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 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 …
Read More “Empty seats at the Ems? You should try the Tax Payers’ Stadium!”
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 …
Read More “Alisher Usmanov makes his move – and it is not the one predicted.”
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 …
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 …
Read More “League Cup: Arsenal – Reading 2-0, The Ox with a brace”
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 …
Read More “Arsenal vs The Spectacles. The teams and other stuff.”
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 …
Read More “All the young dudes – but which one is this year’s breakthrough kid?”
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 …
Read More “The gross incompetence of England’s football authorities exposed, once again”
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 …
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 …
Read More “How are some of this summer’s big value transfers doing thus far? A case study”
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 …
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. …
Read More “Inattentive journalists and pundits totally bemused by the notion of offside”
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 …
Read More “Manipulative, misleading and ill informed: the debate over empty seats at the Ems”
By Walter Broeckx A few changed compared to the team from our last match. No Santi Cazorla so he will not have been completely fit and maybe a bit of rest for the Spanish midfielder. Elneny taking his place. Cech back in goal for Ospina. Monreal came back at left back. And Iwobi came in …
Read More “Arsenal – Middlesbrough : 0-0 too slow and not precise enough in the passing”
By Bulldog Drummond. “If God exists and one day I go up there and He will ask: ‘Do you want to come in? What have you done in your life?’ And the only answer I will have is, ‘I tried to win football games.’ He will say, ‘Is that all you have done?’ And the …
The “Striking Department” By Tim Charlesworth After recent forays into writing about the Labour Party and the US national anthem, I was jerked back to reality by the pure joy of Mesut’s hat-trick, and decided to write about football again. There are lots of things that annoy me about football – my darling wife has …
by Andrew Crawshaw Our match officials are :- Referee – Mike Dean – 48 years old from Mersyside First Assistant – Simon Long – from Suffolk Second Assistant – Ian Hussin – from Mersyside Fourth Official – Tim Robinson – from West Sussex Well Mr Dean needs no introductions – disliked by the entirety of …
Read More “Arsenal v Middlesbrough, 22 October 2016 – The Match Officials”
By Walter Broeckx Are you still buzzing from Wednesday evening? I am. That surely was one hell of a match. One of the most interesting matches even I thought. Not just because we won with 6-0 but because it was a team performance that needed all players to be at their best. Oooooooospina was magnificent …
Read More “Özil responsible for a new word in the English dictionary”
ARSENAL vs. SWANSEA CITY COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 8 DATE: 15th September 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Jon Moss 1st LINESMAN: Harry Lennard 2nd LINESMAN: Marc Perry 4th OFFICIAL: Neil Swarbrick First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 06:16 Jordi …
Read More “Ref review: Arsenal – Swansea, lots of decisions to make”
By Tony Attwood There is something strange about the way the media treats the Arsenal. Like the Telegraph giving a rating of Arsenal player performances in the game and giving everyone seven out of ten except Ozil with nine, Alexis with eight, and the two central defenders with six. And why? Well, we don’t quite …
By Tony Attwood Last night as I drove back to the Midlands after the Arsenal match there was a piece on the radio about a guy who, before each game, bets on Exeter winning 4-1. For each match he gets different odds, but he never changes his approach, and keeps betting. Apparently he is £600 …
Read More “Why the predictions of Arsenal’s season have thus far been soooo wrong”
By Walter Broeckx A few changes for this match against Ludogorets. Xhaka paying the price for his red card maybe and Coquelin takes his place. We have Ospina in goal as expected with Cech sitting on the beach. Furthermore one change in the defence as Gibbs comes in the place of Monreal. And up front …
Read More “CL Arsenal – Ludogorets: 6-0 with an Özil hattrick”
By Bulldog Drummond OK, enough of those Ludo jokes. Let’s move on to the question… does Mr Wenger play the regular first team including Granit who isn’t yet debarred, or does he think this is fairly straightforward and give players a rest? Given that we haven’t been unbeaten in the opening three Champs League games …
By Bulldog Drummond Oh where are the old days? The days when you could safely click onto a football web site and read about Arsene Wenger’s dithering and predictions that this will be the season when Arsenal get relegated, thus putting a stop to the celebrations in 2019 of 100 years in the top …
Read More “Time to get the old board game out as Arsenal play Ludo”
By Tony Attwood I’ve noted before that Arsenal have this season nominated the full list of 25 players that they are able to make available for games – something that most clubs have not been able to do. And we have five under 21s who are also very much part of the first team squad …
Read More “Players used vs league position, and the range of top scorers so far in the league.”
By Tony Attwood Most people who watch Premier League matches do so on TV – and the TV companies make much of this. Back in the early part of the 21st century Man U v Arsenal games were hyped as the “most watched on the planet” and Sky spoke of global audience of 1 billion. …
Read More “How the media twisted Arsenal v Swansea and Liverpool v Man U”
