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 It struck me, while we were having our bit of fun concerning how often people call a team’s squad “bloated”, that I had never seen a comparison chart of the number of players that there are in each squad. Indeed even the full official list published by the Premier League doesn’t actually …
Read More “Bloated or shrunken? How many of the top six clubs have used all 25 places??”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It is being suggested that Arsenal are going to sign Manor Solomon from Shakhtar Donetsk this month. That story comes from HITC who say, “According to The Guardian, the Israel winger is on the Gunners’ shortlist of targets – something that his agent hardly denied by revealing ‘anything can happen’ a little …
Read More “Signing Manor Solomon; how the post-Brexit rules on transfers are working”
By Tony Attwood If you have been reading Untold for a while you will know that when the alliance of media journalists, bloggers and some fans turned against Arsene Wenger I argued that he should stay. The point was that journalists and bloggers love very simple “solutions” because they require no work on the part …
Read More “Then and now: just how far have Arsenal fallen in the past 10 years?”
By Bulldog Drummond We have already seen the Guardian suggesting that Partey and Gabriel will play a part in tonight’s game Sportsmole give us Leno; Bellerin, Holding, Mari, Tierney; Ceballos, Xhaka; Saka, Smith Rowe, Aubameyang; Lacazette which looks to me very much like a team that ought to beat Palace. Sky Sports won’t predict a …
It’s been a painful season for Gunners fans around the globe, but the start of 2021 has seen a revival in form and the team’s potential is beginning to show. The side are still as temperamental as ever though, and it’s tricky to guess which Arsenal will turn up on any given match day. …
by Bulldog Drummond The BBC is giving a prediction of a modest 2-0 win to Arsenal for this game, but they do also note that Lacazette could score for the fourth game in a row, which would indeed be rather jolly. But they do also note that in all the meetings between the two clubs …
Read More “Arsenal v Palace. Partey and Gabriel return for re-ignited Gunners”
by Bulldog Drummond The injury list as published yesterday showed Arsenal in the lower reaches and Palace right up near the top with their old chums Brighton and Hove. Brighton and Hove Albion: 9 Crystal Palace: 8 Southampton: 8 Leeds United: 6 Liverpool: 6 Manchester City: 6 Newcastle United: 6 Sheffield United: 6 Wolverhampton Wanderers: …
Read More “Unbloated Arsenal v Palace: injuries, predictions and games against the Palacials.”
By Tony Attwood It started with an article that turned up in The Athletic who asked “what is the latest news on Arsenal’s attempts to trim their bloated squad?” Then it spread like a virus to France with an article in France24 “Arteta says ‘priority’ in transfer window is to trim bloated squad”. Browsing I found …
Read More “Surely it is the journalists who are bloated not the Arsenal squad”
By Tony Attwood Crystal Palace have been in the Premier League for the past seven years – this being their eighth consecutive season in the competition. Which is quite an amazing improvement because for each of the previous three times they have been promoted into the top league, Palace have immediately gone straight back down. …
Read More “Arsenal v Palace facts and figures: two clubs totally balanced”
By Tony Attwood Slowly, very slowly, there are a few people in the media who are starting to consider the wider issue of the Kroenkes influence on Arsenal in recent years. The issue that is slowly, very slowly, being raised is, is the downturn in Arsenal’s fortunes of late due to poor management by Wenger, …
Read More “How Arsenal got into this mess, and the one thing they must now do.”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It has been widely reported that Rob Holding has signed a new long-term contract, which is really not surprising given that a) he is a regular in the team and b) he is a home grown player. For as we know while we have too many foreigners in the squad, we …
Read More “Arsenal to sell Willock or Nelson to buy Buendia, despite having no space for foreigners”
by Tony Attwood It’s taken a while, but now we have the headline ‘Arsenal should get Wenger back, he’d help land top targets’ That comes from Goal, but of course there is no chance of that happening – but nice to know that after all this time at least one of Mr Wenger’s merits has …
Read More “32 transfers so far in the window, but there will be more…”
By Tony Attwood On 5 October 2020, Arsenal announced that Matteo Guendouzi would be loaned out to Hertha BSC for the rest of the season, something I found incredibly disappointing. And the fact that the valuation of Guendouzi has now shot up to £29m shows that the valuation many of us had of the player …
Read More “Guendouzi is the perfect answer to thick and fast”
By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader you will know that whereas when crowds were present, the home teams in the Premier League were likely to win games more often than the away team. Since games have been played without crowds present the reverse has been true. The explanation for this (as I’ve …
By Tony Attwood OK it is true we haven’t just beaten Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham, and Manchester City. But we have just won four in a row, which considering that in November and December we went eight domestic games without a win is something of an improvement. Plus we also knocked in a couple of …
Read More “Does any other club get coverage this negative after four wins in a row?”
