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 Bulldog Drummond Now here’s a sentence you don’t see everyday in the Evening Standard. Liverpool, we are told, are Facing an Arsenal side in excellent form, OK pause for a moment to pick yourself up off the floor, before we proceed to notice that the only problem with the little article is that although …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal: the predicted line up and media ramblings”
By Bulldog Drummond It is of course self-evident that a win against Liverpool today would mean far more than three points. For the media’s utter devotion to Liverpool (which we used to symbolise by writing the club’s name always as Liverpool!) is as strong as ever. Explanations and excuses would follow of course, but it …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal: how we have changed in just 12 games!”
By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal enter the game against Liverpool with a significant disadvantage. In fact two significant disadvantages. Which is interesting as the clubs are not that far apart from each other in the way they play. Arsenal make just about one tackle more per game than Liverpool. Given the speed and number of events …
Read More “Arsenal 42% more likely to get yellow card today than Liverpool.”
By Bulldog Drummond The number of Arsenal injuries has increased dramatically, but then so have injuries across the Premier League clubs. And oh, what a coincidence we have just had an international break. Funny ol game. Here’s the list, this time showing not just the club’s position in the injury league but also each club’s …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal – the injury count and how it affects our league position”
By Bulldog Drummond PS – leave the video running onto the next match…. But back to now. OK it is gods against upstarts – but as the video above shows, sometimes the upstarts win. But if you read the papers in England, Liverpool are gods. Although in the real world it is fourth against fifth, …
Read More “Liverpool v Arsenal. Do we stand a chance? Well, we did a while back…”
By Bulldog Drummond It is always amusing to watch football journalists struggle, but struggle is what they are doing at the moment as they try to find ways out of the mess they have created by predicting that Arteta would be out by the end of October, and Arsenal would struggle all season against relegation. …
Read More “With Arsenal rising these are confusing times for journos, but how will it all end”
The biggest scandal to hit the English game is ongoing, and no one will speak The biggest scandal in football: who is checking on how clubs behave? Part two. Two simple factors emerge: Championship clubs are in deep financial trouble, and there is no organisation that is acting as an untainted police force. The …
Read More “The biggest scandal in football: no one is checking what’s going on Part 3”
This continues from The biggest scandal to hit the English game is ongoing, and no one will speak In my earlier piece, I argued that it is possible that there is a scandal in English football – different completely from the sex abuse scandal of recent years, but nevertheless a huge scandal, that no one …
Read More “The biggest scandal in football: who is checking on how clubs behave? Part two.”
by Tony Attwood Imagine this scenario. You have a son or daughter who is clearly very talented as a footballer. A League club takes an interest and enrols the young person in one of their junior teams. Everything goes well, until the youngster gets injured and the feeling of the medics is that because of …
Read More “The biggest scandal to hit the English game is ongoing, and no one will speak”
By Tony Attwood An issue within one club does not mean there is an issue throughout football. An issue within one country does not mean there is an issue in other countries. But… an issue in one club can be a warning sign which other clubs may need to take note of. As the imaginary …
Read More “There are signs that issues surrounding football are getting out of hand”
by Andrew Crawshaw The first thing I want to say is that at least this game will not have match officials from the PGMO. I expect this game to be refereed in a competent fashion without the bizarre decisions we say in the WSL match on Saturday. Here is the current league table in our …
Read More “Arsenal WFC v HB Köge Champions League – Wednesday Match Preview”
By Tony Attwood Arsenal have a first team squad (according to the official Arsenal website) of 27 players. These are players who are clearly part of the elite group at the club – irrespective of their ages (which is why it is possible to have over the regulation 25). Now this squad is not the …
Read More “How big a squad does a club like Arsenal need? And why is Man U so different?”
