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By Walter Broeckx
So it’s final now Squillaci was the last player this transfer season to join Arsenal. Now you all can be happy or unhappy about the signing but I will tell you that I am furious.
I’ve had enough of it. For years I have been supporting Arsenal and our manager Wenger with all my heart and passion but now it is over. For years I have written articles and supported his vision but how was I supposed to know he doesn’t care about me and what I think and have to live with. So really I cannot keep my mouth shut any more and I must tell Wenger that before he does another signing he should ask me for my blessing.
For the past few years every signing of Wenger made it go from bad to worse. Rosicky, well okay. Nasri was an exception and I don’t have any problems with that. But with Arshavin whose first name is Andrey of all names it began. Vermaelen didn’t cause me problems but that is just because I knew him as he is from my country. But I know that some of you also have problems with him.
But this season, I mean really, it looks as if he is just doing it to pester us. Marouane Chamakh, no problem for you? It is for me. And what to think about Laurent Koscielny? What was Wenger thinking when he bought him? And now of all people Wenger has brought in Sébastian Squillaci. I think he is doing this just to make us mad at him.
For those who have learned to know me the last year on Untold and you might ask yourself, “What has got in to Walter” or “is this the same Walter that is writing about refs?” The same Walter that is supporting the team with a lot of passion? The Walter that has only just had an article over here to thank Wenger for staying for another few years? Yes, it is me.
Is this Walter now joining the AAA forces? Is Walter going to shout: Wenger out! In every article? Is Walter going to give names to Wenger? Walter who has always been so angry whenever someone was giving Wenger or the players names.
So I guess by now you might be tempted to go scrolling down to the comment section and start writing comments and ask Tony to ban me from the Untold articles for ever and even never let me comment on this site ever again. But please wait one moment before you do this.
The fact is that I have nothing against Rosicky, Arshavin, Chamakh, Koscielny or Squillaci as a player. No I am glad that they have joined us. But the thing I do hate about all these new players is the fact that they have such difficult names.
Have you ever tried to write the name Wojciech Szczesny? No, you lucky guys only have to try to read his name. But okay I could live with that. He was bought as a young goalkeeper and no one ever really cared. But as no one was protesting Wenger thought he could do whatever he wanted and so he only bought players with difficult names.
Really do you think it is funny when you are typing your match report watching the game and then suddenly you have to think: how do you spell Koscielny? Was it with a Z or with a double ss or with an I at the back. In the mean time we have almost missed 3 chances, and scored a goal by Chamakh and then you have to find out if his name ends with a h at the back or is the h in front of the k so it could be Chamahk.
And now I will have to face the same thing with Squillaci. Can you imagine Koscielny and Squillaci playing at the back together?
Can you imagine in a game Szczesny making a wonderful safe, Koscielny hooking it out of danger playing it on to Squillaci who is playing it forward to Rosicky, who at his turn plays it in to the path of Arshavin who gives a cross to Chamakh who scores a goal for Arsenal. I bet you can imagine it on the field but you just try to write it down. Then it isn’t that pretty any more.
So I’m not happy with our manager as he is spoiling the business for us poor match commentators on the internet. He only is looking at the interest of Arsenal and the team and doesn’t care about me and the rest of us poor writers in blogs.
Therefore if Wenger really wants me to be writing articles in support for his great vision and for all the good things he has brought us, he better take care that the next signing he does is not Pjotr Dszjeprtrsjka from wherever and from whatever team in the world but please let it be someone with a name with only 3 letters in it. I don’t care if he can play football or not. I don’t care if he is a goalkeeper, a defender an attacker. I don’t care at all. Just a short and easy name please.
It would make my life and many other bloggers in the Arsenal blogosphere much easier.
Coming up next: What makes a good supporter.
More ludicrous names
A bunch of Scottish names
Some very silly names
Names which only an English speaker will find silly.
Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 3
By Dale Higginbottom
This is the second instalment of the weekly look into the injury levels faced by the clubs in line for a title challenge. Arsenal’s problems with injuries over the past three seasons have been well documented in the media and have largely been blamed for the lack of trophies in recent years. Untold Arsenal have always been willing to look deeper and counter the (often wrong) beliefs that “Arsenal have too many injury prone players” or “Arsene signs crocs” and this series of articles will hopefully gather the raw data required to finally prove (or disprove) these beliefs. So, gameweek three went as follows:
Blackburn Vs Arsenal
Arsenal (5 injuries)
- Goalkeeper, defence – No injuries reported
- Midfield – Frimpong , Ramsey, Nasri
- Attack – Bendtner, RvP (started but injured during the game)
Point to note: Djourou and Denilsen appeared to have been declared fit but did not make the squad.
Tottenham Vs Wigan
Tottenham (9 injuries)
- Goalkeeper – Gomes
- Defence – Woodgate, Gallas
- Midfield – Bentley, Modric, O’Hara,
- Attack – Pavyluchenko (second half sub, returning from injury), dos Santos (second half sub, returning from injury), Keane (unused sub, returning from injury)
Chelsea Vs Stoke City
Chelsea (4 injuries)
- Goalkeeper, attack – No injuries reported
- Defence – Ivanovic, Bosingwa, Bruma
- Midfield – Kakuta
Man Utd Vs West Ham
Man Utd (3 injuries)
- Goalkeeper, attack – No injuries reported
- Defence – Ferdinand
- Midfield – Hargreaves, Anderson
Point to note: Carrick has been on the bench for a while returning from injury. He only appeared as a second-half sub but was not reported as injured.
Sunderland Vs Man City
Man City (4 injuries)
- Goalkeeper, midfield – No injuries reported
- Defence – Boateng, Bridge, Kolarov
- Attack – Balotelli
Liverpool Vs West Brom
Liverpool (1 injury)
- Goalkeeper, defence, attack- No injuries reported
- Midfield – Rodriguez (second half sub, recovering from virus)
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The past two weeks have put Arsenal up near the top of the injury list with our long-term absentees either still out for a while or on the verge of a return. This week has seen things pick up for Arsenal on the injury front and going into the Blackburn game with four injuries is a big plus point so far. The injury to van Persie is obviously a blow but at least he can’t get even more injured whilst away with Holland.
The absence of early Champions League qualifiers for the first time in a while has probably helped somewhat and the fact that new signings have not needed to settle in has meant that less pressure is on injured/unfit players to make a quick return.
On the other side of that point is Tottenham. They seem to have been the worst hit overall so far in terms of injury quantities and on injuries in key areas to key players. Those early Champions League qualifiers can be really competitive with so much at stake and with players only just returning to match fitness after the summer the extra strain of two games per week can often be injury-inducing.
The remaining teams have all had similar levels of injury concerns so at the moment there are not a lot of major issues to report. This is likely to change over the season as more teams play midweek games and fatigue kicks in.
There will not be an injury round up next week as we have Arsenal fans’ favourite point of the season, the international break. Expect the numbers to change for the worse this time in a fortnight.
Untold Arsenal, not exactly the place for facts, but still, you can’t have it all.
Arsenal Worldwide, a completely different experience
Making the Arsenal, the greatest book on Arsenal ever written
Your first time with Arsenal, live - we want your story.
Is this the last season in which Arsenal will buy any player who is above 21yrs of age??
by Dark Prince
Now on the last day of the transfer window, lots of questions have arisen on how many more players Lord Arsène Wenger will be buying. But we have to remember that we have a new 25 limit squad rule from this season.
Yeah sure, many will rightly say that we have enough places to buy another 2-3 players. But are we missing something?? Lets check out…
Lets look at the new rule (yeah, we’ve gone through this many times but there’s still some points to be made…)
By 1 September every club will have to name a first-team squad of no more than 25, of which a maximum of 17 may not be homegrown players.
Well, I’m not going into the aspects of the number of ‘Homegrown’ players we have because I assure you that we have enough of them.
