Arsenal: specialists in failure? Our results against Man U are not quite what some make out

By Tony Attwood It’s the Guardian, and its the weekend, so it’s time to run an article knocking Arsenal.  Why they feel the need to go on and on and on and on doing this week after week after week, I don’t really know.  You might have thought they’d have had enough of it by …

It’s judgement day (part 1). The result of the first case involving Fifa is due shortly

By Tony Attwood The British media, alone in most of Europe, have studiously ignored the dramatic series of court cases that have been engulfing world football – probably because they are having difficulty reconciling what we have discovered with all that they have said before in supporting Fifa, and English bids to host the world …

Arsenal win again; the village fails to stir itself

By Tony Attwood It is not exactly my first choice for watching Arsenal, nor indeed my second, but as an option it will do.  A ten minute drive from my village to the neighbouring (and at night, sleepy) settlement of Rothwell – a place where during the Bronze Age mourners buried their dead alongside offerings …

Arsenal v Dundalk the unconfirmed confirmed confirmations of the teams

by Bulldog Drummond In the last couple of years a number of newspapers have started to put up headlines which say “the confirmed teams” a day or two before the match.  The details that follow are nothing of the sort – the club doesn’t actually confirm the team until one hour before kick off at …

Arsenal v Dundalk: injuries, the table and a video of last week’s fun

By Bulldog Drummond Just in case you missed the opening game in the Europas, here’s a quick summary The injury league remains much as before with Arsenal still near the top, but not at the top. Crystal Palace: 9 Everton: 9 Liverpool: 7 Arsenal: 6 Brighton and Hove: 6 Fulham: 5 Leeds United: 5 Manchester …

Arsenal v Dundalk: the first ever meeting with a side from Ireland

by Bulldog Drummond The League of Ireland is a summer league, but this season, just half a dozen games in, the season was stopped due to the virus.   It only resumed on 31 July.  In the early games after the re-start, Dundalk, whom we play tonight, had three defeats and two draws, including getting themselves …

Good runs, bad runs, manager changes. How’s Arsenal doing?

By Tony Attwood There is a lot of doom around at the moment following the defeat to Leicester, as if supporters expected that after winning the FA Cup and Community Shield Arsenal would storm ahead and at least get into the “fourth is not a trophy” spot from the off. But life in the league …

The disgraceful way some football staff are treated, and how the media respond

By Tony Attwood You might recall how the media went bonkers when Arsenal made some of its talent spotting staff redundant.  There was as ever no comparison made with other clubs – Arsenal were simply singled out and hammered for several days in the press. And yet when Liverpool behave in a far, far worse …

Another Arsenal put down: why do journalists hate us so much?

By Tony Attwood The journalists don’t exactly say that we are a lower form of life, but there is constantly something within the way in which they describe fans that suggests that we are, as a group, of low intelligence, limited attention span, and lacking in any ability to understand, discuss, debate, consider… We are …

It looks like our protest against £14.95 a match was a success. Now what?

By Tony Attwood The match against Leicester looked pretty dispiriting on Match of the Day, as it sounded on Arsenal TV, so those who broke the boycott and paid their £14.95 didn’t get much for the money. But despite there being some protest breakers it looks like the protest might have been a success.   There …

Does the league table after six games tell us much about the future?

By Tony Attwood This season we have the worst start to a season since 2011/12.  In that season after six league games the table looked like this Team P W D L F A GD Pts 1 Manchester United 6 5 1 0 22 5 17 16 2 Manchester City 6 5 1 0 19 …

It’s all been going wrong for a long time but doing more of the same won’t help

We’re back on Twitter (@UntoldArsenal) and Facebook (UntoldArsenalToday)   By Tony Attwood The problem with most analyses of football is that we are repeatedly told that when a club is failing there are only two things that can be done: buy new players and change the manager. But that is a problem for Arsenal because …

Arsenal v Leicester: the boycott game; we are saying “No!!!”

