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 Yesterday around 50 people died attempting to enter a football match in Egypt. But you’ll be hard pressed to find much detail in the media this morning – even on the endlessly updated websites of the mainsteam press. With football, it seems, in England at least, we have shut off our …
Read More “When absolute tragedy overwhelms what do the press say?”
By Tony Attwood “I totally respect the Premier League as a successful business that generates an enormous amount of income and brings some of the best players in the world to these shores,” said the shadow sports minister in the UK, Clive Efford, recently. “But the way the finances are sucked in perpetuates a culture …
Read More “Right, transfer window over, lets start the Arsenal bashing”
By Tony Attwood On Friday last week the bids for the future rights for football on TV were opened. And yet result and announcement was there none. Partly this is because the old days of Lord Sugar are over. The story is that at the time of the first entry of Sky he telephoned Sky …
Read More “Yet more money is about to pour into football. So what will happen?”
By Walter Broeckx So time for the North London derby. And Arsenal starting this match with the following players : Ospina, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Ramsey, Welbeck, Cazorla, Ozil, Giroud. And on the beach we had : Szczesny, Gibbs, Gabriel, Flamini, Rosicky, Walcott, Akpom. To be honest a surprise that Welbeck came in the …
Its a funny old game. Mr Usmanov, the richest man in Russia and the second biggest shareholder in Arsenal has just loaned the Russian FA nearly £4m so that they can pay that old art collector Fabio Capello (whose collection is said to be worth £10m+) his back wages. Mr U said, “I think the situation …
Read More “World football in a bit of a tizz; Mr Usmanov steps in.”
By Walter Broeckx The official transfer window was closed last Monday. But to my surprise the constant stream of transfer rumours didn’t stop at all. The levels of insanity in the media have risen to new heights. The one that made me laugh out loud was that Alexis was going away this summer because…. Cazorla won the last …
Read More “Alexis demands a transfer as the window isn’t completely slammed shut”
Spurs v Arsenal 07 February 2015 – The Match Officials by Andrew Crawshaw Firstly following Walter’s reviews of Mssrs. Moss (Arsenal v Stoke) and Dean (City v Arsenal) here is the updated Table of Shame Wrong Important Decisions Favouring Arsenal Favouring Opponents 2nd Yellow Cards 0 14 Red Cards 3 13 Penalties 3 14 Goals …
Ref for this match: Anthony Taylor First remark I want to make is that apart from a few minor incidents it seemed that Aston Villa wanted to play a fair match of football. This resulted in the fact that the first time the ref had to make a real decision…it was to approve a goal …
Read More “Ref Review : Arsenal – Aston Villa. Arsenal commit two fouls in 45 minutes.”
EXPLANATION OF ZONAL MARKING SYSTEM. By Bob Macdonald I am qualified Uefa grade ‘A’ coach, and have vast experience both coaching and managing at a fairly high level. My observations are in fact no more than that, and I would be the last person to suggest I know more than the next person. However I …
Read More “Few people who criticise Zonal Marking actually understand what it means”
On the anniversary of one of the most bizarre referee performances of all time, I thought I’d look at whether the media has changed its stance of late. . By Tony Attwood . A lot of the problem about the debate concerning referees is the very curious way the media follow it up. . For …
Read More “Chelsea complain, Man U complain. But hush, don’t talk about refs.”
By Walter Broeckx So Arsenal starting with the following players in this match against Aston Taylor: Ospina, Bellerin, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Monreal, Coquelin, Ramsey, Cazorla, Özil, Walcott, Giroud. On the cold beach we had Szczesny, Gibbs, Gabriel, Rosicky, Flamini, Chambers and Akpom. In the stands we had my wife, myself and the rest of a 30 man …
By Tony Attwood To some people all Arsenal did in the transfer window was bought Krystian Bielik and Gabriel Paulista. Maybe – but what is the result? According to TransferMarket.co.uk it means we have a squad that is worth £343.02m. Some players have increased in value since we bought them (Ospina is now worth £6.16m …
Read More “The value of each squad, the transfer fee oddities and multiple loans.”
