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 I have oft made the point that newspapers follow each other. One club is a great historic family unit that everyone loves, and nothing that happens there can change this. Another is a stumbling, rumbling disaster of incompetence, and it only takes one hiccup for the old stories to be rolled out. …
STYLE AND STEEL By Don McMahon While reviewing and watching the fallout from the Burnley game from the pundits, players and media, this comment came up multiple times in describing AFC’s gritty win against a park the flotilla team. Adrian Clarke and Skodran Mustafi aptly described it as an ugly performance meriting all 3 points …
Read More “Style and Steel: the rise of the polyvalent player”
By Usama and Walter IMPORTANT NOTE!! If you hover over the wrong decisions on this page there a few links which take you to videos where you can see the incidents. They should open in a new tab and you can even slow them down in order to watch them. BURNLEY vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier …
Read More “Ref Review Burnley – Arsenal: at least he got that one right”
By Andrew Crawshaw and Tony Attwood The story is that Arsenal can’t do transfers. The manager won’t spend money, the club dithers, there is an overarching level of gross incompetence. We’ve heard it often, and of course it is difficult to prove or disprove without having closer access to the club than any of us …
A very personal odyssey, by Tony Attwood It started with three of us from AISA having a meeting at the Emirates with the club’s chief exec discussing how the area around the stadium could be made more Arsenal-like. Never having been a retiring sort of fellow I immediately pitched in telling Mr Gazidis in no uncertain terms …
Read More “The Untold Banner on TV, continuing the tradition of the club and our blog”
By Max Kerr One of the saddest stories for me to have emerged from football, is that of Justin Fashanu (1961-1998). A talented striker, who played for England, scored the goal of the season while playing for Norwich in 1980, and was the first black footballer to command a million pound transfer fee (to Brian …
Read More “Professional football: one of the last bastions of homophobia.”
By Walter Broeckx As you may have read I was not able to do my usual life match report. The reason was that we had a supporters club meeting straight after the match. And as I am the president of the Arsenal Belgium supporters club I had to be there of course. But I must say that it …
Read More “Burnley – Arsenal 0-1, The Paradox Curse has been broken”
By Tony Attwood Watching the game on Sky and listening to the studio conversation after the match there seemed to be a general consensus that a) the Ox did not touch the ball, it was Kos who kicked it forward, and b) although the ball his Kos’ hands it was not handball. Of course if …
Read More “A goal or not a goal? Burnley v Arsenal – the first reactions.”
Continuing from this morning’s preview… Meanwhile the Burnley manager has been making the usual positive noises about how wonderful Mr Wenger is but he has added to that, “As managers we all understand the fan mentality, the thirst and desire to win and be successful, but from a manager’s point of view you have to scratch …
Read More “Burnley v Arsenal, the team, two contrasting styles of play and the sequences”
By Bulldog Drummond “Seven and a half?” I hear you shout… well all the papers are doing their “five things” this and “ten things” that, so Untold, being Untold likes to go somewhere else. Seven and a half seems about right. 1: Style and efficiency Leading up to today’s games Mr Wenger said, “In recent …
By Tony Attwood On 24 November 1996 Arsène Wenger took charge of his first derby. It ended Arsenal 3 Tottenham 1. It was a victory those of us there celebrated at considerable length as I recall, because Arsenal had not beaten Tottenham in over 3 years and Tottenham were unbeaten at Highbury in the league since …
Read More “A reminder of how things have changed and why top four finishes are not to be decried”
by Andrew Crawshaw Before I start on the preview for this week a quick look at how the refereeing compares this year with previous years. In our six games this year the basic figures are :- Wk Game Score Referee Link to Referee review Overall weighted score Bias H/A 1 Arsenal Liverpool 3 …
By the referee team Danny Makkelie of Netherlands was the referee. Incident 1 – Minute 5 Foul on Sanhcez A possible trip by the Basel player ignored by the ref. Very difficult to see on this replay. I give the benefit of the doubt to the ref. If he played the ball first there is …
By Walter Broeckx It is known by every Arsenal supporter in the world by now I guess. Arsène Wenger has been Arsenal manager for 20 years manager. An amazing long time in the current football climate. People expect us to write an article to celebrate this milestone in his and Arsenal’s history. But to be …
By Tony Attwood A couple of years ago I reported on an analysis which showed that roughly only 25% of big value transfers came good in their first season. Most made a fair impression within three years but a quarter still failed to make the grade even in that space of time. The point …
Read More “Just how well have Premier League clubs been doing when it comes to big money transfers?”
