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 I wouldn’t normally focus enormously on one particular blog and its commentary, but the headline today of “This is why we want you gone: these Arsenal fans can’t quite believe Unai Emery’s latest comments ” really made me wonder if there is any end to the madness, or whether it just goes …
Read More “Man U and Tottenham fans follow Gooners on the path of self-destruction”
By Bulldog Drumond There have been 30 Premier League games so far this season. But only 10 of them have been home wins. That is, rather obviously, 33% of matches that have ended in home wins. Last season it was 48%. And what makes this quite interesting is that this is a sudden change after …
Read More “Why are supercomputers getting their predictions wrong and how to outsmart them”
By Tony Attwood Are there cover ups in football? Cover ups of corruption, incompetence, match fixing, the old boys network looking after each other, abuse of money, abuse of power, that sort of thing…. Certainly in the case of the child sex abuse scandals that have swept across English football in recent years it …
Read More “Why does everyone in football seem to have something to hide?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone As you may have noticed, the Africa Cup of Nations has begun. A little later than planned, but it has begun. What it means is that those players involved will not be available at the start of the season since they won’t have had a proper summer rest. In this case …
Read More “What the Africa Cup of Nations means for Premier League players and their clubs”
By Tony Attwood On 27 May 2015 Untold ran this headline If Fifa execs had read Untold in January they would have known they were going to be arrested That story related back to our piece on 22 January that year which itself had the headline Switzerland take a greater interest in …
Read More “Fifa corruption as rife as ever, but English tax payers keep funding them.”
By Tony Attwood So far in this series: Is football fixed? Part 1: The logical reason why we might well think so. Is football fixed? Part II: why we need to have change I had already written the two previous “Football is Fixed” articles that appeared yesterday, when the news came in that the match …
Read More “Is football fixed? The final chapter: match fixing in Spain.”
By Tony Attwood This article concludes the discussion on why change is needed in the way football is run in the Premier League. As the Guardian pointed out, when Southampton were beaten 6-1 by Manchester City, the expected goals result suggested a 2-2 draw. And we say, ah well, stuff happens. Or we might …
Read More “Is football fixed? Part II: why we need to have change”
By Tony Attwood There are two answers to the notion that football is fixed, which journalists and bloggers like to trot out over and over again. The first is that the people who suggest football is fixed are simply loopy – that they go around wearing tin hats, believe that the BBC is the universal …
Read More “Is football fixed? Part 1: The logical reason why we might well think so.”
It goes without saying that unless you’re English, you’ll have no clue of the immense passion that is deep-rooted in the sport of football, which has become ingrained in the nation’s culture over generations. In this article, we have listed some of the essential tips that non-native English football attendees need to know before they …
Read More “What You Need to Know About Attending English Football Matches”
By Tony Attwood There is no doubt that a lot of readers who are critical both of Arsenal and of my approach to Arsenal, argue that it is dead simple to predict Arsenal’s results because the manager is a turnip who insists on playing players such as Mustafi, Lichsteiner, Jenkinson, Kolasinac, Elneny, Mkhitaryan, Ozil, Xhaka …
Read More “The easiest way to make a profit out of Arsenal’s fixtures next season”
By Tony Attwood I have written many times before about the child sex abuse scandals in English football, and my dismay at the way that the media has been handling them. If you want a quick re-run there is an article at https://untold-arsenal.com/archives/61818 – there have been a fair number since. Football doesn’t want …
Read More “Why are the scandals involving football so often removed from most of the media?”
By Tony Attwood I am about to toddle off to the other side of the world so I may not be able to clear all the comments that come in – more on that in the next post. But first here is a little thought that popped into my head. Mr Emery is mostly very …
Read More “The curious issue of what managers say about their players”
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you might remember that over four years ago we ran the story, Man City decides to take on Uefa; the result will finally decide who runs football. We’ve come back to that from time to time until back in November last year we ran …
Read More “And so, the investigation into Manchester City has begun.”
By Tony Attwood In the affterglow of last night’s lovely victory for Arsenal, I want to turn to something different, not because I didn’t enjoy last night, but because this is Untold, and we like to cover stories no one else will cover. And what we consider here is a perfect example of the creation …
Read More “Another serious misuse of football statistics by those who should know better”
By Tony Attwood We’ve been here before, and before and before: the issue of the transfers of young players, and the way English clubs treat them. There have been warnings and fines for several clubs over time – Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City – I won’t go through it all again, as we have covered …
By Tony Attwood I have not kept exact records over the years on the issue, and sadly I don’t have the spare time to go back and check, but I get the impression that there are more articles in the mainstream media about referees these days than there were even just one year ago. It …
Read More “How the media comes daily to the rescue of the referees”
By Tony Attwood Research appears to show that match officials in England are maybe seven times more likely to suffer verbal abuse than those in France and the Netherlands. I say “appears” and “maybe” because although some who are quoting this research are giving that figure as a fact, the research in England has been conducted …
Read More “New referee research is valuable but is still fundamentally flawed”
By Tony Attwood Given that every day football is in the news, and given that this daily feed of news does not generally include any questioning of the actions of referees, the way journalists report the sport, the coverage of matches by TV, the behaviour of Fifa officials, the allegations that one club threatened to …
Read More “Is everything really ok with football or are we just following a blind faith?”
by Andrew Crawshaw This weekend saw the start of the second half of the League Season for most clubs – as you all know by now one team sits out each round of matches as there are 11 teams in the league and this week it was our turn. This was something of a relief …
By Tony Attwood It is one of the themes I write about a lot – perhaps beyond Arsenal itself it is the theme I write about most of all: that the way the media reports issues affects the way we see the world. For it is hard to argue that a particular topic is of …
Read More “Racism? What racism? The media denies any responsibility.”
By Tony Attwood It is quite hard to remember an interlull that had so much happening on the football front. We have had the new president of Uefa and some clubs unhappy with Manchester City over the way they were able to spend the money they did, Fifa unhappy with Chelsea and Manchester City and …
Read More “The FA is trying to impose a major shift in the Home Grown regulations”
By Tony Attwood Many objections have been raised, mostly but not exclusively by supporters of Manchester City, to our coverage of Financial Fair Play, which has been our main topic of conversation during this period without any men’s football (although it has been wonderful to see how great the women’s team has become – boosted …
Read More “Is FFP legal or could it be challenged in the European courts?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It seems we live in interesting times, and as the Chinese saying would have i,t that is not always a good thing. For we are told by those who claim to be in the know that Manchester City are getting close to being given a one-year transfer ban from Fifa. This …
Read More “The unsavoury face of youth transfers raises its head. Enquiries are being made.”
by Tony Attwood Breakaways, breakaways, everywhere we look are breakaways. But not it seems involving Arsenal. Arsenal has become the first (or if I missed it while arguing with Man City fans, one of the first) clubs to put out a statement saying that they are not interested in the notion of the European Super …
Read More “Arsenal not interested in Euro league but there is a breakaway brewing”
By Tony Attwood The Manchester Evening News has evolved a staunch defence of Manchester City in an article under the headline “Man City Football Leaks revelations are missing a key piece of information” The article is by Stuart Brennan who is best known to many of us who watch the ducking and diving of journalists …
Read More “A defence of Manchester City appears in the press, and it is very worrying”
