Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 5 By Dale Higginbottom Do Arsenal get more injuries then their Premier League rivals? That’s what this series of articles will try to answer and put the difficult run of injuries into some perspective. As the match intensity increases to include cup competitions we should expect the league campaigns to …
By Paul Blythe The Art of Name calling. We all have one, more often than not several. The ones bestowed upon us by our loving parents and those used by friends and foes alike, often to describe our obvious flaws and shortcomings. However names often have a deeper more powerful and historic significance often lost …
By Tony Attwood Guessing the Lord Wenger’s team for a league match can be tough (as witness the fact that I never get within a million miles of it). So guessing the team for the Diddly Cup match is well neigh impossible. A first teamer that you thought would be rested suddenly starts, and some …
When a draw is a win, when a draw is a defeat By Tony Attwood You know the feeling: you score in the last minute to get a draw and it feels like a win. You concede after having taken the lead and it feels like a defeat. You miss a penalty and it feels …
By Walter Broeckx, the ref A visit to Sunderland and the home referee for Sunderland was Mr. Phil Dowd OTHER: From the start Sunderland can’t commit any fouls it seems. The moment we come near a player who falls down ref Dowd blows his whistle. 0/1 GOAL: A lucky goal but they all count. 1/1 …
From the marmalade of the tackle to the croissant of planning. Sunderland v. Arsenal By Phil Gregory* Coming off the back of a stunning 6-0 against Braga, confidence will undoubtedly be high amongst the Arsenal camp. While the goals have flowed freely at home, with big wins against Bolton, Braga and Blackpool, our away games …
By Billy the Dog McGraw This weekend Arsenal play away to Sunderland – the smallest village to have a team in the Premier League. Beer is 1/3 a pint. The Sunderland web site currently carries an article called “Behind Enemy Lines” which features an illustration of barbed wire in what appears to be a prisoner …
by Walter Broeckx At first I only planned to do this series on refs in the EPL. But after the game I thought it could be nice to do this also for the Champions League so that at the end of the season we also could make a comparison between the refs in both competitions. Who …
Can Arsenal win the League with Almunia in goal? by Paul Collins A couple of weeks ago I saw an article in a major newspaper that asked the question “Can Arsenal win the League with Manuel Almunia?” The writer concluded that Arsenal could not win the Championship with Almunia playing in goal. The writer used …
By Walter Broeckx As everyone is again and rightfully focusing on our great attacking play I thought it would be a good thing to have a look at our defensive game. As I pointed out in my early season comparison and like Wenger pointed out at arsenal.com at first sight we tend not to concede …
By Tony Attwood Carlos Vela was 21 last March, according to my maths, and yet it seems like he has been here for centuries. In fact he came in in 2007/8 but didn’t start playing for us until the following season. Year on year his stats are 2008/9 – Starts 10 – Subs 19- Goals …
by Phil Gregory Coming straight from France, the Braga preview. On y va… The season is well and truly on now, with the return of Champions League football, missing apostrophe and all. Life is made much easier by not having to negotiate the play-off round, extra fixtures are rarely desired unless necessary, while Tottenham suffered …
A Norwegian website has claimed that it has the personal data of more than 250,000 football fans who were sold World Cup Final tickets by an employee of FIFA. Dagbladet says the list includes the full name, date of birth and passport number in each case and was built up from the sale of tickets for …
By Billy the Dog McGraw. Our man in the car park. Thus it was. I know the Guardian said it was 25 passes, but that’s tripe. They were quite clearly drunk at the time. I could see them in their little press boxy type thing, below us executive types in club level with me old …
by Walter Broeckx Last season I tried to compare our season with the one before and as some readers rather liked the idea I thought I would try to do this again. Last year I used the method of comparing the games against the same opponents, no matter at which time in the season they …
What constitutes failure? By Tony Attwood One of the most interesting issues raised in correspondence about the “philosophy of Wenger” articles was the question, “what constitutes failure”. I was asked whether seven years without a trophy would be a failure? Or ten years? And that led me into thinking that really that was far too …
By Tony Attwood Before the round of games on September 11th I wrote in a semi-joking manner that both Tottenham Middlesex and Liverpool RBS would see the weekend as an opportunity to claw their way into the top half of the Premier League. I have to say I am rather surprised to find my prediction …
Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 4 By Dale Higginbottom We certainly didn’t come away form the break unscathed, injuries to Walcott and Vermaelen were tough blows but we probably come out of the break fairly well and I’ll explain later. This is the third article in the series and I thought I’d set out a …
by Walter Broeckx, the ref from Belgium, the Worldwide man Our Second home game brought us not only the visit of Bolton but also ref Stuart Atwell, the youngest ref in the EPL. CARDS: tackle Davies from behind on Rosciky. Ref gives advantage which goes to nothing. But with a tackle on a defensive player so …
By Tony Attwood Paul Robinson, Martin Taylor, Ryan Shawcross and now Dan Smith – the list of criminals walking the streets of England after committing violent and pre-meditated assault seems to grow by the day. In any just society they would all be in prison for their attacks on footballers, with their managers at least …
By Billy The Dog McGraw. Allow me to explain. 02 are doing this thing with Arsenal in which they provide entertainment and hand out some free beer, free tickets, free beer, free fun and games, free beer, free beer, and free beer. One of these free things takes place in a tent (or “bubble” to …
By Gordon Driver and Tony Attwood We thought today that we might do a sort of match day Untold programme, complete with special feature (the interview with Cesc), plus an updated preview of the game, and the like. (Phil is currently installing himself in his new university in France, and so can’t make it this …
Arsenal and Team Chemistry – Something that money cant buy. By Dark Prince Team Chemistry – What is it?? It’s something we cannot touch, something we cannot artificially make and most importantly, something which teams like Man C or Real Mad cannot buy. It cannot be quantified or be measured by any man-made machine. But …
By Walter Broeckx – our man in Belgium So here we have it again with the Cesc DNA and move to Barceloanus. And this time it would have been Vermaelen who has said something. But has he really said something? I will try to find out. I’m not going to say that I am going to …
Wenger, Chapman, Graham – a comparison By Tony Attwood I was intending to stop this series on Wenger after covering the three basics: Philosophy, Practice and the Total Revolution. But a reader wrote in asking me what would constitute failure in terms of the Wenger revolution, and I thought it such a good question I …
