by Tony Attwood I’ve been dwelling on the perfidious nature of newspaper and blog commentaries on Arsenal for a while, because although on their own mostly they are fairly trivial and pointless, combined they can add up to a feeling of doom, gloom, desperation and incompetence; which it appears is their main purpose. Take this …
by Andrew Crawshaw Here courtesy of premierleague.com are this weekend’s matches. Please note kickoff times are 15:00 unless stated otherwise:- Saturday 19 January 12:30 Wolves v Leicester Referee: Chris Kavanagh Assistants: Daniel Cook, Sian Massey-Ellis Fourth official: Roger East AFC Bournemouth v West Ham Referee: Simon Hooper Assistants: Adrian Holmes, Derek Eaton Fourth official: Kevin Friend Liverpool v Crystal Palace Referee: Jonathan Moss …
by Sir Hardly Anyone What is it a football journalist wants? Basically a story that writes itself, that needs no research, no insight, no drawing out of implications, no need to ask the pesky “why?” question, and a story that knocks the clubs they love to hate, while allowing them to heap praise on the …
By Tony Attwood The story is circulating that Manchester City have refused to reply to Uefa in relation to FFP allegations, on the basis that the multiple claims against them in relation to breaches of FFP regulations came from hacked or stolen emails, and therefore they don’t have to answer. This approach, that stolen evidence …
By Sir Hardly Anyone There has been a consistent knocking of Mohammed Elneny of late, and an absolute torrent of abuse flowing upon Granit Xhaka. And I wondered what that must be like for the players. We do of course get our fair share of abuse on Untold and we by and large take …
By Tony Attwood Although you might not know it from the daily blogs and newspaper websites Arsenal are one of the most successful teams in the Premier League. Not in terms of the number of times teams have won it – Manchester United are way out in front of everyone on that score; but by …
By Tony Attwood Now that it has been confirmed in such an overt manner that the owner of Arsenal is not putting any more money into the club and is merely interested in taking money out, the blogs have finally got the message. Publishing ever more expansive lists of players Arsenal are going to buy …
By Tony Attwood Looking at the way Arsenal are playing at the moment I am starting to get the view that no one within the club has properly briefed the manager and his team on the unique approach to refereeing in the Premier League. I wonder if this is because Mr Wenger and Mr …
By Tony Attwood The thesis set out here during the “Wenger Out!” period was that changing the manager at Arsenal last season would probably not solve much. Only “probably” rather than “definitely” because there was always a chance – but the odds were against us. Football is a game in which all sorts of things …
By Walter Broeckx A back 3 with Sokratis, Koscielny and Mustafi and with Maitland-Niles and Kolasinac as wing backs. On the beach we had the return of Bellerin and Monreal. No Özil to be seen in the team. Arsenal team at the start : Leno, Sokratis, Koscielny, Mustafi, Maitland-Niles, Xhaka, Guendouzi, Kolasinac, Iwobi, Aubameyang, Lacazette. …
by Bulldog Drummond Today is the 11th anniversary of the launch of the Untold Arsenal site. Our first ever article published on 14th, concerned the match against Birmingham on 12 Jan 2008, and focussed on rotational fouling which was unpunished by the referee. There’s no real consensus on who is going to play but …
By Bulldog Drummond Samir Nasri is likely to appear for Wham (that is the football club not the popular singing combo) against Arsenal. He played for West Ham in their FA Cup win against Birmingham. And the buzz stat that is circulating is the both teams have only managed to concede zero goals in a …
By Bulldog Drummond Unai Emery has said Arsenal will not be able to sign players this month but just take them on loan. So all this talk of Barcelona’s Denis Suárez and Sevilla’s Éver Banega means loan deals not transfers – if the talk has any basis in fact. And all the other chatter about …
by Andrew Crawshaw Here courtesy of premierleague.com are the matches and officials for this weekend’s games. Please note that kickoffs are at 15:00 unless otherwise stated. Where no Predictions article is listed, it will be added in the course of the next day or so on the Predictions website. Saturday 12 January 12:30 West Ham United …
by Andrew Crawshaw Arsenal Women hosted Birmingham in the quarter-final of the Continental Tyres Cup last night at a very cold Meadow Park. Joe Montemurro rotated his squad to a degree with the Club having three important games in a week. Our starting 11 was Sari van Veenendaal Katie McCabe, Jannni Arnth, Louise Quinn, Dominique …
By Bulldog Drummond Physioroom currently has Arsenal top of the league table for injuries alongside West Ham United, each club on nine injured players. But a closer look at the figures suggests that a fair number of these players should be avaialble for selection for Arsenal in the West Ham game. Indeed while WHAM, as …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Transfer window times are when journalists and bloggers make prats of themselves, regularly touting stories of transfers, and trying to slide out of any responsibility by citing unknown overseas sources as the origin of the story – omitting to say that these self-same sources are often quoting the English newspapers and …
By Tony Attwood Arsenal have moved senior football analyst Ben Knapper over to the new position of Loans Manager. Ben Knapper has been working for Arsenal with Prozone who gather sports data for Arsenal – having joined the club in 2010. It is said that he will work with director of football Raul Sanllehi and …
By Sir Hardly Anyone And those two players are… “£26m star ready to snub Man Utd to join Arsenal after Gunners make contact over deal” That headline is from Football-Talk and it relates to Yannick Carrasco. The other player comes through this headline… “Offer accepted: Player agrees Arsenal transfer after chat with Unai Emery, talks between …
By Tony Attwood One can’t help but smile when one sees headlines such as “Jurgen Klopp facing defensive crisis as Liverpool lose Dejan Lovren to hamstring injury” in the Telegraph, especially if one thinks, “What would they have said about Arsenal? And come to that what they have said about Arsenal – although Liverpool didn’t …
by Andrew Crawshaw Following the Christmas break the Women’s league games restarted on Sunday. We started the WSL matches with a 12:30 kickoff away at West Ham. The match was shown by the BBC on their red button and on-line services in the UK so a decent picture, even if accompanied by annoying commentators. Team …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Now we are all used to wild and weird transfer rumours popping up and turning out to be completely untrue, but then there is something else. For the Daily Excess today published an article on the five players Arsenal are most likely to sign. Nothing odd about that, of course, but …
By Sir Hardly Anyone, our man on the inside. Ever wondered how a club like Arsenal can be so chaotic in its transfer dealings and player management? Or how there are so many football rumours all swirling around at once. Or who creates them? And if it is true that there is one mega empire …
By Tony Attwood An interesting article in the Guardian today about making mistakes, by Daniel Taylor, which contains this line… “The referees you see demonised on social media tend to get a lot more right than wrong,” and of course that is absolutely true. The article goes on to say that with VAR next season …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Once upon a time football rumours, which Untold has followed with a combination of absolute disdain and occasional amusement, were out on their own. Wild and whacky with no sense of Earthly reality, the stories were created by drunken scribblers meandering around the Toppled Bollard public house telling shouting out names …
