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 (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 …
SUNDERLAND vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 10 DATE: 29th October 2016 VENUE: Stadium of Light (Sunderland, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Martin Atkinson 1st LINESMAN: Stephen Child 2nd LINESMAN: Stuart Burt 4th OFFICIAL: Craig Pawson First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 00:05 John …
By Tony Attwood If you want to skip my chit-chat and usual rambling just scroll down the page, the video is below. But if you have a moment to spare, do consider this…. Driving home from Heathrow Airport last night I heard someone on BBC Radio 5 announce that his “worry” was that Arsenal treated …
By Walter Broeckx A few changes as we already knew as some players had to stay at home. Walcott, Bellerin, Monreal and Santi amongst them. So we had Jenkinson at right back and Gibbs came on at left back but he did that in the last matches also. Xhaka also came back in the team …
Read More “CL Ludogorets – Arsenal 2-3: a Liège comeback as predicted after 15 minutes”
By Bulldog Drummond Seems there is a bit of a debate going on about Arsenal’s line up today with Mr Wenger being at his most enigmatic. We know that Monreal, Cazorla, Bellerin and Walcott did not travel. Mr Wenger said of the two last named players “both are ‘more or less’ injuries”. I’m not …
Read More “Ludogorets Razgrad v Arsenal. “Our destiny lies in the minds of the players””
By Tim Charlesworth So here it is – November. Halloween brings genuine horror for Arsenal fans, because the day after Halloween is November 1st and that is something for us all to be scared of. Every year I convince myself that November is an absurd irrational superstition, and every year it delivers on the horror. …
Read More “Here comes November: a time of horror or success for Arsenal?”
by the Referee Review Team 1: Details of Match Referees and Assistants Chelsea vs. Leicester City [3-0] Referee – Andre Marriner 1st Assistant Referee – Simon Beck 2nd Assistant Referee – Andy Garratt Fourth Official – Stuart Attwell Bournemouth vs. Hull City [6-1] Referee – Lee Mason 1st Assistant Referee – Mick McDonough 2nd Assistant …
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 …
Read More “Ref Review: Arsenal – Middlesbrough; a non Deanesque score!”
. 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 …
Read More “Seeing the positives at Arsenal has been easy, so far”
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 …
Read More “Arsenal always do worse than everyone else in November, and other myths.”
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”, …
Read More “The Football journalists education programme. A public service commentary.”
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 …
Read More “Sunderland – Arsenal: 1-4, Welcome back Giroud and Ramsey”
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 …
Read More “Wonderloaf v Arsenal. The preview, the teams, the stats, the score and the bland bread.”
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 …
Read More “Why CIES data ranking clubs by the average age of their signings is not all it seems”
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 …
Read More “Arsenal to change the line up for Sunderland game: the tactical preview.”
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 …
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 …
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 …
Read More “Reading in the library: watching the EFL cup from the posh seats”
