Untold Arsenal: Supporting the club, the manager and the team
"I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art." A Wenger
By David Clarke Arsenal are in turmoil following captain Granit Xhaka’s confrontation with fans at the Emirates Stadium following a below-par performance against another London side in Crystal Palace. The Gunners were tipped by most football experts to collect three points at home to The Eagles, but they made heavy weather of what should have …
Read More “Who can replace Xhaka as Arsenal captain if needed?”
By Tony Attwood The penalty shoot out could have gone either way – as is so often the case. But Arsenal lost and that is enough for the negativists who now effectively run Arsenal’s future. Arsenal for Life blog summed up the situation with the headline “Arsenal collapse once again in Unai Emery’s last game”, …
Read More “With the attacks on Arsenal rising by the hour the future of the club looks grim”
By Tony Attwood We saw it of course last weekend for the match against Crystal Palace. The crowd were moaning about the way a two goal lead was thrown away, and about the lunatic situation over VAR, in which we were unable to see anything on the screen, save that the referee and his PGMO …
Read More “When the Arsenal crowd fights the Arsenal players, Arsenal never wins”
By Bulldog Drummond It is quite possible that Arsenal will put out something of a reserve and under 23 side while Liverpool! using very few under 23 players. This will be because having been banned from signing new junior players because of their behaviour towards a young player and his family not surprisingly they have …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal league cup, the past and the team”
By Tony Attwood What role does the media, from TV soap operas like Match of the Day and Gillette Soccer Saturday, to the tiniest bloggetta, play in how we understand football? None whatsoever, according to the media operators who endlessly pedal the myth that they just report the news, they don’t create it. But their …
Read More “The myth of media neutrality over Xhaka and match fixing can’t be maintained”
By Tony Attwood At the weekend I mentioned the failure of the UK media to report Uefa’s admission that match fixing has now reached such a high level that they can’t cope any more and want outside agencies to tender for the chance to study match fixing and report it back to Uefa. This is, …
Read More “Why is the UK media utterly ignoring Uefa’s declaration on match fixing?”
Does this page look different from usual? If so, try loading via Firefox, Google, Bing or any other alternative. We know very occasionally a variant front page occurs, but can’t find the cause. However changing your route in, normally resolves the issue. Apologies for the inconvenience. By Tony Attwood If you were not at …
Read More “From ground access to VAR and the booing of Xhaka, it is total chaos at Arsenal”
By Bulldog Drummond If you missed it please do consider having a look at our last article: Exclusive: Uefa admit match fixing is now too big for them to fight it. There is the old tale that the prime sign of madness is doing something that fails and then doing it again, and again, and …
Read More “Arsenal v Palace. Injury news, possible line ups, goal scoring data”
By Tony Attwood, (and I rather think this might be an exclusive in the UK – although not in Europe where match fixing is something to be investigated not hidden). We don’t use the word “exclusive” much here. Indeed the biggest exclusive that we have run – the story that the US police were within …
Read More “Exclusive: Uefa admit match fixing is now too big for them to fight it.”
By Bulldog Drummond It is possible that you may remember from first hand experience the arrival of Robert Pires at Arsenal. You may remember like me the glorious moments of his career, and perhaps the hattrick he scored that started the run of 49 games unbeaten. But what about Pires at the start of his …
Read More “Arsenal v Crystal Palace: the edge is clearly with us”
By Tony Attwood At the start of his second season Wenger bought Overmars. Emery at the same moment in his Arsenal career bought Pepe. By the end of the season people were nodding very knowingly about Overmars who by the last game had got 12 valuable goals. But here’s the thing: Overmars was a fixture …
by Bulldog Drummond “Why is Arsenal’s match against Vitoria being played on a Wednesday?” screams the Sun, which is rather alarming if one believes they are talking about the match at Arsenal stadium this evening. But in fact they were not but rather about a debate concerning when the second match against Vitoria will be …
Read More “Arsenal v Vitoria. Not much can go wrong, can it?”
