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 There are naturally a number of dates that can be celebrated as the birthday of Woolwich Arsenal – the day the club formally became a limited company, the day it received notification that it had been accepted as a league club, the day it changed its name from Royal Arsenal to Woolwich …
Read More “It’s Woolwich Arsenal’s 120th birthday and we’re on the radio”
By Tony Attwood Premier League grounds were, on average, somewhere around 95% full last season on average. But it turns out, the number of away supporters fell by 9%. (Most clubs, I imagine, do what Arsenal do, and ask for unsold tickets back by a date a few weeks before the game, so that they …
By Our Man in Black If the rumours can be believed it seems that not all games are assessed from a refereeing point of view, and, going one step further we might start to say that the assessments (or at least some of them) are more or less a joke. And yet we have this …
Read More “How the secrecy behind the referees’ organisation is leading to more and more rumours”
By Tony Attwood I have never quite figured out what it is that the Guardian newspaper has against Arsenal. The Guardian is a liberal left wing paper which produces quality journalism. Sometimes it is insightful, sometimes amusing, generally highly informative and mostly accurate in its news reporting. And yet when they come to the Arsenal, …
Read More “Lies, damn lies and the Guardian’s analysis of ticket prices”
By Walter Broeckx Oh the transfer rumours. You hate them or you love them but surely some of them are really big fun that makes you laugh. Let us have a look at a few funny ones. Let us start with Andy Carroll who has been purchased by West Ham United. Probably after first having …
Read More “Silly, sillier, silliest – today’s rumours, and even Untold comes in for criticism!!!”
By Tony Attwood It is, it seems, time to work out which keys to press on the keyboard in order to get a letter i with an acute accent over the top, because it now appears that Gonzalo Higuaín is on his way to Arsenal. While I confidently predicted that, “He’s obviously not going to …
Read More “107 goals in 187 games, and he’s coming to Arsenal”
By Our Man In Black If the rumours can be believed it now seems that whereas PGMO should assess the referee in all games, not all games are actually assessed. Which is rather bizarre since it means that the only place where all games are assessed from a referee point of view is Referee Decisions. …
Read More “Referee Rumours: Is the promotion and demotion of referees fixed?”
By Our Man In Black ASSESSMENTS OF GAMES According to the way the PGMO should be working each game in the PL should be assessed by the PGMO. To put it bluntly, all PL matches are meant to be assessed by a panel of assessors every Monday. But rumour has it that this is not …
Read More “Who referees the referees? It’s a bigger problem than we imagined”
By Tony Attwood I’ve been ruminating in recent articles about the fact that three of the top four clubs have new managers. Hardly a revelation, but I’ve been trying to think through what this actually means. Now normally a new manager means new players, but that could be a problem for both Chelsea and Manchester …
Read More “The summer of unexpected transfers as Chelsea and Man C “refresh” their teams.”
By Tony Attwood It appears that the Guiness International Cup featuring Milan, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Juventus and LA Galaxy is not going to be a one off event. Rupert Murdoch’s TV companies are planning to run a new international competition for clubs, which they will broadcast – not least because Murdoch as lost the right …
Read More “Fifa and Uefa face the long awaited challenge to their authority”
By Tony Attwood Guessing which of the vast number of players Arsenal are now linked with is going to be impossible. Even the hype language employed by some of the more exciteable blogs is on the rise. We have had “Arsenal on Alert”. We have had “Arsenal on red alert”. Now we have “Arsenal on …
Read More “Gonzalo Higuaín, Real Mad, Juve, Nic B, Bart Simpson”
By Tony Attwood We are so used to Arsenal summers being tales of doom and despair, painted by the omni-watchful AAA as due entirely to Mr Wenger and the board, that it seems strange to watch the chaos elsewhere, while we seem to be sailing serenely through. We have no Flamini style departure (where he …
Read More “Football descends into total chaos; the circus is back in town”
By Walter Broeckx I don’t know if you ever have seen the English comedy series ‘Dad’s Army”. If you did you will probably remember the funny intro song . So if you know this tune just sign the title above along with me. I don’t know why exactly but this song suddenly came back in …
Read More “Who do you think you are fooling Mr. Riley… fewer fouls given does not mean more goals”
By Our Man In Black You might well imagine that referees can’t referee all teams, and quite reasonably PGMO – the highly secretive referee organisation – insists that referees declare who they support, and then doesn’t give that ref those teams. But there is another exclusion clause in referee contracts, and that is to do …
By Walter Broeckx When is a referee error not a referee error? Now we know – it is when PGMO (the shadowy body that controls English Premier League refereeing) doesn’t see it. As Mr. Riley head of the PGMO has come out in the open with his numbers that I have talked about in another …
Read More “Refs report only 5.8% of all the errors they make in a match.”
By Walter Broeckx Well can you believe it. Untold asks the PGMO to speak up and to come out of the dark and on the same day Mike Riley comes out to talk about referees and fouls in the PL. This can be found on the BBC website over here First let us see at …
Read More “Mike Riley gives us numbers, but the explanation makes uncomfortable reading”
By the Referee Rumour Mill Welcome to the new world – not transfer rumours but referee rumours. If you are a regular reader you will know that Untold has been covering the murky world of referees for years. If you want to see some of our past work take a lot at the Corruption Archive …
By Walter Broeckx If you look at the way some people behave on the internet one could think that we are already at the last day of the transfer window and we haven’t bought anyone. Not even the youngster that was mentioned in the rumours. Rumours that will have passed more than 100 names in …
By Walter Broeckx I happened to mention the name a few weeks ago in one of my articles. And apparently the deal has been finished and we bought one for the future. His name is Julio Pleguezuelo and he is what is called a higly-rated 16-year-old defender from Barcelona. I will call him just Julio …
Read More “One for the future or is there more to come? The tale of Julio and Xavi.”
By Ethan Ward This is the start of a series of blogs on Arsenal’s younger player, and I thought I’d start close to home and pick an Arsenal youngster who has the talent to break into the first team in the next couple of years, maybe even this coming season. The youngster in question is …
Ivan Gazidis: this is what he does…a report from the end of season supporters’ event by Drew (Blacksheep63) Part one appeared here. This concluding part of the report covers the questions that were asked from the floor. The first question was why is everybody being quiet about Red and White and Usmanov? Given he is …
Read More “Ivan Gazidis: this is what he does. Questions from the floor”
Ivan Gazidis: this is what he does…a report from the end of season supporters’ event by Drew (Blacksheep63) I was one of the fortunate AISA members whose name came up in the ballot for the Ivan Gazidis meeting, and so off I trotted to the Emirates on Monday night for a Q&A with the Arsenal …
By Walter Broeckx Business as usual I was hoping in my last post but that was not possible as my internet was down this morning and I had to wait and wait and wait before I could come online. But now the problems have been solved I hope for a fast internet and with lots …
Read More “Coffee, Arsenal and a cup. It’s all about enjoyment.”
By Walter Broeckx As I had to do some sports today and made a long walk for the company I work for today I was not on the internet today. So I couldn’t write an article and as Tony is still hanging around Barcelona, bringing home Cesc we couldn’t publish a second article today. My …
By Walter Broeckx There are times that when you are a blogger you write things and people fall over you. I remember this happening on a few occasions this season. Whenever we dropped points I said that this team was good enough and would be good enough. I have said that we needed a bit …
