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
I get so hooked on all the youngsters coming through the ranks all the time, Wilshere, Vela, Ramsey, Merida and the rest, that it becomes easy to forget that the Lord Wenger has a fair old ability to work with old timers too. It was widely said that when he arrived at Highbury he extended …
It would be amusing to hear all the shouting and complaining about ITV’s cock up while showing a bit of a local game from the north west the other day, if it weren’t for the greed and the crass stupidity of the footballing authorities that led up to the situation. On 1 May 2002 ITV …
The question is arising in correspondence: where are the definitive stats for footballers. A link to the Guardian’s fantasy football stats appeared here a couple of days back, and those figures are really interesting, but I was wondering if there is a source below that level. Someone has to measure all this stuff. I had …
Having wandered into a mathematical world of unreal numbers yesterday, today we face the big issue. Where do negative stories come from? Right up to the signing of Mr A yesterday there were stories saying the deal was dead – one I saw said that the FA were going to refuse the deal for being …
First, because 23 is a prime number. Just like 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, and 19 before it, and an infinite number thereafter. Second it was Theo’s number and we all love Theo. Third it was David Beckham’s number at Real Mad, and Russians somehow think that if you are British …
In my story on January 26 I said that we were definitely signing Arshavin. I said this not because I thought the Lord Wenger was desperate, and not because I had deep insight into the workings of the KGB, but rather because of the array of people who had far too much invested in the …
The return of Keane from a championship chasing club to a relegation flirting club just six months after he went the other way for more money, is proof if it were needed of the financial disaster facing Liverpool Weetabix. Liverpool were, let us not forget, held up as a model of how football could move …
These days, when a ref makes a dubious decision, the inclination of most people is to blame the ref’s ability. The suggestion is that referees today are simply not able to keep up with the speed of the game. What most commentators don’t suggest is that the ref might have been bought. In Italy of …
There are two ways to rubbish players. One is to dismiss them in one line, just saying “he’s ineffective” and leaving it at that. The implication is that he is so bad everyone knows it, you don’t have to say another word. The other is to argue the point constructively, using the stats, showing comparisons …
