Untold Referee Review: Sunderland – Arsenal

Referee : Kevin Friend The full commentary follows the chart below. Someone before the match predicted we would drop points (wrong prediction) and then would moan about the referee (yes we will moan a bit) but the two together: not. We won and even in the match report that came online minutes after kick off …

My boss was right : Alexis is awesome

By Walter Broeckx My boss was right. Ah, aren’t  they always right you might say. Well let us leave that in the middle. Because my boss has made some mistakes in his life. Like when he decided to support a team like Barcelona. That surely can only be seen as a big mistake. But apart …

Spending money on transfers doesn’t relate to success

By Tony Attwood Below is a table that shows the league position of clubs as per Sunday morning, against the net profit or loss in transfer fees over the summer.  The last column shows the net expenditure (a minus figure) or net profit (+) on the summer’s sales. What it shows is that spending lots of …

Sunderland – Arsenal : Working class hero…. Alexis Sanchez

By Walter Broeckx The starting team was Szczesny, Chambers, Per, Monreal, Gibbs, Arteta, Flamini, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Cazorla, Alexis, Welbeck. On the bench we had Mrtinez, Bellerin, Ramsey, Rosicky, Walcott and Podolski. For those who expected an easy match I can just point at the time we lost heavy in recent seasons. The matches after that we …

Sunderland away. It’s time for the After Eights.

Sunderland v Arsenal by Bulldog Drummond So, what do Sunderland do after letting in eight and giving the away fans a refund?  Pull back in defence and follow the Hull style of time wasting I would imagine.  In which case I wonder if the Sunderland supporters will follow Hull fans by arguing that slowing down …

Sunderland v Arsenal 25 October 2014 – The Match Officials

Sunderland v Arsenal 25 October 2014 – The Match Officials   by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly here is the current Wrong Important Decisions table including the Hull game   Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 4 Red Cards 3 5 Penalties 1 5 Goals 0 2 Total 4 16 Possible Cost …

Football betrayed: making up stories for fans to believe

By Tony Attwood This week the Daily Mirror launched a big special on the questions that Arsenal fans are wanting the answer to but for which there will never be an answer.  Actually they weren’t the questions I would like to have answered, largely because I knew the answers, but they were the questions the …

PGMOL v Arsenal: the score after eight games

PGMO v Arsenal – After eight games is it evening out yet?   by Andrew Crawshaw We are now approaching matchweek 9 in the Premier League, surely after 8 games things should start to even out shouldn’t they? Our recorded results so far :- Arsenal v Crystal Palace   2 – 1 Everton v Arsenal               2 …

Football Betrayed. PGMOL splits, journalist proclaims the future.

By Tony Attwood . On 9 June 2010 I wrote the article “How Arsenal came to the rescue of English football” in which I presented the thesis that the key issue in terms of England’s failure to do well in world cups was down to the number of qualified coaches that each country had, per 1000 …

Emotions, going from hell (frozen AHA) to heaven

By Walter Broeckx I think I might have mentioned it before that being drawn in the same group with a team from Belgium was a dream scenario for the Arsenal Belgium supporters club of which I am chairman. But then came the nightmare scenario of Arsenal getting only a small allocation of tickets. And we …

Arsenal v Anderlecht: here we go…

By Bulldog Drummond So, contrary to popular belief, we do have some players.  Ramsey came on against Hull somewhere around the 25th minute of playing time (the  63rd-minute of time including stoppages).  Arteta  was on the bench.  Theo Walcott, played for the under 21s with Gnabry and Diaby. And we know that young Emiliano Martinez, (22 …

Arsenal v Hull: The ball was out of play for 31 minutes and 52 seconds

  By Andrew Crawshaw   I was at the Emirates on Saturday and, amongst other things was incensed at the time wasting that was going on.  I have just reviewed the whole game on Arsenal Player and here is my analysis of the time that the ball was out of play or being held by …

