By Sir Hardly Anyone. Watching the responses of the bloggettas and the so-called professional journalists has been quite informative in the wake of the Vardy refusal to commit to Arsenal. In essence they divide into four camps… Camp 1: Here’s Caught Offside’s take which sums up this position – As if Jamie Vardy’s fence-riding the last few …
Read More “Apparently it wasn’t Vardy we were after at all. Here’s who we are actually getting…”
By Tony Attwood Now I want you to pay particular attention to this page because there will be a test at the end. My proposition is that it is never going to be possible to lift those people who are stuck in concrete thinking out of that position, without the media moving up a number of …
Read More “What we need is football Journalism 2.0, not football journalism 0.1 which is where we seem to be stuck.”
By Tony Attwood You might have expected the British media to have learned its lessons when it was caught out over the first round of American/Swiss arrests of Fifa executives. They covered the arrests of course, and allowed members of the FA and government to express horror and shock. But they never once posed the …
Read More “The latest Fifa corruption allegations, why tax payers money still funds Fifa, and why the British media is refusing to mention it.”
By Tony Attwood So, Vardy is another Higuain, the sort of transfer that everyone is so sure is on, that he actually signed a week ago, that it was kept secret, that he had a medical last weekend, but didn’t, that he was going to tell the club his decision on monday but didn’t. Either …
Read More “What we learned: Leicester can’t do sums, Vardy is getting a bit too big for his boots”
By Tony Attwood If you run a business and spend quite a bit of time dealing with other businesses, there is every chance that at some time or another you will have found yourself in an argument with an individual or a company that behaves utterly and totally unreasonably. They make a claim that is …
Read More “José Mourinho walks free from court as Chelsea apologise “unreservedly””
By Tony Attwood Of course you need a good goalscorer if you want to win the league. But do you need the best one there is? Having looked at whether changing the manager works, buying in big name players works, and whether injury levels affect the position in the table, I thought I’d see how …
Read More “Does having top league scorer help you win the league? Here’s the stats…”
By Tony Attwood In a widely reported recent interview, Arsenal’s CEO Ivan Gazidis said of Arsène Wengrer, “He has always put the long-term health of the club first. He wants to hand over a football club, whenever that it is, that is in great shape. He views that as a massively important part of his …
Read More “The Ivan Gazidis interview, what happens when a successful manager leaves, and do injuries determine success?”
MANCHESTER CITY vs. ARSENAL COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 37 DATE: 8th May 2016 VENUE: Etihad Stadium (Manchester, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Anthony Taylor 1st LINESMAN: Lee Betts 2nd LINESMAN: Stuart Burt 4th OFFICIAL: Mike Jones First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 02:09 Sergio …
Read More “Ref Review: Man City – Arsenal: A tale of Jekyll and Hyde”
AUTHORITARANISM……………Don McMahon Society needs authority, since without it, we have anarchy or worse still, madness and chaos that destroy all before it. That said, some forms of authoritarianism are worse than others. For example, the theocracy currently in vigour in Iran has limited the power of the average citizen significantly and is posited on the …
Read More “We are right, you are wrong; we know best, we cannot be challenged”
By Sir Hardly Anyone (in jovial mood and jaunty hat) A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go We’ll catch a fox and put him in a box And then we’ll let him go Isn’t it curious how quickly the mood can change! Now we live in a one issue world we can flip from …
Read More “Are Arsenal hunting Foxes? After Vardy there is another lined up. Tally ho!”
By Tony Attwood Among psychologists it is called Mathswash: the notion of presenting ideas and vague thoughts on what might happen, as if they were firm facts and evidence based predictions. No caveat, no suggestion this might be wrong – just here it is, it’s bleedin’ obvious. You know the style: If Mr Wenger continues …
Read More “How some Arsenal fans embraced the world of mathswash, plus witches, gin, imperialism and persecution of minorities”
by Dr Billy “the Dog” McGraw Chief psychologist at the Institute of Certain Things, The University Hospital of the North Circular Road. I would like you to know that normally I don’t do sundays, but there have been so many calls on my time from members of the aaa utterly distraught that their banners and …
Read More “Arsenal 3 Scotland 0 and the big problem with signing Vardy that seems to be overlooked”
By Tony Attwood Copa America Centenario is what is happening in the US just at the moment, celebrating 100 years of CONMEBOL, the South American Football Federation, and of Copa América. It is being held outside South America for the first time – in the USA in fact, (in case you haven’t been following events) in agreement …
Read More “Ooooooooooooooooospina: its Copa America Centenario, and he’s done great”
By Tony Attwood [this story was updated on 9am, UK time, following publication an hour earlier] As you might have gathered, transfer rumours on this site are pretty much the province of Sir Hardly Anyone who just a couple of days back ran the story Unbelievable Transfer Shock; Arsenal sign £20m striker in secret. Here’s …
Read More “Blimey – the Vardy bid looks like it is true, and there is a release clause, and it wasn’t all made up”
By Tony Attwood According to Die Welt, Fifa is investigating claims that the new President of Fifa, a Mr Infantino, has been doing the rounds destroying recordings of a Fifa council meeting in Mexico. A Fifa spokesman pronounced to Sky Sports News: “We are not in a position to indicate if we have or have …
Read More “Infantino under suspicion of being Blatter II; Fifa under suspicion of being, well, Fifa.”
