Arsenal’s sponsorship deal with the Emirates was bound to explode one day

by Tony Attwood The problem with accepting sponsorship from a state sponsored entity, when the state is a dictatorship and human rights denier are obvious, and we have touched on them many times before.   Untold tended to call the stadium the Ems (which was the name of a sandwich bar on East Midlands Trains) and …

Arsenal youngsters join three old timers in training but one absentee is noticeable

By Tony Attwood Jordi Osei-Tutu, our 20 year old defender, who first grabbed attention in the pre-season games this past summer but who then got an injury, is back playing, and has been training with the first team. Other youngsters who have been signed up include Charlie Gilmour who has been playing with the under …

Arsenal have run further than any other PL team this season. And this proves that…

By Tony Attwood Well actually I don’t know what the headline proves, other than the fact that even with my devotion to statistics, I too can find stats that don’t actually tell me much. The same set of figures (from the Guardian) tell us that it is the centre backs who do the least running …

Zelalem returns as Arsenal progress and the Man U game that never was (but was paid for)

by Tony Attwood It is certainly not the most well-followed trophy among those that Arsenal are engaged in, but it is there, the fifth competition on the agenda, and having seen one of our games thus far I can confirm for those who do go, it is good fun. For below the Permier League, FA …

Everton v Arsenal Women the Match Report. 8 games, 38 goals!

by Andrew Crawshaw This match was broadcast live on the BBC Red Button and kicked off at 12:30 on Sunday 18 November.  The match was played at the Select Security Stadium the home of Southport Football Club. Everton had sacked their manager, Andy Spence leaving after 12 years with the club as assistant to Mo …

Crazy stats, junk headlines, upcoming youngsters and the return of Ron Manager.

By Tony Attwood There is a strange stat that truly is worth of Ron Manager doing the rounds to the effect that Arsenal hasn’t been ahead at half time this season in the League.   In a Sky Sport piece that is titled “Your PL season in a stat” that is the headline story.  And yet …

Tottenham advertising stopped, new delays, Arsenal bribery allegations

by Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. As regular readers will know I am usually called in when we have a spate of mind readers writing to the site telling anyone who cares to read just what someone else is thinking.   Checking with the …

Football after the UK leaves the EU. The FA remains in total denial of the research.

by Tony Attwood A while back I saw a survey on why some people in the UK voted to leave the EU. As we all know, fewer than half the electorate voted to leave the EU, although just over half of all those voting did vote Leave and that is taken as the definitive statement.  …

Football headlines and the strange stories that follow them. (The two are not connected)

by Sir Hardly Anyone These days, even when the news report seems to have some semblance of reality within it, and comes from a decent enough source, the headline invariably has to be written to give a different impression. Take for example this headline from This is Futbol: “BBC expert: Arsenal have tabled loan-to-buy offer …

The 7 top players Arsenal are signing this January (you can count them).

By Sir Hardly Anyone One story says that Arsenal are losing money (largely because of two seasons out of the Champions League), and the owner has no intention of putting any extra money in to fund further purchases. A second story says we are buying everyone imaginable. In the midst of all that we have …

And now another major set of football allegations. Who’d have thought it?

By Tony Attwood There is a simple point at the heart of the scandals and allegations so far and that is that Man City and PSG, according to the released documents, have broken Uefa rules and threatened to elminiate Uefa from the landscape unless Uefa is complicit in covering up the affair. And while we …

Reiss Nelson looks to Arsenal return, Arsene Wenger turned down Fulham

By Sir Hardly Anyone Two interesting tales emerging this day: one that Fulham asked Mr Wenger if he fancied being the manager and the other, positive sounds from Reiss Nelson.   Plus a load of tattle and some tittle, which I will come to in a mo. To take your Reiss first, I was fearing that …

What are our chances of getting top four this season?

