When the media comments on a referee BEFORE a match maybe things are changing

By Tony Attwood The Guardian newspaper, in common with other British newspapers, is not known for criticising referees, obeying, as it does, the dictates of PGMO that commentary on referee errors should be kept to a minimum and always considered as individual referee mistakes.   Analyses of how many “errors” referees make, and what types of …

Arsenal v Newcastle Utd: the prediction based on this season’s analyses.

By Tony Attwood This is going to be another match I’ll miss what with being in Australia for a few more days before flying home.  But of course it is still possible to see how our prediction system of analysing the home and away performance of each club comes up with a result.  And it …

How come England are getting better at football all of a sudden

By Tony Attwood In terms of reporting on football, by and large I doubt that anyone has much expectation that we will ever be better informed about what is actually going on than we are now.   Jounalists, bloggers and newspaper editors choose what is and what is not news, and report it in their own …

There is no football news – only a choice of stories. Arry the Red and other affairs.

By Tony Attwood It was on one of my earlier trips to Australia to visit my daughter that I heard the news that Harry Redknapp had been found not guilty in a high profile court case.   Now, with myself being in Oz doing the visiting once again I find Arry is also in the news …

When you deal with countries with different values, you can expect different values.

by Tony Attwood The directors of Dreambox, Dreambox TV Limited, and Digital Switchover Limited, have now been jailed in England for offering illegal access on TV of matches involving Premier League clubs. The League might be feeling a bit jolly about that, but is perhaps less happy knowing that BeoutQ is still broadcasting Premier League …

Why are the scandals involving football so often removed from most of the media?

By Tony Attwood I have written many times before about the child sex abuse scandals in English football, and my dismay at the way that the media has been handling them.    If you want a quick re-run there is an article at https://untold-arsenal.com/archives/61818 – there have been a fair number since. Football doesn’t want …

Arsenal Squad Values – Changes since the start of the season

By Andrew Crawshaw I saw an article this morning referencing the latest CIES Observatory weekly report which according to the headline was listing the most fouled teams in Europe. On checking the source document it was, of course, not actually doing that at all but the difference between the numbers of fouls committed by a …

Computer predicts final league placings, but how good is the computer?

By Tony Attwood When I see the words “super computer” used in a football blog I tend to shy away from the report, simply because I have no idea what “super computer” means in terms of anything, let alone football. I mean, the little laptop I am using to write this while in Australia is about 1000 …

How VAR is used will be the most important matter for the future of VAR

By Walter Broeckx It has been some 11 years ago I started the referee reviews. And in those days I was a lone voice in saying that football needed some system to help the referees in their difficult job. From what I found in my reviews and in the reviews we did with non-Arsenal supporting …

Arsenal and Napoli: it is going to be very close in the Europa League

By Tony Attwood Following Arsenal from the far side of the world (Sydney, Australia to be precise) is something of an odd affair.   The games don’t appear to be shown live (at least not in the bars that I can find) and anyway does one really want to follow football in the middle of the …

Full time Europa League live match report Arsenal – Rennes : 3-0

By Walter Broeckx As we knew no Sokratis of course because of his double yellow card last week. Arsenal playing with 3 at the back. And with Lacazette in the team after we won our appeal against the high punishment of 3 matches. Xhaka is the only player that has to be carefull if we …

Arsenal Women and Junior Teams update

by Andrew Crawshaw Whilst the most that our Men’s team can achieve is third place in the Premier League, our Women and U18s are in with a real shot of winning their leagues, sadly our U23s are not going to retain the title they won last year. Arsenal Women Current League table :- Team P …

The top 6 head to head and the run in to the PL title

by Andrew Crawshaw As you all know our match on Sunday against United was our last this season against the other ‘top six’ clubs.  All of the others have two matches to play against each other. Here is the current mini-league table P W D L +/- Pts Man City 8 6 1 1 12 …

Untold about to get more erratic than usual

By Tony Attwood If you have been with us for a year or more you may recall that each spring I take a break from UK and head to the other side of the world wherein lives one of my daughters.  Depending on all sorts of complexities which I won’t bore you it can be …

The curious issue of what managers say about their players

By Tony Attwood I am about to toddle off to the other side of the world so I may not be able to clear all the comments that come in – more on that in the next post.   But first here is a little thought that popped into my head. Mr Emery is mostly very …

Arsenal continue to confound: it is not Arsenal that is in chaos.

By Tony Attwood “This topsy-turvy season continues to confound,” says the Guardian in an article today in relation to Arsenal.  Which I’d say isnt really totally accurate. For the last couple of years we’ve been focussing on the difference between Arsenal’s home and away form, and for quite a few games making predictions of matches …

Final score and live report Arsenal – Manchester United : 2-0

By Walter Broeckx A few changes compared to the last two matches. Some because of suspension other just an attempt to pick the best team. Arsenal playing with 3 central defenders a tactic that didn’t Always work so far this season. Up front we have the combination of Aubameyang and Lacazette with Özil also starting. …

Arsenal v Manchester United the teams and the home v away form

By Bulldog Drummond I’m having to write this some way in advance of the match, because of my convoluted travel arrangements to the game, but even though there will have been a result on saturday evening after my writing of these notes the general point still applies. While Arsenal and Manchester United remain one point …

Arsenal lose, and thus we are back to the land of abuse.

By Tony Attwood The headlines revealed in the aftermath of the Arsenal defeat in the Europa league tell a story of their own.  They include… Arsenal are out of Europa League because of one player – fan theory Daily Star Arsenal flops abused at airport by their own fans after Rennes defeat Metro.co.uk Ben Arfa: …

And so, the investigation into Manchester City has begun.

By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you might remember that over four years ago we ran the story,   Man City decides to take on Uefa; the result will finally decide who runs football.     We’ve come back to that from time to time until back in November last year we ran …

Arsenal’s form: we’re closer to the top four than you might think

By Tony Attwood There was a general feeling of disappointment following the draw with Tottenham last weekend, obviously so given the nature of the Tottenham goal and the missed penalty at the end. But if we look at Arsenal’s recent record in the league, things are not too bad Date Game Res Score 19 Jan …

Rennes v Arsenal: the predictions

Here’s a quick run down of how Rennes are doing in recent matches Date Competition Home Score Away 14/02/19 Europa Rennes 3 – 3 Real Betis 17/02/19 League Reims 2 – 0 Rennes 21/02/19 Europa Real Betis 1 – 3 Rennes 24/02/19 League Rennes 1 – 1 Olympique Mars… 27/02/19 Cup Rennes 2 – 0 …

Pub talk: Stoke imitate Arsenal, the summer window shuts, Petit lashes out.

By Sir Hardly Anyone As a rule, the football journalist doesn’t do anything which might be considered by the general population to be related to the concept widely known as “thinking” during the hours of daylight. Upon waking he or she will stroll to his or her favourite public house, order up a few short …