How football could be improved forever through one simple adjustment.

By Tony Attwood Listening to TalkSport’s commentary on the Manchester City game at the weekend I was struck, not for the first time, by a very simple point.  It was the failure of the commentators to ask “why?” The particular situation was the Kyle Walker push on Sterling and the failure of the referee to take …

Trump, Piers Morgan, Caligula, post-truth football, post-Wenger Arsenal.

Spare a thought for the disenfranchised By Tim Charlesworth (@Timc1972) So Donald Trump has been inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States to a chorus of generally gnashed teeth, the world over (although the world still seems to be turning).  Trump puts me in mind of the apocryphal Roman emperors Nero and Caligula.  …

Arsenal – Burnley: The long road to the upper corner

By Walter Broeckx Well it sure wasn’t the easiest of trips we have ever made to the Emirates. I left my house around 5 in the morning. I got the tickets for the group as that was the most important thing of course. Imagine not getting the tickets at the starting point… Well not that …

Steve Bould’s managerial career begins with a victory

“I didn’t see Arsene Wenger sent off” “Neither did he”. By the front row, Block 110, and the Untold Team Hysteria and humour seemed to be the main response to yesterday’s game.  Humour with the comments and headlines above, and hysteria of such proportions from the Telegraph that one begins to fear for the well-being …

Arsenal v Burnley. The teams, the beach, the factoids

By Bulldog Drummond. . So here we are just on ready to get up and head south.  And a rather nicer journey than usual since I’m not driving, so a bit of relaxation and pleasant conversation en route. . Here’s the table as it stands on Sunday morning . Home Away P W D L …

Arsenal v Burnley: Cheating Ladbrokes, injury news, tactical preview and Arsenal in crisis.

By Bulldog Drummond For days on Facebook I have been seeing adverts showing pictures of somewhat eccentric Arsenal supporters (one large guy holding an Arsenal scarf above his head with the words upside down, another large gent with a bald head tattooed throughout with Arsenal motifs, that sort of thing) followed by the slogan “91% …

Arsenal v Burnley Sunday 22 January 2017 – The Match Officials, and news of a promotion

by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly some news Mike Dean has demoted himself this week after being heavily criticised in the press following so-called errors in his decision making over the last few weeks, most notably his sending off of Feghouli which was overturned on appeal and failing to send off Barclay for a foul on Henderson …

Arsenal v Burnley: the background stats, Burnley in season 1, and goalscorers in double figures.

By Bulldog Drummond Burnley let us not forget, were there at the start.  At the very start of organised league football in England and fairly near to the start of FA Cup football. Six years before Royal Arsenal made it to the first round proper of the Cup for the first time Burnley were there …

Referee Appointments and Results Matchweek #15 complete with video evidence

by the Referee Review Team If you find our ever growing referee analysis too much, we’re now publishing a quick summary version.  You’ll the summary for this matchweek on Untold here. But of course we would be very critical of anyone who just published such a summary without the details, so if you like the …

If TV football audiences really are in terminal decline, as the figures suggest, then what?

by Tony Attwood In February 2015 the Premier League announced that it had sold the television rights to its games for a record £5.136bn, 71% above the amount it gained three years before. Sky paid £4.2bn for five of the seven TV packages while BT Sprout paid £960m for the other two in the record …

Referee Appointments and Results Matchweek 15 – The bullet points

by The Referee Team Just in case you find the full weekly referee review to long – here is a quick summary in bullet point form.  The full analysis will follow later today. Matchweek 15 included these games Saturday 10th December 2016 Arsenal 3-1 Stoke City Burnley 3-2 Bournemouth Hull City 3-3 Crystal Palace Leicester …

Arsenal and Burnley, the early early news

By Bulldog Drummond. Hmmm… bit of an early slot for me, a Thursday, but there’s news so time for an early early preview.  A preview of the preview in fact.  Or a preview of the pre… [Get on with it – Tony] Carl Jenkinson has decided that he will NOT play for the Very Large …

Why are statistics such a problem in football? After all, the facts are out there.

