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
Arsenal v Burnley 01 November 2014 – The Match Officials By Andrew Crawshaw Firstly, here is the ongoing table of wrong Important Decisions for the season – still no signs of anything “evening out in the end”; four in Arsenal’s favour, 17 against. Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 4 …
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Fouls and Cards Awarded by the Referee by Andrew Crawshaw Some of our readers have noted that there seem to be some anomalies this season between the number of fouls committed by teams in the Premier league and the numbers of cards issued. I have looked at the official web site of the Premier …
Read More “Football is changing… Fouls and Cards awarded by the referee.”
By Tony Attwood There is an episode of the Simpsons in which Lisa Simpson questions the validity of a school trip to the local slaughterhouse and meat processing factory, asking “why do we have to eat meat?” Suddenly the scene moves to Principal Skinner’s office where a red light is flashing above the slogan “Danger: …
Read More “The culture of keeping everyone quiet, and paying for the FA’s after dinner drinks”
By Walter Broeckx There is something in the air. Don’t you smell it? Well I do. All the way from where I sit writing this article. I sure smell it. It is the smell of anticipation in the air. The smell of: finally! Yes! It is the smell of the green, green grass of home. …
By Tony Attwood That question was asked yesterday at the head of an article in the Telegraph, the full title of which was, “Why did Liverpool sign striker Mario Balotelli when he is so unsuited to Brendan Rodgers’ playing style? The article is fairly long and detailed, but it is only at the end that …
THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD by Don McMahon Here’s a question: what happens when you say that you want to become a referee? It’s actually not quite what you might think. For what actually happens is that you find you need a certain amount of strength to overcome the first hurdle. Which is the amazement …
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By Tony Attwood When Talksport gets excited it can be a good time to take cover. And excited they are today in their latest web statement. They say… “In a timely report the Football Observatory of the International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) have explored just which clubs from Europe’s top five leagues currently boast …
Read More “Guilty Barcelona praised to the heavens by part of the media”
By Tony Attwood The notion that the size of Tottenham’s pitch might be the cause of their heartache might or might not be true – I really don’t know. But I thought the importance that their manager gave to it and to the psychological fitness of their players was interesting, and something that I’d …
Read More “Football betrayed: why journalists and broadcasters laugh at us.”
By Tony Attwood I was in a furniture shop in Market Harborough – a charming town in south Leicestershire – last weekend, and wandering around found this gigantic hearth rug covered in Tottenham emblems. Away from the games and the shouting I do try and have a moderately civilised life, so I went over to …
Read More “What’s wrong with Tottenham? Trying to find out from a Tottenham fan.”
By Walter Broeckx with many thanks to Mike one of our readers I might sound a bit pretentious to say that our articles are really worth reading. As a regular writer myself I think they do of course. But in my country praising yourself is not really something you do. So apart from my articles …
Read More “How much does each point cost? Here comes the miracle man”
By Tony Attwood It has been going on so long I wondered if we would have a season of it. All the players Arsenal could have signed if only the board had not been so lazy, the owner and the manager so tight, and the reputation of the club so low because of years of …
Read More “Injuries and failures to sign. And guess what, it’s Liverpool and Chelsea”
By Tony Attwood Nationalism can always work people up. It is emotional – perhaps especially so for an island kingdom that claims to have invented football but only won an international football competition when allowed to play all its games at Wembley. So does it matter how many players in England are “home grown”? Does …
Read More “England still fixated on the evil influence of Johnny Foreigner”
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 …
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 …
By Tony Attwood One of the great things about Arsène Wenger is that he never shies away from a situation. Famously, on the day he arrived at Highbury he was greeted by a swarm of journos already out for his blood. Not quite realising the intellectual abilities of the man they had brought into …
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 …
Read More “Spending money on transfers doesn’t relate to success”
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 …
Read More “Sunderland – Arsenal : Working class hero…. Alexis Sanchez”
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 …
Read More “Sunderland away. It’s time for the After Eights.”
Per Mertesacker admits Arsenal’s ‘confidence is shot’ and he is ‘struggling’ after Germany’s World Cup triumph It was a dramatic headline in the Independent and it sent shock waves through the brains of a lot of fans. Well, some at least. But then, slowly, it became clear that this story was not all it seemed …
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 …
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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 …
Read More “Football betrayed: making up stories for fans to believe”
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 …
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 …
Read More “Football Betrayed. PGMOL splits, journalist proclaims the future.”
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 …
Read More “Emotions, going from hell (frozen AHA) to heaven”
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 …
