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 An interesting piece in the Telegraph today includes a review of Granit Xhaka which instead of just joining in the general “he’s rubbish get him out” actually looks, as we tried to do earlier this season, at his figures. Their commentary reads, “Divides opinion, doesn’t always track his runner and is liable to …
Read More “Five great players, six great reserves and Arsenal win the league”
By Tony Attwood You can’t read a transfer rumour about Arsenal without the issue of defenders coming up. One is retiring, one is out injured for the rest of the year and one (or is that two?) are useless. So we desperately need defenders by the shed load. I’m not sure what the general opinion …
Read More “Arsenal are said to be trying to find new defenders. Why age could be an issue.”
by Tony Attwood It was only a few weeks ago that Arsène Wenger suggested that a European Super League was on the way. In saying that he made the point that one way for the Premier League to respond might be to cut itself to 16 teams. That would leave Manchester City as champions for …
Read More “Fifa aims for greater control of football with new summer club competition”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The news that is being splashed around is that Arteta will get the Arsenal manager job and will invite Santi Cazorla to be his assistant. Meanwhile the ever knowledgeable Arsenal Youth website gives us a list of the youngsters likely to be let go. These includes Aaron Eyoma Chiori Johnson, Jay …
Read More “The 64 players who have been tipped to be coming to Arsenal in this summer’s window”
By Tony Attwood It was way back in 1966 that the defining research into being an “expert” was conducted. Not in football but generally. What does it take to make someone an expert in a particular field? Since the media love phrases like “our panel of experts” and “our chief football correspondent” (which implies expertise), …
Read More “How you can be a football “expert” just like everyone else.”
Lacazette Can Use Arsenal Form to Fire France to World Cup Glory “Alexander Lacazette” by Chelsea Debs (CC BY-SA 2.0) The World Cup this summer will feature many Arsenal players and the one that looks to have the best chance of winning the World Cup appears to be Alexander Lacazette. He has been in …
Read More “Lacazette Can Use Arsenal Form to Fire France to World Cup Glory”
By Tony Attwood Transfer rumours concerning Arsenal have been continuing apace since Arsene Wenger announced he was leaving at the end of the season, without any question being raised about who the new manager is and what he wants. If that is actually happening it is a major change of policy for the club, and …
By Tony Attwood It is fashionable these days to pick on a player, describe him as useless and then say the manager is an idiot for playing him. When TV, blogs, radio and newspaper columnists all join in, the opinion becomes the truth, and it can take quite a bit of individual analysis and determination …
By Tony Attwood In his final interviews at the Huddersfield game Mr Wenger said he was convinced that the squad merely needed two or three new signings to be able to challenge again for the major trophies. At the same time we have had the figure of £50m being available which in terms of top …
Read More “Why Arsenal might have to mortgage the ground to get in the players that we want.”
By Tony Attwood With this season’s end also being the end of the Wenger Era I found my mind wandering, and, being of a certain age, found it was quite hard to remember exactly who had won what both during recent years and indeed the who Wenger Era. My thought was that no one remembers …
Read More “Who did what and what problems come up next…. Using the past to predict the future.”
By Tony Attwood Here we go: ten things that went right or wrong this season. 1: The Telegraph started to recognise that there is a problem with refereeing in the Premier League. The fact that they lead this morning with “My choices for the best and worst Premier League referees this season” shows …
Read More “The Premier League 2017/18 – what went wrong and some bits that went right”
by Tony Attwood Of course not everyone buys into the remourceless rampant low-level abuse this club suffers on a daily basis. David Wagnar of Huddersfield Town, for example, said of Mr Wenger, “I can’t imagine that this can happen again, so this only shows he has done something extraordinary. Words don’t describe enough how big …
Read More “Mr Wenger’s final farewell. Our last match preview with Mr Wenger in charge.”
By Tony Attwood Thus we approach the end of days: the very last Wengerian game. Let’s see where he left the injury list # TEAM No. down Last man fallen What he done 1 Watford 9 A Gray Knock 2 Leicester City 9 D Simpson Groin Injury 3 Everton 7 W Rooney Knee Injury 4 …
by Tony Attwood We’ve played Huddersfield Town 75 times so far, and beaten them 34 times, drawn 25 and lost 16. Of course the most interesting historic period is what happened when Herbert Chapman left Huddersfield and came to Arsenal as manager in 1925. Chapman managed Huddersfield from 1 February 1921 until the summer of …
Read More “Huddersfield v Arsenal. How the Huddersfield manager transformed Arsenal.”
