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 Tony Attwood Back in 2007 when Untold started I was exploring all sorts of avenues of interest that I thought this site could follow. One involved statistics. I’d watched a match at the Emirates and looked that evening at the stats that appeared on some web sites. Although I’d not made any notes …
Read More “Phantom matches and why Arsenal have their own data company”
By Don McMahon The core issue with being an official is one’s integrity. IF the referee or his/her assistants lack the moral courage and integrity, even in making a difficult but self-evident call on the field, even ONCE, then they are certainly very susceptible to being ” influenced” by those who make it their profession …
Read More “A referee’s dilemma: do you report the corruption of your colleagues?”
What has happened this year to our Junior Teams? Part 1 – U21 team by Andrew Crawshaw Last summer saw a major overhaul of the Coaching staff at Junior (U21 and below) level with Liam Brady retiring and being replaced with Andries Jonker. The U21 team were also relegated to the second level of Premier …
Read More “What has happened this year to our Junior Teams?”
By Dr Billy the Dog McGraw, senior consultant in the psychological study of football support, University Hospital of the North Circular Road. I was struck by the comments made by two hedgehogs on a blog that was quoted on Untold the other day, in which the writers said they were thankful that Giroud was not …
Read More “Deposing the king of detrimental simplisitude. Arsenal vs Piers Morgan”
By Tony Attwood There was a lovely comment on the Independent web site recently that said that “In recent years the FA has finally woken up to the reality that amateur 11-a-side adult football, left unaided, is withering away, despite the boom in popularity of the televised professional version.” Has it? Woken up, I mean. …
Read More “The FA: from 90 Minute Noah to McDonalds via 3G George, Ukip and Marmite”
By Tony Attwood Way back in 1893 a major scandal broke in the British press concerning the amount of money that the nation was spending on football. . The St James Gazette ran the story that in England the populace was spending twice as much per year on the game as it was on the …
Read More “It is the sheer size of football gambling that gives English football a problem”
Arsenal at the AlKass by Andrew Crawshaw An Arsenal U17 team, managed by Jan Van Loon, have been competing in the AlKass tournament in Qatar. This has attracted very little attention even on the official Arsenal.com website so I thought I would share some highlights with Untold. AlKass is a Qatari sports channel, which has …
Read More “Arsenal at the AlKass; this month’s tournament you may have missed”
By Walter Broeckx A few days ago Tony pointed at the (amazing) fact that Untold has published 5000 articles since it all started on 14 January 2008 with the first article. I must say that around the turn of the year I noticed that we were approaching this number. And I decided to write an article about it. …
Read More “Some late celebratory thoughts: long may it continue”
“Form like this could make Giroud an Arsenal legend” So it says in the Daily Telegraph today, and I wondered where they got that notion from. Surely not Untold. For since the S Robson, P Morgan, the black flaggers and the anti-arsenal Arsenal in general started attacking Arsenal, we have been comparing Olivier Giroud with …
Read More “Giroud: good enough for Arsenal? Cazorla leaving for Madrid!”
By Walter Broeckx The starting line for the match against Middlesbrough who surprised City in the round before was Szczesny, Chambers, Gabriel, Koscielny, Gibbs, Flamini, Cazorla, Özil, Alexis, Giroud and Welbeck. On the bench we had Akpom, Coquelin, Rosicky, Walcott, Martinez, Mertesacker, Monreal. So Gabriel with his debut in the first team for Arsenal. Gabriel playing in …
Read More “Match report : FA cup Arsenal – Middlesbrough. Onwards we march!”
Welcome to the FA Cup Fifth Round clash between Arsenal and Middlesbrough at the Emirates, brought to you by Arsenal’s Official Car and Van Rental Partner Europcar. The Gunners’ defence of the world’s oldest football cup competition continues with the visit of Aitor Karanka’s Championship side. Boro are riding high in the second tier, sitting …
By Bulldog Drummond So, with 5000 articles done, it seems I lead us off into the sixth millennium (and yes I know literally millennium means not just any old thousand, but a thousand years, but points are there to be stretched and anyway I don’t think that there is a word meaning 1000 editions). But …
Read More “Into the sixth millennium: Arsenal v Middlesbrough FA Cup preview”
By Tony Attwood So yes, we have written and published 5000 articles on Untold Arsenal since we started this rather eccentric and somewhat different publication back on 14 January 2008. Our first piece, rather portentously, was called Arsenal witness the end of football and we plodded along writing maybe five articles a week. These days you …
Read More “This is the 5000th edition of Untold. What have we achieved?”
