Arsenal v Manchester City Hoovers. Opening day blues for us and the champions

By Bulldog Drummond. This is the hardest game to select a team for, as we have not yet seen the manager in action when not testing out the players in the pre-season matches. Maitland Niles is the obvious replacement at left back,  and I suggest Monreal will not even make the beach so he is …

Arsenal v Man City: How it went in the past, and the new comers

By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal ended last season with a mixed collection a results Date Game Res Score Competition 08 Mar 2018 AC Milan v Arsenal W 0-2 Europa League 11 Mar 2018 Arsenal v Watford W 3-0 Premier League 15 Mar 2018 Arsenal v AC Milan W 3-1 Europa League 01 Apr 2018 Arsenal v …

Arsenal v Man City: the injuries and recent games between the two.

By Bulldog Drummond Coming back to the list of injuries after not having followed the details since the end of last season is something of a shock.  And unless you’ve been following the details I think you might be shocked too. Ready? As before I am using the Physioroom list.   And I would warn you …

EPL Matchweek 1 the Games and Officials

by Andrew Crawshaw We didn’t undertake any detailed analysis of referee performances last season so I am not going to try and replicate the referee previews this season.  Instead I am going to restrict myself to an informative (I hope) post of who is allocated to which match.  The data is liftd straight from the …

Arsenal v the Hoovers. Background to Sunday’s game at Arsenal Stadium

By Lady Market Dominance In English culture, and maybe elsewhere, the domestic vacuum cleaner is often known as the Hoover, the Hoover being a dominant make of the product dating back to the early 20th century.  So dominant did it become in the market that the word passed into the language as meaning “to take …

Arsenal Women take a small squad to Tolouse

by Andrew Crawshaw The Arsenal Women’s senior squad was ‘compact’ to begin with, our injuries have reduced the available players to an alarming level. For the last match against Juventus we only had four substitute players of whom one was a senior squad member. Goalkeepers Sari Van Veenendaal – available for selection Pauline Peyraud-Magnin – …

Eight years late a TV station finally confirms the referee bias against Arsenal

By Walter Broeckx For many years I have been spending a lot of my spare time on reviewing the referees in the PL and more specific in Arsenal matches. I have done this on my own and I have done this with the help of other Arsenal supporting referees. And we have done this with …

After Deadline Day August 2018 – The full Arsenal Squad that remains

By Andrew Crawshaw Less frantic activity generally yesterday than on many previous transfer deadline days with not as many players moving.  Having said that Everton signed three in the last 10 minutes and Fulham added another keeper.  Tottenham added no-one as has become a well-established fact.  The first PL club ever to sign no one …

Arsenal transfers – the full table of all 122 rumours, plus the view from White Hart Lane.

By Tony Attwood By the end of course it was getting truly ridiculous.  Indeed as Short Fuse announced, “Arsenal’s transfer window descends into farce as structural problems remain.”  What they didn’t realise was that the farce was created by the media as time and again they told us deals had been done, and were confirmed, when …

Transfer remnants: What exactly are Arsenal doing, and what is a Spurs fan saying?

By Sir Hardly Anyone We’re almost there it is almost done – at least in terms of the buying.  And as you probably expected, despite all the frantic suggestions by the People Regularly Engaged in Spurious Stories (or PRESS for short) nothing is happening thus far concerning Arsenal in terms of buying, although Perez looks …

The final night of transfer rumours: Sir Hardly Anyone in the home of the half baked

Sir Hardly Anyone reflects on another wasted night at the bar. I have generally thought most “reporters” who cover transfer chit chat to be half baked, but some of those I have met in this fenêtre de transfert don’t seem even to have made it into the oven.  And to hear the silly little people …

Arsenal Squad as at 16:00 on Wednesday 8/8/18

Arsenal Squad as at 16:00 on Wednesday 8/8/18 by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly here is my list of the players who I believe are still with the club and count as over 21 as at January 01 this year, the qualifying date for this coming season.  These players are those that will form our maximum list …

Why the panic? What’s going on? How this summer’s transfer market has turned itself upside down.

By Tony Attwood There has, I think, not been a transfer market quite like this one, and that for two reasons. One is that the Premier League summer market gets crazier every year, first because each year the media tries to do more and more to outdo whatever crazy things they got up to last …

Arsenal bid £100m for player in transfer rumour untouched by even The Hollow Men.

