By Tony Attwood Taking certain referees off the rota is just one of the things we have campaigned about for years in relation to PGMO – the ultra-secretive agency that handles refereeing in the premier league.   We’ve also questioned the regional bias of the referee group, the fact that we have far fewer referees in …

Read More “Referee changed after Liverpool demand; even the excuse makes no sense”

By Tony Attwood My little series on FA cock ups and disasters has reached part 8.  We have published enough FA stories of this sort to go on for another 15 or 20 articles, but we’re heading towards the resumption of proper football in a couple of days, so I will make this last one …

Read More “How the FA have manipulated the stats in order to try and gain more power”

By Sir Hardly Anyone Leicester are different for two reasons.  One is that their statistics suggest they play a tactical game in a completely different way from other clubs.  The other is that they are rather neatly changing their tactical game from time to time, depending on whether the referees have tumbled what they are …

Read More “Could Arsenal adopt Leicester’s tactics and follow them up the table?”

This is a series of articles about the Football Association and some of their activities over the years.  So far we have had Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform or we close you The FA scandals part 3: hiding racism …

Read More “Tracking the fun things the FA have got up to over the years. Part 7.”

by Tony Attwood By and large football journalists don’t criticise each other, and that for one simple reason: most of the time most of them make up what they write.  If one criticises another he or she can then be criticised back, simply because everyone is writing about fantasies. The difference between football journalism and …

Read More “When football journalists fall out, there’s something nasty exposed beneath”

By Tony Attwood This is the sixth part of a series of articles reviewing the catastrophe that is the Football Association and the total inability of the UK government to stop funding it with tax payers money Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The …

Read More “The failures of the FA: Part 6 – if we don’t communicate it is your fault”

By Sir Hardly Anyone Journalists and bloggers do have a hard time of it, lacking technical and detailed knowledge but at the same time trying to make a story out of a snippet, in order to draw in readers. Take for example the headline “Edu ‘finds another Martinelli’ for Arsenal after being given work permit …

Read More “A second Martinelli, selling a “flop”, Arsenal’s huge error: the big Gunnerstories”

This is the fifth part of a series of articles reviewing the catastrophe that is the Football Association and the total inability of the UK government to stop funding it with tax payers money Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform …

Read More “The crimes of the FA: failing to deal with Fifa and with discrimination”

by Tony Attwood The average number of penalties awarded to teams in the Premier League so far this season is fractionally over two per club.   That is around one every four games this season. But there is one club that is getting awarded penalties at a rate of four times as many penalties as you …

Read More “Last season we found weird tackle statistics. Now penalties have gone crazy”

This is a series of articles about the Football Association and some of their misdemeanours in terms of handling football in England. Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform or we close you The FA scandals part 3: hiding racism and …

Read More “The FA scandals: a history of the destruction of football: 4 Wenger v FA”

By Bulldog Drummond There is much talk now about this being our worst start to a season since… and there you can fill in the year of your choice.   But it is worth noting that Arsene Wenger himself had several bad starts to seasons over the years – and recovered. Each of these led to …

Read More “Wenger had just as bad a start to a season as Arteta; and found a way out!”

By Sir Hardly Anyone You might have noticed from time to time that Untold is a trifle critical of other outlets (or drainpipes as we prefer to call them) in the way they handle their predictions concerning transfers for each “window”. You will also recall that we currently have two players on our books who …

Read More “New restrictions on transfers will apply from January transfer window onwards”

By Tony Attwood The nonsense from the FA in terms of their top dog saying utterly inappropriate things reminded me of some of their other great outrages, so I thought I would gather together a little series of them. Thus we started with Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration …

Read More “The FA scandals part 2: The minister says reform or we close you (2016)”

by Tony Attwood It is getting quite hard to work out who the real crazies are in football at the moment.  Is it the bonkers FA with their wild and out of control chairman, now thankfully gone, or is it the bloggers and journalists who refuse to ask the most obvious and simple question: how …

Read More “Clarke’s other job; Arsenal’s transfer decisions, who leaves the “25” and a laugh”

By Sir Hardly Anyone After the summer transfer rumour table reached record proportions, I thought that even the most rabid “buy buy buy” website would realise that maybe just buying more and more players doesn’t work.  Getting the players bedded in and working with the team, is also a major part of the equation. Yet …

Read More “Are Arsenal really going to keep on buying new players?”

By Tony Attwood This is how the Guardian reports today’s story about the Football Association… “Greg Clarke was forced to quit as FA chairman in ignominious circumstances on Tuesday after a series of offensive gaffes to MPs left the reputation of his organisation seriously damaged. “The 63-year-old is to vacate his role immediately after his description of …

Read More “Sweet FA. A history of the idiocy and incompetence in football administration”

By Tony Attwood I have no doubt that patterns are the key to understanding football.  Indeed if you have been looking at our series on tackles, fouls and yellow cards, you’ll appreciate exactly how this can work.  It is not just a case of how the team is playing, but also how the referees are …

Read More “What exactly should Arsenal do now in order to climb the table?”

By Tony Attwood As I mentioned last week, measuring the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards each club gets and then searching for the relationship between them, is  something that only Untold does.  Quite why no one else mines this rich vein of data I don’t know, but we do it, and the results …

Read More “Fouls, tackles and yellow cards. These figures are getting seriously weird”

By Tony Attwood “One goal – a penalty – in their previous four Premier League matches paints a depressing picture.” That is one of the miserable headlines from the media today.  So what can Arsenal do to put things right.  Here are some solutions: 1: Play Joe Willock That comes from the Guardian who point …

Read More “What now for Arsenal? The 8 strategies Arsenal could use to get out of this mess.”

by Bulldog Drummond The Shortfuse obliges us with a team prediction… Leno Holding Gabriel Tierney Bellerin Partey Elneny Saka Willian Lacazette Aubameyang and goes beyond that by also giving us a beach consisting of Nicolas Pepe, Granit Xhaka, Eddie Nketiah, Ainsley Maitland-Niles, Shkodran Mustafi, Dani Ceballos and Alex Runarsson Now this is exactly the same …

Read More “Arsenal v Villa: the projected team from around the media”

By Bulldog Drummond According to most pundits Aston Villa started the season like a bullet from a gun with a fair amount of primer and gunpowder helping it along its way… Date Game Res Score Competition 21 Sep 2020 Aston Villa v Sheffield United W 1-0 Premier League 28 Sep 2020 Fulham v Aston Villa …

Read More “Arsenal v Aston Villa: how Villa’s “missing” games changes the outlook”

By Bulldog Drummond I don’t normally present the injury news for every team, but this is so extraordinary I’ve includef the full injury table rather than just the few clubs above Arsenal in terms of players injured.  Here we go…  Figures as always from Physioroom.com Wolverhampton Wanderers: 2 Manchester City: 3 West Bromwich Albion: 3 …

Read More “Extraordinary injury news from Arsenal and what Pépé and Eddie must do”

By Tony Attwood Our next match is again going to be on Pay TV with Sky at £14.95.  The protests continue, money is being sent to local foodbanks, and the dreadful Sky and the BT Sprout continue with their doomed venture although this might be the last weekend of it. But whereas with football there …

Read More “The desperate need to sort out Arsenal’s away form”

By Tony Attwood Back in August as this season was about to get under way, the Guardian published the article “Home advantage prevails despite absence of fans.” You might think that pretty well does it for the approach that Untold has been taking which is that a) The home benefit has vanished b) The reason …

Read More “Despite media denials, away advantage now outweighs home advantage”