By Tony Attwood So as we are just having a little break from the day to day stuff of the League, I thought I’d try a fantasy list of my own, in terms of how each club is fixed at present covering this list of goodies Refereeing Injuries Biggest advantages Biggest disadvantages Squad & Experience …
Read More “Where will it all end? A guide to which PL teams are prospering and why”
FA Cup 5th Round – Arsenal v Middlesbrough The Match Officials Here is a complete list of the officials for all of the FA Cup games over this (extended) weekend. We are game 2. 1 Crystal Palace FC v Liverpool FC Saturday 14 Feb (5.30pm) Referee Robert Madley Assistant Referees John Brooks & Harry Lennard …
Read More “FA Cup 5th Round – Arsenal v Middlesbrough The Match Officials”
By Walter Broeckx Wenger is a useless prick who overplays Alexis and this is the ultimate proof that he is no good, is past it, and should be sacked. This is a bit of a simplification of what the aaa is saying at the moment. Alexis is out and its all Wenger’s fault. Period. FACT! …
Read More “Overplaying players ? Really? Or is it over kicking?”
By Tony Attwood The Observer, which is in the same newspaper group as the Guardian, publishes a weekly column, Said and Done which makes fun of Fifa, football managers, players and the ladies who hang around with players by running sequences of events – what they said and what they did. A typical piece from …
Read More “Football Betrayed: Guardian use the same trick as the trolls”
A view from Brighton on the last game. As we approach the fifth round of the FA Cup, we’re turning back to the last round for a moment to look at an issue we missed in the build up to that match – the owner of Brighton. Brighton has been stuck in the lower reaches of …
By Walter Broeckx Let us have a look at our cup runs since Riley took over as h Season Result Ref 2013/14 Won No Dean 2012/13 Lost to Blackburn Dean 2011/12 Lost at Sunderland Webb 2010/11 Lost at MU Foy 2009/10 Lost at Stoke Atkinson 2008/09 Lost semi v Chelsea Atkinson League Cup Season Result Ref …
By Tony Attwood Alexis Sánchez seems to be ok despite the attack on his legs by M Upson, once of Arsenal, in the Leicester game. He might still be rested on sunday against Middlesbrough but there’s no long term injury. Aaron Ramsey however has yet another hamstring injury. He could be out for anything to …
Read More “This week: Sánchez, Ramsey, finances, Mu-Mu, nursery clubs”
By Tony Attwood Have Arsenal sunk lower than we thought?” That was the screaming healing in the Daily Telegraph yesterday. To be fair the article below it suggested nothing of the kind. In fact it didn’t suggest much at all. But it show just how close the Telegraph, once a serious newspaper, has slipped as …
Read More “Mike Jones & Co: a fine example of how Type III match fixing looks”
By Walter Broeckx In our match against Leicester we had an incident where Alexis tried to make a pass and a Leicester defender handled the ball and the ref gave no penalty. Let us have a closer look on this particular incident with the laws of the game in hand, the instructions towards referees and …
By Walter Broeckx For the match against Leicester we had the following team at the start : Ospina, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Rosicky, Walcott, Cazorla, Ozil, Alexis On the substitutes bench we had : Szczesny, Gibbs, Gabriel, Flamini, Ramsey, Welbeck, Giroud So that is three changes to the side that started last weekend. Alexis …
Read More “Arsenal – Leicester 2-1, the bad stream and equal bad referee match”
By Bulldog Drummond Yep it is true; you are only as good as the journalist asked to make up another story says you are. For three days Harry Kane was the Greatest Thing to hit English football since the last Greatest Thing to hit English football. A Man among men. A God. A Towering Genius …
Read More “Arsenal Leicester – Theo out, Danny out, Ramsey out. Maybe.”
Arsenal v Leicester City 10 February 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Here is the wrong Important Decisions Table updated following Walter’s review of the Aston Villa game. Overall this was the best refereeing performance Arsenal have seen this year getting Mr Taylor an 85% overall weighting – mind that is the standard …
Read More “Arsenal v Leicester City 10 February 2015 – The Match Officials”
