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
Which club got the most home bias this past season? By Tony Attwood Although you might well know this off by heart, for ease of reference here is the way the Premier League finished in 2021/22 Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Manchester City 38 29 6 3 99 26 73 …
Read More “Arsenal on track for third next season by scoring just seven more goals”
By Tony Attwood 85 players tipped to join Arsenal; 30 players leaving this summer according to pundits You will undoubtedly recall that the Heysel Stadium Disaster in 1985 involved Liverpool fans at a match in Europe, and what happened subsequently was to a degree a result of how the terrible events of that evening played …
Read More “The Liverpool ticket affair: the warnings before and Europe’s reaction after”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Two interesting headlines stand this week. First, we are told (and note this was published today, 2 June) “Arsenal should look to make a sensational Premier League transfer next season if Mikel Arteta’s side qualify for the Champions League. Mohammed Salah’s surprising desires should have put the Gunners on red alert.” …
Read More “85 players tipped to join Arsenal; 30 players leaving this summer according to pundits”
by Tony Attwood I have just received the notice reprinted below, telling me it is time to renew my season ticket. And as a season ticket holder keen to ensure that my season ticket does not lapse I interrupted my daily work of writing advertisements, and followed the link outlined in the message. To save …
Read More “Can you renew your Arsenal season ticket? (Because I can’t)”
By Tony Attwood As we have shown, the majority (but not all) of referees covering Premier League matches show a home bias. The reason for this, as described in full here and is proven by detailed independent academic research. The cause is quite clearly shown to be the influence of the crowd on the referee …
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By Tony Attwood One of the great benefits that the French football authorities have in putting forward their notion that 70% of the tickets presented at the Champions League final was fake, is the awareness that English journalists are well, to put it bluntly, not very clever and mostly mathematically illiterate. If 70 percent of …
Read More “How the French could have stopped the problem in Paris”
By Tony Attwood OK I have already written one article about football and the media today, and this is another. And I am running it because this one is about a rarity indeed. Normally, the media generally don’t attack any other aspect of the media, because to do so opens up a debate that they …
Read More “An amazing day: newspaper journalist launches attack on media football coverage”
Does the media really have an effect on Arsenal results? By Tony Attwood There is a very interesting little snippet on the Mirror website “Arsenal should learn from their mistakes and allow Mikel Arteta to make summer signing” which proclaims, “Mikel Arteta must push Arsenal to sign Houssem Aouar after failing to land their midfield …
By Tony Attwood There is an article by Keith Hackett in the Telegraph today that opens, “I do not think I am alone in expressing happiness that Sunday saw Jonathan Moss’s last game as a referee. It is not before time.” With that I would agree. And indeed with the follow-up statement that “I now …
Read More “One English newspaper is openly critical of PL referees, and it offers a dire warning”
By Tony Attwood When football authorities order the media to delete the video, we really have problems One of my main complaints about the English media’s coverage of football is that it is not only anglophile, but also highly selective, ignoring the notion that there is a different focus elsewhere both on what issues are …
Read More “In football the view from Europe is quite different from the view from England”
By Tony Attwood Does the media really have an effect on Arsenal results The headline this morning on the Liverpool.com website reads Liverpool still have three trophies to parade as serious Real Madrid question is for another day Which may come as a little bit of a surprise. We know that for the fifth time …
Read More “When football authorities order the media to delete the video, we really have problems”
Does the media really have an effect on Arsenal results Marquinhos to Arsenal. Is it really true that Arsenal could face a transfer ban? By Sir Hardly Anyone. One of the things we have shown many times over the years is that there is often no direct link between the amount of money spent by …
Read More “What impact did big spending have on results this past season?”
By Tony Attwood My own view, based on two strands of clear evidence and then extrapolating the likely effect it that yes, the media does have an effect on Arsenal’s results. I’ll try and explain how. First, we know that different referees have different levels of bias toward the home teams and against away teams. …
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By Tony Attwood 81 players arriving, 27 leaving: the media’s wild take on Arsenal’s transfers this summer Out of contract players: are Arsenal just being sloppy in retaining players? UK government increases its active involvement in football, but is that good? In one sense the tale of Arsenal facing a transfer ban is of course …
Read More “Marquinhos to Arsenal. Is it really true that Arsenal could face a transfer ban?”
Out of contract players: are Arsenal just being sloppy in retaining players? By Sir Hardly Anyone The case of Adam Hlozek shows us exactly how the media work these days. Before the last couple of days, there has been no mention anywhere of the forward wanting to come to Arsenal, or of Arsenal being interested …
By Sir Hardly Anyone UK government increases its active involvement in football, but is that good? Saka and the world cup: a worrying scenario In the media, there is always a lot of debate about how Arsenal regularly lets players’ contracts run down, and how stupid this is. (And it is interesting that it is …
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By Tony Attwood According to an article in the Guardian, the UK government did indeed encourage Premier League to approve Newcastle even though the Prime Minister has said repeatedly that the government had no role in the affair at any point. Presumably, this was done to increase investment in the UK and to smooth the …
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A ten point penalty for each club whose fans invade the pitch? Arsenal Women 2021/22 Review Part 4: Player of the Season and where do we go from here In the Premier League 2021/2, 50% of refs showed signs of persistent bias By Sir Hardly Anyone A report in the Telegraph newspaper tells us that …
By Sir Hardly Anyone https://youtu.be/WN3KkC5E2nY For many years employers (including of course football clubs) have been responsible for ensuring the health and safety of players at work (ie for football that means in training and in playing in matches). Health and safety is widely accepted as meaning being free from threats of abuse as well …
Read More “A ten point penalty for each club whose fans invade the pitch?”
Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season review – Part 1 Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season Review: Part 2 WSL Match by Match highs and lows Arsenal Women 2021/2 Review, Part 3 – 21 Players to keep; 9 players to let go by Andrew Crawshaw In my Player reviews, I identified four contenders for Player of the Season, Leah …
Read More “Arsenal Women 2021/22 Review Part 4: Player of the Season and where do we go from here”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Mike Dean, Jonathan Moss and Martin Atkinson all retire after the last round of games in the Premier League this season. But are they biased referees, or the ones who can ignore the crowd and referee the game without crowd interference? That has become the prime question but not a new …
Read More “In the Premier League 2021/2, 50% of refs showed signs of persistent bias”
By Tony Attwood Of course most of the time – indeed we might say almost all of the time – most football fans in England don’t spare a moment to think about how the rest of the world sees us. We are told by our own media that the Premier League is the best in …
Read More “What does Europe think of the Premier League? Less and less it seems”
by Andrew Crawshaw Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season review – Part 1 Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season Review: Part 2 WSL Match by Match highs and lows No Plays Comments Apps Goals All games Keep or Pass 1 GK Manuella Zinsberger Undisputed No 1 goalkeeper, has performed excellently 13 clean sheets in the WSL 33 K 18 …
Read More “Arsenal Women 2021/2 Review, Part 3 – 21 Players to keep; 9 players to let go”
By Sir Hardly Anyone and a slide rule Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season Review: Part 2 WSL Match by Match highs and lows The ten things we really learned from the 2021/2 season When people talk about teams making progress they tend to talk in generalisations without giving any statistics to justify what are often preposterous …
Read More “So did Arsenal make progress this season? And what of the rest.”
Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season review – Part 1 by Andrew Crawshaw In this article, I have used red to show the matches I consider to be season highlights and blue for the lows. Our League Season started with a daunting series of games with home ties against Chelsea and Manchester City in the first three …
Read More “Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season Review: Part 2 WSL Match by Match highs and lows”
