By Bulldog Drummond In this little piece we look at a few current headlines concerning Watford v Arsenal and consider if they are actually worth publishing or merely a load of blather. In each case we consider the writing against four fundamental criteria: the headline, importance, discovery of new facts, and truthfulness. 1: What Unai …
Read More “Watford v Arsenal: How helpful and accurate are these journalists’ commentaries?”
Looking behind the ceaseless avalanche of anti-Arsenal propaganda. By Tony Attwood It is hardly a novelty to note that the concepts of “truth,” “logical analysis,” “evidence” and even “checking facts before giving opinions,” are not exactly prevalent in football journalism, be it on blogs or in newspapers and their websites, in podcasts, or on radio …
Read More “The art of telling untruths when talking about Arsenal”
By Bulldog Drummond There was a very interesting piece this week by Jason Burt, the Chief Football Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph on the topic of Watford and their new manager Quique Sánchez Flores in which it is said that “Flores was the best defensive coach they had employed and one who could organise them …
Read More “Watford v Arsenal: defence v attack and the injuries”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, senior psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road and chief consultant to the Moscow Metro system. It really isn’t that hard to see. In fact most of them do see it. It is just that they are so keen on knocking Arsenal minute after minute, …
Read More “The four incredibly simple factors all the pundits are missing this season”
By Tony Attwood The headline on the Daily Mirror’s website was worrying in the extreme: Former Arsenal striker convicted of stalking ex-girlfriend and mother of his son Stalking is a frightening and generally terrifying experience, and it is quite right that any man who stalks a woman – or worse stalks an ex, her mother …
Read More “The most dire anti-Arsenal football journalism we’ve seen”
By Tony Attwood If you have been with us for a while you will maybe remember that during the summer we ran a series celebrating Arsenal’s 100 years in the top division of English football – something no other club has come anywhere close to achieving. Obviously in doing this I recognised that many anti-Arsenal …
Read More “History shows Arsenal are on course for a top four finish”
By Sir Hardly Anyone If you are a regular habitué of these parts you will know that in June each year we start recording all the players who are mentioned in the media as being about to be transferred to Arsenal. The summer total always ends up as being between 90 and 115 players. However …
Read More “Web site reveals Arsenal’s next summer’s transfer target 10 months early!”
Get to know your teams Before placing a bet, you need to know your team inside out. Their strengths and weaknesses play a very important role in their evaluation. You should be able to learn their home and away records. You also need to pay attention to each individual player for getting to know …
Read More “Soccer Betting Tips”
By Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw, chief psychologist at the University College Hospital of the North Circular Road. Sometimes the mind wanders a little and I find myself in a land of “what if”; a land of beautiful dreams and enchanted forests, a land of… well another land. A land in which following an undercover …
Read More “Far beyond the real world, the pundits profess the awfulness of Arsenal”
by Andrew Crawshaw The Match was the last of the 10 WSL matches for the first game week. Here is a quick round up of the other nine :- Manchester City started on Saturday afternoon with a derby against newly promoted Manchester United. This was played at the main Etihad stadium before a WSL record …
Read More “Arsenal Women v West Ham – Sunday 8 September The Untold Match Report”
by Bulldog Drummond The new season of the Women’s Super League opens today with champions Arsenal playing West Ham. The game is live on BT Sport. Last season’s table was a joy to behold not just because we were at the top with a seven point margin over the megamoney Man City, but also because …
Read More “Arsenal v West Ham today: the expectations”
By Sir Hardly Anyone We have all got so used to the stories that knock Arsenal at every turn that it is rather hard to get adjusted to a sudden switch to the positive stories. In the past it has not just been that we have bought the wrong players, but also that talented youngsters …
Read More “What’s all this? Positive Arsenal stories? Yes – a whole stream of them at once!!!”
