Do we actually need to buy anyone this January?

By Tony Attwood On 2 September we bade farewell to the great Arsenal Transfer Index – a listing of all the players we could find who were allegedly leaving the club or coming to the club.  In our final analysis we noted 115 incoming transfer rumours – almost all of them wrong 22 players who …

Ref Review : Sunderland – Arsenal: Was this not knowing the laws? Or just plain bias? The latter looks more probable

SUNDERLAND vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 10 DATE: 29th October 2016 VENUE: Stadium of Light (Sunderland, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Martin Atkinson 1st LINESMAN: Stephen Child 2nd LINESMAN: Stuart Burt 4th OFFICIAL: Craig Pawson First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 00:05 John …

The moment that proves “our destiny is in the minds of our players”. Watch again and again and again.

By Tony Attwood If you want to skip my chit-chat and usual rambling just scroll down the page, the video is below. But if you have a moment to spare, do consider this…. Driving home from Heathrow Airport last night I heard someone on BBC Radio 5 announce that his “worry” was that Arsenal treated …

CL Ludogorets – Arsenal 2-3: a Liège comeback as predicted after 15 minutes

By Walter Broeckx A few changes as we already knew as some players had to stay at home. Walcott, Bellerin, Monreal and Santi amongst them. So we had Jenkinson at right back and Gibbs came on at left back but he did that in the last matches also.  Xhaka also came back in the team …

Ludogorets Razgrad v Arsenal. “Our destiny lies in the minds of the players”

By Bulldog Drummond Seems there is a bit of a debate going on about Arsenal’s line up today with Mr Wenger being at his most enigmatic. We know that Monreal, Cazorla, Bellerin and Walcott did not travel.   Mr Wenger said of the two last named players “both are ‘more or less’ injuries”.  I’m not …

Here comes November: a time of horror or success for Arsenal?

By Tim Charlesworth So here it is – November.  Halloween brings genuine horror for Arsenal fans, because the day after Halloween is November 1st and that is something for us all to be scared of.  Every year I convince myself that November is an absurd irrational superstition, and every year it delivers on the horror.  …

Referee Appointments and Results Matchweek #08 complete with video evidence. The worst week yet.

by the Referee Review Team 1: Details of Match Referees and Assistants Chelsea vs. Leicester City [3-0] Referee – Andre Marriner 1st Assistant Referee – Simon Beck 2nd Assistant Referee – Andy Garratt Fourth Official – Stuart Attwell Bournemouth vs. Hull City [6-1] Referee – Lee Mason 1st Assistant Referee – Mick McDonough 2nd Assistant …

Ref Review: Arsenal – Middlesbrough; a non Deanesque score!

ARSENAL vs. MIDDLESBROUGH COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 9 DATE: 22nd October 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Mike Dean 1st LINESMAN: Simon Long 2nd LINESMAN: Ian Hussin 4th OFFICIAL: Tim Robinson First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 06:16 Daniel Ayala …

Seeing the positives at Arsenal has been easy, so far

. By Fishpie To enjoy: to derive pleasure from, or take delight in, an activity or an occasion. And with the first-quarter stage of the season now completed, we’ve seen 15 competitive occasions in which Arsenal have endeavoured to play great football for us to enjoy. They’ve endeavoured and, in a good proportion of those …

Arsenal always do worse than everyone else in November, and other myths.

By Tony Attwood If you are a regular reader of Untold, you may have noticed that of late I have been trying, in my normal bumbling manner, to point out ways in which newspapers deliberately mis-represent events in the game. At the start of the century there was the tale that Arsenal got more red …

The Football journalists education programme. A public service commentary.

By Fear N Panick There was a very strange comment made during Sky’s programme covering Sunderland v Arsenal. Niall Quinn told us, “It’s not the fan’s fault.”  An interesting perspective, not because I think Sunderland’s predicament at having appointed a man who a week before his appointment said “the jury is still out on Ozil”, …

Sunderland – Arsenal: 1-4, Welcome back Giroud and Ramsey

By Walter Broeckx Arsenal was forced to make a few changes after some late fitness test failing on Walcott and Monreal. So The Ox and Gibbs came in their place at the start. Still no Cazorla back in the team. As a result we also had a few new faces on the beach that we …

Wonderloaf v Arsenal. The preview, the teams, the stats, the score and the bland bread.