The complex part is what seems to be the simple part… In addition to this squad of 25 players, each club may use as many under-21 players as they wish. The player must have been born on or after January 1, 1989 to be classed as ‘Under-21′ for this season.
Now we have lots of under-21s, dont we? And yeah, we don’t have to include them in the 25 man squad this season. This is where we come to the bit quite a few people are overlooking…
Here’s our first team players along with their birth dates. The breakdown is as follows-
1) Manuel Almunia (May 19, 1977)
2) Abou Diaby (May 11, 1986)
3) Bacary Sagna (February 14, 1983)
4) Cesc Fabregas (May 4, 1987)
5) Thomas Vermaelen (November 14, 1985)
6) Laurent Koscielny (September 10, 1985)
7) Tomas Rosicky (October 4, 1980)
 Samir Nasri (June 26, 1987)
9) Robin van Persie (August 6, 1983)
10) Carlos Vela (March 1, 1989)*
11) Theo Walcott (March 16, 1989)*
12) Denilson (February 16, 1988)
13) Aaron Ramsey (December 26, 1990)*
14) Alex Song (September 9, 1987)
15) Jack Wilshere (January 1, 1992)*
16) Johan Djourou (January 18, 1987)
17) Lukasz Fabianski (April 18, 1985)
18) Gael Clichy (July 26, 1985)
19) Andrey Arshavin (May 29, 1981)
20) Vito Mannone (March 2, 1988)
21) Emmanuel Eboue (June 4, 1983)
22) Kieran Gibbs (September 26, 1989)*
23) Marouane Chamakh (January 10, 1984)
24) Armand Traore (October 8, 1989)*
25) Nicklas Bendtner (January 16, 1988)
26) Wojciech Szczesny (April 18, 1990)*
27) Sebastien Squillaci (August 11, 1980)
* = Under-21 for season 2010/11
Well, we look very well settled for this season with this squad. Some (including me) may argue that we need a new goalkeeper. But keeping that aside, if we look at our squad, we’ve got 7 players who are under-21s and rest 20 players are 21 or above. So we do have 5 spots left to fill…or do we??
Now I can say that maybe apart from Cesc, everyone else will be a part of our team for the next season as well. So, If we look closely, we can see that four of our under-21s, namely, Vela, Walcott, Gibbs, Traore, will no longer be classified as under-21s from next season since for a player to be under-21 for next season, he has to be born on or after January 1, 1990.
This means, we’ll already have 24 players who are 21yrs of age or above next season. Which means, we wont have much room to manoeuvre next season, something which Lord Wenger must have anticipated already. Thus signing another player now is more undesirable. And we now know the reason why Lord Wenger isn’t happy with the new squad rules.
It is highly debatable whether Cesc would be staying with us next year. Suppose he does leave, that would still leave us with only 2 places left next season. But does it mean we would still buy players next season???
I think probably no, and the reason being the same that we have so many youngsters who would be 21yrs by the following 2012-13 season. The likes of Ramsey, Szczesny, Eastmond, Lansbury, Nordtveit, JET, Barazite, will have to be included in the 25 man squad or else they’ll have to play for the reserves all year.
Most of us can again debate whether we can loan out some of these players, but surely not every one of them. So by the time, we reach 2012-13 season (2 years in the future), our squad will be jam-packed because except for maybe Almunia and/or Cesc, everyone else present in our current team will be surely there after 2 years and we’ll have almost a dozen newly 21yr olds waiting to get added in the first team squad.
Now I have not even included many other players of our current/reserve/youth team because some of them will still be under-21s after 2yrs, namely Afobe, Wellington Silva, Watt, Sunu and Wilshere (can you believe it?) and some others I believe they might not make it, i.e they might be sold.
So how does this affect trading of Arsenal in next few years??
There is strong probability that Arsenal will mostly sell in the coming years. Well, then surely Arsenal will be called a ‘Selling’ club. That does not mean we wont buy at all. We will bring in lots of youngsters. All of them falling in the under 21 category so that we have a continuous flow of talent and quality players from the highly successful youth academy into the 1st team year after year.
