Christmas to be moved to accommodate world cup

  By Tony Attwood I must confess at once that I didn’t write that headline – although I wish I had.  It came from News biscuit – a wonderful satirical site, and one I’d recommend to anyone with an off centre sense of humour. The point of their piece is that Representatives of Europe’s biggest …

More Arsenal purchases this summer, and how Chelsea are getting such high transfer fees

By Tony Attwood So what are the children chattering about today? Well, the Telegraph, having run the story a day or two back that the Arsenal board were fed up with Mr Wenger have now dropped that one and instead gone with the fact that the transfer budget for this summer will be £50 million. …

Arsenal v Everton – 01 March 2015 – The Match Officials

Arsenal v Everton – 01 March 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Following Walter’s review of the refereeing of the Tottenham game Ref Review Tottenham – Arsenal here is the updated Table of Shame Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 15 Red Cards 3 14 Penalties 3 14 …

PL decline seems to continue, media helps to keep our heads in the sand

By Walter Broeckx In November 2014 I wrote a short series of articles to the effect that the PL was not that superior league that we all think it is. . They can be found here, there and everywhere  if you want to read them first. I linked this to the year of 2009 with …

Arsenal: the lines are now clearly drawn. Time to sort out the children.

By Tony Attwood The highest win rate a club has had in the Premier League, across a complete season is I think, 68%.  In January and February prior to the Monaco match, Arsenal achieved a win rate of 80%.  Including the Monaco match the ratio for the League, FA Cup and the single Champions League …

Ref Review Tottenham – Arsenal

In case you have not come across this series before, we have reviewed hundreds of matches over the past few years – both matches involving Arsenal and those not.  At the end of the seasons we’ve also compared the way referees have handled different teams. Ref for this match was Martin Atkinson A few interesting …

What’s happened this year to our junior teams?

What’s happened this year to our junior teams? Part 2 – U18 team By Andrew Crawshaw In Part 1 I looked at the fortunes of our U21 team, (What has happened this year to our Junior Teams?) in this part I will first try and place the U18 setup into the context of the Youth …

When you’re rubbish there ain’t much you can do

By Tony Attwood Last Friday I attended a modern jive dance in Cambridgeshire, despite having an Achilles injury, that should been keeping me off the dance floor for as long as it takes to repair itself. I went because being at home night after night writing about Arsenal and Bob Dylan is OK but ultimately …

Oh lady Luck, where have you gone to? Missed chances cost us dear

By Walter Broeckx The Arsenal team that started this match against Monaco was Ospina, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Gibbs, Coquelin, Cazorla, Sanchez, Ozil, Welbeck, Giroud. On the bench we had Szczesny, Gabriel, Monreal, Chambers, Rosicky, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Walcott. Arsenal started rather well with an early chance for Welbeck who turned good but his shot sailed over the …

“Defend, defend, break, defend.” Yes, Monaco is in town.

By Bulldog Drummond This has been a season of a slow start and then reigniting the engines in winter. We have won eight of the last nine matches in all competitions.  We have won every home match since November, and the injuries are jogging along at an average level.  It is something that can be …

Wenger, Monaco and Arsenal : a strange love story

By Walter Broeckx Yesterday the story was on Arsenal.com about the first time Wenger visited Arsenal.  The article can be found clicking on this link For those who don’t want to click I will tell you that Wenger visited Arsenal at Highbury for the first time in 1989. On 2 January to be exact. As he …

FA Youth Cup – Arsenal v Crewe Alexandra

FA Youth Cup – Arsenal v Crewe Alexandra Meadow Park, Borehamwood Thursday 19th February Match Report by Andrew Crawshaw Crewe Alexandra FC are currently in 18th place in League 1 (third tier of professional football); the club was formed in 1877 and named after Princess Alexandra, they were founding members of the second division in …

What does an organisation do when its been rumbled?