By Sir Hardly Anyone What happens to the bloggettas owned by newspapers when their computers get overheated in the, well, err, heat?   This morning, Wednesday 8 August, we find out as Foot Lond, the Daily Mirror’s endlessly automatic computer generated churning  bloggetta, runs the story,  “There’s less than a week left of the transfer window – …

How strange that Emery and Wenger should be so alike

By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, head of pyschology at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. According to the Daily Telegraph, “Arsenal’s new head coach Unai Emery could be an unmitigated disaster or a phenomenal success. We do not really know, and that alone is a radical departure from the past decade when …

What is the difference between Stan Kroenke and Henry Norris, and who’s to blame?

by Tony Attwood So Mr Kroenke has made an offer to buy the shares of Mr Usmanov in Arsenal, and it seems Mr Usmanov is willing to deal.  Mr Kroenke will then own just over 97% of the shares.  At this point, under English law all the other shareholders must be offered the same deal.  …

All the experts agree: at least one of these Arsenal transfer deals will happen in the next 48 hours

By Sir Hardly Anyone And so as the word “slammed” is taken out of its cupboard and prepared to be given a massive overdose of multiple use by so-called journalists, we approach the last mile, the final furlong, the extra yard and the finish line which is not so much about to be passed with …

Early Season Preview: The nine (yes 9) innovations we’ll have to get used to.

by Andrew Crawshaw Monday before the season gets underway this coming Friday (Man United v Leicester).  No news yet on the PL website about which referees have been appointed to blow the whistles but there are some other snippets of news.  STOP PRESS (or perhaps I should say STOP BLOG) – it is being reported …

What has been Arsenal’s best period in history, and can Emery replicate that?

By Tony Attwood During the last 10 years as you well know we have won 3 FA Cups, and this obviously was not good enough for some people who attended matches.  And of course was wholly unacceptable for the media who jumped on this, as they often do with their perceived negatives when reviewing Arsenal. …

Predictions agree (!), attacking Bellerin, Chambers going, fighting the media

By Tony Attwood As you will know, if you are a regular reader, the media and their tail coat hangers on, have created more transfer rumours in terms of players joining Arsenal, than ever before.  (We’re not keeping a record of rumours of leavings since we had that summer two years ago in which every …

This summer’s Arsenal transfers reach an all time record!!!

By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes it is true, there have been more transfer rumours concerning Arsenal this summer than in any of the previous transfer windows we have measured.  Not by much but we have got there. 116 players have been tipped to be coming to Arsenal (or in the case of Jack Wilshere, signing …

Arsenal: Eight reasons to be cheerful ahead of the new season – and then some.

By Tony Attwood Ten years and a bit ago – in April 2008 to be exact, I wrote an eight part series on Reasons to be Cheerful.   It’s not the only “Reasons to be Cheerful” series on Untold – I did another three in 2009 and there have been several since.  I’m not going to …

Pre season : Arsenal – Lazio : 2-0

By Walter Broeckx Starting XI: Leno, Lichtsteiner, Chambers, Holding, Maitland-Niles, Xhaka, Torreira, Nelson, Iwobi, Lacazette, Nketiah Subs: Bellerin, Sokratis, Mustafi, Mavrapanos, Elneny, Mkhitaryan, Ozil, Guendouzi, Smith Rowe, Aubameyang A first start for the new boys Lichtsteiner and Torreira and the return of Xhaka for his first match. Holding and Chambers is the central defensive pairing …

Arsenal v Lazio details, Lazio v Arsenal fighting, transfer latest, and taking on the media

By Bulldog Drummond In my youth, on hearing that “the season starts today” (as it does for the championship etc, and of course Scottish football) old timers would say “it gets earlier every year”.  To my utter dismay, on realising that the we were now only one week away from the Manchester City match I …

A guide to who will finish where this season across Europe

by Andrew Crawshaw I started today by updating my database of Arsenal players and adding in the current estimated player values from Transfermarkt.com.  I then remembered Tony’s predictions regarding the winners of various leagues across Europe (which I think he has got right) and thought I would provide the logic behind his predictions.  The transfer …