Leno, Cedric Soares, Luiz, Mari, Tierney, Elneny, Willock, Pepe, Willian, Martinelli, Aubameyang. And the subs are: Runarsson, Chambers, Maitland-Niles, Xhaka, Saka, Nelson, Smith Rowe, Nketiah, Lacazette. Which I guess means that if we are 4-0 up at half time we can then change the squad around a bit. But the great news is that …
Read More “Arsenal team v Newcastle in the FA Cup (and their team too)”
By Bulldog Drummond Years ago we had a bash at trying to raise support for having live football on TV on a saturday afternoon, on the grounds that Arsenal’s matches were always sold out, so why not let those who can’t go to the game watch it live? Nothing came of it of course, but …
Read More “Live football on TV on a saturday afternoon – and Arsenal’s team this afternoon”
By Bulldog Drummond So we have just won three league games in a row and Newcastle have just drawn one and lost two in the league (see the last article for more details: Arsenal v Newcastle in the FA Cup: the injury situation is unprecedented What’s more, we have scored eight, and they have scored …
Read More “Beating Newcastle 7-3 (the video), recent results and Newc’s virus worries”
By Bulldog Drummond Now here is a funny thing. Just look at the injury table – we are no longer at the top, in fact we are almost at the bottom. Of course this will be an opportunity for one or two anti-Wengerians to come in and say that they told us all along that …
Read More “Arsenal v Newcastle in the FA Cup: the injury situation is unprecedented”
By Tony Attwood In this series I have looked at how we have discovered the level of influence that crowds can have on referees, thanks to the LSE research, and then considered from there how clubs have responded to that knowledge. This is the concluding article. Here is a list of the articles so far …
Read More “Referee tactics and why Arsenal are in the bottom half of the table”
This is part of a major series on refereeing in the Premier League, reflecting Untold’s work in analysing exactly what is going on, using both data from academic research and from our own analyses. Here is the series so far… however each article is by and large readable on its own… How clubs manipulate referees …
Read More “How some clubs manipulate referees and journalists to their own advantage”
by Tony Attwood This is the third in our series reviewing what is happening to refereeing in the Premier League. The previous articles are: Revealed: How clubs have evolved their “referee handling” tactics with such success How the impression refs have of certain clubs influences how they are treated You might recall that back in …
Read More “How clubs developed the fourth type of match fixing in the Premier League”
By Tony Attwood In my last article I suggested that there were numerous issues we had discovered with regards to refereeing in the Premier League. In summary these are 1: The LSE research which shows how crowds influence referees. This destroyed the PGMO assertion that referees are getting 99% of their calls right. 2: The …
Read More “How the impression refs have of certain clubs influences how they are treated”
By Tony Attwood In my recent articles about the bias of referees in terms of favouring the home team when there is a crowd present, I have moved away from earlier commentaries on this site which have sought to show that there is persistent bias by referees in the Premier League. Now I want to …
Read More “Revealed: How clubs have evolved their “referee handling” tactics with such success”
By Tony Attwood If you have been following this series, you’ll know that it has been shown, through research undertaken at London School of Economics (part of the University of London) that referees are clearly influenced by the crowd. This in turn explains why the bias towards there being more home wins than away wins …
Read More “Proving unconscious bias by referees is rife in the Premier League: penalties”