Former Player Alex Scott Takes to the Dance Floor in Strictly It’s that time of year again, when the days get shorter, the weather gets colder, and Michael Bublé is played on repeat in every shop in the country. It’s also the time of year when our TV schedules are filled with reality TV contests like …
Read More “Former Player Alex Scott Takes to the Dance Floor in Strictly”
by Tony Attwood Just as the Premier League has its quaint regulations concerning players in PL matches, with the list of 25, the home grown list, and quite probably a few other quaint lists as well, so Uefa has its own little regulations that we have to go through each year. What we haven’t yet …
Read More “Arsenal’s Europa list and the curious case of the Salisbury goalkeeper”
By Tony Attwood There were some huge variations in the amount of money being lashed out this summer – and indeed in the amount of money being received by clubs for players sold. Each year different sources quote different sums of money being spent, and so as per previous years I have limited myself to …
Read More “Who spent the most money this summer and has it done them any good?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone It took Nicklas Bendtner nine years to play 108 games for Arsenal and score 24 goals. Which doesn’t sound that good – although to be fair, for three of those years he was on loan, playing 42 games for Birmingham City (11 goals), 28 for Sunderland (8 goals) and nine …
Read More “It’s Nic Bendtner mania all over again”
by Tony Attwood Yesterday we published Arsenal’s 20 man squad for the new season So it was with a little surprise that the editorial group at Untold peered at its screens soon after and saw the headline from the Express saying, “Arsenal 25-man Premier League squad revealed as Unai Emery includes new signings.” Had we …
Read More “The 25 players who left Arsenal this summer, and the tiny squad left behind”
By Sir Hardly Anyone “Man United will finish in the top four but Arsenal are battling for sixth’.” When talkSPROUT issued this headline to the world there was no need even to look up who said it. It was of course their one man Anti-Arsenal machine Tony Cascarino. Quite well known for being arrested …
Read More “The one man tirade against Arsenal which the media just loves to report”
By Tony Attwood Now this is where I traditionally go very wrong, so when you spot my errors please can you correct my workings gently, recognising that I am now a year older than I was last season, when I was pretty old anyway. We actually have a squad of 29 players. But four …
Read More “Why Arsenal’s squad of 25 has only 20 players!”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Well, well, well, as they say at the watering hole, what have we here? Another load of old bananas plus one piece that, even if you don’t agree with it, really does have a few thought provoking (as opposed to mind numbing) moments. Of we go, and gibberish first… 1. Arsenal …
Read More “The craziest Arsenal headlines of the last few days, and one piece well worth reading”
by Tony Attwood I am not sure when people started talking about a “top six” rather than a “top 4” or any other designation for clubs that regularly finished near the top of the Premier League, but it seems to have become a permanent feature of the way in which the Premier League is thought …
Read More “Is the “top six” a Premier League fixture or is something about to change?”
by Tony Attwood With the recent demise of Bury Football Club – a club that won the FA Cup twice and came fourth in the Football League in the season that Arsenal reached above that position for the first time ever – one or two questions are starting to be asked as to who should …
Read More “Who is a fit and proper person to own a football club and does Arsenal have one?”
by Bulldog Drummond Even in the days when Arsenal were Woolwich Arsenal, playing in Plumstead there was a strong rivalry between ourselves and Tottenham – although probably the biggest rivalry for Woolwich Arsenal was that with Chelsea. Arsenal and Chelsea were the two clubs who had ignored the Southern League and instead applied successfully for …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: teams and what’s happened before”
By Bulldog Drummond This is a difficult game to predict using our favoured home and away statistics, because Tottenham’s form has been affected by their sojourn at Wembley. Now back at Newhl anything could happen. Their home form might dip, as generally happens when teams move stadia (and this is effectively a move, given the …
Read More “Arsenal v Tottenham: recent games and trophies won by each club this century”
By Bulldog Drumond There have been 30 Premier League games so far this season. But only 10 of them have been home wins. That is, rather obviously, 33% of matches that have ended in home wins. Last season it was 48%. And what makes this quite interesting is that this is a sudden change after …
Read More “Why are supercomputers getting their predictions wrong and how to outsmart them”
