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 Many who push out the mantra that coming fourth is not a trophy forget what happened after George Graham won his two league titles. Following the wonder 1991 triumph of just one defeat through the whole season, Arsenal found themselves in 10th in 1993. Worse we scored the lowest number of goals …
Read More “Monaco look like a latter day George Graham team”
Don McMahon A number of Gooners have asked about how referees get promoted to the top of their profession so I am humbly submitting my experience and will happily accept any corrections our readers can bring to my attention. I will be speaking in general for both genders and North America officials but worldwide for …
By Tony Attwood REDaction, the Arsenal supporters grouping that focuses on the atmosphere at home and away matches has published the results of a survey of over 2,000 Arsenal fans in relation to issues such as kick-off times, ticket prices, and access to live football for younger fans. Of those surveyed (and of course such surveys can’t …
Read More “RedAction and other fans’ groups choose to ignore the older supporter”
By Walter Broeckx 1. Sanchez grew up at Tocopilla a small town north of the capital Santiago de Chile. The name Tocopilla means in fact ‘The Devils corner’. Devilish because the little town is divided in two parts in between a big power plant and a saltpeper factory so not the most healthy environment to …
In the last article we looked at how Mourinho is playing games with the media, the FA and PGMO. All this – and indeed the whole threat of Type III match fixing (in which club owners seek to persuade refs to hinder the progress of other clubs, rather than fix the results of their …
Read More “Other countries are more open than the PL and the PGMO”
By Tony Attwood Today we publish two reports. This introduction s about how José Mourinho is waging his own battle against refereeing decisions. The next is about how the English model of utter secrecy in terms of referee inaccuracy is not the only one possible. About how other countries have come into the open and allowed everyone …
Read More “Why is PGMO giving Mourinho the arena to make all these complaints?”
By Walter Broeckx For this match we had the following 11 players in the starting line up : Ospina, Chambers, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Cazorla, Welbeck, Ozil, Alexis, Giroud. On the beach we had : Szczesny, Gibbs, Bellerin, Gabriel, Wilshere, Rosicky, Walcott. So a few changes with Ooooospina coming back in goal for Szczesny. Chambers …
Read More “Crystal Palace – Arsenal, too close at the end but 3 golden points”
By Bulldog Drummond. In a rather revolutionary move Untold Arsenal today publishes the right review of the right match more or less at the right time. A bit left field I know but well, at Untold, we like to do things differently. And to begin with an anniversary… 21 February 1998: Arsenal 1 Crystal Palace …
Read More “The right match, previewed in the right place. Amazing. Palace away”
Editorial note: Sincere apologies for yesterday’s posting of the referee preview with the wrong officials. So many thinks coincided to make that go wrong and not be sorted that it would take the whole article to explain it. But we’re now back and Bulldog’s preview of the game will, hopefully, follow anon… Tony Crystal Palace …
Read More “Crystal Palace v Arsenal 21 February 2015 – The (right) Match Officials”
Crystal Palace v Arsenal 21 February 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly the table of Shame – I haven’t seen Walter’s reviews of the Spurs or Leicester games so it is unchanged since last time. It still makes sorry reading, nearly eight times as many potential game changing decisions against us as …
Read More “Crystal Palace v Arsenal 21 February 2015 – The unacceptable face of refereeing”
By Tony Attwood How many injuries do Arsenal have at the moment? Are we the worst off, the best, or middling? That question is a bit tougher than might be thought to answer. According to the web site the Physio Room we have five injuries at present, putting us eighth in the list. Top of …
Read More “Arsenal’s injuries: it seems the figures are very misleading”
By Walter Broeckx and Tony Attwood Over the years we have been talking a lot about referees. Now one of our most favoured persons over those years was Mike Dean. And I have given many possible reasons for why referees might be biased against Arsenal. We suspect one of the reasons was and is still …
Read More “How the passing of time has affected the way Arsenal is refereed.”
By Tony Attwood Back in 2007 when Untold started I was exploring all sorts of avenues of interest that I thought this site could follow. One involved statistics. I’d watched a match at the Emirates and looked that evening at the stats that appeared on some web sites. Although I’d not made any notes …
Read More “Phantom matches and why Arsenal have their own data company”
By Don McMahon The core issue with being an official is one’s integrity. IF the referee or his/her assistants lack the moral courage and integrity, even in making a difficult but self-evident call on the field, even ONCE, then they are certainly very susceptible to being ” influenced” by those who make it their profession …
Read More “A referee’s dilemma: do you report the corruption of your colleagues?”