Anderlecht – Arsenal, The Untold pre match talk

By Walter Broeckx Anderlecht. If there is one team that can be called the best team in Belgium it is Anderlecht. I say this with gritted teeth. Not because I support one of their rivals. But because my local team lost their biggest talent I had ever seen play to them.  And some other stories …

The Arsenal AGM. What really happened (rather than the press make-believe)

The 13th AGM  of Arsenal Holdings plc was held on 16 October at the Emirates Stadium This year I am sorry to say we are a little late in giving a full account of the Arsenal AGM to balance the rather whimsical pieces that appeared in some newspapers. But fortunately we had our man in the …

Referee review : Arsenal – Hull : East, West not the best

Referee : Roger East Match: Arsenal – Hull The detailed commentary on the referee in this game, follows the chart. Let me start by saying that in the opening 15 minutes Hull didn’t start to kick us as other teams have done this season. No they were rather clean even in their fouls. Some pushing …

The players return: who’s fit and who’s out for Wednesday

By Dr Billy “The Dog” McGraw.   Physician to anyone who wants an opinion. Where are we on the injury front?  I must admit it is getting a bit confusing all round, as I found in a debate yesterday where two of us struggled to complete the full set of details on who is in …

Anderlecht – Arsenal, the Untold travel advice

By Walter Broeckx So we have a match coming up this week  that was looked upon with great anticipation from our supporters club in Belgium when it was announced: Anderlecht. So here is our Untold take on all and everything involved in this match. Let us start with some geography. Anderlecht is one of the …

Untold: the catering report. The Quays Holloway Road

  Getting very fed (Irish style) on the Holloway Road by Blacksheep This article is adapted from the Goosebarnacles report on The Quays pub, Holloway Road. This week Drew and I didn’t have a particular venue in mind for our pre-match luncheon, so we strolled down Holloway Road from Archway underground station looking hither and …

Football betrayed. Swansea v Stoke; a manager speaks out against corruption and incompetence

By Tony Attwood First off, I know of course that this is the third FOOTBALL BETRAYED article in a row.  I think the issue of how lazy journalists restrict analysis is important – and having decided to write about it, I’m amazed at how each day there is example after example.  I don’t even have …

Football betrayed: it’s a numbers game – unless you cheat

By Tony Attwood The piece I published this morning (Incompetence or Collusion: football betrayed) resulted in a lot of comments to Untold that have been refused or deleted or edited, mostly because they were off topic. This was frustrating because the essence of that article was that journalists, through their laziness, talk about the same …

Incompetence or collusion: football betrayed

By Tony Attwood There is quite a difference between football journalism and (for example) political or financial journalism, for football journalism rarely asks “why?”  And even less rarely does it do any sort of analysis of the “why”? There is little questioning of why something happened, why something else is an issue, and if another …

Referee cost us again. Well Mike how long till you do something about it?

By Walter Broeckx Arsenal started really well in the opening 10 minutes. It was one way stuff from the start. Attack after attack went in the direction of the Hull goal. As my stream was very blurry in the opening minutes I couldn’t see them all but I did think I saw some pretty good …

Arsenal v Hull. Everyone is injured; there’s no point turning up.

By Bulldog Drummond At last at last my jolly chums – a match to go and watch.  Do we want to hear again that Mathieu Debuchy has an ankle and Olivier Giroud has a tibia?  I say no!  We have a squad, and a squad that is strong and shall see us through. Mesut Özil like …

Arsenal v Hull 18 October 2014 – The Match Officials

Arsenal v Hull 18 October 2014 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Before I start on the referee preview here is the table of Wrong Important Decisions, updated to include both the Spurs and Chelsea games.   Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 4 Red Cards 3 4 Penalties …

Does Keith Hackett read Untold? How many refs, refs and Wenger, the after-match…

By Walter Broeckx This article is based on an article that you can find when you click on the link a bit further. “We need to replace the quality and to do so we may need to look elsewhere,” says Keith Hackett. That was the header of an article that you could find if you …