by Tony Attwood In theory, referees don’t influence matches at all – it is the players’ actions that determine what decisions a referee has to make. But in effect referees do have to decide which tackle is a foul and which foul is worth a yellow card, and this is where big differences can be …
Read More “The phenomenal differences in the way refs treat each of the big six teams”
By Tony Attwood It’s the old media game – if the result goes the way that suits your narrative, you big it up like mad, calling the match the turning point, or the dire warning. Suggesting the club is on its way or that collapse is imminent. Of course the real world isn’t like this …
Read More “How the media missed Arsenal’s big story but now can’t even apologise”
By Sir Hardly Anyone There is an article in the Athletic, (Daily Football Briefing 15 November), that suggests that most people believed that Ole Gunnar Solskjaer would be a success as Manchester United manager, for the simple reason that, as a former player, he understood the tradition of attacking football at the club. It is …
Read More “Do Man U know how to attack? Or is it just journalists making it all up?”
Here’s the worrying figure (so you don’t have to read the whole article to get to the central fact – although it would be nice if you did). Only four Premier League teams require more shots to get a goal than Arsenal: Norwich, Leeds, Southampton and Tottenham. The good news is that if we could …
Read More “The one simple factor that Arsenal need to sort out to be in the top four”
By Tony Attwood One of the most curious factors about football is that it has evolved its own unreal set of causes and effects. Unreal in the sense that the causes do not actually have the effect that is imagined, but despite this, they are regularly touted as the issues that determine how well a …
Read More “Does changing the manager or buying new players really help a Prem Lge club?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Vanishing spray first hit the agenda in Brazil in 2014 when it was used in the world cup. And anyone looking at the story’s history would have noted the reports that the spray had been used in Brazil for quite some time. Fifa took up the notion of the vanishing spray …
Read More “Fifa steals patent and refuses to pay debts! Who would have thought it?”
By Bulldog Drummond I guess most of us thought we would thankfully never have to watch anti-football again once Wimbledon were relegated from the Premiership in 2000. But here it was, in all its horrors. The return of anti-football, and in of all places the Women’s Super League. Those with memories of football in the …
Read More “Behold: Arsenal meet the Wimbledon of the Women’s game in 1-1 draw”
By Tony Attwood I’ve not received a match preview for the north London derby today from Andrew, our usual correspondent, so I am going to try and put something together myself, just in case you have not noticed that the match is on. If Andrew does forward something I’ll get it up straight away …
Read More “It’s Tottenham v Arsenal today – and its live on TV”
By Tony Attwood Let’s ask a simple question. If everything was straight and above board in Qatar, why have secrecy? If there is nothing amiss why not open up every aspect of Qatarian society, and the organisation of the world cup? If everything is running in a way that we would all immediately approve of, …
Read More “Small publication threatened by Qatar World Cup Committee over slavery allegations”
By Tony Attwood I don’t think I have ever seen an analysis of yellow cards year by year, and so I’ve just undertaken one using the Premier League’s own list of who gets carded. Now research students at university are always told not to gather data just to see what it looks like. No, you …
Read More “The yellow card count this season is truly weird. So what’s going on with the refs?”
HB Köge v Arsenal WFC – 2021 Champions League match report By Andrew Crawshaw The one question in my mind leading up to this game was “would Köge start the match in the same manner as they did against Barcelona”?. The answer turned out to be an emphatic no. Against Barcelona they were aggressive and …
Read More “HB Köge v Arsenal WFC – 2021 Champions League match report”
By Tony Attwood The view is growing that clubs throughout the Premier League are uniting in an alliance not to sell players to Newcastle United, as a protest against the takeover of the regime so awful even football supporters can’t find it in themselves to say a good word about it. This policy has been …
Read More “Anyone but Newcastle: how the league is seeking to control the lunacy it has created”
By Tony Attwood A tackle from a Manchester City player is 83% more likely to get called as a yellow card offence than a tackle by a Chelsea player. While most of us will, I suspect, be quite happy with the way things are going for Arsenal, and certainly relieved that the maniac journalists and …
Read More “Tackles, fouls and yellows: why are Man City and Arsenal being punished so much?”
