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 Walter Broeckx As far as I could find out all the Arsenal players have played their matches for their national teams and weren’t injured! An unseen achievement for Arsenal. Probably Wenger’s fault…. And when looking back at their performances one can say that in general they did rather well. Jack Wilshere was again voted …
By Tony Attwood If anything seems to represent the style and approach of Professional Game Match Officials Ltd company which employs Premier League referees, it is a combination of complacency and secrecy, with a side order of arrogance thrown in. This is a most dangerous combination, because the secrecy inevitably leads to a lack of …
Read More “The extreme danger we face of PGMO doing nothing”
By Walter Broeckx We all have probably seen the headlines in the media that provoked a firm reaction. Headlines saying: Wenger will offer Diaby a new contract. One of them said: Abou Diaby will be offered new Arsenal deal if he regains full fitness, confirms Arsène Wenger. With an accent of course but I …
Read More “Offering Diaby a new contract or not, what Wenger really said”
By Tony Attwood Although I don’t want it soon, one day it will happen. Mr Wenger will leave Arsenal. So who will we get? Will Arsenal do a Man U, and appoint a seemingly decent manager, fail to give him the proper support he needs, and then chop his head off after a year, wasting …
Read More “13 men who might or might not take over after Arsene Wenger”
By Walter Broeckx I think it was halfway September that I for the first time predicted that we would have Dean for our match against Manchester United. And who did Mike Riley appointed for this match this Monday? Yes, the Untold prediction on referees once again was spot on. Mike Dean it will be. In …
Read More “As predicted by Untold months ago… the ref for Arsenal – MU”
By Walter Broeckx I think we can say that we have survived the first round of international matches. And the best thing is that all you out there crossing your fingers, praying, hoping, wishing for no injuries to Arsenal players have done a good job so far. Because as far as I could find I …
By Walter Broeckx Thanks to a good wind we have the end of season report from the PGMO over the season 2011-2012. A season Untold Arsenal also covered in their ref review history for a big part. In the first article we looked at the way the PGMO rates their referees and who it would …
By Tony Attwood Having learned to stand upside down, deal with very large lizards and not get frightened by some very alarming bird calls, and having been stung by a jellyfish the wildness of transfer rumours, well, half a a world away. But I must say the Daily Mirror gave me a laugh-out-loud moment with …
“Blatter has long clung to the comforting falsehood that the English media only reports all this because England lost out, but he should realise there is outrage here that the FA spent £21m of football money, and £3m public money from 12 hard-up local authorities, courting a corrupt Fifa.” That paragraph, from the Guardian, is …
Read More “Germany stands tall while pathetic FA and UK press still want us in Fifa”
By Walter Broeckx When I got my hands on the end of season 2011-2012 report from the PGMO (the secret organisation that runs the referees in the PL) I compared this with the numbers we gathered over the same season. I talked about this in a first article that you can find here and then …
Read More “We all live in a PGMO dreamland…more strange numbers”
by Walter Broeckx Untold Arsenal is a positive blog. We always look at things in a positive way. We don’t believe that moaning about the players and managers 25 hours a day is first of all making any difference and secondly will change anything. So why moan and make yourself and the rest of the …
By Walter Broeckx In my first article I said that I had an end of year report from the PGMOL still with the L in those days in which they said that they only have noticed 43 wrong key decisions in the whole season 2011-2012. Of course if you think about that number for more …
By Walter Broeckx After our loss at Swansea I have seen a few comments blaming Wenger for not having interfered enough by letting Chambers play on right back after it was clear that he had a difficult match against Montero. The reasoning was: we had Bellerin on the bench so he should have brought Bellerin …
By Walter Broeckx We have been doing reviews for several years now on Untold Arsenal. So I have a lot of data from the seasons that are behind us and from the current season. But I also have at my disposal some internal documents from the PGMO. One could say that a good wind blew …
Don McMahon in my never-ending eagerness to anticipate potential improvements to the Beautiful Game and at the same time explore what other sports have experimented with or are considering doing, the urge to write a definitive compendium of such ideas and changes has overwhelmed me. So I did an internet search and a bit of …
By Tony Attwood (meditating on life to the sound of the waves of the Pacific). There was a really amusing comment on Untold this week that started along the line of “Wenger is in charge so obviously he is to blame.” When I stopped laughing I deleted it. I mean I do like humour, but …
By Tony Attwood A month or so ago the comedian Justin Moorhouse broadcast a few interesting thoughts on international football. I heard part of it while driving, and wished I had recorded it. Fortunately one of the newspapers obviously had their recorders running, and gave rundown of what he said: “It’s probably going to upset …
Read More “International football’s problems in Africa, but it does have its uses.”
By Jack Bottle, examination officer and connoisseur of all good things like whisky, woman and money Cheers. aaaggghhh The first sip is always the worst. But once you have done that the next sip tastes all the better. But as you are not here for my whisky but for my report on that wonderful organisation …
By Walter Broeckx It might sound pretentious such a title but once again we can say that we have been talking about things in the world of football that we were heavily ridiculed for at times (till today still by some) that are now slowly filtering through to the serious media. Untold Arsenal setting the …
By Bob MacDonald As an introduction to this article I wish to mention briefly my credentials, hopefully this will not be misinterpreted as arrogance. Since the early 70’s I have held the UEFA ‘A’ Coaching Qualification, having used it in various coaching and managing posts over the years including work at a former Football League …
Referee : Phil Dowd So we had our old friend Phil Dowd in an Arsenal match. Main talking points in the first half: A possible penalty for Swansea. I know that only a handful of refs will give it against Arsenal and never in favour of Arsenal but when a defender jumps in the …
By Tony Attwood One of the slightly amusing things one finds when editing Untold are the comments that come in which have either deliberately or accidentally misunderstood the thrust of an article. Many of these are just so daft, and so regularly from the same people, that I tend to edit them out, but occasionally …
Read More “Only a madman would manage Arsenal; and some of those will say “no””
By Walter Broeckx The media smell blood and want Arsenal supporters to revolt against Arsène Wenger. So they open all registers to open up the attack on our manager. We have never made it a secret that we support our manager because we think that he deserves our support. Even more in difficult times. Because …
I have reported regularly on how the Daily Telegraph, a right wing English newspaper, has been following up on Untold Arsenal stories. Now they have gone even further and added a point that goes a bit beyond where we went. And it seems highly relevant. So, they’ve picked up on Walter’s articles about the …
By Tony Attwood In an article last week I suggested that journalists and commentators who simply dismiss a manager’s insight and understanding out of hand should first prove their own ability by managing a club. I also noted that the post at Borrowash Victoria of the East Midlands Counties League was up for grabs and …
Read More ““The difference between newspapers and people” by Arsène Wenger”