By Tony Attwood A comment made recently on Untold had me pondering the statistics issue again. I had written about Arsenal’s finances vis a vis marketing income, and noted how the marketing income was rising, while patting myself on the back for having predicted this while an eminent economist had suggested it would not happen. …

Untold’s “Money League” predictions concerning Arsenal’s finances come to pass

By Tony Attwood Warning, this article includes a bit of crowing… although with a certain degree of caution. Having been caught out saying that I had an exclusive yesterday, when seemingly I didn’t as Arseblog beat me to the particular story by half an hour, I take today’s piece with caution. However the point about Untold …

Fifa preparing to change football’s rules. An Untold exclusive (at least until tomorrow)

  By Tony Attwood As far as I know, the English media has not picked up on this story that has broken from Fifa HQ in Switzerland.  Therefore my use of the word “exclusive” might be a slight exaggeration, but “Exclusive in the UK” seemed a bit cumbersome.  And you never know, there have been …

Who are the biggest ball hoofers in the PL? Beware: this is not the story the media wants you to read!

By Gooner Mikey I find fake news, post truth etc., fascinating in the sense that those who use it show a degree of inadequacy and demonstrate a whole new dynamic in terms of social engineering.  Don’t get me wrong though I don’t for one moment question its effectiveness, we only have to look at the …

Football in crisis. Football in chaos. Football as a fairy story.

By Tony Attwood There is a story doing the rounds that the wing of British military intelligence that works in secret in countries outside the UK (MI6) not only helped the British agent who put together the Trump sex dossier, he always worked with MI6 investigating Russia’s bid for the World Cup of 2018. A …

Arsenal need a new striker. I know this because last summer lots of journalists told me so

By Tony Attwood . Last summer it was hard to see much beyond the ceaseless baying of the mainstream media and their camp followers on the bloggettas.   We had (and this lot came from just a period of a few days) Arsenal transfers: 10 strikers Arsene Wenger could sign – Telegraph Which striker should …

Would Arsenal be higher up the league if we had Pep Guardiola instead of Arsène Wenger?

By Tony Attwood . It is indeed amazing just how quickly a manager can move from being the ultimate superstar, the man Arsenal should have brought in if they really wanted to win the league, to being an also-ran, another silly foreigner who doesn’t really grasp what the Premier League is all about. Indeed it …

The value of Arsenal’s players is not what you think. Or at least not what we thought.

By Tony Attwood OK, I admit it.  I know nothing about football. When it was announced that the Football Observatory was publishing a new list of the 100 most valuable footballers according to their own special unique super-wonderful way of evaluating players my pal and I decided to test our knowledge of football. The game …

Football might be the biggest sport in the world but its management is chaotic

By Tony Attwood You’ve probably heard that Liverpool! had to leave Joël Matip out of their team to play Man U because, although he has publicly retired from international football, Cameroon still called him up for the Africa Cup.  He didn’t go, but Fifa still haven’t ruled on the situation so he can’t play. Bournemouth were …

20 fake news stories created by UK’s media plus three Arsenal transfer stories that are actually real.

By Sir Hardly Anyone One of the great twists of the Football Fake News creators is that they not only create fake news day by day, but that they then attribute the “story” to another source – in which the story didn’t appear in the first place.  So not only is the news fake but …

Simple answers and the rejection of experts: the need for multiple scorers

By Tony Attwood I am endlessly fascinated by the way in which the media and their camp followers in the bloggettas adopt twin approaches in order to bolster their constant provision of Fake News – largely to the detriment of Arsenal. The first is the view that anyone can have an opinion (which is true) …

Alexis’ ego: where will it take him next?

By Tony Attwood Of course I’ve never met the guy but think I can still make a fairly decent guess as to what powers the brain of Alexis.  He’s got a big ego. That isn’t a very insightful comment however because I suspect most top level footballers have got very big egos.  Very very big …

Swansea – Arsenal : 0-4 Iwobi pulls us over the line

By Walter Broeckx As could be expected a few changes compared to our cup match at Preston last weekend. Cech back in goal for Ospina was expected. Koscielny and Mustafa in the centre was also an expected pairing. At right back Gabriel started and that is something that I also had thought would be a …