By Bulldog Drummond Previously… Arsenal v Palace: What’s happened to Patrick Vieira as manager Arsenal injuries, the home/away portents and past matches with Crystal Palace. How can some clubs commit fouls with impunity while others get card after card? Of course, all the negative coverage about Arsenal is continuing in the face of Patrick Vieira’s …
Read More “Arsenal v Palace. Patrick’s arrival reminds us how we have fallen (according to some)”
By Bulldog Drummond As you know, of course, Patrick Vieira (oh oh) returns to Arsenal on Monday. Patrick retired as a player in the summer of 2011, and went to work with the youth development team at Manchester City with the grand title “Football Development Executive” working alongside another ex-Arsenal man, Brian Marwood. He graduated …
Read More “Arsenal v Palace: What’s happened to Patrick Vieira as manager”
by Bulldog Drummond The injury table retains its somewhat unusual look with Arsenal retaining their place either at the top or the bottom, depending on your point of view and which way you are holding up your computer. Curiously, Crystal Palace are right next to us. Indeed being in the south of the country is …
Read More “Arsenal injuries, the home/away portents and past matches with Crystal Palace.”
by Tony Attwood In case you like statistics, here are a few that have never been published here nor anywhere else before – at least as far as I know. These figures look at tackles, fouls and yellow cards and show that we are keeping our numbers considerably below the clubs that go overboard on …
Read More “How can some clubs commit fouls with impunity while others get card after card?”
By Tony Attwood While the media is of course mentioning the return of Patrick Vieira to Arsenal in his new role as manager, few if any have yet started to comment upon how Patrick’s team is behaving on the pitch in comparison with how Vieira himself was seen as a player. Patrick got 76 yellows …
Read More “These days Arsenal players are taught not to tackle. Maybe they shouldn’t talk either.”
by Tony Attwood There is an article in Le Matin, (the Swiss newspaper that is, not the long-defunct French publication), which looks at some of the developments being suggested for football, such as the automatic detection of offside using technology rather than assistant referees. The writer of the piece notes that Julian Nagelsmann, the “progressive …
Read More “Why rule changes happen – but we never get the one rule change we need”
By Tony Attwood If you ever wanted to undermine a football club the way to do it would be to set up what appears to be a serious news service about the club and then pour forth negative stories all based on the same concept of incompetence spiced with a few quotes from people who …
Read More “Revealed: how the media campaigns constantly to stop Arsenal signing players”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Mikel Arteta insists Arsenal are in a “good place” – but he may have overlooked problems “…more injuries could rock the boat and Granit Xhaka’s knee injury – expected to keep him out for the rest of the calendar year – is a warning for Arteta.” That is the opening of …
Read More “Has Aretea really overlooked a key problem at Arsenal?”
By Tony Attwood There is an article in the Guardian “VAR still a work in progress so expect more controversy and occasional fury” by Barry Glendenning which (obviously) takes a look at the issue of VAR this season. In the midst of this article, the author turns to criticising commentator Richard Keys, and in so …
Read More “Behold: the first admission in the national media that there is a referee problem”
By Bulldog Drummond The headline in the Daily Mail expresses the media’s attitude: “Time to ban Hungary thugs”. Their article opens, “The Football Association vowed to launch an investigation and file a report to FIFA after racism from Hungary fans marred yet another World Cup qualifier with England and they were also involved in violent …
Read More “Why does the media always excuse the FA when there is chaos at a match?”
By Tony Attwood The thesis that underpins this website is simple: there are many football stories of interest that newspapers and broadcasters will not touch. Plus many more that might be mentioned briefly but never in depth. And because these stories vanish from the media, are trivialised or indeed never appear at all, they don’t …
Read More “The hidden problem within football is that problems remain hidden”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Arsenal’s summer transfer window was an utter disaster… for the pundits. With 136 players highlighted as being ready to be signed by the club, only a handful made it. Meanwhile with every single player in the first team squad headlined as being in line for a transfer or simply a give-away, …
Read More “Arsenal’s key transfer targets for January 2022 revealed – and you won’t believe it!”
