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 Bulldog Drummond The review of recent events, and the league table for 2015 to date appears in the first part of the Southampton Arsenal review. The referee preview also is here. . Now moving on… . The team is most likely to be Giroud Campbell Ozil Walcott Ramsey Flamini Monreal Koscielny Mertersacker Bellerin …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal the teams and final preview”
By Bulldog Drummond Could it be that football is not only taking note of our desire to video refereeing, but also for evidence based commentary? After so many years of attempts to tell us what we will think in the future (as per “Arsenal fans will be angry if…” it seems hard to believe, and …
Read More “Arsenal v Southampton. Arsenal top the year’s league and other interesting stuff.”
Southampton v Arsenal 26 December 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw The Table of Shame – valid to matchweek 14 Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 19 Red Cards 1 9 Penalties 1 14 Goals 0 4 Total 2 46 Possible Cost in Points 0 11 Before …
Read More “Southampton v Arsenal 26 December 2015 – The Match Officials”
By Walter Broeckx In the article about the possible introduction of video refereeing in the PL you can read the reaction of Graham Poll and that was rather typical for how referees are. I will quote from his reaction: “Hallelujah! That was my first reaction to the news that professional clubs are being asked their opinions on …
Read More “A typical referee reaction to allowing video refereeing.”
By Tony Attwood After the Premier League’s own version of Financial Fair Play was left in its box, never to have the wrapping paper undone, Uefa crumbled from its ideals of bringing football finance under control, and the Football League let QPR off the hook with a fine that didn’t even make the owner blink, …
Read More “FFP is alive and kicking (a bit); Kolo is a good guy; and Happy Christmas”
By Walter Broeckx Is the Untold Arsenal campaign really going to lead to a change in refereeing? It seems that for the first time the answer could be yes! Sticking your neck out isn’t always easy. You get ridiculed. You are called all sorts of names. But I have never backed away from explaining and …
In the last article Tim Charlesworth discussed the Birmingham v Arsenal game of 23 February 2008 – surely most fans’ nomination for the “worst Arsenal game ever”. In this piece Tim continues by looking at the aftermath. The devastation was total. Arsenal’s title challenge unravelled over the next few weeks, and we finished third. As the 2015/16 …
By Tim Charlesworth I was sorry to hear that Cesc Fabregas was booed by Chelsea fans last weekend. He may well have deserved it, but the incident reminded me of something sad. Cesc has not, and never will, realise his full potential. I suspect that, like many players who started young, his career may tail …
Read More “The worst Arsenal game ever? A look back to the game that defined an era, and a referee”
By Tony Attwood We’ve had a torrid ten years at the hands of the press, so maybe it is about time they stopped. I reckon it started at the end of the Unbeaten Season – something that shook the media to the core after they had spent five months (after the possibility of an unbeaten …
Read More “Laughing when the press turn on another club is ok, but they’ll be after us again soon.”
By Tony Attwood They’ve all been down the pub. They’ve all supped their glasses of whatever it is that tickles their fancy, and they’ve all agreed: It is now or never for Mr Wenger. This is his great chance to win the league, not because Arsenal are good, but because everyone else is rubbish. Yep, …
Read More “Why the notion that Arsenal will never have a better chance than now is utter rubbish.”
By Kim The other day a friend of mine rang me out of the blue, his voice was trembling with rage, at first I couldn’t understand what was going on. Had something happened to him; his family; friends…? oh God this is the kind of call I dread. He was uncharacteristically incoherent …
Read More “PALPITATIONS AND TREMORS IN NORTH LONDON; beware the temptation to twiddle the dial”
By Tony Attwood Slowly but surely, the wattage of support (if support can be measured in wattage) has risen. Before the game the club now often plays with the lights flashing them on and off in fancy sequences, the sound levels are up and there is a really positive feel about the place. No …
Read More “Where on earth have the anti-Arsenal Arsenal “fans” gone?”
By Walter Broeckx When Arsenal win a top match like they did against Manchester City the feelings of happiness are a bit higher than when you win against let us say Sunderland. In a way this is not based on facts as a win against Sunderland gives the same number of points as a win …
By Walter Broeckx No changes were made by Arsenal for this match against Manchester City. So Wenger went again for Giroud and Walcott together in the starting line up. The name we were all looking for wasn’t included even on the bench: Alexis. So Iwobi and Jeff Reine-Adelaide were also on the bench. The team …
By Bulldog Drummond Part one of the preview is here. Now onto what we might (in a state of revolutionary fervour) call “part two”. It seems only yesterday that every match against one of the so-called big teams in the League was preluded by a run-down of a big defeat of Arsenal. Defeats at Man …
By Bulldog Drummond We have taken just 11 points out of the last 18 in the league. That doesn’t sound so good. Although we’ve won the last two games. That sounds better. But Man City are having greater trouble. They’ve actually got ten points out of the last 18, including being beaten by Liverpool! Put …
By Tony Attwood Speaking with their regular authority on such matters on September 15 the Daily Express announced the “Liverpool owners will not sack Brendan Rodgers”. And no they didn’t do it then – they did it on 4 October, and immediately the Daily Star said, “Replacing Brendan Rodgers with Jurgen Klopp will not solve …
Read More “Klopp is not making much of an impression at Liverpool, and financially it looks tight.”
by Andrew Crawshaw Following Walter and Usama’s review of the Norwich Game Ref Review : Norwich – Arsenal – these acts of thuggery must be stopped Here is the updated Table of Shame Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 19 Red Cards 1 9 Penalties 1 14 Goals …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Although it is not a topic normally covered on Untold Arsenal I thought I would mention that almost one-third of Republican primary voters believe the US should bomb the kingdom of Agrabah, according to a report released in the US by Public Policy Polling on Friday. This is bad news for …
By Tony Attwood You’ll know by now that it’s my view that the notion that you have to buy players to make a success of a club is thoroughly misleading. But still the bloggettas and their friends in the media love to hype up purchasing as the route to success. How much evidence they …
By Tony Attwood I know Untold doesn’t normally do pre-match stuff until the day of the game, but these snippets from the media suggest one or two old timers have been having a bit of a jolly before rushing back to the company computer to put up their latest thoughts. And I don’t mean the …
Read More “Arsenal v Manchester City: the most screamingly silly (and wrong) previews of all”
By Tim Charlesworth Proudkev recently wrote an interesting article highlighting that a disproportionate number of referees are from the Manchester area. I think this article touches on a much wider point. It is not just refereeing that is biased, but the whole of football in England. I’m not sure that there is a conspiracy here …
Read More “Why is football biased towards the North West of England?”
By Walter Broeckx With the sacking of Mourinho and as one of our readers linked to an article on the BBC below a previous article I thought it would be interesting to have a look at what some of their experts said at the start of the season. Somewhere at the start of the season …
Read More “What everyone said about Mourinho…. before they changed their minds.”
By Tony Attwood The latest word on Sepp Blatter and Michel Platini is that they are likely to receive suspensions of at least seven years from football related activity in the hearings happening Thursday (Blatter) and Friday (Platini). The specific issue that will cause the ban is the £1.3m payment made to Platini by Fifa in …
Read More “Blatter and Platini at the end of the road; but we don’t give up on the awful FA”
By Walter Broeckx I must say that everyone likes to be right most of the time. I am no exception to that rule. Writing on a blog of course brings the risk that what you have written at some point in time can come back to haunt you. Now I must say that when the …