By Walter Broeckx Not really the match report as you are used to getting from me after a game. That will be for later. When I get the time to review the match from the comfort of my sofa and enjoy the events on the pitch as they unfolded in front of our eyes. Because …
By Tony Attwood I’ll come to the dodgy and indeed the very very dodgy in a moment, but first, a headline from the Daily Telegraph. “Arsene Wenger failed to land a single player before the window shut – despite links to a host of stars across Europe.” Yes, well, considering that Mr Wenger had already …
Read More “All the dodgy doings you might have missed on deadline day”
By Tony Attwood Every day we get comments on Untold which criticise either one or more Arsenal players, or our manager, or the management team. As I have said many, many times before, we will publish such commentaries, but only when backed up by some logic, stats or reasoned argument. Just calling someone at Arsenal …
By Tony Attwood It struck me as Blacksheep and I walked back from the game to Archway underground station, what a warped vision of football is created by the arrant nonsense that is pumped out by so many blogs and the newspapers each day, with their endless story that the only thing that matters is the …
Read More “Villa’s problem, Arsenal’s six injuries and the cost of January transfers”
Afternoon one and all and welcome to Sunday’s Premier League early KO at the Emirates. It’s Arsenal vs Aston Villa brought to by the lovely folk at Europcar – Arsenal’s Official Car and Van Rental Partner. It’s four wins on the bounce now for Arsene Wenger’s men who return to Premier League action for the …
Read More “Arsenal vs Aston Villa live brought to you by Europcar”
By Bulldog Drummond Quite a big day for the Untold Collective: Andrew, Walter, Blacksheep and Tony all at the game together. Untold doesn’t manage that very often. And glory be, what a difference a few weeks makes. From the December doom gloom and doom and gloom and we are finished, to this, in the Guardian: …
Read More “The difficult task of fitting in all the players: Arsenal v Villa”
By Tony Attwood With each passing outrage from Fifa Untold has raised the issue of the sponsors of the dictatorship, and suggested that the sponsors should take a good look at what is going on in their name. Of course we can’t expect much to happen, not least when the Football Association in England, always …
By Tony Attwood ‘Arsenal to make audacious swoop for Suarez’ Roll up roll up all the nonsense you want to have. Suarez plays for a club quite rightly banned from transfers because of its child trafficking policies, and Arsène Wenger says that we are not signing anyone, and so we get that headline. Oh what …
Read More “Tiny Arsène, Arteta signs, we’re buying Suarez, and dictionary lackadaisicals latest”
By Andrew Crawshaw Firstly, following Walter’s review of Mr Pawson in our away game at Southampton, we have an updated Table of Shame – it is shown at the end. That table reveals that there are still no signs of it starting to even out. Mr Pawson made two wrong Important Decisions (second yellow cards, red …
Read More “Arsenal v Villa 1 Feb 2015: Taylor will bend the rules to punish Arsenal”
By Tony Attwood The oldest, one might almost say, the traditional way of match fixing, was established by Liverpool and Manchester United at the end of the 1914/15 season. Yes, 100 years ago this season. Manchester United were looking likely to be relegated while Liverpool were comfortably placed mid-table. So the two clubs worked …
Read More “The three ways of fixing matches in the Premier League”
By Walter Broeckx So Taylor it is again. Only 7 matches since his last match in charge of Arsenal the evil face of the PGMO is back. Let us look at his stats up to now and compare them with the overall record from Arsenal in the PL. Total WIN DRAW LOST Arsenal 174 96 …
By Tony Attwood Sky Sports presenters Andy Gray and Richard Keys were dropped by Sky after making off-air comments during a game in January 2011 saying that female officials “don’t know the offside rule” and predicting assistant ref Sian Massey would make mistakes during a game a couple of days later. The comments were boorish, sexist and …
By Walter Broeckx Over the last months we have heard the media coming up with the phrase that Arsenal is a one man team. One could say this is another fine example of the laziness from the journalists. Now of course I am the last person to take anything away from what Alexis has brought …