By the Referee team 1 : Details of the Match Referees and Assistants Chelsea vs. Liverpool [1-2] Referee – Martin Atkinson 1st Assistant Referee – Stephen Child 2nd Assistant Referee – Stuart Burt Fourth Official – Robert Madley Hull City vs. Arsenal [1-4] Referee – Roger East 1st Assistant Referee – Darren Cann 2nd Assistant …
Read More “Referee Appointments and Results Matchweek #05 – with video evidence”
By Walter Broeckx If we would believe the moaners, our club is run by a bunch of nogoods who know nothing about football. And who have appointed and kept a manager that knows nothing, is outdated, a dinosaur, a dictator and a ditherer when it comes to transfers and spending money. The last thing might …
Read More “Luckily our manager doesn’t listen to the twitter-experts and TV-moaners”
By Tony Attwood Last night at the Arsenal Stadium (as we have to call it on Euro nights) before the match I bought a bottle of water. The young man selling it to me removed the cap before handing it over, presumably on the grounds that I would otherwise throw the tiny plastic cap …
By Walter Broeckx Two changes in the team with Ospina coming the place of Cech and Xhaka taking up the place of the injured Coquelin. On the bench we had Reine-Adelaide and Gabriel. A rather unexpected name the first. Arsenal team: Ospina, Bellerin, Mustafi, Koscielny, Monreal, Cazorla, Xhaka, Walcott, Ozil, Iwobi, Alexis On the beach: …
By Tony Attwood In the end the FA couldn’t even sack him. Instead we find that the appalling Allardyce left his job as England manager “by mutual agreement”. As various newspapers have pointed out, Allardyce has been known for many, many years to be a man who regards the basic rules of football as an …
Read More “How much longer must English tax payers fund the criminal idiocy of the FA?”
By Walter Broeckx As you may have heard I have been in the TV studios again. And it was a far more relaxing experience this time than last season. You might recall I then was invited on my own to sit next to the super pundits in Flanders and one “famous” Tottenham supporter. I then …
Read More “Arsenal Belgium in the TV studios and Arsenal getting all the praise in the world”
By Usama and Walter ARSENAL vs. CHELSEA COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 6 DATE: 24th September 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Michael Oliver 1st LINESMAN: Gary Beswick 2nd LINESMAN: Stuart Burt 4th OFFICIAL: Craig Pawson First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision …
Read More “Ref Review Arsenal – Chelsea : Another good performance from the ref!”
By Tony Attwood You will almost certainly know (at least if you live in England) that the manager of the England football team is today accused of telling people whom he thought were Far East businessmen that it was possible to “get round” the rules about third-party player ownership. Various issues immediately jump out: one is …
By Tony Attwood Apparently it seems that we have never played Basel before, so we’ve never had a chance to do lots of Fawlty Towers jokes – but I won’t start now. That would be far too silly. But we have played Swiss teams before and have done quite well, winning four times in competitive …
Read More “Arsenal v Basel. Basel’s amazing form, Theo’s comeback, Arsenal’s team.”
By Tony Attwood If we take it for a moment that a little of the more extreme behaviour of referees witnessed over recent years has now been removed from Premier League matches then we truly are going to enter a new age of football. Not an age wherein referee bias is removed, nor an age …
