By Tony Attwood In a recent article we argued that a lot of the fake stories that circulate at this time of year concerning transfers were deliberately set up by not just by the media trying to fill space and grab readership, but also by the clubs themselves and by players’ agents. One implication of …
Read More “Is turning up without tickets the new trend in football supporting”
By Andrew Crawshaw The Women’s Euros – what have we learned from the opening round of fixtures? Group A Austria 2 v Northern Ireland 0 – this match went according to the form-book, Northern Ireland showed plenty of industry, but never really looked to have the touch of class they required to beat Manuella Zinsberger …
Read More “The Women’s Euros – second round group games”
By Tony Attwood In the last couple of weeks we’ve been looking, off and on, about how the Premier League has changed over the last ten years. Most recently we’ve started to ponder the possible move from the traditional “big six” of Manchesters City and United, plus Liverpool, in the north west, with Arsenal, Tottenham …
Read More “Are Arsenal in line for a return to the top four?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The 102 players the media say are joining Arsenal this summer The media story about summer transfers at Arsenal is not just that the club is interested in over 100 different players, but also that Arsenal is prone to making mistakes. The media can see it, and the fans can see …
Read More “Transfers: the six sources of information feeding the media”
The 102 players the media say are joining Arsenal this summer By Sir Hardly Anyone According to data supplied by the Guardian, Arsenal are the top spenders so far in the Premier League having a net spend on £68.7m. The figures take into account the sale of Mattéo Guendouzi to Marseille, Dinos Mavropanos to Suttgard …
Read More “The transfer dealings of the Big 7: how they compare.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone As the number of players said to be heading Arsenal’s way now passes the 100 mark the Telegraph suggests that “phone calls stop immediately when interested clubs learn that a potential new signing is not vaccinated.” It’s the first time we’ve seen that published in one of the more serious newspapers, …
Read More “The 102 players the media say are joining Arsenal this summer”
Why is the media so certain Arsenal will fail in 2022/23? By Tony Attwood Looking at Arsenal’s development last season, we have focussed on two particular sets of statistics, generally not used by other commentators. One is what happened to Arsenal after the disastrous first three matches, and the other what happened in the second …
Read More “How easy is it for Arsenal to reach the top three next season?”
Why is the media so certain Arsenal will fail in 2022/23? By Tony Attwood Most commentators on next season, speak of Newcastle United’s rise, but because they refuse to use any statistics to analyse the position, feel that Newcastle are not going to rise that far. Mind you they also don’t comment on the issue …
Read More “Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Newcastle”
By Andrew Crawshaw Last night’s match between France and Italy was the last of the first round of group matches. This afternoon the focus switches to the second round with Austria v Northern Ireland at St Mary’s kicking off at 17:00 and England v Norway at Brighton’s Falmer Stadium at 20:00. Both matches are …
Read More “The Women’s Euros – what have we learned from the opening round of fixtures?”
By Tony Attwood As we know Arsenal lost the first three games of last season, and the media made a huge fuss about that. Then amazingly Arsenal made a significant recovery, and became the third-best club in the league over the remaining 35 games. Only Untold Arsenal covered that. Only one other team had a …
Read More “Why is the media so certain Arsenal will fail in 2022/23?”
By Tony Attwood What if Arsenal hadn’t had that awful start to the season… In recent articles we have looked at how the alleged “supercomputers” have predicted how the 2022/23 season will work out, and looked at how the teams around Arsenal at the end of last season were doing, and compared this with Arsenal. …
Read More “Is the media finally saying “football is fixed”?”
Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: West Ham Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Manchester United Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Chelsea and the notion of progress. Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Tottenham Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Leicester City By Tony Attwood Last season, It wasn’t just a bad start to …
Read More “What if Arsenal hadn’t had that awful start to the season…”
Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Chelsea and the notion of progress. Arsenal’s opposition in 2022/3: Tottenham Hotspur Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Leicester City Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Manchester United Last summer the Guardian’s football writers suggested West Ham would finish 10th in the league. Sports Mole went for the same. …
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Arsenal to finish sixth? Not likely! Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Chelsea and the notion of progress. Arsenal’s opposition in 2022/3: Tottenham Hotspur Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Leicester City By Tony Attwood And now of course the Sun has discovered a supercomputer which can be taken away from its day job or …
Read More “Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Manchester United”
By Tony Attwood Platini and Blatter innocent. So there is only one person left to find… We have for many years been showing that clubs are each treated very differently when it comes to the relationship between tackles and fouls. But it also turns out that the number of fouls called varies from one referee …
Read More “The more clubs tackle, the more they get away with it. The stats.”
By Tony Attwood The two mountains Arsenal have to climb Sadly I don’t have time this evening to write a complete review of the game, as I’m off to Derbyshire for a dance, but I would like to note just how fantastic I thought that game this afternoon was. Of course, I know we went …
Read More “A pre-season game where we score five; this season could be rather jolly…”
By Tony Attwood As you may have heard, the case we have been following in Switzerland involving Michael Platini and Sepp Blatter ended with both being found not guilty of fraud and other offences over a lack of evidence of ill-intent relating to the £1.3million payment made for consultancy work. Following the result, and not surprisingly, Platini …
Read More “Platini and Blatter innocent. So there is only one person left to find…”
Arsenal’s opposition in 2022/3: Tottenham Hotspur Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Leicester City By Sir Hardly Anyone In this series we are looking at a few of Arsenal’s rivals, to see how the media predicted their progress last season and how they are seeing it for 2022/3. We have mentioned GiveMeSport already and they …
Read More “Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Chelsea and the notion of progress.”
Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Leicester City By Sir Hardly Anyone If you read our recent pieces about predicting results you will know we have been raging against the concept of Super Computers giving a prediction for their results. Super computers are never used in this way. See Supercomputer vs human predicting Arsenal next …
Read More “Arsenal’s opposition in 2022/3: Tottenham Hotspur”
US authorities give extra money to Fifa: the most bizarre timing ever! By Sir Hardly Anyone In 2019/20 it was shown that the number of Premier League clubs that exceeded UEFA’s 70% wage control guideline had risen to 13 out of 20. Even more bizarre two of the Premier League clubs at the time were …
Read More “Arsenal’s opposition in the coming season: Leicester City”
The two mountains Arsenal have to climb by Andrew Crawshaw The Women’s European Championship gets underway this evening at a sold out Old Trafford with England playing Austria. All matches in the competition are being screened by the BBC with tonight’s coverage of the opening ceremony and match beginning at 7pm on BBC1. The studio …
Read More “Arsenal at the Women’s Euros (5-31 July)— an introduction”
By Tony Attwood What’s so wrong with both football, and with the reporting of football Since the Premier League was reduced to its current size of 20 clubs playing 38 games, in 1995/6, there have been 26 seasons. In ten of those seasons (so that is just over one third) the top club has got …
Read More “The two mountains Arsenal have to climb”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Is Fifa about to follow Infantino and move to the Persian Gulf? This is a list of players who the media are touting this summer as coming to Arsenal: 97 in all. We’ve got five completely new stories today, along with a further 11 which have updated information about bids etc. …
Read More “The 97 players heading Arsenal’s way this summer: 16 new and updated”
Is Fifa about to follow Infantino and move to the Persian Gulf? By Tony Attwood There is a screamingly funny piece in the Sussex Express which really does need to be contemplated. The headline is… Predicted Premier League table 2022-23: Supercomputer forecasts Brighton, West Ham, Tottenham, Fulham, Arsenal finish – after latest transfer activity. Now …
Read More “Supercomputer vs human predicting Arsenal next season. Both lose.”
In Switzerland Fifa is on the edge of being blown up. In England….? By Tony Attwood When it comes to goals and assists per 90 minutes, only two players (Sergio Aguero and Mohamed Salah) have been more effective than Jesus since he joined Manchester City in January 2017. In other words, he has contributed goals …
Read More “From Edu to Gabriel Jesus – how Sao Paulo became Arsenal’s talent factory”