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 Tai Emeka Obasi Wenger’s Arsenal: The Enemy Within. Arsenal is a global institution that extends far beyond the English horizon. Not just on playing turfs but on the stock market terrains of big business empires. A jigsaw of a dream that took one lanky genius a chunk of his productive years of toil is …
By Tony Attwood I’ve done several pieces of late which argue against the statement that “you can prove anything with statistics”. But suddenly I find myself doubting my own argument, as the CIES Football Observatory has published its list of the most valuable players in world football. Their statement is that the list takes into account …
Read More “Özil declines in value but was best attacking midfielder of the year!?!?!”
By Tony Attwood It seems such an innocuous question: who runs football in England? And yet the more I think about it, the more confused I get. (OK I know I am often confused, but on this one I am even more confused.) The list below of the institutions, bodies, groups, and collections of organisations, …
By Walter Broeckx Looking back at the Sunderland match there are a lot of good things I have noticed. Last week one of our commenters came up with an interesting stat. He pointed out that when we went behind we usually lost the match. I think only once could we turn a deficit around in a …
By Tony Attwood Saying stuff without much evidence can be fun, and is of course dead easy. You just say it. Or write it. Although in retrospect it can make the speaker or writer look a little silly at times. Take for example the guy who wrote that headline for Arsenal Report. His opening …
Read More “Ozil was a last minute panic buy in a position we didn’t need to strengthen”
By Tony Attwood I thought I would push Sir Hardly Anyone aside for a moment and do a transfer column of my own. This is based around two players that several “sources” say are most certainly on, and about to go through. One even has the player’s mother spotted talking to Arsenal, so that is …
Read More “Two dead cert Arsenal transfers to follow through and see how they pan out.”
By Tony Attwood One of the things that I’ve always tried to ensure is that Untold lives up to its name and covers issues that are not covered in most other places. Of course over time some other media catch up, which is gratifying, but just re-iterating what other people say has never been the …
Read More “How could anyone write a report of yesterday’s game and not mention the ref?”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal made a lot of changes for this match in the FA cup. Five in total. Cech stayed in goal as Ospina has a slight groin problem so we saw Macey on the bench. At the back Gabriel came in for Mertesacker and Gibbs came in for Monreal. The latter found himself …
By Bulldog Drummond Only four teams have won the FA cup twice running in this or the last century, Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea and Newcastle Only two teams have won the FA Cup three times running and both of these made their mark before even Royal Arsenal FC existed. In fact the last one was …
by Andrew Crawshaw Referee – Martin Atkinson Assistants – Mark Scholes and Matthew Wilkes Fourth Official – Lee Collins Martin Atkinson is probably the second most distrusted referee that Arsenal have to cope with in the Premier League, regularly twisting his decisions to ensure that the outcome of the game suits his agenda. This is …
Read More “Emirates FA Cup 2015/16 Third Round Arsenal v Sunderland – the Match Officials”
by Tony Attwood One of the points about Untold Arsenal is that it gives an outlet for those of us who want to explore specific issues with evidence, rather than just opinion. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with opinion, it is just that after a while, opinion on its own gets a …
Read More “If Ferguson had gone to Man U in 2015 he wouldn’t have lasted a season.”
by Andrew Crawshaw The statistics – all in one place In the first half of the season the PGMO have used 19 referees in the Premier League. There have been 190 games in total so, if all referees had been given an equal workload, one would expect the an average of about 10 games per …
Read More “Why do certain clubs get the same referee so often? Referees 2015/16 Half Time Review”
By Walter Broeckx (written before the latest injury update just published on arsenal.com) If we take a look at the current injury situation as we can find it on the website injury league we can see that Arsenal for the moment have 6 players out with injuries. The full table with their expected return date …
By Tai Emeka Obasi. Wenger, Mourinho Drama – Good Usually Triumphs. As a man who earns his living authoring books of fiction and scripting movies, I may say I’m quite schooled in the protagonist and antagonist world of make-believe. Writers love to play God and if you happen to live within this most-times-alluring fantasy world …
By Sir Hardly Anyone. Here are 19 current headlines from bloggettas concerning Arsenal transfers which are causing a bit of a stir today. Each one is followed by a note of the source. All you have to do is guess what each one relates to… Below the list of 19 headlines are those headlines again, …
Read More “Has there ever been a January like this? The 19 transfer stories surrounding Arsenal.”
By Tony Attwood It was in August 2012 that I wrote an introduction to the craft of the Vapour Transfer, having in previous articles explored the way that the transfer market was being manipulated by clubs. In that piece I drew a comparison with the activities of companies like Microsoft and Apple, with their pre-announcements of …
Read More “How a phantom transfer got Daniel Levy and the press all in a tizz.”
By Usama & Walter ARSENAL vs. BOURNEMOUTH COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 19 DATE: 28th December 2015 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Roger East 1st LINESMAN: Lee Betts 2nd LINESMAN: Darren Cann 4th OFFICIAL: Darren Deadman First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision …
By Billy the Dog McGraw According to reports in some of the wackier parts or the media. Jack Wilshere has been to the estate agents, and so is undoubtedly leaving Arsenal this summer. Now most of us sell our houses after we’ve got an offer of a new job, but apparently the wild and wobbly media …
by Andrew Crawshaw Despite the Ladies Football season not starting competitive football until March, the Club have made three announcements this week, not least because the transfer window in now open and will close before the season starts in March. Katie McCabe has joined the club from Shelbourne FC in Dublin. Katie is 20 and already …
By Usama & Walter SOUTHAMPTON vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 18 DATE: 26th December 2015 VENUE: St. Mary’s Stadium (Southampton, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Jon Moss 1st LINESMAN: Michael Mullarkey 2nd LINESMAN: Stephen Child 4th OFFICIAL: Graham Scott First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & …
By Tony Attwood This season I’ve bored everyone to death with my thesis that transfers and managerial changes can cause as much havoc in a club as they can bring success. Indeed it is very possible to show that transfers and managerial change is actually more likely to bring a decline or stagnation, than it …
By Danny Karbassiyoon Danny Karbassiyoon is a former Arsenal player who was forced to retire at 22 due to recurring knee injuries. Soon after hanging up his boots, he was hired as a scout for Arsenal and spent 7 years scouting the Americas full time before recently moving back to London. I’ve both written and …
Read More “How does an Arsenal scout decide if a player is good enough or not?”
By Usama & Walter ARSENAL vs. MANCHESTER CITY COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 17 DATE: 21st December 2015 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Andre Marriner 1st LINESMAN: John Brooks 2nd LINESMAN: Mick McDonough 4th OFFICIAL: Craig Pawson First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & …
By Sir Hardly Anyone It’s called “Ramping up the lingo”, or “Finding a new twist”. Anyway to keep the excitement on the rise everything and anything is on the table. Or at least underneath it. And I have to admit the notion of Arsenal signing two £29m players in the January transfers did persuade …
Read More “Arsenal agree to sign two £29m players in two weeks!”
SO YOU THINK YOU CAN BE A REFEREE……..Don McMahon Recent events have convinced many football supporters that too many officials in the EPL are at the least, incompetent and at worse corrupt and manipulated by a cabal of PGMOL managers intent on preventing their Club from winning. In this post I want to invite UA …
