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 I think I have said before that I am not a master tactician. One has to know one’s limitations and even in my playing days I never was one to listen to all the blah blah from managers. And even now I couldn’t care one bit if Arsenal play 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 …
Funny old game. Gareth Bale, who despite his past is actually a very good player, gets booed at Real Madrid mostly for not passing to Cristiano Ronaldo when he (Bale) goes through one or one with the keeper. Bale has scored 12 goals in 25 games, while Benzema has scored 14 in 27. Critiano Ronaldo …
Read More “Bale gets booed, we’ve got the top scorer in PL history”
By Tony Attwood Following up on the Untold piece about chants over the weekend the Guardian quotes the “Three nil and you can’t get home” song from Sunday, and invites readers to send in their own versions of popular singing numbers from the terraces. Of course it is written within the constitution of the Guardian …
Read More “The funniest songs of all time at a football ground”
By Tony Attwood, publisher of Untold A few days ago a comment appeared on Untold which struck me as very odd. It said… “guys every time you delete a comment that does not resemble yours your no better than ISIS as far as I’m concerned apart from the unfortunate killing of innocent people. Free speech …
Read More “According to one correspondent, Untold is no better than ISIS.”
Ref on the day was Martin Atkinson Well that was a match with lots of big decisions. And not really the +98% score the PGMO tells us that referees get in general. In the first half the ref awarded a penalty for a clear foul on Alexis. It proved to be his only correct penalty …
By Walter Broeckx The team to start this match was Ospina, Debuchy, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Rosicky, Cazorla, Alexis, Giroud. The subs were Szczesny, Bellerin, Flamini, Ramsey, Ozil, Campbell, Walcott. So 4 changes since the last match with Ospina making his debut in the PL. Coquelin continuing as a defensive midfielder. Giroud taking his …
Read More “Arsenal – Stoke, one casualty as usual, football wins in the end”
Shock Horror. Arsène Wenger used to sell cigarettes in his younger days. That has been presented as a new revelation in some of the papers, but really is a tale he’s told before – Mr Wenger likes to emphasise the fact that he came from a fairly basic background with no special privileges. And yes …
Read More “Funny stories, amusing tales, total cobblers, African Cup”
By Tony Attwood I recently wrote a piece in which I said that the signing of Frank Lampard by Manchester City involved some sort of jiggery pokery. In that regard I was right – but those Manchester C fans who wrote in to Untold were also right – because I got the nature of the …
Read More “Man City fans were right about Lampard; the club lied and broke the rules.”
By Tony Attwood The latest Daily Telegraph story about refereeing in the Premier League was hardly out on its web site that the comments started pouring into Untold, along with the emails to me – mostly just with a link followed by a load of exclamation marks. We’ve mentioned the bizarre Telegraph man Jonathan Liew (author …
Arsenal v Stoke – 11 January 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly the Table of Shame updated following Walter’s reviews of the Newcastle and Liverpool game. Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 10 Red Cards 3 11 Penalties 2 9 Goals 0 5 Total 5 35 Possible …
Read More “Arsenal v Stoke – 11 January 2015 – The Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood I’d never claim that Untold has changed the world, but we have highlighted a few issues over time which, when we started our campaign were never spoken of, and which now are everyday conversation. And I think everyone involved on Untold – writers, commentators and the silent audience – can be proud …
Read More “The referees’ organisation: a blind, lame man shuffling backwards into a wasps’ nest.”
By Tony Attwood “FIFA is one of the most discredited organisations in the world with serial allegations of corruption plaguing almost its every move off-the-field in terms of management and governance.” I think most of us can agree with that. So when I then read that, “Football players and fans who are concerned with how world …
Read More “New Fifa same old Fifa; beware the makeover, it is just a con”
. By Tony Attwood . From the P.A. News Agency… . Press Association Sport understands reports the Poland keeper [Szczesny] was banned and fined following a dressing room bust-up after the 2-0 Barclays Premier League defeat at Southampton on New Year’s Day are incorrect. .. So there we are. One day it was true, now …
Read More “Arsenal sign Vieira II but the news before was not news. But this is.”
By Tony Attwood The good news in Arsenal football’s world on a morning when I must admit news from elsewhere makes it hard to focus and write, (and this isn’t news at all, only that I have just woken up to the fact) is that we don’t seem to be losing anyone to go to …
Read More “Every bit of transfer news you could imagine, and then some…”
By Tony Attwood When a club moves from having a shirt too sacred ever to put the name of a sponsor on, to accepting the money of Qatar, you know something has changed. When a club suddenly fails to pay its top players for a month and the president speaks of having to turn off …
Read More “Even now, after all the revelations, the media still try to love Barcelona”
By Walter Broeckx Only last week I found a comment on Untold that went like this: “The refs are not only unfair to Arsenal. If u check the record of refs in games of Chelsea, man city,lvpool, man utd and others this season , you wil find out that they are treated unfairly too. Everything …
Read More “So we were deluded over the issue of referees? More evidence”
By Tony Attwood One of the first times that we really started suggesting that there was something amiss with refereeing in the Premier League was in December 2010 when we ran the story There is something seriously wrong with EPL refereeing. An opposite title I am sure you will agree. We may well have written earlier …
Read More “Refereeing is going down hill – the BBC knows but the press ignore the story”
Ref for this match was Michael Oliver A match of two halves for the ref. The first half he was excellent. Just falling for a dive from Coutinho and not giving a foul in favour of Alexis when it was a foul. But for the rest spot on with his decisions. So an excellent score …
Read More “Ref Review Liverpool – Arsenal. Someone put something in the ref’s tea at half time”
By Tony Attwood The Arsenal History Society is currently experimenting with Arsenal quizzes in various guises, and we’ve put a new one up today. To make life easier we’ve also added three possible answers to each question, rather than leaving you on your own. Now of course I know that Untold readers are incredibly knowledgable …
How do we know that a manager is succeeding? Richard Bedwell Rather than come up with a short comment that would get lost in what is a long and interesting response I thought I would respond to Tony’s piece in a little more depth. In this age of data driven assessment there are, I believe, …
Read More “The three ways in which we know if a manager is succeeding”
By Tony Attwood Untold has followed the Rangers saga from the moment we picked up on the tax case issues, and noted that the press were ignoring any suggestion of odd doings by dodgy dealers that circled the club. When there is a story, and the press absolutely refuse to follow it, you can be …
By Walter Broeckx In the comment section the other day someone said that the oil money was responsible for Arsenal not winning as they did before. And one of our other readers wrote in with this remark about winning and oil money: “On the oil money subject, much oil money did Porto get, or Ajax …
By Tony Attwood A little while back Arsenal Supporters Trust allied itself with the equivalent groups at Chelsea, Tottenham and Liverpool to write to the FA about the importance of maintaining the rule that says 15% of tickets for FA Cup matches be reserved for away supporters. In Arsenal’s case this means 9,000 tickets, and …
Read More “FA bring game into disrepute, BBC try to reinvent community”
By Walter Broeckx For the replay of the FA cup final of 2014 we saw the next team from Arsenal at the start Ospina, Bellerin, Chambers, Mertesacker, Monreal, Coquelin, Rosicky, Cazorla, Walcott, Campbell, Alexis. As substitutes we had Martinez, Debuchy, Koscielny, Zelalem, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Maitland-Niles, Akpom. So a lot of changes compared to the Southampton match. …
Welcome to the FA Cup third round clash between Arsenal and Hull City at the Emirates, brought to you by Arsenal’s Official Car And Van Rental Partner Europcar. It’s the most magical weekend in English football and fortune has brought these two sides together at the first opportunity since their memorable meeting in last year’s …
