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 It is known by every Arsenal supporter in the world by now I guess. Arsène Wenger has been Arsenal manager for 20 years manager. An amazing long time in the current football climate. People expect us to write an article to celebrate this milestone in his and Arsenal’s history. But to be …
By Tony Attwood A couple of years ago I reported on an analysis which showed that roughly only 25% of big value transfers came good in their first season. Most made a fair impression within three years but a quarter still failed to make the grade even in that space of time. The point …
Read More “Just how well have Premier League clubs been doing when it comes to big money transfers?”
By the Referee team 1 : Details of the Match Referees and Assistants Chelsea vs. Liverpool [1-2] Referee – Martin Atkinson 1st Assistant Referee – Stephen Child 2nd Assistant Referee – Stuart Burt Fourth Official – Robert Madley Hull City vs. Arsenal [1-4] Referee – Roger East 1st Assistant Referee – Darren Cann 2nd Assistant …
Read More “Referee Appointments and Results Matchweek #05 – with video evidence”
By Walter Broeckx If we would believe the moaners, our club is run by a bunch of nogoods who know nothing about football. And who have appointed and kept a manager that knows nothing, is outdated, a dinosaur, a dictator and a ditherer when it comes to transfers and spending money. The last thing might …
Read More “Luckily our manager doesn’t listen to the twitter-experts and TV-moaners”
By Tony Attwood Last night at the Arsenal Stadium (as we have to call it on Euro nights) before the match I bought a bottle of water. The young man selling it to me removed the cap before handing it over, presumably on the grounds that I would otherwise throw the tiny plastic cap …
By Walter Broeckx Two changes in the team with Ospina coming the place of Cech and Xhaka taking up the place of the injured Coquelin. On the bench we had Reine-Adelaide and Gabriel. A rather unexpected name the first. Arsenal team: Ospina, Bellerin, Mustafi, Koscielny, Monreal, Cazorla, Xhaka, Walcott, Ozil, Iwobi, Alexis On the beach: …
By Tony Attwood In the end the FA couldn’t even sack him. Instead we find that the appalling Allardyce left his job as England manager “by mutual agreement”. As various newspapers have pointed out, Allardyce has been known for many, many years to be a man who regards the basic rules of football as an …
Read More “How much longer must English tax payers fund the criminal idiocy of the FA?”
By Walter Broeckx As you may have heard I have been in the TV studios again. And it was a far more relaxing experience this time than last season. You might recall I then was invited on my own to sit next to the super pundits in Flanders and one “famous” Tottenham supporter. I then …
Read More “Arsenal Belgium in the TV studios and Arsenal getting all the praise in the world”
By Usama and Walter ARSENAL vs. CHELSEA COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 6 DATE: 24th September 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Michael Oliver 1st LINESMAN: Gary Beswick 2nd LINESMAN: Stuart Burt 4th OFFICIAL: Craig Pawson First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision …
Read More “Ref Review Arsenal – Chelsea : Another good performance from the ref!”
By Tony Attwood You will almost certainly know (at least if you live in England) that the manager of the England football team is today accused of telling people whom he thought were Far East businessmen that it was possible to “get round” the rules about third-party player ownership. Various issues immediately jump out: one is …
By Tony Attwood Apparently it seems that we have never played Basel before, so we’ve never had a chance to do lots of Fawlty Towers jokes – but I won’t start now. That would be far too silly. But we have played Swiss teams before and have done quite well, winning four times in competitive …
Read More “Arsenal v Basel. Basel’s amazing form, Theo’s comeback, Arsenal’s team.”
By Tony Attwood If we take it for a moment that a little of the more extreme behaviour of referees witnessed over recent years has now been removed from Premier League matches then we truly are going to enter a new age of football. Not an age wherein referee bias is removed, nor an age …
By Tony Attwood It was Opta who cleverly picked up on the fact that Alexis Sanchez had scored 47 goals in his 100 appearances, one fewer than Thierry Henry (48) in his first 100 apps for the club. Which undoubtedly helps understand Mr Wenger’s move to put Alexis at number nine this season. So I …
Read More “Is Alexis Sanchez the new Thierry Henry? Here are the figures.”
