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 Tim Charlesworth As we head deep into the interlull with the transfer window closed, it finally feels like the football season is ready to start. The first three games had a curious ‘pre-season’ feel to them, with summer weather, lots of teams missing players following the Euros and everyone looking a little …
Prelude: Just before we get into the regular report on referee performances on the pitch, if you have been following the Mark Halsey incidents reported in our last article you might like to note the latest from the Daily Telegraph. Mark Halsey reveals incident he claims he was told to lie about by referee bosses as …
Former Premier League referee Mark Halsey claims he was told to say he’d not seen incidents by refereeing body That is the headline from the Daily Mirror and it is popping up in quite a few newspaper web sites now, originally mostly finishing with a pompous statement about how the newspaper has contacted (ie sent …
Read More “Mark Halsey claims he was told to say he’d not seen incidents, by PGMO”
By Tony Attwood If you have been paying attention you will know that recently Andrew has written a series of detailed articles on Arsenal’s players, including the “25” list of registered players, the loanees, and what is going on with the under 23 and under 18 teams. Top of the league and bottom of the …
Read More “Arsenal Under 23 and under 18, what on earth is going on”
by Andrew Crawshaw This is the third part of our series on the Arsenal youth system. Earlier articles in the series were… Top of the league and bottom of the league. Is Arsenal’s youth system working properly? The Arsenal Youth System – Part 2 Comparisons with other clubs At the U23 game against Liverpool I …
Read More “The Arsenal Youth System – Part 3 Questions and (some) Answers”
By Sir Hardly Anyone 115 incoming transfer rumours – almost all of them wrong 22 players who were about to leave Arsenal – most are still with us. Total failure to spot the actual transfers ahead of activity – except in one case. So here it is, although sometimes it seemed it would never get …
by Andrew Crawshaw In Part 1 – an Introduction I showed that 10 players out of our 32 man first team squad are products of at least one of the three phases of our Youth Team System. This has occurred despite our U21 team (as it was up to and including last season) had been …
Read More “The Arsenal Youth System – Part 2 Comparisons with other clubs”
. The Arsenal Youth System – Part 1 Introduction by Andrew Crawshaw As you may know I get to see as many of the Youth games as possible. Our U18 team play the vast majority of their home games at the Colney training ground but these are effectively behind closed doors. We have an U19 team …
Read More “Top of the league and bottom of the league. Is Arsenal’s youth system working properly?”
By Tony Attwood As you may have noticed, Uefa has approved changes to the Champions League from the start of the season after next. A new company is being set up, equally owned 50/50 by Uefa and the European Clubs Assn to run European competitions. This has been done to stop a European breakaway by …
by Andrew Crawshaw and Tony Attwood With all of the ‘ins and outs’ of the transfer window here is the final 25 man senior players squad list. The top 9 are ‘home grown’ the remaining (from Debuchy downwards) are overseas. (The numbers in the left column are simply for Tony to double check that we …
Read More “Arsenal’s 25 man squad – The Final List (at least until January)”
By Tony Attwood In the end, the preliminary figures from the transfer window show Arsenal spent the fourth largest sum in the league, behind Man U, Man C and Chelsea in that order. The figures below only reflect the summer transfer window. Spend pos Club 2015 spend Lge Position 2016 spend 1 Manchester Airport £153.0m …
By THE BRICKFIELDS GUNNERS With nearly everyone going digital and talking and communicating in computer lingo and binary bullshit , the average young fan is not able to understand the beauty and the richness of the written word, and is now limited only to reading SMSes or Texting; Wassupp? messagings; moronic Twatting, chirppings and Fakebooking …
Read More “The Arsene Wenger operating system made easy for dummies.”
