By Tony Attwood It takes me several hours to leave the Arsenal Stadium, get the train back to Blacksheep’s house, say hello / goodbye to his good lady wife, and then drive up the A1 to my home in the East Midlands. And thus by the time I get home the media men and women …

Read More “Wot no mention of the referee in the Southampton game?”

by Bulldog Drummond We have one injury listed by Physioroom: Dani Ceballos with a thigh injury.  It is not reported as being a major injury, but may well keep him out of the team for the game against Southampton. Tierney did not play for Scotland, as Arsenal requested that he should be allowed further time …

Read More “Arsenal v Southampton, the team, Xhaka, the injuries, the stats”

By Bulldog Drummond From 2014 to 2016 Southampton were one of those sides who adopted what we might call a “certain style” which Arsenal, believing that the game was football and not elbows, did not like the result one little bit. Date Game Res Score Competition 23 Sep 2014 Arsenal v Southampton L 1-2 League …

Read More “Arsenal V Southampton recent form and the visitors’ interesting managers”

By Bulldog Drummond If you think these are difficult times for Arsenal, then spare a thought for Southampton… Date Game Res Score Competition 28 Sep 2019 Tottenham Hotspur v Southampton L 2-1 Premier League 01 Oct 2019 Walsall v Southampton L 1-0 FL Trophy 06 Oct 2019 Southampton v Chelsea L 1-4 Premier League 19 …

Read More “Arsenal v Southampton: at home the danger comes from the fans”

by Tony Attwood Normally, in any European court of law, when a defendant threatens the judge or the prosecuting counsel the defendant is taken to the cells and is subsequently prosecuted in a separate case.  Threatening the judge, the legal system or the prosecution counsel is considered rather a serious offence. But of course, as …

Read More “What to do when the defendent threatens the court? In football – nothing!”

by Tony Attwood and a calculator. I have been running the story that 80% of the Premier League clubs that have changed their manager in recent times are now doing far worse than they were under the old manager. The general response to this is that this doesn’t matter, for things are SO bad at …

Read More “How all of last summer’s big spenders have all run into trouble”

By Tony Attwood The PGMO, the fanatically secretive organisation that runs refereeing in the Premier League, have decided what they regularly decide – the rest of the world is getting it wrong, and only the PGMO are right. So while the rest of football uses pitchside monitors to assist with VAR this will only happen …

Read More “Premier League referees decide rest of the world is wrong and they are right”

By Tony Attwood We obviously do have a crisis in the club at the moment, with endless bitching and complaining about players, management and directors, and numerous people who have had no experience whatsoever of even working in a club (let alone working in a club at a senior level) moaning, moaning and then, just …

Read More “Arsenal need world class supporters to give us back our identity”

By Tony Attwood Take a look at the blogs and newspapers and you will find article after article about how Arsenal’s performance has declined this year and how vital it is for the manager to be changed. What these self-same blogs and newspaper journalists are not writing about is how two years ago many of …

Read More “The shocking truth behind the plans to sack Emery as manager”

By Bulldog Drummond That Arsenal Women beat Tottenham Women was not so much the main story.  Nor was it that we stayed third in the league one point behind the leaders Chelsea that made the headlines yesterday.  It was the crowd. At what I suppose we now have to call the Unsponsored Stadium there was …

Read More “Women’s league record crowd for Totts v Arsenal, but it could have been even greater”

By Tony Attwood As I mentioned in my last little piece,  match fixing in English football is never mentioned in the media.  This could be because it does not exist, or because there is an agreement never to talk about it. In the last piece I drew the comparison with the conspiracy theory that suggests …

Read More “Modern day match fixing in football: how it works”

By Tony Attwood Modern day match fixing  This story that match fixing is arranged by gambling syndicates in the Far East is the everyday tale that the newspapers tell (when they bother with it at all), and is in fact an endless retelling of the tale that was put about by the footballing authorities in …

Read More “How the Premier League set up a system that allows match fixing to flourish”

By our reporter on the spot, Sir Hardly Anyone Following from his earlier announcement, and now speaking from his home in Deadhorse, Alaska,  (pictured left) President Trump has revealed more of his plans for PGMO, the ultra secretive refereeing and match controlling association in England. To begin Mr President answered the question on everyone lips …