Editorial note: No organisation has ever analysed and reviewed the performance of Premier League referees before in this much detail. As I am sure you can understand, the amount of time it takes our team to complete this work is enormous, but all of us feel this is worth it, for the simple reason that …
Read More “The most comprehensive review of referee performance: Match Day #04 with video evidence”
By Tony Attwood Yesterday’s match was of course one of great joy, but among all the excitement there were two incidents yesterday that seemed to me of great importance: Costa’s yellow for arguing, and the way Ozil took his goal. Which is why I went looking at the papers this morning and found… “Costa received …
By Walter Broeckx A bright start from Arsenal who immediately took the game in hand and went in search for the attack. Chelsea sitting deep as expected and defending numbers from the start. A new manager but nothing changed at first sight. Alexis winning the ball in the Chelsea half and Arsenal pressing Chelsea and …
Read More “Arsenal – Chelsea: 3-0 for a team without a centre forward”
By Bulldog Drummond When it suits the media and their chums in the aaa they focus on the last match, or maybe the last couple of matches. But with Arsenal having just won four and drawn two of the last six, and with the two draws being away to last year’s champions of England …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea: the teams, the predictions, the fair play league thus far”
By Bulldog Drummond, If you have been reading the definitive history of Arsenal in the 1930s you will be used to the Arsenal / Chelsea pattern of the era. Each season Arsenal win the league by beating Chelsea in front of 65,000 and Chelsea just about manage to stay up. As the story of the …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea, groundhog day, oddball referees, injuries and Mr Africa to buy AFC.”
We need to talk about Granit By Tim Charlesworth There is a lot of bizarre hysteria in the Goonersphere at the moment about why Granit Xhaka is not playing (why spend all that money on a bench-warmer etc. etc.). It makes me wonder what team some people have been watching for the last ten …
Read More “We need to talk about Granit. Is he DM or box-to-box?”
by Andrew Crawshaw Before I start on the officials for this coming game I want to raise a point about PENALTIES – as you will have noticed so far this season they are being given which is a major change from the past few seasons. Last season we were awarded 2 out of 35. This …
Read More “Arsenal v Chelsea Sat 24 September 2016 – The Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood This is the team that Arsenal put out last weekend against Hull City. Cech, Bellerin, Mustafi, Koscielny, Monreal, Cazorla, Coquelin, Walcott, Ozil, Iwobi, Alexis. On the beach: Ospina, Holding, Gibbs, Elneny, Xhaka, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Lucas. And the team against Forest Martinez, Maitland-Niles, Holding, Gabriel, Gibbs, Elneny, Xhaka, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Reine-Adelaide, Akpom, Lucas On the …
Read More “How the transformation of Arsenal applies to both the first XI and the back up team”
By Walter Broeckx I have been talking about the video ref for many years now. Tony has given me the chance to talk about it for many years and on many occasions. I have written articles and showed video clips about the tests that have happened under the guidance of the Dutch football federation KNVB. …
Read More “Like it or not, the video ref is alive and kicking : no stopping it now (I hope)”
By Tony Attwood We have often heard in recent years the stories about how Arsenal is a “selling club” unable to hang on to its youngsters, with the proven child traffickers Barcelona endlessly sniffing around trying to buy back players that they have let go to Arsenal, while using the old “Barca DNA” gibberish as …
by the Referee review team In the next round we have drawn Reading. More details on that in a moment, but first following on from the article after our game with PSG in the Champions League, here is a quick review of some of the incidents that occurred in the game against Nottingham Forest (each …
By Usama and Walter HULL CITY vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 5 DATE: 17th September 2016 VENUE: KCOM Stadium (Hull, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Roger East 1st LINESMAN: Darren Cann 2nd LINESMAN: Matthew Wilkes 4th OFFICIAL: Paul Tierney First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & …
Read More “Ref Review: Hull – Arsenal. An extraordinary performance by the referee.”