By Tony Attwood There is a lot being said and written about Unai Emery and the changes he is making to Arsenal in relation to the style of play and his methods of training.   And of course the result of this so far – as with the way the team doesn’t score in the …

How much money raised by the FA in the names of charities goes to charities?

by Tony Attwood If you have been reading Untold for a while you may well have picked up on the fact that one of our bêtes noires is the Football Association, largely because of its willingness to spend public money without accounting to the taxpayers who give it, while ignoring the fact that the House of …

The whole football system seems to exist only to protect and enlarge itself

By Tony Attwood The Premier League has said it will take action in the Manchester City case if any of its rules have been broken.  Uefa (now under new management since the Manchester City scandal was initiated) has said that it could go back and look again at the 2014 FFP investigation.  This is a …

Reiss’ great record, loanees done great, transfers that won’t happen, international insanity

by Tony Attwood Let’s open with a nice piece of news: Reiss Nelson has scored six Bundesliga goals this season. No non-German player has ever reached six Bundesliga goals at a younger age. Actually it wasn’t a bad weekend for our loanees: Matt Macey played for Plymouth as they won 1-0, David Ospina played for Napoli …

Arsenal player wins Women’s PFA player of the month

Arsenal Women’s Nobbs wins October Women’s PFA Bristol Street Motors Fans’ Player of the Month Award  Arsenal Women FC’s Jordan Nobbs has been voted the October Women’s PFA Bristol Street Motors Fans’ Player of the Month by football fans across the country. In a tightly-contested vote, run by fan engagement experts Snack Media, the England …

How personal gratification and a desire for profit create the negative feel at Arsenal

By Tony Attwood According to the banners and the chants when Mr Wenger left and a new manager was found the fans wanted and expected to get “our Arsenal back”.  Quite what that Arsenal was, was never made clear, but the chants of the away support at Fulham suggested that was the Arsenal they wanted …

Live match report Arsenal – Wolverhampton : 1-1

By Walter Broeckx Arsenal team at the start : Leno; Bellerin, Mustafi, Holding, Kolasinac; Torreira, Xhaka; Iwobi, Özil, Aubameyang; Lacazette. On the beach: Cech, Maitland-Niles, Sokratis, Guendouzi, Ramsey, Mkhitaryan, Nketiah All stood up in silence to hear the always impressive Last Post and an even more impressive minute of complete silence to commemorate the end of …

Arsenal v Wolverhampton team news and the need to avoid corners

by Bulldog Drummond Mr Emery has been talking about the evolution of Arsenal under him and the way in which the game against Liverpool showed the direction he was taking the club in terms of the power within the team.  “Our idea is to repeat matches with this pace over 90 minutes,” he said. “It …

Arsenal v Wolverhampton and what to do after Danny’s injury

By Bulldog Drummond The terrible injury to Danny Welbeck has highlighted another aspect to the growth in players running down their contracts.  Danny, like Ramsey and Cech will be free to leave the club this summer and find themselves a new club to play for. But of course if the player gets a serious career …

Arsenal v Wolverhampton: the form, predicting the score, and the last time we played them

By Bulldog Drummond As we saw against Crystal Palace analayses of home and away team performances don’t give an exact indication of how a match will go, but over time we have found they are one of the very  best ways of making predicitons, and are more often right than wrong. So despite the failure …

Which teams are benefitting most from referee decision making this season?

By Bulldog Drummond As we saw in Gordon’s super-analysis of referee actions earlier this week, Arsenal have inflicted the need for treatment on the opposition 11 times this season while Wolverhampton have inflicted the need for treatment on opposition players 5 times.  So we shouldn’t have too much worry about fouls from them resulting in …

Danny’s out, but how does that affect our immediate chances?

By Bulldog Drummond Only one place to start the preview series for the Wolverhampton game and that is with injuries; we are virtually top of the list.  Danny is of course the latest to go on the list – details from Physioroom as always. Who? What? Back? So? Playing? Welbeck Ankle Injury No Date “Significant …

Which clubs inflict the need for treatment on others, the most? The weekend fixtures.

Game Day 12 – The Rememberance Day weekend. by Gordon Haverland Largely in rememberance of WWI and WWII. Matic has memories of a Balkin war that bothers him. Game Day 12 takes place over 2 physical days (Saturday and Sunday). On Saturday there is one early game, 4 games running in the middle time slot, …