By Walter Broeckx Ah that lovely sound of the window that slams shut. I love it. Because then finally we can be sure that we will get rid of all those silly rumours that are being spouted 25 hours a day. Well… for a week or so because as I will go on a holiday …
Read More “Has the Arsenal squad been improved this transfer window?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone The problem is not so much your actual news but removing the exclamation marks and question marks from internet reports and finding the large woman who will apparently open her mouth and warble in order to bring it all to an end later today. So here is your deadline day shock …
Read More “Arsenal transfer shock; one more player on the way”
By Max Kerr 56 years ago Vance Packard published “The Waste Makers”, in which he analysed the notion of ‘Planned Obsolescence’. He coined the terms “obsolescence of function”, which is when a product is manufactured to last less time than it needs to, and “obsolescence of desirability”, where marketing persuades us that the newer version …
Read More “Waste Makers: how Planned Obsolescence entered the world of football.”
WATFORD vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 3 DATE: 27th August 2016 VENUE: Vicarage Road Stadium (Watford, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Kevin Friend 1st LINESMAN: Ian Hussin 2nd LINESMAN: Mick McDonough 4th OFFICIAL: Simon Hooper First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 00:48 Granit …
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yesterday we noted that Mr Wenger had told the press that they might be surprised at what will happen at the end of this window, and that every club still had transfers to do before the closure of the transfer market on wednesday night. Now we see the story, which is …
Read More “More indicators that Arsenal are going to buy another player before tomorrow’s deadline”
By Tony Attwood The Guardian today has its normal “Premier League: 10 talking points from the weekend’s action” and for the first time in I don’t know how long it makes no mention of Arsenal. Normally there’s a bit about how disappointing it is, how the club are doomed, or the anger of the fans, …
Read More “Mediocrity is now defined as coming second. So how do you define coming third?”
by Andrew Crawshaw This game was against opponents Arsenal know well, we beat them in the Continental Cup final last November, and three times at Borehamwood this season, once in the league and in both the FA Cup and the Continental Cup. The question was could we make it 4 out of 4 this season …
Read More “WSL Notts County v Arsenal Ladies 28 August 2016 – Match Report”
By Sir Hardly Anyone One of the great things about the transfer rumours is that they take no account of reality. We already have a fair number of players in a position, we clearly don’t need any more, and the rumours keep on rolling. We’ve already had 111 players we are signing and 22 leaving, …
Read More “Wenger hints at one more big transfer before the end of the Window.”
By Ima Counter, Professor of Numerological Sciences, University of UnCertain Things, Shetland. The last competition brought in a bumper crop of brilliant commentaries on the name Man Utd. I personally loved Mischievous Arsenal not Arsene Not Unlike Tiny Dumbo not least because it followed a typical comment from an aaa and was the best response …
by Andrew Crawshaw Arsene made a rather cryptic quote regarding squad numbers in his press conference before the Watford match :- “We already have a big squad, and we are already short on the numbers now. We have a requested number, and we can’t have any more players anyway” Given the Imminent/Actual arrival of Shkodran …
Read More “Arsenal 25 Man Senior Squad – Update. A hint of more to come but with one in, two out.”
By Walter Broeckx Arsenal team that started: Cech, Bellerin, Holding, Koscielny, Monreal, Cazorla, Xhaka, Walcott, Ozil, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Alexis. On the beach: Ospina, Chambers, Gibbs, Coquelin, Elneny, Wilshere, Giroud So a first start for Özil this season after the euro’s. A midfield combination of Xhaka, Santi and Özil for the first time. Giroud on the …
by Bulldog Drummond. A cheeky football journalist (you know the type – asks a stupid question and the writes down something the respondent never said) asked Mr Wenger this week if he thought that, given the fact that transfer doorway (or “window” as it is often known) expenditure had already exceeded last summer, and we …
by Andrew Crawshaw A quick review of Mr Clattenberg’s performance last week First half he was terrible overall although he had a good start when in Min1 he adjudged the holding between Holding and Huth to be six of one and half a dozen of the other and rightly said no penalty. He was 5 …
Read More “Watford v Arsenal Sat 27 August – The Match Officials”
