man defense with Mustafi and Sokratis. Maitland-Niles and Kolasinac as wing backs. Torreira also drops to the bench after having played a lot recentely. Aubameyang …
Read More “Final score and live match report Arsenal -Fulham : 4-1”
By Bulldog Drummond Depending on which newspaper or blogetta you choose to read Arsenal will either play Ozil or he will be “assessed” prior to the game. And there is a general feeling that Monreal will be back as will Bellerin. And before we get too carried away with this being an easy match we …
By Bulldog Drummond Mesut Ozil will return it seems or at least he will be assessed before the game against Fulham. And if he doesn’t play – well there will be another outburst of rumours, all without a trace of evidence. In fact as far as we can tell the problem is a knee injury …
By Walter Broeckx It has been a rather interesting year for football in Belgium. Belgium, as you may recall, reached third place in the world cup, but at the same time not all was well in Belgian football. It might not be a story that has moved across the Channel but in 2018 a …
Read More “Operation clean hands, when will it start in England?”
Below is the data analysing the fouls and cards awarded by referees. The key findings are Manchester City commit over three times the number of fouls as Arsenal for each yellow card they get. Arsenal at home have had 22 yellow cards this season whilst Manchester City have just five and Tottenham and Liverpool have seven …
Read More “How four clubs commit fouls with impunity, while others constantly get punished”
by Andrew Crawshaw Here courtesy of premierleague.com are the New Year games. Please note that kickoffs are at 15:00 London time unless noted otherwise:- Tuesday 1 January 12:30 Everton v Leicester City Referee: Martin Atkinson Assistants: Stephen Child, Lee Betts Fourth official: Anthony Taylor Everton v Leicester: the predictions 15:00 Arsenal v Fulham Referee: Graham Scott Assistants: Richard West, Neil Davies Fourth official: …
Read More “Matchweek 21 – All the Games and Officials, and predictions”
By Tony Attwood As you will probably have heard Peter Hill-Wood died this week at the age of 82. He came onto the board in 1962 and became chairman in 1982, serving until he stepped down through ill health in 2013. The Hill-Wood engagement with Arsenal goes back to the time of Sir Samuel Hill-Wood, the …
Read More “Peter Hill Wood and the end of the dream of an Arsenal owned by its fans”
by Tony Attwood During the past two seasons there was a fair amount of talk, not to mention poster waving, along with a spot of aircraft flying and marching, concerning the future of Mr Wenger. Not particularly to deny what he had done for the club in the past, but rather to question what he …
Read More “Why the failure against Liverpool was inevitable, and what Arsenal need now.”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal team at the start: Leno, Lichtsteiner, Mustafi, Sokratis, Maitland-Niles, Torreira, Xhaka, Kolasinac, Ramsey, Iwobi, Aubameyang On the beach: Cech, Koscielny, Elneny, Guendouzi, Willock, Saka, Lacazette A first dangerous attempt from Liverpool after some 6 minutes when Salah tries to flick a shot but the ball goes wide. Arsenal keeping Liverpool mostly out …
Read More “Final score live match report Liverpool – Arsenal : 5-1”
by Bulldog Drummond A win in this game would be an absolute miracle or a reason for the media suddenly to discover the dark forces that exist within the footballing underworld. Or if they don’t want to admit anything might be odd in the world of football it might be simply “inexplicable”. At least we …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal: the teams and the possibilities”
By Tony Attwood The regular daily praise of Liverpool FC piece in the press today has taken a new twist, as shown in this comment in the Telegraph… When Fenway Sports Group bought Liverpool in 2010, John W. Henry reserved particular praise for one English club. “I admire Arsenal very much,” Henry said, citing Wenger’s …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal. All change at Liverpool, or more of the same?”
By Bulldog Drummond Here is the injury list for the top of the injury league 1 10 West Ham United 2 7 Tottenham Hotspur 2 7 Arsenal 4 6 Manchester City 4 6 Liverpool 4 6 Watford 7 5 Chelsea However one thing to remember is that clubs do far fewer updates than normal …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal: the injuries and the title winners predictions”
by Bulldog Drummond At the end of last season Untold boldly predicted that this season Manchester City would win the League again, quite simply because they would spend, spend, spend and spend, and do everything they could to ensure that they would stay top. In fact we were wrong, they didn’t go on another mass …
by Andrew Crawshaw Here, courtesy of premierleague.com, are this weekend’s matches:- NB All matches start at 15:00 UK time unless otherwise noted Previews will appear shortly in https://Predictions.org.uk – links are added below as the previews are published. Saturday 29 December Brighton v Everton Referee: Andy Madley Assistants: Simon Long, Mick McDonough Fourth official: Andre Marriner …
by Tony Attwood Consider this headline Arsenal ‘willing to pay’ €16m to make transfer happen, decision now rests with player That seems quite straightforward, except that the player is Keylor Navas of Real Madrid. So let’s see if the “Willing to pay” story hangs together. 1: Do we need another goalkeeper? In their ultimate …
Read More “Reality can be very boring but can be quite useful in football”
By Tony Attwood Last season the media and some fans made a lot of noise about getting rid of Mr Wenger as manager. Within the noise there were claims that Arsenal were clearly not keeping up with the rest of the league, and demands that at the very least Arsenal should be challenging to win …
Read More “How is Arsenal doing compared with half way through previous seasons?”
By Walter Broeckx Some changes in the starting line up to cover for the injury of Monreal and Lichtsteiner coming in at what looks to be a 4 at the back starting line up. Our beach showing we are rather thin now on first team players… Arsenal starting with : Leno, Lichtsteiner, Sokratis, Koscielny, Kolasinac, …
Read More “Final score and live match report Brighton H&A – Arsenal: 1-1”
By Bulldog Drummond Looking at Arsenal, as we have noted throughout this season, the away form is key to taking us up the league (not least on the grounds that it would be hard to improve on last season’s home form). If we can beat Brighton, that will take us to five away wins – …
Read More “Brighton v Arsenal, the teams, the possibilities, Koscielny”
By Bulldog Drummond Brighton’s season has been somewhat erratic not helped by having three players sent off in seven days of playing football. This might well be having an impact on them – the manager telling the players to reign in some of the aggro. Looking at their performances through the season we find these …
by Andrew Crawshaw Covering the first half of the season here is a list of the games done by each referee and the top of the table for the Assistant Referees. A total of 18 different referees have been used so far but with vastly different workloads. Referee Games Assistants Games Anthony Taylor 17 Simon …
Read More “First Half of the Season – Referee Analysis – who’s been where and how often”
by Andrew Crawshaw This week marks the halfway point of the season. Maybe we aren’t quite where we would have liked to be but, in all honesty, I don’t think that many of us could reasonably have expected us to be any higher than fifth, given our form from last year. Here, courtesy of premierleague.com …
By Bulldog Drummond If it is Arsenal it must be an injury crisis, so let’s take a peek…. and yes this time they are right we are second in the injury league behind Watford. Crisis, crisis, crisis. But is anyone calling for the head of the Watford manager because of their injury crisis? I can’t …
Read More “Brighton v Arsenal: the injury crisis (part 94), kettles of fish and runs.”
By Tony Attwood This time it is Keith Hackett who does it, but it could have been any of the commentators who tell us that refereeing is really ok and jolly good and everything is fine and there is nothing sinister about having an organisation so secretive that it makes the masonic lodges look like …
Read More “The great referee con, played on us poor punters over and over again”
