By Tony Attwood 81 players arriving, 27 leaving: the media’s wild take on Arsenal’s transfers this summer Out of contract players: are Arsenal just being sloppy in retaining players? UK government increases its active involvement in football, but is that good? In one sense the tale of Arsenal facing a transfer ban is of course …
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Out of contract players: are Arsenal just being sloppy in retaining players? By Sir Hardly Anyone The case of Adam Hlozek shows us exactly how the media work these days. Before the last couple of days, there has been no mention anywhere of the forward wanting to come to Arsenal, or of Arsenal being interested …
Read More “81 players arriving, 27 leaving: the media’s wild take on Arsenal’s transfers this summer”
By Sir Hardly Anyone UK government increases its active involvement in football, but is that good? Saka and the world cup: a worrying scenario In the media, there is always a lot of debate about how Arsenal regularly lets players’ contracts run down, and how stupid this is. (And it is interesting that it is …
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By Tony Attwood According to an article in the Guardian, the UK government did indeed encourage Premier League to approve Newcastle even though the Prime Minister has said repeatedly that the government had no role in the affair at any point. Presumably, this was done to increase investment in the UK and to smooth the …
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A ten point penalty for each club whose fans invade the pitch? Arsenal Women 2021/22 Review Part 4: Player of the Season and where do we go from here In the Premier League 2021/2, 50% of refs showed signs of persistent bias By Sir Hardly Anyone A report in the Telegraph newspaper tells us that …
Read More “Saka and the world cup: a worrying scenario”
By Sir Hardly Anyone https://youtu.be/WN3KkC5E2nY For many years employers (including of course football clubs) have been responsible for ensuring the health and safety of players at work (ie for football that means in training and in playing in matches). Health and safety is widely accepted as meaning being free from threats of abuse as well …
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Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season review – Part 1 Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season Review: Part 2 WSL Match by Match highs and lows Arsenal Women 2021/2 Review, Part 3 – 21 Players to keep; 9 players to let go by Andrew Crawshaw In my Player reviews, I identified four contenders for Player of the Season, Leah …
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By Sir Hardly Anyone Mike Dean, Jonathan Moss and Martin Atkinson all retire after the last round of games in the Premier League this season. But are they biased referees, or the ones who can ignore the crowd and referee the game without crowd interference? That has become the prime question but not a new …
Read More “In the Premier League 2021/2, 50% of refs showed signs of persistent bias”
By Tony Attwood Of course most of the time – indeed we might say almost all of the time – most football fans in England don’t spare a moment to think about how the rest of the world sees us. We are told by our own media that the Premier League is the best in …
Read More “What does Europe think of the Premier League? Less and less it seems”
by Andrew Crawshaw Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season review – Part 1 Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season Review: Part 2 WSL Match by Match highs and lows No Plays Comments Apps Goals All games Keep or Pass 1 GK Manuella Zinsberger Undisputed No 1 goalkeeper, has performed excellently 13 clean sheets in the WSL 33 K 18 …
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By Sir Hardly Anyone and a slide rule Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season Review: Part 2 WSL Match by Match highs and lows The ten things we really learned from the 2021/2 season When people talk about teams making progress they tend to talk in generalisations without giving any statistics to justify what are often preposterous …
Read More “So did Arsenal make progress this season? And what of the rest.”
Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season review – Part 1 by Andrew Crawshaw In this article, I have used red to show the matches I consider to be season highlights and blue for the lows. Our League Season started with a daunting series of games with home ties against Chelsea and Manchester City in the first three …
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The worry for those who attend games is what will happen in the summer 1: We have by far the best song in football, ever. The choreography was perfect – which is not something you often hear in relation to Arsenal. But it was. At the final moment just before kickoff when we thought the …
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By Tony Attwood As a final look at the Arsenal v Everton game today, we take a quick look back at the past through historic videos. On the Arsenal History Society website we have collected together videos of Arsenal games, sorted by the teams played against as well as by date. Below are the details …
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Today we celebrate the short life of one of Arsenal’s greatest ever goalscorers. By Bulldog Drummond So here we are with the last team preview of the season… The referee is Andre Marriner. And that is not good news for Arsenal for while the vast majority of the referees have reverted since the pandemic to …
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By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal have beaten Everton 98 times in the 1st Division and Premier League – a record for one club against the same opponent. Everton have the most seasons in the top level of English football in part because they joined the football league when it was just a northern and west midlands …
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By Bulldog Drummond Without those opening 3 defeats, Arsenal would be fine. AFC v Everton preview Rob Holding has served his suspension and so will be available for the final game of the season. Kieran Tierney has undergone surgery and so is obviously out as is Thomas Partey. Takehiro Tomiyasu suffered from a muscular strain …
Read More “Arsenal injuries and suspensions, Evertonian violence, lunatic predictions”
By Tony Attwood The question, as we approach the final game, is this: are Arsenal making progress? And the answer is yes. Not at first, but now, yes. We have obviously done better this season than in the last two seasons under Mike Arteta, and are on a level once again with 2019 – Unai …
Read More “Without those opening 3 defeats, Arsenal would be fine. AFC v Everton preview”
by Andrew Crawshaw First here is a brief summary of the 2020/21 season to give us a baseline against which to measure our 2021/22 season The 2020-21 season finished with Arsenal in third place, one point better than Manchester United who were fourth and nine points behind Chelsea who were champions Club P W …
Read More “Arsenal Women 2021-22 Season review – Part 1”
By Tony Attwood If clubs cannot control their fans, their stadiums should be closed proclaims the Telegraph The rise of disorder at football: why is it happening and what can be done? asks the Guardian commenting on a “shocking rise in disorder” Football arrests ‘highest in years’ & disorder on the rise – police announces …
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The Transfers Arsenal Need To Make In Summer 2022 By Jonathan Strange It’s looking like a bitter end to the season for Arsenal but many fans seem to be forgetting just how promising this emotional rollercoaster of a year has been. Sure, it’s not looking like we’re going to finish in fourth place, but it …
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What Arsenal really need now is a new image maker The two faced approach of football regulators to corruption By Tony Attwood There is an article on the Telegraph website today about pitch invasions, which has the headline, “If clubs cannot control their fans, their stadiums should be closed.” And I suspect anyone who …
Read More “The incredible lengths the media will go to, to avoid blaming the FA for anything”
By Tony Attwood The two faced approach of football regulators to corruption It’s the same old problems at Arsenal. But what are the same old problems? PR and advertising have for many a long year been dirty words in England with the notion that both trades aim to turn things into what they are not …
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To cover up its acceptance of Russia, Fifa expands its powerbase still further. by Tony Attwood As we have often noted, it is a prime mantra of Fifa that football authorities should not be subject to the demands of national governments but should in fact be utterly independent except that they are answerable to the …
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By Tony Attwood The benefits of the Europa League, plus Chelsea sale on the edge of collapse There is an article in the Telegraph that has the headline “New-look Arsenal have been undone by the same old problems during late-season stumble” which I have read with some interest, as I was hoping the piece would …
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