Ref Review: Arsenal – Middlesbrough; a non Deanesque score!

ARSENAL vs. MIDDLESBROUGH COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 9 DATE: 22nd October 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Mike Dean 1st LINESMAN: Simon Long 2nd LINESMAN: Ian Hussin 4th OFFICIAL: Tim Robinson First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 06:16 Daniel Ayala …

Seeing the positives at Arsenal has been easy, so far

. By Fishpie To enjoy: to derive pleasure from, or take delight in, an activity or an occasion. And with the first-quarter stage of the season now completed, we’ve seen 15 competitive occasions in which Arsenal have endeavoured to play great football for us to enjoy. They’ve endeavoured and, in a good proportion of those …

Arsenal always do worse than everyone else in November, and other myths.

By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader of Untold, you may have noticed that of late I have been trying, in my normal bumbling manner, to point out ways in which newspapers deliberately mis-represent events in the game. At the start of the century there was the tale that Arsenal got more red …

10 things we learned about football in the last week which the media won’t admit

By Billy “the dog” McGraw, senior recreational psychologist, University Hospital of the North Circular Road. 1: Mourinho’s blip at Chelsea was not a blip. Mr Mourinho went into a state that we psychologists call “bonkers” while at Chelsea, picking a fight he could never win, (and which was wholly and utterly unjustified) with the highly …

The Football journalists education programme. A public service commentary.

By Fear N Panick There was a very strange comment made during Sky’s programme covering Sunderland v Arsenal. Niall Quinn told us, “It’s not the fan’s fault.”  An interesting perspective, not because I think Sunderland’s predicament at having appointed a man who a week before his appointment said “the jury is still out on Ozil”, …

Sunderland – Arsenal: 1-4, Welcome back Giroud and Ramsey

By Walter Broeckx Arsenal was forced to make a few changes after some late fitness test failing on Walcott and Monreal. So The Ox and Gibbs came in their place at the start. Still no Cazorla back in the team. As a result we also had a few new faces on the beach that we …

Wonderloaf v Arsenal. The preview, the teams, the stats, the score and the bland bread.

by Bulldog Drummond The first bread slicing and wrapping machine in Britain was installed in the Wonderloaf Bakery in  White Hart Lane, right on the boundary of Tottenham and Wood Green, in 1937 and was used to create the Wonderloaf.  It was a white sliced loaf with all the natural goodness removed to produce something incredibly …

Why CIES data ranking clubs by the average age of their signings is not all it seems

By Tony Attwood There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Or so it is said (although usually without any data to back up such a claim). Ask a statistician however and he/she will tell you that there are statistics used properly and statistics used improperly or with incomplete data.   Football, sadly, is fully of …

Arsenal to change the line up for Sunderland game: the tactical preview.

  By Tony Attwood One of the things that fascinates me is that many people who pontificate on football (as I admit I do) often don’t look at the home and away form of the teams playing each other.  I think that if one does that one can begin to make more realistic predictions about …

Sunderland v Arsenal Saturday October 29th – The Match Officials. Expect serious fouls to go unpunished.

by Andrew Crawshaw Our officials for this weekend are :- Referee – Martin Atkinson – 45 years old, FIFA Accredited from West Yorkshire Assistant 1 – Steven Child – FIFA Accredited from Kent Assistant 2 – Stuart Burt – FIFA Accredited from Northamptonshire Fourth Official – Craig Pawson – 37 years old FIFA Accredited from …

Reasons to be cheerful parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

By Tony Attwood The Telegraph is currently running a “Fan happiness index” via which they ask “Which Premier League club has given its supporters reason to cheer, or be sad?” It’s all invention of course – the bloke behind me in the east upper will be Very Very Angry every time Theo doesn’t put in …

Reading in the library: watching the EFL cup from the posh seats

By Blacksheep On Tuesday night I went to watch the Arsenal play Reading in the Football League Cup (the cup that is officially so uninspiring it hasn’t attracted a sponsor this season). I was out of the country when Arsenal beat Robin Hood Athletic away and what with the hectic schedule of work and domestic …

Empty seats at the Ems? You should try the Tax Payers’ Stadium!

