Messut Özil, what we will miss the next weeks

By Walter Broeckx So far it hasn’t really been a good international break for Arsenal.  With the news coming out of the German training camp about the injury that Özil has suffered in the match against Chelsea being the worst of course. Of course this is not an injury he got from playing for Germany, …

Arsenal’s two old-timers who look like new transfers

By Tony Attwood We all know who we signed this summer.,, Mathieu Debuchy Alexis Sanchez David Ospina Calum Chambers Danny Welbeck Not a bad haul.  Some were raved over from the off, like Alexis, some had a load of manufactured abuse from make-believe supporters egged on by Sky, such as Danny Welbeck.  But all turned …

Reforming English football: ideas, plans and theories

By Tony Attwood Last night I watched the TV movie Castles in the Sky.  It tells the story of how radar was invented and what a huge impact it had on the ultimate victory of the allies in the second world war. It also contained a lesson for the FA and journalists alike for at …

The FA is not part of a solution to English football’s problems. It is part of the problem.

By Tony Attwood In 2010 I wrote a piece that I have subsequently referred to several times, since I am rather pleased with it.   It was a piece about why England do so badly at international football. The article looked at the number of players, the number of players playing in their homeland, the …

Reforming English football: Greg Dyke wants your money

By Tony Attwood Who would you trust the most out of this group when it comes to providing facilities for children’s football and for the amateur adult game? The Football Association Local Councils Private contractors who are paid by local councils to run sports provision. The rest of us (because we are all in the …

Robert Pirès speaks; I always listen

  By Tony Attwood When Robert Pirès speaks I do pay attention, just as I do when Thierry Henry says something, or indeed Dennis Bergkamp.  They have played elsewhere and indeed two continue to play elsewhere, but their hearts are always at Arsenal.  Wonderful players with extraordinary insights into the game, in my view, and always …

Champions League seeding changes and discussions being on FFP Part 2

By Tony Attwood When the concept of Financial Fair Play was laid out it was self-evident that the issue of finance in football had a central core (self-sustainability) and two issues – debt and loss making. Uefa chose to look at loss making first, because it was the more insidious of the two issues standing …

The search to see exactly how Özil was injured and who was responsible.

By Walter Broeckx First let me say I am not a doctor. But I am a person who likes to know how things come about. And so whenever I got an injury myself from doing sports I wanted to know from my doctors the how, why, what, where from it. And kept it in mind. …

Red Action, FSF and the police speak on the menace of flares

  By Tony AttwoodIn case you have not come across them before Red Action is the group that works with Arsenal to improve the atmosphere at Arsenal games and naturally they have an interest in the problem of flares.As you’ll know, Arsenal are now under investigation from Uefa for the flare incidents at the match …

Mesut is out, so how does the squad cope now?

By Tony Attwood So now we know.  Mesut Özil is out for about three months with a partial knee ligament tear.   The great dream of Sanchez, Walcott, Ramsey, Welbeck and Özil all in one team – the dream of stillness and speed – has taken another knock.  Will we ever see it I wonder? The …

Which team had the toughest start to the season?

By Walter Broeckx If you look at the number of points and the position in the league table I can understand that some people are not completely happy. But as in most things in life it is about perspective. And not just about the now moment. The season still has a long way to go. …

Trolls, hyenas and vermin

TROLLS, HYENAS AND VERMIN by Don McMahon Following our loss to Chelsea, which imho was a close run thing….I felt it appropriate to anticipate the reactions of our AAA minions. There is a phenomena in cognitive psychology which tries to explain how mankind’s morbid focus on small and often irrelevant negatives dominates many ordinary people’s …

The injury crisis is in fact a referee crisis

By Walter Broeckx Just as the leaves will fall off the trees each autumn you can be assured that every start of a new season Arsenal players are like rabbits in the woods in the hunting season. When the hunting season starts the hunters can go in the woods and kill rabbits or whatever they shoot …

What do you do when the transfer window is cracked?

by Tony Attwood When I fist started watching football back in the Bronze Age, we didn’t have a transfer window.  Clubs could transfer whomsoever they liked, as long as they were British or Irish, whenever they liked, all the way up to around six weeks before the end of the season.  You couldn’t buy players …

When the wheels fall off the bus

By Tony Attwood One of the most amazing things this season is to see how quickly fans of various clubs can turn on their club’s management.  That is interesting in itself, but there is more.  For I have had confirmed something I have suspected for a long time: that bad news draws fans to blogs …

REFEREE REVIEW: Arsenal – Tottenham

Referee : Michael Oliver   First let me say that this together with Everton – Liverpool and Sunderland-Newcastle is one of the difficult games to do. Final score overall was 72% which isn’t completely bad but certainly not great at all. When we put weight on the decisions it drops to 65% and then we …

A few things as predicted, now to get going after the break

By Walter Broeckx As I couldn’t see the match live as I was doing my own match as a referee I saw the match with no tension in my body. It was very much what everyone could predict. But not all. They said that our full backs would run forward at any opportunity and we …

Chelsea v Arsenal: the preview

By Bulldog Drummond Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain recently did an interview in which he said he is certain that there will be no major adjustment this week to Arsenal’s usual style of play. Here’s what he said… “I think that’s the risk you take when you play the way we play football.  We send a lot of …

The Catering Review: Piebury Corner

Continuing our series on where to eat before an Arsenal match… A short walk south from Holloway Road underground station (i.e towards Highbury & Islington) you will find a smart fronted pie shop selling some of the finest pies for miles around. Run by Paul and Nicky Campbell Piebury Corner is an unashamedly Arsenal inspired …

Referee Preview : Chelsea – Arsenal

Chelsea v Arsenal 05 October 2014 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Referee – Martin Atkinson Assistants – M Mullarkey and S Child Fourth Official – J Moss Martin Atkinson is another useless FIFA Accredited twat of a referee, at least as far as his beloved Chelsea and hated Arsenal are concerned. We have …

Flares: same offence, different rules once more?

By Walter Broeckx I thought the flares issue had been extinguished on the night but now I see a rather strange thing happening. I base this article on what I read in the Belgian newspapers so if they have spread wrong information I can only apologise. But for now I still trust them more than …

UEFA Youth League Arsenal v Galatasaray Wednesday 1 October 2014

by Andrew Crawshaw As you all know Arsenal dominated the game and ran out winners by five goals to one. The scoreline fully reflected the way that a youthful Arsenal team dominated the game and was a true reflection of the performances of the two teams on the day. For a full report on the …

Corruption, you see it is a foreign thing

By Walter Broeckx I think Untold Arsenal has in its life time always been one of the front runners when it comes to fighting corruption. Visible corruption and invisible corruption. Be it assumed corruption in the referee world, or real like when we talked and pointed at the scandals in Italy, Belgium, Germany and many …