By Bulldog Drummond Vitória Sport Clube also known as Vitória de Guimarães, play in the Portuguese first division, but are outside the traditional top teams from that league: Benfica, Porto and Sporting. Indeed since the Primeira Liga was created in Portugal in 1999/2000 only these three teams have won the league, and Sporting have only …
Read More “Arsenal v Vitória de Guimarães: how the visitors are doing this season”
by Tony Attwood If you want a single word to summarise Joe Montemurro then “impressive” is probably the word that would spring first to mind. If you want two words then they would probably be “bloody impressive.” One could go further but then the words become a trifle more risqué in expressing their appreciation. For example, …
Read More “An interview with Joe Montemurro, manager of the Arsenal Women’s team”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The fact that Arsenal are fifth in the league and not challenging for the title raises many questions, most notably concerning the abilities of the manager and his future with hundreds of commentators calling for him to resign or be sacked. Among the headlines yesterday we have had in the last …
Read More “If Emery goes will Arsenal really suddenly get much, much better?”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road and head of the “What Lies Behind” unit. “Wilfried Zaha delivers warning to Arsenal fans about Nicolas Pepe’s £72m transfer,” shouts a story on Football.London, the eccentric website owned by the Daily Mirror. So we ask, what’s …
Read More “What’s behind Zaha’s warning about Pepe’s transfer to Arsenal?”
By Tony Attwood We live in a world in which we are encouraged to think that to all complex problems there is a simple solution. If the team is not performing well, get rid of the manager, the new man will surely do better. And who knows, maybe if we go on getting managers and …
Read More “The figures show exactly the sort of manager Arsenal need at this time.”
by Bulldog Drummond Last season Sheffield United had these home defeats in the league Date Game Res Scored Competition 04 Aug 2018 Sheffield United v Swansea City L 1-2 Championship 01 Dec 2018 Sheffield United v Leeds United L 0-1 Championship 14 Dec 2018 Sheffield United v WBA L 1-2 Championship 30 Mar 2019 Sheffield …
Read More “Arsenal injuries ahead of Sheffield Utd away and various possible line ups”
By Dr Billy “the dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the “What Lies Behind Department of the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. There was a hilarious piece in the Mirror recently under the title “Arsenal need to be careful with Pierre Emerick Aubameygang – trouble could be brewing.” So we wondered, what could …
Read More “What’s behind the story that Aubameyang is going to Liverpool?”
By Bulldog Drummond It is interesting to note that while Arsenal play in five competitions at the moment (League, League Cup, FA Cup, Europa League and Football League Trophy), Sheffield United along with other teams in a similar position only have three: the League, FA Cup and League Cup thus putting less strain on their …
Read More “Sheffield United v Arsenal: how United have been doing this season”
by Bulldog Drummond The last time we had a regular series of league matches against Sheffield United was in the early 1990s, but then the club dropped ouf of the top league in 1994. However during that era although they didn’t manage to beat us they did manage a series of 1-1 draws. Eventually …
Read More “Sheffield Utd v Arsenal, remembering the kiddies getting 6, and other big scores”
By Tony Attwood One of the central themes that Untold has worked on in the past 11 years is that of having evidence of a statistical nature upon which analyses can be built. Sometimes the amount of evidence is not that great of course, but generally speaking there is evidence of some sort available. Sometimes …
Read More “How clubs are performing, against how they might be expected to perform”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Would you like to be a football journalist who is paid money for writing the same thing over and over and over and … well, you get the idea. Then yes it can be done with the British media. What you do is take any incident in European football, and “call …
Read More “Calling on Uefa to act is a political ploy which gets a headline but no action”
by Tony Attwood Imagine that Arsenal had played eight games this season and won them all 4-3, the club would be second in the league but would have the worst defence in the league. The headlines would be “The statistic all Arsenal fans should be worried about this season.” Here’s another one. Imagine was had …
Read More “We’ve always asked for more stats and fewer opinions… but not like this”
Dear Loyal and Hardcore Regular Untolders , I think that a fellow regular Untold Arsenal poster, Les Williams, and myself may have inadvertently stumbled upon a million pound idea, which may not only enrich our UE coffers, but may also bring much joy, happiness and possibly solace to our regulars, and the Arsenal fandom at …
Read More “A radical solution to the problem of football journalists”