What has happened this year to our Junior Teams? Part 1 – U21 team by Andrew Crawshaw Last summer saw a major overhaul of the Coaching staff at Junior (U21 and below) level with Liam Brady retiring and being replaced with Andries Jonker. The U21 team were also relegated to the second level of Premier …
Read More “What has happened this year to our Junior Teams?”
By Dr Billy the Dog McGraw, senior consultant in the psychological study of football support, University Hospital of the North Circular Road. I was struck by the comments made by two hedgehogs on a blog that was quoted on Untold the other day, in which the writers said they were thankful that Giroud was not …
Read More “Deposing the king of detrimental simplisitude. Arsenal vs Piers Morgan”
By Tony Attwood There was a lovely comment on the Independent web site recently that said that “In recent years the FA has finally woken up to the reality that amateur 11-a-side adult football, left unaided, is withering away, despite the boom in popularity of the televised professional version.” Has it? Woken up, I mean. …
Read More “The FA: from 90 Minute Noah to McDonalds via 3G George, Ukip and Marmite”
By Tony Attwood Way back in 1893 a major scandal broke in the British press concerning the amount of money that the nation was spending on football. . The St James Gazette ran the story that in England the populace was spending twice as much per year on the game as it was on the …
Read More “It is the sheer size of football gambling that gives English football a problem”
Arsenal at the AlKass by Andrew Crawshaw An Arsenal U17 team, managed by Jan Van Loon, have been competing in the AlKass tournament in Qatar. This has attracted very little attention even on the official Arsenal.com website so I thought I would share some highlights with Untold. AlKass is a Qatari sports channel, which has …
Read More “Arsenal at the AlKass; this month’s tournament you may have missed”
By Walter Broeckx A few days ago Tony pointed at the (amazing) fact that Untold has published 5000 articles since it all started on 14 January 2008 with the first article. I must say that around the turn of the year I noticed that we were approaching this number. And I decided to write an article about it. …
Read More “Some late celebratory thoughts: long may it continue”
“Form like this could make Giroud an Arsenal legend” So it says in the Daily Telegraph today, and I wondered where they got that notion from. Surely not Untold. For since the S Robson, P Morgan, the black flaggers and the anti-arsenal Arsenal in general started attacking Arsenal, we have been comparing Olivier Giroud with …
Read More “Giroud: good enough for Arsenal? Cazorla leaving for Madrid!”
By Walter Broeckx The starting line for the match against Middlesbrough who surprised City in the round before was Szczesny, Chambers, Gabriel, Koscielny, Gibbs, Flamini, Cazorla, Özil, Alexis, Giroud and Welbeck. On the bench we had Akpom, Coquelin, Rosicky, Walcott, Martinez, Mertesacker, Monreal. So Gabriel with his debut in the first team for Arsenal. Gabriel playing in …
Read More “Match report : FA cup Arsenal – Middlesbrough. Onwards we march!”
Welcome to the FA Cup Fifth Round clash between Arsenal and Middlesbrough at the Emirates, brought to you by Arsenal’s Official Car and Van Rental Partner Europcar. The Gunners’ defence of the world’s oldest football cup competition continues with the visit of Aitor Karanka’s Championship side. Boro are riding high in the second tier, sitting …
By Bulldog Drummond So, with 5000 articles done, it seems I lead us off into the sixth millennium (and yes I know literally millennium means not just any old thousand, but a thousand years, but points are there to be stretched and anyway I don’t think that there is a word meaning 1000 editions). But …
Read More “Into the sixth millennium: Arsenal v Middlesbrough FA Cup preview”
By Tony Attwood So yes, we have written and published 5000 articles on Untold Arsenal since we started this rather eccentric and somewhat different publication back on 14 January 2008. Our first piece, rather portentously, was called Arsenal witness the end of football and we plodded along writing maybe five articles a week. These days you …
Read More “This is the 5000th edition of Untold. What have we achieved?”