By Bulldog Drummond So here we go, the very last game for the man who revolutionised the club from being a place where finishing sixth was “not a bad season really” became “an absolute disaster”. From “something to build on” to “get him out at once”. And so he has changed the club he found …
Read More “Huddersfield v Arsenal. A team with a home record almost as bad as Arsenal away.”
by Andrew Crawshaw So now we know that the referee for Arsène’s last match at Arsenal wont be Mike Dean. We have Referee – Michael Oliver age 32 from Northumberland and FIFA accredited (but not going to the World Cup this summer) Assistant Referee 1 – Lee Betts from Norfolk and FIFA accredited Assistant Referee …
Read More “Huddersfield v Arsenal Sunday 13 May 2018 – The Match Officials”
by Sir Hardly Anyone Here’s a nice one to start with… “For 22 years, what this guy has done not just for Arsenal, but for English football, people should remember. I think they came to a moment where people just want to see someone else. It’s not a matter of if you win the Europa …
Read More “Arsenal’s next manager; we list the 16 (yes sixteen) men being tipped”
By Sir Hardly Anyone and R.E. Ports. The team of intrepid opinionators at Sky Sports have told us that Arsenal need to replace the entire team if the club want to escape relegation next season, which makes Craig Burley seem positively modest in believing that that Arsenal need to sign just six new players this …
Read More “The complete list of the 61 players that our new manager will certainly buy”
by Tony Attwood Here is the list of next season’s league winners England: Manchester City Scotland: Celtic France: PSG Spain: Barcelona Germany: Bayern Munich Italy: Juventus Won’t it all be astonishingly exciting to watch it happen, knowing in advance whose going to win! Wow, won’t just everyone be glued to their TVs to see every …
By Tony Attwood It was a sad way to say a personal farewell to watching Arsenal coached by Arsène Wenger last night, but even so I’m glad I went to see just one more Wenger game and reflect back on 22 years of the Wenger teams I’ve watched. And indeed to try and remember what …
Read More “Farewell Arsène; that was my last match with you. I sure am going to miss you.”
By Walter Broeckx A match with nothing at stake apart from Tony being in Leicester. Wenger picked a team that would give whoever the new manager will be to have a look at some youngsters in the squad. Starting Xl: Cech, Maitland-Niles, Holding, Mavropanos, Kolasinac, Xhaka, Ramsey, Iwobi, Mkhitaryan, Welbeck, Aubameyang On the beach: Ospina, …
by Bulldog Drummond The big stat doing the rounds for this game is that Arsenal are the only side without an away point in English league football in 2018, having lost all six of their matches. Well, I think we knew that. But what you might not have seen (although it has turned up in …
Read More “Leicester v Arsenal: the teams and the last time Arsenal’s away form was this bad”
by Andrew Crawshaw I have just checked my database and Man United also joined Chelsea in the “SIXER” club last weekend having had Craig Pawson in charge of six games this season. Tonight’s match is the rescheduled game from matchweek 31, deferred due to cup commitments (Leicester, not us). Referee – Graham Scott Age 49 …
Read More “Leicester v Arsenal Wednesday 9 May 2018 – the Match Officials. A stranger returns.”
ByBulldog Drummond The injury file doesn’t look too good at the moment, given that it contains Laurent Koscielny, Santi Cazorla, Mesut Ozil and Mohammed Elneny, and it is a good job we are at the end of the season. But thankfully the days in which the media printed the endlessly recycled “Arsenal have the most …
Read More “Leicester v Arsenal: remember the days when Arsenal allegedly had the most injuries?”
by Bulldog Drummond Before we get down to our usual coverage of past matches between the two clubs there is a lovely story in the local Leicester newspaper today Claudio Ranieri linked with Tottenham in strangest transfer rumour of season The sub-heading reads “The former Leicester City boss looks set to leave Nantes this summer …