By Tony Attwood When an organisation is battered into a corner the best way out is subterfuge, to make it look as if you are doing something when doing nothing, to suggest x is the issue when it is y and above all to stop people talking about z.  The generic terms are “putting up …

Monaco look like a latter day George Graham team

By Tony Attwood Many who push out the mantra that coming fourth is not a trophy forget what happened after George Graham won his two league titles.  Following the wonder 1991 triumph of just one defeat through the whole season, Arsenal found themselves in 10th in 1993.  Worse we scored the lowest number of goals …

How referees get to the top

Don McMahon A number of Gooners have asked about how referees get promoted to the top of their profession so I am humbly submitting my experience and will happily accept any corrections our readers can bring to my attention. I will be speaking in general for both genders and  North America officials but worldwide for …

RedAction and other fans’ groups choose to ignore the older supporter

By Tony Attwood REDaction, the Arsenal supporters grouping that focuses on the atmosphere at home and away matches has published the results of a survey of over 2,000 Arsenal fans in relation to issues such as kick-off times, ticket prices, and access to live football for younger fans. Of those surveyed (and of course such surveys can’t …

Alexis Sanchez, 10 non footballing facts

By Walter Broeckx 1. Sanchez grew up at Tocopilla a small town north of the capital Santiago de Chile. The name Tocopilla means in fact ‘The Devils corner’. Devilish because the little town is divided in two parts in between a big power plant and a saltpeper factory so not the most healthy environment to …

Other countries are more open than the PL and the PGMO

  In the last article we looked at how Mourinho is playing games with the media, the FA and PGMO.  All this – and indeed the whole threat of Type III match fixing (in which club owners seek to persuade refs to hinder the progress of other clubs, rather than fix the results of their …

Why is PGMO giving Mourinho the arena to make all these complaints?

By Tony Attwood Today we publish two reports.  This introduction s about how José Mourinho is waging his own battle against refereeing decisions.  The next is about how the English model of utter secrecy in terms of referee inaccuracy is not the only one possible.  About how other countries have come into the open and allowed everyone …

Crystal Palace – Arsenal, too close at the end but 3 golden points

By Walter Broeckx For this match we had the following 11 players in the starting line up : Ospina, Chambers, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Cazorla, Welbeck, Ozil, Alexis, Giroud. On the beach we had : Szczesny, Gibbs, Bellerin, Gabriel, Wilshere, Rosicky, Walcott. So a few changes with Ooooospina coming back in goal for Szczesny. Chambers …

The right match, previewed in the right place. Amazing. Palace away

By Bulldog Drummond. In a rather revolutionary move Untold Arsenal today publishes the right review of the right match more or less at the right time.  A bit left field I know but well, at Untold, we like to do things differently. And to begin with an anniversary… 21 February 1998: Arsenal 1 Crystal Palace …

Crystal Palace v Arsenal 21 February 2015 – The (right) Match Officials

Editorial note: Sincere apologies for yesterday’s posting of the referee preview with the wrong officials.  So many thinks coincided to make that go wrong and not be sorted that it would take the whole article to explain it.  But we’re now back and Bulldog’s preview of the game will, hopefully, follow anon…  Tony Crystal Palace …

Crystal Palace v Arsenal 21 February 2015 – The unacceptable face of refereeing

Crystal Palace v Arsenal 21 February 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly the table of Shame – I haven’t seen Walter’s reviews of the Spurs or Leicester games so it is unchanged since last time.  It still makes sorry reading, nearly eight times as many potential game changing decisions against us as …

Arsenal’s injuries: it seems the figures are very misleading

By Tony Attwood How many injuries do Arsenal have at the moment?  Are we the worst off, the best, or middling? That question is a bit tougher than might be thought to answer.  According to the web site the Physio Room we have five injuries at present, putting us eighth in the list.  Top of …

How the passing of time has affected the way Arsenal is refereed.

By Walter Broeckx and Tony Attwood Over the years we have been talking a lot about referees. Now one of our most favoured persons over those years was Mike Dean. And I have given many possible reasons for why referees might be biased against Arsenal. We suspect one of the reasons was and is still …