Read More “Donald Trump, now head of PGMO, gives speech on changes being made to refereeing”

  By AKH Since the start of this season, a number of Arsenal observers have commented on the performance of the Premier league team. General observations have included that there has been little apparent creativity in front of goal, instead an approach that includes much running around and passing sideways and backwards; that passing out …

Read More “Is the notion of transparency a problem for Arsenal Supporters?”

by Sir Hardly Anyone Would you like to be a big time blogger bringing in a huge audience?   Or maybe work for a national newspaper’s website, with tens of thousands of readers hanging on your every word? Actually it is dead easy and you can do this in five simple steps. 1: Think up a …

Read More “The lessons to be learned from the “Arsenal player shot in the eye” story”

By Walter Broeckx I have been calling for VAR for a long time. And I still want VAR in football. Even after recent events. Why? Because I know that refs make mistakes and I want to make sure that referees make as few mistakes as possible. And I want errors to be corrected. And I …

Read More “As the evidence shows, VAR is not the problem. The problem is PGMO”

by Tony Attwood I have hoped it might happen for a long time – that the sheer complexity of manipulating the news surround football would ultimately lead to the voluntary self-censorship of football commentary would fall over itself.  And so it has proved. When PGMO resisted the introduction of VAR we wondered quite what they …

Read More “At last a national newspaper admits it – football is being manipulated.”

By Tony Attwood The headline in the Mail read Arsenal board give ultimatum to Unai Emery and it became one of the most read articles about Arsenal after it was published on Tuesday afternoon. Yet from the start there were pretty big hints as to the fact it was a fake as immediately under the …

Read More “Arsenal board DON’T give ultimatum to Emery. Original story a fantasy.”

By Tony Attwood Switzerland, as of course you will know, is not a member of the European Union.  It applied once, but changed its mind, and decided to continue outside the union. As such it has no obligation to allow EU citizens or indeed citizens of any other country into Switzerland to play football, or …

Read More “No foreigners here. Switzerland starts the crack down in football”

By Sir Hardly Anyone The Daily Mirror has run an article with the headline “Every Arsenal manager candidate rated and slated as Unai Emery’s job remains under threat.” As usual the headline doesn’t have much to do with the article for as it gets going the article says, “Here we look at the managers Emery …

Read More “Upsetting the Arsenal cart: seeing just who has been Arsenal’s most effective manager”

By Tony Attwood One of my arguments against changing managers over and over is that there is never any certainty that the next manager will be any better than the last one. The focus is always on “get him out now” – as we have seen with both Mr Emery and before him Mr Wenger. …

Read More “Brendon Rodgers for Arsenal? Why go for someone worse than we’ve got?”

By Tony Attwood 1: The attempted robbery of Ozil and Kolasinac. I think it shocked every member of the team,   Of course their hearts went out to their colleagues and friends, but there was more, because this made it clear that given the incredible increase in knife crime on Britain’s streets, following the dramatic cut …

Read More “The ten reasons why Arsenal’s campaign has gone wrong this season”

By Tony Attwood The German Football League has a motto: “Football, as it should be.”   In its publicity materials it talks about the league being stable, reasonable and innovative. And in many ways the German footballing authorities have a very good reason for feeling rather pleased with themselves.   By investing properly at grass roots level, …

Read More “Football in England: something seems to have gone terribly wrong”

By Bulldog Drummond The always entertaining (if extraordinarily eccentric and flat-earth like) Football is Fixed website seems quite sure that matters involving Leicester also involve match fixing.  Sadly their policy of not telling us how they have reached such a conclusion makes it hard to spot any reasoning or logic in their drawing of conclusions …

Read More “Leicester v Arsenal: recent games, the team and yet more media bias”

By Bulldog Drummond So it is third against fifth, and we are the club in fifth. Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Liverpool 11 10 1 0 25 9 16 31 2 Manchester City 11 8 1 2 34 10 24 25 3 Leicester City 11 7 2 2 27 8 …

Read More “Leicester v Arsenal: not fixing our away form is the biggest problem”