The sprint and the marathon. How much Arsenal’s start tells us about where they will finish.

By Tony Attwood When Arsenal lost to Liverpool on the opening day the knives were out.  Losing on the opening day was a disaster said the doubters.  That’s it.  All over. But just as people have said that only teams that spend loads of money do well, (the stats show that there is little relationship …

How Arsène Wenger’s faith in Theo Walcott is paying off this season

By Walter Broeckx On August 6th Arsène Wenger said this about Theo: “Theo is intelligent, he analyses well what’s happening to him and he’s mentally very strong, and the way he practises, the way he works since the start of the season, I think I’m very positive that we can get a great season from …

Granit gets 3, and what would it have been like if we had signed Icardi?

By Tony Attwood The news from the press on Granit X is that Arsene Wenger thought the tackle that led to him being sent off was a “deep yellow” which I suppose those who look at rainbows would call orange, and so the club will not appeal.  So Granit gets a three match ban, effectively …

Parliament is going to propose that corruption in football is investigated by…. The FA!!!

By Tony Attwood One of my eternal rants, with which I have bored you stiff in recent years, is that the FA is guilty of a multiplicity of misdemeanours, ranging from ineptitude to the failure properly to investigate corruption, from the refusal to accept the proven fact that England do badly because of lack of …

Referee Appointments and Results Matchweek #07 complete with video evidence

by the Referee Team 1: Details of the Match Referees and Assistants Everton vs. Crystal Palace [1-1] Referee – Jon Moss 1st Assistant Referee – Simon Bennett 2nd Assistant Referee – Richard West Fourth Official – Kevin Friend Swansea City vs. Liverpool [1-2] Referee – Michael Oliver 1st Assistant Referee – Gary Beswick 2nd Assistant …

Arsenal – Swansea 3-2, good play, nasty tackle and character shown

By Walter Broeckx No changes to the starting line up compared to the team that won at Burnley. Mesut Özil celebrating his birthday today so let’s hope he can make a very happy day of it. Also Cech celebrating his 50th appearance for Arsenal. On the bench a few changes. Coquelin back on the bench …

Arsenal v Swansea: the Untold match preview, and teams and a do-it-yourself team selector

By Bulldog Drummond And so off we go again after another unwelcome interruption.   And once again the press are struggling to find something negative to say about us.   Here’s the Guardian’s latest attempt Four consecutive clean sheets leading up to the international break suggests that defensively Arsenal have found an encouraging solid platform, …

Arsenal v Swansea – the statistics

By Bulldog Drummond The general chit chat is that Arsenal should win this at a stroll, but Arsenal will always let you down just when you expect them to win. But we must note that Swansea change managers as regularly as Tottenham, and the Untold view that this doesn’t normally work does include the word …

It’s not just the team for Saturday we need to consider. How Arsenal will start to rotate.

By Tony Attwood So off we go on our run of four consecutive home games starting this week with Swansea and then with a game against Ludogorets Razgrad on Wednesday.  And the associated need to finish top of the Champs League group to avoid the child molesters in the next round. And the good news is …

Arsenal v Swansea Sat 15 October 2016 – The Match Officials

by Andrew Crawshaw Well Mr Pawson nearly managed to completely cock up the game at Burnley scoring a (to date) season low of 38.2% on our weighted performance chart.  I have now had to add a ‘Wall of Shame’ table to my season spreadsheet which I had hoped to avoid this year.  Here is the …

How Arsene Wenger’s spending on players has given us a team to marvel over

By Tony Attwood On the afternoon of 13 October 2016 two things happened.  First the other Untold site, Untold Dylan, started to get hits like it has never done before.  Untold Dylan is doing ok with an audience of over 300,000 page views a year, but its subject matter is a bit esoteric.  It deals …

The Yanks are coming!