By Tony Attwood This is the moment we have a little chance to fight back against the exploitation of fans both by the TV companies and by the clubs that bow down to them. The Untold team – little band that we are – are not paying £15 to watch the match.  Those of us …

Arsenal v Leicester, the boycott game. The score and who’s playing with no one watching

After quite a long lay-off we are back on Twitter @UntoldArsenal and Facebook@UntoldArsenalToday. Please do follow us. Untold Arsenal is fully backing the campaign supported by AISA – the Arsenal Independent Supporters’ Association to protest as best we can against the charging of £14.95 for supporters to watch today’s game against Leicester on Sky. We’ll be …

Arsenal: fewest tackles, fewest fouls, best defence. What next?

By Bulldog Drummond Last season we gained a major insight into the way football was being played in the Premier League by analysing three factors: the number of tackles, fouls and yellow cards.  Leicester we found had really weird statistics in these areas in the first half of last season, tackling way beyond anyone else, …

Arsenal’s squad list in comparison with others; and could Ozil legally walk out?

By Tony Attwood As you will of course know, and indeed as is rather implied within the name, the “25 man squad” can be made up of 25 players.   No surprises there. But Arsenal have only 22 players in the squad.  And that’s after we left out Ozil. The reason of course was that we …

Media’s feeble attempt to explain away wins while ignoring the true research

By Tony Attwood Please note this article refers to academic research into referee behaviour – the links to the research are given at the foot of the article. The great thing about the debate concerning referees is that when Untold started out 14 years ago, the only evidence we had was what we saw on …

Could Fifa really be stopped? Is the unthinkable now actually possible?

By Tony Attwood As you will know if you are a regular reader of Untold, there is a major crisis facing Fifa through the trial happening in Switzerland which pitches Infantino, the head of Fifa against the Swiss state. Now we have had the court decisions in Trinidad and Tobago in which for the first …

Vivianne Miedema: our Striker of Distinction

by Andrew Crawshaw Down the years as an Arsenal supporters we have been granted the privilege of being able to watch a number of truly great players at their very best.  Ian Wright, Thierry Henry, Denis Bergkamp, Tony Adams, Mesut Özil (once upon a time) are some who spring to my mind and I’m sure …

And the point about beating Rapid Vienna is….

By Tony Attwood The point is that we have had a transfer window in which we have signed a fair number of players and spent a lot of money.  These guys, along with some more of our youngsters, need to be introduced into the squad, and they need to get used to their team mates.  …

Rapid Vienna v Arsenal. Everyone’s guess at the team, and the injury horror list.

By Bulldog Drummond Arsenal are right up at the top of the injury table, and once again I must report that we have spied no articles explaining how Arsenal being top of the injury list (which they occasionally were) was always the fault of Mr Wenger, when here we are again, at the top.   Is …

Rapid Wien v Arsenal: All I’ve managed to find out, and maybe what you need to know

by Bulldog Drummond Tonight we are away to Rapid Wien, kick off at the singularly bizarre time of 1755 GMT. It is normal with these previews for newspapers and websites imperiously to headline that “All you need to know” and then tell you the date, time and TV channel.  I would never wish it to …

We must be clear; it is the referees who have been giving clubs the advantage

By Iver Number This season there have been 48 games played in the Premier League.  Of those 22 have been away wins, 17 have been home wins and 9 have been draws. In 2018/19 – the last season without any corona virus interruption, 128 games out of 380 were away wins. Looking at both sets …

Arsenal completely dominant: Women’s Super League – Weeks 4 and 5 Roundup

by Andrew Crawshaw Week 4 saw the following games Tottenham H v Manchester United Chelsea v Manchester City Reading v Birmingham City Bristol City v Aston Villa Everton v West Ham United Brighton and Hove v Arsenal The Saturday game saw Tottenham take on Manchester United, who if they won would go to the top …