By Tony Attwood Top of the list today among the oddities of England’s press when it deals haphazardly and on the cheap with football, is the Independent’s home football page which has within it a listing of the top three stories for each club. Or at least that is what it is supposed to have. …
Read More “Memo to the Metro Newspaper. Just how miserable would you like me to be?”
By Sir Hardly Anyone In the last month Arsenal have been tipped to sign an unbelievable 57 players. 57 in one month, and it is more than likely that in the hurly burly I have missed a few. Apologies to those players, their agents and the tipsters in the press for all omissions. According the …
Read More “The 57 players tipped to arrive (so far) and the 12 players on their way out. The Arsenal Transfer Index 2016”
by Tony Attwood Have we proven that there is something wrong with refereeing in this country? It is a question that comes up each time further revelations are made about refereeing by Untold, and I had decided a little while ago not to go over the same old issues of “proof” again. But two events made …
Read More “Maybe it is wholly appropriate that the PL has a ref system different from all the rest”
By Tony Attwood There is a preliminary question to answer here which is, “which fair play league?” because I have come up with three of them. I know its a bit nerdy to go through all of them, but since no one else has, and since we have been publishing the fair play league tables …
Read More “Arsenal won the Fair Play League this season. I wonder why the media didn’t mention it.”
By Tony Attwood Earlier this year there was talk that the FA was going to reform itself. I must say that I didn’t really hold my breath in expectation, we’ve heard it 100 times before and the FA never reforms itself. We’ve covered the stories about how it has wasted huge sums of money …
Read More “The reform of the FA is now down to a man particularly familiar with lap dancing.”
ARSENAL vs. NORWICH CITY COMPETITION: English Premier League MATCH NO. 36 DATE: 30th April 2016 VENUE: Emirates Stadium (London, England) MATCH OFFICIALS: REFEREE: Mike Jones 1st LINESMAN: Richard West 2nd LINESMAN: Mark Scholes 4th OFFICIAL: Kevin Friend First Half Fouls, Advantages, Cards, and Penalties Time Foul by Foul For Description & Decision Points 01:48 Cameron …
Read More “REF REVIEW ARSENAL – NORWICH: interesting observations or just coincidence”
By Sir Hardly Anyone Yes this past week’s transfer tales have been full of both in’s and out’s and with only three months to go before the transfer windows slams shut on your fingers and little driblets of blood spatter onto the carpet you just had cleaned, the clubs are starting to panic. However there …
Read More “Unbelievable Transfer Shock; Arsenal sign £20m striker in secret.”
ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL IN CANADA……………. by Don McMahon This is not meant as an exhaustive or serious overview of what is happening in my country’s Association Football (known as soccer over here) but rather an overview of how we treat, support, officiate and play the game in the Great White North. It is called the …
Read More “Association Football in Canada, by Untold’s Canadian Correspondent (which makes a certain sense)”
ARSENAL 13. Internet has got us all hooked. Having no access to the internet is unthinkable now. Forget phones, we have internet on our watch now, whoever wears those.!!. Our routines have changed and is now all wired up. I start my day with a peep into the phone. And then when I …
Read More “The curious case of the Theo Walcott.”
By Tim Charlesworth My last article talked about the two big gambles that Wenger took in constructing the squad in the summer of 2015. The first gamble was in midfield and the second was in the striker/no 9 position. So now we take a look at last season’s strikers. We went into the season with …
Read More “Strikers: the second Arsenal gamble of Summer 2015 (and will we buy this summer?)”
