European referee associations start to distance themselves from secretive Premier League

Because there are technical problems with Untold Arsenal off and on I am also publishing articles on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/UntoldArsenalToday/ If you ever can’t get on this site, try the Facebook page. Now onto today’s piece How Sweden have taken up the battle of more open refereeing. Last year we ran a series of …

Benzema Completes Medicals, Welcome To The Emirates

By Sir Hardly Anyone According to Goonersden, and currently the top story on the Goonernews.com news accumulator site Done- Benzema Completes Medicals, Welcome To The Emirates It was posted on August 10, 2015.   The story is only accessible behind a gambling ad, with one of those tricky misleading “close now and read article” tabs that …

if it bleeds it leads…: a whimsical look at historical newspapers and football

By Blacksheep (who should know better) Tony spends considerable time on all of our behalf scouring the interweb for scurrilous stories about The Arsenal. Many of these seem to emanate from that organ of respectability the good ol’ Daily Telegraph. Whilst I do wonder (out loud it has to be said) if it is terribly …

Arsenal off the bottom of the league!

By Tony Attwood   Blueberries are good for you screams the headline, so people rush to supermarkets and buy blueberries.   Some idiot eats blueberries all the time, and in due course is rushed to hospital.   “Blueberry poison.” scream the headlines. “No, blueberries are safe,” say “experts”. “No,” say other experts, “they are in …

Ref review Arsenal – Chelsea: the most comprehensive ref review ever.

This is an experiment in taking referee reviewing to a new level. Note, because of the use of tables in what follows, if the text flows across to the right on your screen and into the adverts, press Ctrl –  (that is control and minus at the same time). ARSENAL vs. CHELSEA COMPETITION: Community Shield …

Reasons to be cheerful (1, 2, 3)

By Tony Attwood I wonder when the notion that we can see one event and then generalise out from there, first started.  Perhaps it is just something inside all our heads, the “if only I could just have one sign from God, then I’d believe” sort of thing. But by and large, although using single …

The difference at the start of the season (and ways to make it better)

By Walter Broeckx Losing the first match of the season is most of the time a downer of course. But we didn’t play as we know we can play and we made a few vital mistakes. Both of them leading to a goal. And that was it.  But how did it come that far? A …

Arsenal – West Ham a bad start

By Walter Broeckx Arsenal made two changes compared to the side that beat Chelsea 1-0 to win the Community Shield. Debuchy came in at right back in the pace of Bellerin and upfront we had Giroud in the place of Walcott. And maybe one surprising name on the bench… Alexis. The team that started: Cech, …

GLITCH REMOVED! Arsenal vs State Aid United: WHUs pre-season, biggest fears, and the teams

Apologies if you read this immediately after publication, we had a coding glitch which made much of the article even more unreadable than normal.  Fixed now. By Bulldog Drummond. What is new this year is that for anyone who says, “Wenger should sign x y and z,” the difficulty with signing the very very best …

Arsenal v State Aid Utd; off we go again on another record busting season

By Bulldog Drummond Ere we go ere we go ere we…. well you know the rest.  Start of the new season an’ all that. Actually the Independent thinks maybe we don’t and seriously has Here we go!  as its lead headline this morning.  That’s so passé it is positively out of date, outdated, unfashionable, old-fashioned, …

Ref preview: Arsenal v WHU. Atkinson; appalling judgement, worse than random in his decision making

Arsenal v West Ham United – Sunday 9 August – The Referee Preview By Andrew Crawshaw Well at last proper competitive football and I will again look at the Match Officials, what Arsenal’s history is with them and attempt to predict what they will do during the game. For Sunday the Officials are Referee – …

Who can stop us winning the title this season?