by Bulldog Drummond The first bread slicing and wrapping machine in Britain was installed in the Wonderloaf Bakery in  White Hart Lane, right on the boundary of Tottenham and Wood Green, in 1937 and was used to create the Wonderloaf.  It was a white sliced loaf with all the natural goodness removed to produce something incredibly …

Why CIES data ranking clubs by the average age of their signings is not all it seems

By Tony Attwood There are lies, damn lies and statistics. Or so it is said (although usually without any data to back up such a claim). Ask a statistician however and he/she will tell you that there are statistics used properly and statistics used improperly or with incomplete data.   Football, sadly, is fully of …

Arsenal to change the line up for Sunderland game: the tactical preview.

  By Tony Attwood One of the things that fascinates me is that many people who pontificate on football (as I admit I do) often don’t look at the home and away form of the teams playing each other.  I think that if one does that one can begin to make more realistic predictions about …

Sunderland v Arsenal Saturday October 29th – The Match Officials. Expect serious fouls to go unpunished.

by Andrew Crawshaw Our officials for this weekend are :- Referee – Martin Atkinson – 45 years old, FIFA Accredited from West Yorkshire Assistant 1 – Steven Child – FIFA Accredited from Kent Assistant 2 – Stuart Burt – FIFA Accredited from Northamptonshire Fourth Official – Craig Pawson – 37 years old FIFA Accredited from …

Reasons to be cheerful parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19

By Tony Attwood The Telegraph is currently running a “Fan happiness index” via which they ask “Which Premier League club has given its supporters reason to cheer, or be sad?” It’s all invention of course – the bloke behind me in the east upper will be Very Very Angry every time Theo doesn’t put in …

Reading in the library: watching the EFL cup from the posh seats

By Blacksheep On Tuesday night I went to watch the Arsenal play Reading in the Football League Cup (the cup that is officially so uninspiring it hasn’t attracted a sponsor this season). I was out of the country when Arsenal beat Robin Hood Athletic away and what with the hectic schedule of work and domestic …

Empty seats at the Ems? You should try the Tax Payers’ Stadium!

By Tony Attwood You might recall a little piece I wrote about the outrageous allegations in the Telegraph about empty seats at matches at the Emirates.  Using faked and misleading photographs the paper tried to make out that vast swathes of the ground were vacant during matches – even though the article admitted the number …

Alisher Usmanov makes his move – and it is not the one predicted.

By Tony Attwood (and his French-English dictionary) It was back in August that the website Tribal Football came up with the headline “REVEALED: Usmanov ponders selling Arsenal stake and buying into Everton”.  It was an article with the usual stuff about Mr Usmanov being “frozen out” of Arsenal, and no mention that he has been …

Why 26 October is such a special day in the history of football, and of Arsenal (and the Royal Family)

By Tony Attwood If you ever spare a moment to read the anniversaries that are posted on the home page of this site most days (occasionally I forget or the technology goes wrong – normally I blame the latter but the former is usually the real reason), you might know what is coming up. Because …

League Cup: Arsenal – Reading 2-0, The Ox with a brace

By Walter Broeckx As expected a lot of changes compared to the starting line up against Middlesbrough for this League cup match. In fact the only 2 survivors of that match are Iwobi and  Elneny in the starting line up. Lucas, Oxlade-Chamberlain also starting this match. At right back we find Carl Jenkinson for the …

Arsenal vs The Spectacles. The teams and other stuff.

By Bulldog Drummond As you will know perfectly well (so I am not quite sure why I am telling you, but I’ve started so I will finish), we are in a 12 match run without defeat; a run that now has nine wins and three draws.   Here is how it goes… 1 20 Aug Leicester …

All the young dudes – but which one is this year’s breakthrough kid?

by Tony Attwood We’ve got so used to having youngsters break through into the first team from the youth sides that it seems almost inevitable that we will have another such player this season. Another Bellerin, Coquelin or Iwobi.  Or looking back a bit, another Ramsey (who came aged 18, and then did loan spells …

The gross incompetence of England’s football authorities exposed, once again

By Tony Attwood Way back, ten years ago in fact, the Daily Mail ran the headline (28 September 2006): English football ‘most corrupt in all Europe’ It was a theme Untold took up, but with a twist, for we have often argued that the corruption that is part of football is there not just because …