The Yanks are coming! By Tim Charlesworth The American influence has been growing in the Premier League for many years now.  Two of Arsenal’s directors are American citizens, and our own Silent Stan is the wealthiest of the Americans to buy a Premiership club.  This Americanisation is more than just skin deep – the statistics …

Chelsea and Man City dominate the loan system. But what is the point?

By Tony Attwood How many players do Arsenal have out on loan? It is not a difficult question, and I suspect that if you are here as an Arsenal supporter not only will you get the answer right you will be able to name the players The number is five and the details (taken from …

When your first Arsenal goal is against Tottenham you know you are on the right side of the tracks

By Tony Attwood I get sent a fair number of video links but rarely pass them on, because most other sites do that, and we are after all Untold. But this one from FFDTV is worth watching – all the way through. Here is what they say… Arsenal’s highly rated 15 year old Trae Coyle demonstrates …

The 10 major sources of corruption and dubious practice in football

By Tony Attwood What is it in football that makes corruption so likely?   It is not just the large amount of money – that always causes problems in every industry, and not every industry is in such a mess as football. Rather, according to the Financial Times, it is the short termism in football. …

International football is dying, and at last the media discover why.

By Tony Attwood International football is dying. It is a phrase that Untold wouldn’t use because the general view here is that it died a long, long time ago, and is now only kept alive by the corrupt and the gullible (see last few articles on this site). To support international football is to support …

Could it be that the media is finally investigating transfers and refs seriously? Here’s the latest revelations.

By Tony Attwood From time to time we get comments at Untold that the site’s operators in general (or more often, me in particular) are too smug and self-satisfied, endlessly talking up Untold as a crusader that gets things done. That’s not how I see Untold (not surprisingly), but I do find that I like …

At last Fifa being taken to court: what the legal case claims.

By Tony Attwood As Walter pointed out in his article Taking on Fifa: How the Dutch FA has become the first to tell Fifa it has had enough Fifa is now facing legal action in the Swiss courts over alleged complicity in the mistreatment of migrant workers in Qatar.   The writ argues that “Swiss law, and …

Arsenal U18 team: a Progress Report – Extra Experience counts

by Andrew Crawshaw This year the U18s managed by Kwame Apadu have experienced a welcome, if rare, great start to the season.  With seven games played we are top of our table having won 5, lost 1 and drawn 1.  We have scored the most goals (22) and only West Ham (6) have conceded fewer …

Taking on Fifa: How the Dutch FA has become the first to tell Fifa it has had enough

By Walter Broeckx I think we have over the years written a fair number of articles about Fifa and the way the association is very close to a criminal organisation that is standing above laws that other companies and people have to obey. If you allow Fifa to organise a worldcup in your country you …

There is a big problem in Britain with not seeing our history honestly

By Tony Attwood It has long been noted that people with an agenda will re-write history to fit their message.  Thuat the aaa notoriously re-write Arsenal’s history to show that this is a bad time in Arsenal’s history.  Football journalists and their chums in the FA rewrite the England football teams history to make out …

What is likely to happen in Arsenal’s next four games?

By Tony Attwood Arsenal’s next four games are something of an oddity – for they are all at home: Swansea Ludogorets Razgrad Middlesbrough Reading Swansea and Middlesbrough, our league opponents, sit next to each other in terms of their league fortunes just now.  Here’s the table with the final column showing the results this season …

On an interlull weekend let’s remember when the FA contemplated stopping internationals

By Tony Attwood It may seem strange that the FA, whom we know as an organisation that will willingly crawl on all fours to lick up the droppings from the grand table of Fifa, might actually consider pulling out of internationals, but that is exactly what they did in 1934. Not all internationals I should …

Which teams always benefit from referee mistakes, and which teams are constantly wrongly penalised?

By Tony Attwood If you have been reading the referee reports this season you will know that the Untold referee review team has expanded its work quite considerably. As a result in the reviews this season we have included these two tables: Table 9: Major Wrong Decisions Against Teams Table 10: Major Wrong Decisions in …