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 Richard Scudamore chair of the Premier League has issued a diktat to the effect that at least one block of away supporters must be in a lower tier section approaching the pitch (or in the case of the Tax Payers Stadium, within a few hundred yards of the pitch). This announcement was …
Read More “Stadium reforms: away fan positioning to change and safe standing proposed”
by Andrew Crawshaw With 9 games gone in the Pl we are now effectively a quarter of the way through the season and this is a good time to see how the referees have been doing. Here are links to the nine weekly reports we have published Matchweek 1 ; Matchweek 2 ; Matchweek 3 ; Matchweek 4 ; Matchweek 5 ; Matchweek 6 ; Matchweek 7 ; Matchweek …
Read More “Referees – First quarter Report. This isn’t healthy.”
by Tony Attwood We all know all about the FA incompetence, its wastage of money, its willingness to take on people known to have been involved in murky deals, and its utter unwillingness to deal with employees who are shown to have lied in court. Untold also led the way with the original research which …
Read More “10 reasons why England fail and will always fail in international football”
By Norman 14 Re the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee enquiry into The Governance of Football – the Committee questioning of Greg Clarke, Chairman, The Football Association, and Robert Sullivan, Director of Governance and Regulation, The Football Association. There are 40 pages of transcript, and most of the questions relate either to …
Read More “Commons Committee questioning of Greg Clarke, Chairman, The Football Association,”
Open letter to FIFA on Remembrance Day From: Tim Charlesworth, football fan, UK To: Gianni Infantino, President, FIFA 11th November 2016 Dear Gianni FIFA’s allegation that the poppy is a political symbol is an interesting one, and one that is difficult to deny. It certainly has a symbolic meaning and has the power to move …
By Tony Attwood I have often written on the subject of Greek football, and the issue of Olympiakos (four of whose matches in the last year have been abandoned due to crowd violence – mostly from supporters of the team they are playing, over ludicrous refereeing decisions). Now Greek football is back in the news, …
Read More “Violence and corruption in Greek football, humanity and respect at Rochdale”
By Tony Attwood Some figures have been released by CIES Football Observatory concerning transfer expenditure over recent years. Unfortunately as I have found before, the CIES figures are not complete and have a rather strange basis for their analysis – in this case they only record purchases between clubs in the top five leagues. Also …
Read More “Who spends the most, and who gets the most from player sales?”
By Tony Attwood With enough Americans voting for a man who doesn’t believe climate change is happening, and that his political opponent should be put in prison, it would be nice to have a bit of positive news from Arsenal just to keep us going, but as you’ve probably heard Alexis Sánchez has been injured in Chile. …
Read More “Reasons to be cheerful are slipping away like snow in spring”
by the Referee Review Team 1: Details of Match Referees and Assistants Bournemouth vs. Tottenham [0-0] Referee – Craig Pawson 1st Assistant Referee – Scott Ledger 2nd Assistant Referee – Peter Kirkup Fourth Official – Roger East West Ham United vs. Sunderland [1-0] Referee – Robert Madley 1st Assistant Referee – Keith Stroud 2nd Assistant …
Read More “Referee Appointments and Results Matchweek #09 complete with video evidence”
By Josif As Untold Arsenal has already reported, someone who calls himself a journalist actually gave advice to a football team to use violence as a legitimate way to win the game over their rivals. Just like many people who use their own brain-cells to make conclusions on what the hell is going on with …
Read More “How Tottenham’s 451 fouls can equal no red cards at all.”
