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 Sir Hardly Anyone. Just as I was about to take a couple of weeks in the south of France with the jolly old yacht being airlifted from Rutland Water to Monaco (which of course I know isn’t in France but I’m not one for details), so I am asked to write another column because …
Read More “Suddenly the transfer scene has woken up with an explosion of stories. We have names!”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal will play Ostersund in the next Europa Cup round on February in Sweden and at the Ems on February 22. It is, I suspect, a dream draw for the club, although let me say at once I don’t have a Swedish correspondent to check this with. If I have made mistakes in …
Read More “Ostersund v Arsenal. Welcome to the most wonderful fairy story in football.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone I am sure it has nothing to do with it, but the little series we’ve been running on the real transfer news (see the links at the end of this piece) – looking at the players Arsenal are actually likely to sell and therefore which replacements are needed – has coincided …
Read More “Arsenal transfer market revived with amazing transfer reports.”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal starting with : Cech, Bellerin, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Monreal, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Özil, Alexis, Lacazette. On the beach we had Ospina, Maitland-Niles, Coquelin, Wilshere, Iwobi, Giroud, Welbeck. The first real attack from Southampton and Austin scored. Arsenal losing the ball in their own defence and Southampont with a quick move setting on …
By Bulldog Drummond Flipping through the tittle tattle this morning, one of my favourite lines comes from “101 Great Goals” which tells us With less than a month to go until the January transfer window opens, it’s no real surprise to see rumours in the tabloids. Given that the tabloids, the bloggettas that they …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal the teams amidst the threat of snow”
By Bulldog Drummond If you are a really, really long term reader of Untold you might recall that one of our first campaigns to was expose what we called Rotational Fouling. It was a notion that the media ignored, and commentators laughed at us in relation to. We were out on our own (how often …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal; modest home v modest away, but WHU lurking.”
By Bulldog Drummond Our recent (and on going) series on what will really happen in terms of transfers next month has already suggested that goalkeepers and wing backs are not on the agenda. But when it comes to centre backs (or as we used to say in the ancient days, centre halves) there could be …
Read More “Southampton Arsenal: a chance to test the theory that we don’t need a new centre half”
by Andrew Crawshaw Another week and another referee we have had before this season Referee – Bobby Madley Age 31 from West Yorkshire and FIFA accredited Assistant Referee 1 – Stephen Child from Kent and FIFA accredited Assistant Referee 2 – Marc Perry from the West Midlands Fourth official – Graham Scott Age 49 from …
by Tony Attwood It was, I think, about five years ago that Blacksheep, Walter and I drew up a list of ten reforms that between us we felt could make Premier League football much more enjoyable all round, and one of these was the live TV broadcasting of all matches with a return to all …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal II – that second team of Mr Wenger’s has had a fair run of games in the Europa and the League Cup, and that has no doubt benefited a lot of the squad who by now are used to playing together. It also allows them to make a claim for a …
Read More “Arsenal II hit six as the sneering and sarcasm from the Guardian drones on and on”
By Walter Broeckx The starting line up for Arsenal was Ospina, Debuchy, Holding, Chambers, Maitland-Niles, Coquelin, Elneny, Wilshere, Walcott, Welbeck, Giroud. Lots of youngsters on the beach. A first dangerous attack with a cross from Debuchy to Walcott who heads it to Giroud who lays it off to Elneny and his left footed shot hits …
Read More “Arsenal II – Bate Borisov : 6-0 with Jack the boss”
By Tony Attwood A Prize to the Football Forecast website for noticing that if BATE actually beat Arsenal and Red Star and Cologne draw, then BATE could qualify for the knock outs. Here’s the table to prove it Group H Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Arsenal 5 3 1 1 …
Read More “Arsenal and the Tractor Boys: the final instalment.”
By Tony Attwood It has been interesting to read the media’s response to the little tiff that occurred when Match of the Day presenters got rather miffed at being called out over alleged bias against Arsenal. The Guardian and the Telegraph handled the event in slightly different ways. The Telegraph responded with “To those lambasting …
by Sir Hardly Anyone The Metro on 26 August this year told us “Arsene Wenger is ready to green light a late exodus to raise funds for two massive January arrivals.” Explaining who they thought would be leaving the club the paper said that Arsenal risked “losing a number of players before the window slams …
Read More “The real January transfer news and the signing of a new centre back”
by Don McMahon In his most recent article, Tony quite accurately reviewed the seriously flawed logic of Mr.Clattenburg and his rather bizarre public revelation about how he manipulated a game to achieve a personal end. Some people posted criticisms of UA’s concerns but there are many other issues that Tony didn’t mention and I’d like …
By Johnny Foreigner Every now and again at UA an idea crops up, either suggesting that somebody somewhere is an ‘original fan’ or that someone else is a ‘foreigner’. Unfortunately both ideas have implications which are impossible to verify once we start to scrabble around a bit under the surface. The idea of being …
by Tony Attwood The trouble with home and away ties against teams that we don’t know too much about is that one tends to use up all the information available in the first leg. When it comes to the second leg there then isn’t too much to say. But rather than offer you a blank …
Read More “Arsenal v the Tractor Boys – the final part of the Europa League part one”
By Tony Attwood It must be fun to be Paul Merson’s scriptwriter, coming up with ever more crazy things to. say each day. But also a worry given that everything said then has to be outdone, and always in comparison to that masterstroke about Olympiakos: “I could win the league with Olympiakos. I am not …
by Andrew Crawshaw It has been a while since I did an update on our junior teams and I thought I would start with the U18s. They have been active on two fronts so far this season – the U18 League and the Premier League U18 Cup. They start in the third round of the …
Read More “Arsenal U18s – early December update, 100% home record, no wins away!”
By Tony Attwood Context, logic, breadth of analysis, overview and detail, evidence… the sort of things I learned when studying science and the scientific method, and then later psychology. I wasn’t a particularly brilliant student, and certainly not a brilliant scientist, but I think I got the thread. You know things by gathering evidence, making …
Read More “Wright and Shearer lose the thread, Wright apologises, but neither really gets it”
By Tony Attwood A major part of the argument that suggests that referees are not following the laws of the game but are following a different set of rules has come from Mark Clattenburg in relation to the notorious Chelsea v Tottenham game near the end of the 2015/16 season. In an interview he has …
Read More “Clattenburg confirms what we feared: referees are making up their own rules”
By Tony Attwood I recently wrote a little piece trying to show how journalists create a piece of fantasy transfer news ahead of a transfer window, and did this by looking at our goalkeeping situation, the insane tales from last summer relating to keepers, and then adding in what I thought would actually happen. A …
Read More “The antidote to transfer rumours: real insights into who we are signing in January”
By Tony Attwood I knew before I started the three hour journey from my home to the ground that I shouldn’t have gone. Not because I feared for the result – I had hoped we could win, or at the very least take a draw – but because I had been coming down with a …
By Walter Broeckx If there is anything you cannot afford to do against Manchester United it is to give them a two goal advantage in the first 10 minutes. And that is exactly what we did. First Koscielny with a bad diagonal ball to Kolasinac that was intercepted by Valencia who could go on and …
Read More “Arsenal – Man Utd 1-3 or 1-1 or 2-1 or even 6-3 if it hadn’t been for….”
By Bulldog Drummond And so after the usual visits around the houses we come to the teams, and just as we have discovered this wonderful effective front three, one of them looks like dropping out, although as one report said, actually Lacazette is going to play. I think not, but you never know. If he …
Read More “Arsenal’s front three have revitalised the team. Now can they do it with a change?”