By Tony Attwood Apologies for the delay in publishing this article. This was due to a technological failure requiring immediate action on my part. Or put it another way, my glasses broke and I had to go to the opticians to get them repaired. But now on with the show… In Britain today a seemingly …
Read More “Why do many believe that vaccination can harm, while few believe that refs are biased?”
By Tony Attwood The general consensus is simple: Newcastle United is now the the richest football club in the world, Of course it is not their own money earned by having a big stadium packed with fans (as per Arsenal’s 1930s model) or a world-wide marketing system (Manchester United’s approach in the 1960s). No instead …
Read More “Why the world’s media is alarmed at what the Premier League is now allowing”
By Tony Attwood There are a number of issues floating around the issue of Newcastle’s purchase by Saudi Arabian forces. Some affect football as a whole, as we have seen, another is that there is opposition to the move within English football, and the other is that the financial structure of English football is out …
Read More “Could it be that Newcastle’s success isn’t quite as guaranteed as some imagine?”
By Tony Attwood There is an article on the Premier League website under the headline “Find out how the awards for players, manager and goal of the month and season are decided.” However you might not want to spend too much time there as there is no clue as to how the debates go, only …
Read More “Mikel Arteta is a worthy manager of the month, but the media can’t say why”
In July 2017 Stan Kroenke announced that he was bringing his bloodsports TV channel “My outdoor TV” to England. We covered the issue in a number of articles on Untold at the time. Untold didn’t get nearly as upset as some people did in relation to the issue, but we did say that we would …
Read More “Compare: Kroenke blood sports TV channel and Mohammed Bin Salman on human rights”
By Tony Attwood So now we have another club with access to more money than is imaginable, while we have a controlling body in terms of Fifa, meandering around attempting to fine Arsenal £34,000 because of what it felt was a misuse of sell-on clauses in contracts. But there is a wider problem here. In …
Read More “Football is absolutely not sustainable like this: here are the six crash points.”
By Tony Attwood Obviously Newcastle United are not the first club to have been bought either by a state, or by a person with access to the massive funds of a state. Although it is probably the first club to be bought and then generate the lines in a national newspaper: Infuriating tracksuit vendor v …
Read More “What does the purchase of Newcastle by Saudi Arabia mean for Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood We’ve discussed Saudi Arabia before. And there is now a certain irony that of all clubs being taken over by Saudi Arabia the one selected is the one most closely associated with beer. It’s illegal in Saudi Arabia. But maybe if this rule is applied to Newcastle United once the Saudi takeover …
Read More “Suddenly Saudi Arabia is being allowed into Newcastle”
By Tony Attwood This article continues from “Why do we keep pointing out errors in what the media says” ——————- Here is an interesting thought, published in the Guardian in an article headlined, “Are Burnley a rough team? Their red card record suggests not.” The piece makes the point that their last red card was …
Read More “How gaslighting excuses Burnley’s tactics, and knocks Arsenal’s reputation”
By Tony Attwood In the last article Have Uefa and CAS finally had enough of club trickery in avoiding FFP? I reported on the way that Uefa and the Court of Arbitration in Sport seem to have had enough of the way Manchester City are using the rules in order to escape punishment in the …
Read More “Here’s a turn up: CAS are supporting Arsenal against Fifa”
By Tony Attwood This article answers the question raised in the July 2020 article “What will Uefa and the clubs that obey FFP do now that FFP has been wrecked?” In recent months and indeed years both Uefa and the Premier League have required that Manchester City hand over documents and give information that is …
Read More “Have Uefa and CAS finally had enough of club trickery in avoiding FFP?”
by Tony Attwood “Scoop” recently wrote a comment on this blog relating to our regular pieces on what some of us consider to be wholly misleading articles in the media about football. Scoop expressed the opinion, which is often heard here, that “calling it out here is not going to change anything at all, and …
Read More “Why do we keep pointing out the errors of what media says when everyone knows?”
by Andrew Crawshaw The matches within the four groups that form the last 16 of the Women’s Champions League commence this week The clubs involved are:- Group A Group B Group C Group D Chelsea Breidablik Kopavogur Arsenal Bayern Munich Juventus PSG FC Barselona BK Häcken FF Servette FC Chēnois Real Madrid HB Køge Olympic …
Read More “TONIGHT: Arsenal Women in the Champions League. Group Stage preview”