By Tony Attwood Senior officials and management found involved in dubious deals, and guilty in court of crimes? That must be another boring “told you so” story about Fifa from Untold with a mention that we spotted the change in Swiss law which allowed the raid on Fifa’s in December 2015. Well, actually no. It’s …
By James Bailey Arsenal midfielder Alex Iwobi has said that he is amazed by the level of support there is for his football team at home in his native Nigeria. Speaking to the Evening Standard, Iwobi revealed that during an international match, supporters were shouting out his team’s name – rather than his! Arsenal …
Read More “Why Arsenal Is Nigeria’s Favourite Football Team”
. by Blacksheep FIFA (in their infinite wisdom) have decided that the remembrance poppy is a ‘political symbol’ and therefore should not be sported by players of England and Scotland in their forthcoming World Cup qualifier. Not surprisingly, as this game takes place on the 11 November (the traditional day of remembrance of those who …
Read More “Fifa and the poppy debacle: the poppy just like Fifa is a “political act”.”
By Tony Attwood It was quite a move by the Daily Telegraph to publish its “kick them” article when speaking of how Tottenham could try and beat Arsenal. And there was some of that, but it was the elbow of Wanyama that really caused the concern. We could see Theo holding the back of …
Read More “The Telegraph advised Tottenham to kick Arsenal, but an elbow was as effective”
By Walter Broeckx No live match report this time as I had to be with a rather large group of Arsenal Belgium members who gathered in Leuven to see the match against our neighbours. So this is written a few hours after the match and not during the match as usual. So the shape and …
Read More “Arsenal – Tottenham 1-1: If you can’t win it, make sure you don’t lose it”
By Bulldog Drummond The joy of having a big squad – a squad of 25 players registered and five more youth players in serious contention – is that there is always choice. Those old days when a player would be risked, and more often than not (or so it seemed) get a worse injury as …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: trying to find the team for today’s match”
By Tony Attwood It used to be so easy in bygone days – I could write a piece about how many managers Tottenham had had in the past week, and we could all have a little laugh, and that would be the preview. Then we had the period when the anti-Arsenal-Arsenal mob put forward the …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: trying to find the future of the Tiny Totts.”
By Tony Attwood (and his abacus) According to the Guardian today (in a more upbeat mood than of late it must be said), “Arsenal have actually lost only once in their last eight matches against their bitter rivals, and have not succumbed at home since 2010.” In the bloggettas the story is somewhat more downbeat. …
By Tony Attwood Against Leciester away, earlier this season, a group of supposedly Arsenal supporters started to chant “Spend some ****ing money” (**** = not offending NxNow) and “We want Wenger out” etc. Of late I have not heard much from them, as they have left the complaining to the journalists who are always happy …
Read More “The danger of asking for simplistic change at the start of a season.”
. Arsenal v Spurs Sunday 6 November 2016 by Andrew Crawshaw Before I look ahead to our game, Bournemouth will be enjoying the pleasures of Mike Dean for a third time this season in their game against Sunderland on Saturday. What’s more Liverpool have Michael Oliver for a third time in their game against Watford. …
Read More “Arsenal v Spurs Sunday 6 November 2016 – The Match Officials”
By Tony Attwood When you think about transfers, abuse of the transfer system, and the hoarding of players probably the first club that comes to mind is not Arsenal. While we all know about Chelsea and Manchester City having large numbers of players that they buy and then loan out and never get back, …
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Head of the Dept of Psychiatric Medicine, University Hospital of the North Circular Road We don’t normally start previews for a Sunday game on Thursday but matches against the Tiny Totts do require a little more chit chat than most, and there are always one or two things worth …
By Tony Attwood “The chairman of the LLDC, owners of the London Stadium, has resigned after an inquiry was opened into the soaring costs to the taxpayer to run the venue.” The Guardian “Tottenham have now lost each of their ties at the national stadium – they were beaten 2-1 by Monaco in September”. The …
By Tony Attwood There are two things we know about players who have played for Barcelona. One is that they have been in a club that engaged for multiple years in child trafficking. The second is that they employ or have employed a number of players who have been found guilty of tax fraud …
Read More “Alexis’ time at Barcelona catches up with him as he is accused of tax fraud.”
By Tony Attwood On 2 September we bade farewell to the great Arsenal Transfer Index – a listing of all the players we could find who were allegedly leaving the club or coming to the club. In our final analysis we noted 115 incoming transfer rumours – almost all of them wrong 22 players who …
