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 Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you’ll know that we have become quite interested in the level of fouling that different clubs engage in – and the way it is treated by referees. Thus we have been analysing not just the number of fouls that clubs commit but how many fouls a …
Read More “How Chelsea were brought back to the average by European refereeing.”
by Andrew Crawshaw The FA had a problem with last season’s Women’s FA Cup. The pandemic caused a cessation of all non-elite level sport at a time when the early rounds featuring non-elite teams would have been taking part. Like the men’s FA Cup the competition is open to all clubs affiliated to the FA …
Read More “Women’s FA Cup 2020/21 Quarter final Arsenal v Spurs”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It seems like several hundred years ago that some fans gathered outside the Emirates to protest at the ownership of Arsenal, with multiple calls for the Kroenke family to remove themselves from the club forthwith. That protest movement, fully supported and to a degree orchestrated by AFTV seemed to be very …
Read More “What difference would it make if Daniel Ek and Thierry Henry took over Arsenal?”
by Tony Attwood I’ve spent a little while wondering how to write a review of “Over Land and Sea and Lockdown” by Darren Berry. And in wondering and pondering, the fact that there are two utterly different ways of looking at football sloshed me in the face like a wet kipper on a cold night …
Read More “Over Land and Sea & Lockdown: Arsenal 2020/21. Book Review”
By Tony Attwood As we know, the media find it impossible to admit that Arsenal are doing well. They couldn’t take the notion that we were the second best club in the last two thirds of last season, nor that we doing rather well in recent matches played Nor can they take it that Tottenham …
Read More “Why can’t the media admit Arsenal were wonderful on Sunday?”
by Tony Attwood The battle over Super League rumbles on, with the six English clubs that were part of the scheme, still having failed to remove themselves from the organisation set up to run it. Meanwhile a legal case continues ducking and weaving its way around various European courts – claiming that Uefa is a …
By Tony Attwood There is a little article in the Guardian today. It is by Daniel Harris. He has apparently written two books, On The Road, a journey through a season (currently unavailable through Amazon – although that doesn’t say much as most of my books are the same) and one on cricket. And he …
Read More “Knock, knock. How a newspaper publishes two anti-Arsenal pieces in one day”
It must be great being a technical director. You join a club, they give you a mobile phone and a budget of millions, then say go forth and multiply our playing squad. Of course, the role itself is a little bit more complicated than that, simply because the business of buying and selling players …
By Tony Attwood A couple of years back we ran the article d “How a club can commit the most fouls, but get the fewest yellow cards?” and it started a series of investigations into tackles, fouls, and yellow cards in the PL. We continued this last season and our summary of all of last season’s …
Read More “WHU don’t get yellow cards like Arsenal; but how are they getting away with it?”
By Tony Attwood Across the last 10 games played Arsenal are second in the league Pos Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Liverpool 10 8 2 0 26 7 19 26 2 Arsenal 10 7 0 3 14 13 1 21 3 Manchester City 10 6 1 3 24 9 15 …
Read More “Across the last ten league games, Arsenal are second best in the Premier League”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal have not been beaten by Tottenham in any of the last 28 games against them at Arsenal stadium – 11 of the games have been draws and the remaining 16 we’ve won. But we have not had consecutive wins since 2014. However we usually score – in fact we have scored …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham the team and some of the more interesting records”
By Bulldog Drummond Yesterday we did some of the heavy statistics comparing Arsenal and Tottenham. So let’s go to the other extreme and look at the sort of story that can emerge when one just says things because, that’s just about all one can do. For this approach of course it is always a good …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: looking at the history of Tottenham’s trophies”
By Bulldog Drummond Last season we analysed how referees treated Arsenal and found that PGMO tended to give Arsenal more matches with referees who consistently penalised the club with yellow and red cards, and fewer matches with referees who bucked that trend. We also began to analyse the links between tackles, fouls and yellow cards, …
Read More “Tottenham and Arsenal: do the refs treat us equally?”
By Bulldog Drummond We might still be languishing more than half way down the Premier League table six places below Tottenham Hotspur having had the worst start in Arsenal’s history since the birth of the Messiah… Team P W D L F A GD Pts 7 Tottenham Hotspur 5 3 0 2 3 6 -3 …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: what stats could make people think Arteta is a bad manager?”
By Bulldog Drummond I normally run the league table of injured players from the most injured to the least but let’s for once try this the other way around and look at the clubs most able to keep their players fit… West Ham United: 1 Arsenal: 2 Chelsea: 2 Leicester City: 2 Crystal Palace: 3 …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: the injuries and 10 years results under 3 different managers”
By Tony Attwood The argument is being made in some quarters that with its debts out of control football is at last trying to start controlling its finances. This means there is a move toward reducing its insane spending and costs instead of believing that it is always possible to screw more money out of …
Read More “Football’s new world order – not spending everything you don’t have”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Now consider the case of Mikel Arteta. And yes I know that picture on the left is not Mike Arteta but is in fact Garth Crooks, but I will come to that in a moment. For either Mikel Arteta is utterly out of his depth (as Garth Crooks says – see …
Read More “Arteta: out of his depth or radical and revolutionary tactician?”
by Tony Attwood The roar that greeted the arrival on the pitch of Bukayo Saka said it all – many of the fans who were at the game last night had probably never seen him in the flesh before, and he didn’t disappoint them, with a peerless display. The same crowd didn’t give quite such …
Read More “Arsenal beat Wimbledon in style, and finally the club sort out security”
By Bulldog Drummond If ever there was a cop out on teams it is the Express today which runs an article “Arsenal vs AFC Wimbledon: Prediction, kick off time, TV, live stream, team news,” and its entire team news is “With no Europa League this season, this competition may provide Mikel Arteta with a rare …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon: the proposed team and the issue of Xhaka”
by Tony Attwood This is obviously an Arsenal site, but if you are a Wimbledon fan and have got here deliberately or by mistake, please stay for a moment because there are security issues going on at Arsenal which affect all fans. If you are a regular reader you will know that I have been …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon – special security issues and the inclusion of a surprise player?”
by Bulldog Drummond One of the interesting things to notice about AFC Wimbledon is that while they have not been much of an away team in recent years, this season, so far, they have reversed that trend. Here is the league one table taking only away games into account. Pos Team P W D L …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon home and away, the injured, statistics, and Lge Cup history”
By Tony Attwood As you may know, I have occasionally been a little critical of Arsenal’s administration in terms of the way in which admission to the ground is being handled. I have suggested that perhaps some of the people in charge of such matters are possibly not up to the job, and also that …
Read More “Arsenal now tell fans to arrive at the ground BEFORE the stadium opens!!!!”
By Bulldog Drummond OK, let’s get the technical bit sorted. We are playing AFC Wimbledon, which is the reincarnation of Wimbledon FC who played at Plough Lane (into which I think Wimbledon have just moved or have partially moved are about to move), not the old Wimbledon who upped sticks and moved to Milton Keynes …
Read More “Arsenal v Wimbledon for the first time since the split”
By Tony Attwood The point that we have been putting forward for a couple of seasons now is that the way clubs are treated by referees differs considerably. Our explanation for this is not that there is wholesale corruption going on, although we can’t rule this out, but rather there is a bias in the …
Read More “Chelsea are tackling with near impunity: the tackles / fouls / cards table.”
By Tony Attwood There is a story being propagated at the moment that Arsenal are willing to sell Bukayo Saka for just €50m. Following this comes the usual shock horror stories about incompetent Arsenal, and how the current employees and the board members are not fit to run a drinking session in a location that makes …
Read More “Arsenal contract error means Saka can walk for just €50m. Or maybe not…”