By Tony Attwood Pre-season time is traditionally “lists” time, although the papers of late have taken us into the all-the-year-round-list of “five things we learned from the way the referee walked out of the tunnel” variety of late. But we are almost there – we’ve got the ref preview from Andrew coming up and the …

WINNERS & LOSERS: what is the real meaning of a “winning mentality”

WINNERS & LOSERS…….Don McMahon Tony’s excellent 10 point review of the Arsenal and my personal experience in winning and losing, inspired this opus about the “winning mentality”, the journos and aaa go on about.   And as a psychologist, I can explain a little about the so-called “winning mentality.” First off, a few definitions to …

10 things we learned about the world of Arsenal this summer

By Tony Attwood 1.  Wenger is working In a press conference recently Mr Wenger told the press that over the summer, “I had a few days off, but I spent most of my summer at the training ground.  Not the whole holiday, but most of it.” 2.  And he’s got the measure of the media even …

If you live and work in the UK, you pay for West Ham United, no matter who you support.

By Tony Attwood In my recent article on state aid for West Ham United, I made the point that not all the awful details of how the state (which means all of us who live in the UK and pay tax) is paying for West Ham’s ground had yet come out, although those that had, …

New guidance for referees on offside decisions

In the last couple of weeks we have published four articles about referees…  The Referees’ accuracy 2014-15. When it’s important you might as well toss a coin. A FRIGHTFUL REALITY: the world of Premier League refs is not all it should be 2015/16: An introduction to the Referees. Do not read this standing up. How …

How Arsenal will do this season and why there is no “winning mentality”.

The 10 key factors that seem to me to be of prime influence as we enter another season. by Tony Attwood 1: Olivier Giroud and Theo Walcott Last season Thierry Henry was reported by part of the media to have said that Arsenal needed a “top, top striker” to win the league.  The newspapers chimed …

The Referees’ accuracy 2014-15. When it’s important you might as well toss a coin.

The Referees 2014-15 A quick summary   by Andrew Crawshaw   First breaking news from the referees announced for this coming weekend – the PGMO have introduced an additional referee who is not on their Elite List.  Simon Hooper is to take charge of the Norwich v Crystal Palace game.  It will be interesting to …

Does TV revenue make a club well run? Or is it just taking clubs to the edge of a cliff?

By Tony Attwood This is the third and final part of the little series of articles answering the question “What determines if a club is well run or not?” The series began with my own personal view of how I feel about the club I’ve supported from childhood with 10 ways measure Arsenal. Then I took …

Measuring Arsenal’s success: asking silly questions, manipulating the figures.

by Tony Attwood I wrote in the last article about the issue of measuring club success.  It strikes me that this is important because it gives an ideal of a feel supporters have for their club.  It is perhaps hard to remember or recognise that before the Emirates and before Wenger, Arsenal was not always …

How do we measure club success? 10 ways measure Arsenal.

By Tony Attwood A recent article in the Telegraph sought to evaluate the best run clubs in England. I found that quite a challenging concept – and what made it all the more difficult to deal with was that the Telegraph produced tiny summaries of the clubs that were nominated for being among the “best …

A FRIGHTFUL REALITY: the world of Premier League refs is not all it should be

A FRIGHTFUL REALITY………Don McMahon   There has been much written and posted about the PGMOL and its members. Lets be clear and rational about some aspects of these referees: 1) Where they come from probably doesn’t have much to do with how they officiate but who they support does. 2)What they are told to do …

Done deal: it’s the prize winner and the biggest shock of the whole transfer window

By Sir Hardly Anyone The hunt is on for the winning piece of transfer news of the first month of the window, known as the Prize for the Winning Piece of Transfer News of the First Month of the Window.   And there is no doubt about the lead story. It comes under the headline: …

2015/16: An introduction to the Referees. Do not read this standing up.

2015-16 Referee Previews – An introduction to the Referees   by Andrew Crawshaw The Official Web Page for the Barclays Premier League has the following to say about the PGMO :- “Led by General Manager Mike Riley, Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL) is responsible for the training, development and mentoring of 79 referees and …

Wenger vs. Mourinho, Baker’s Dozen Failure, A Tale of Two Managers

Wenger vs. Mourinho, Baker’s Dozen Failure, A Tale of Two Managers By Jerry As Arsenal prepared to face Chelsea on Sunday in the FA Community, everyone was aware (due to the usual media reminders) that Arsène Wenger has managed against the self appointed “Special/Happy One” José Mourinho on 13 (a baker’s dozen) occasions without a …