By Tony Attwood You might recall a little piece I wrote about the outrageous allegations in the Telegraph about empty seats at matches at the Emirates.  Using faked and misleading photographs the paper tried to make out that vast swathes of the ground were vacant during matches – even though the article admitted the number …

Alisher Usmanov makes his move – and it is not the one predicted.

By Tony Attwood (and his French-English dictionary) It was back in August that the website Tribal Football came up with the headline “REVEALED: Usmanov ponders selling Arsenal stake and buying into Everton”.  It was an article with the usual stuff about Mr Usmanov being “frozen out” of Arsenal, and no mention that he has been …

Why 26 October is such a special day in the history of football, and of Arsenal (and the Royal Family)

By Tony Attwood If you ever spare a moment to read the anniversaries that are posted on the home page of this site most days (occasionally I forget or the technology goes wrong – normally I blame the latter but the former is usually the real reason), you might know what is coming up. Because …

10 things we learned from Arsenal v Reading.

By Bulldog Drummond Here are ten things that could be taken from last night’s performance. 1: Jeff Reine-Adelaide is ready and could be the player we truly promote this season. Mr Wenger said in the programme, and has been hinting as much by not letting him go on loan and by giving in a lot …

League Cup: Arsenal – Reading 2-0, The Ox with a brace

By Walter Broeckx As expected a lot of changes compared to the starting line up against Middlesbrough for this League cup match. In fact the only 2 survivors of that match are Iwobi and  Elneny in the starting line up. Lucas, Oxlade-Chamberlain also starting this match. At right back we find Carl Jenkinson for the …

Arsenal vs The Spectacles. The teams and other stuff.

By Bulldog Drummond As you will know perfectly well (so I am not quite sure why I am telling you, but I’ve started so I will finish), we are in a 12 match run without defeat; a run that now has nine wins and three draws.   Here is how it goes… 1 20 Aug Leicester …

All the young dudes – but which one is this year’s breakthrough kid?

by Tony Attwood We’ve got so used to having youngsters break through into the first team from the youth sides that it seems almost inevitable that we will have another such player this season. Another Bellerin, Coquelin or Iwobi.  Or looking back a bit, another Ramsey (who came aged 18, and then did loan spells …

The gross incompetence of England’s football authorities exposed, once again

By Tony Attwood Way back, ten years ago in fact, the Daily Mail ran the headline (28 September 2006): English football ‘most corrupt in all Europe’ It was a theme Untold took up, but with a twist, for we have often argued that the corruption that is part of football is there not just because …

Why the TV audience for football is falling, and what it means for the future of football

By Tony Attwood TV money funds the Premier League.  Not just Big Time, but Very Big Time. OF course if the TV companies started to lose interest in the Premier League, then nothing would happen much at the start as the TV companies would be forced to continue to pay for live programme rights they …

How are some of this summer’s big value transfers doing thus far? A case study

By Tony Attwood Whenever Arsenal have a few duff games the cry goes up about the need to buy more players and spend more money.  And yet, as I have tried to point out before, only a minority of players become a significant success very soon after a big money transfer.  The figures suggest that …

With a quarter of the season gone, how much value have clubs got from their summer transfer spending?

  By Tony Attwood Last year I passed a few hours examining how various teams’ league positions compared with their position in terms of how much money they spent in the summer on players.   I’ve waited until nine games have gone this season, but now I think it might be time to see how …

Inattentive journalists and pundits totally bemused by the notion of offside

By Tony Attwood Poor Sky.  Poor Sky commentators. (I think one of them is Niall Quinn, the other Rob Hawthorne).  Come to that poor Guardian reporters. Goals are not goals unless the referee gives them as goals.  And then the goal is followed by a kick off by the other side.  In the centre circle. …

Manipulative, misleading and ill informed: the debate over empty seats at the Ems

By Tony Attwood There is a little bit of a debate going on about the issue of empty seats at the Emirates, and how unfair it all is that some people have season tickets and then don’t show up for games.  The suggestion is that such people should have their season tickets forcibly removed by …