I don’t think we would be in any need to buy any players above 21yrs of age after this season. We have future world class goalkeepers in Szczesny and Mannone. We have future world class strikers like Afobe and Wellington Silva. We have future world class midfielders like JET, Lansbury and Frimpong. Our future defense is also starting to look good with Nordtveit. So the question arises – Is this the last season in which Arsenal will buy any player who is above 21yrs of age??
I wont be surprised if it is.
Untold Arsenal, not exactly the place for facts, but still, you can’t have it all.
Arsenal Worldwide, a completely different experience
Making the Arsenal, the greatest book on Arsenal ever written
Your first time with Arsenal, live - we want your story.
By Tony Attwood
Arsenal is more than the first team, more than the “25″ – it is a collection of teams including an all-conquering women’s team, and a youth team that has taken three trophies in the last two years.
Additionally we have our loanees. The number of these will rise over time (we hear that half the clubs in the EPL are after Lansbury at the moment) but already there are players out there doing their stuff.
So here’s a quick summary of how things are working out, outside the area of the top “25″
The loan system is under way…
Sanchez Watt is playing for Leeds United and is starting most games.
Kyle Bartley at centre back is playing for Sheffield United
Luke Freeman is playing with an injury, but still manages to to put in time as a sub for Yeovil.
Francis Coquelin is playing for Lorient in France, but was an unused sub in the last game.
Pedro Botelho is playing for FC Cartagena alongside Pascal Cygan. He played the whole of the last match and scored.
Samuel Galindo has finally got his work permit (he’s Bolivian) and will be playing for UD Salamanca.
The women’s league however is not underway…
…since Arsenal are in the Super League which will play through the summer starting next March or April next year.
At the moment the fixture list is looking rather threadbare with just a handful of friendlies, the Champions League matches and a couple of London County Cup games lined up. There aren’t even FA Cup matches to fill in the gaps yet since Arsenal have been given a bye until the 5th round. (Actually that’s the fifth round proper – in addition to the three preliminary rounds).
The FA has not published dates of the later rounds yet, but I imagine that the Super League clubs who have been given a bye to the 5th round, have done so on the understanding that their matches will be played in March onwards, rather than out of season.
Reserves: The reserves started off with a 5-0 win over Bolton, and have got Blackburn on 7th September. The exciting game however is 14th September against the Elite Squad!!! of Manchester City. Supposedly the Elite Squad!!! is in fact the graduates of the youth system at the Manchester club – and it will be interesting to see if it stays that way.
I’ve lost track of how many players Man City have in their first team squad, but I think it is about 38, which needs to come down to 25. So what will they do with the rest? Loan them out? Play them in the reserves? We shall see.
Our reserve team for the opening game was
- Vito Mannone
- Havard Nordtveit
- Thomas Cruise
- Gavin Hoyte
- Ignasi Miquel
- Craig Eastmond
- Mark Randall
- Chuks Aneke
- Nacer Barazite
- Benik Afobe
Youth:
The youth team played what was apparently a poor game against Manchester City for their opening match and lost 5-2. However in the second game there was seemingly an improvement and we won 2-1 against Sunderland. The team was
- Charles Cook
- Glasgow
- Boateng-
- Monteiro
- Brislen Hall
- Edge
- Webb
- Rees
- Monakana
- Neita-Meade
by Walter Broeckx
So let us have a look at the ref from the game against Airburn Rovers – Arsenal. Ref in charge was Mr. Foy who had received a fair deal of criticism after the game Stoke City – Tottenham H. And he deserved that criticism as he was truly bad in the Stoke game.
But how did he do at our away game ?
The first miss he made was not giving a yellow card against Song early in the game when Song was bringing someone down rather cynically.
Next important thing was that all three goals were within the rules – nothing to report.
And then he gave a yellow card for a blatant pull on the shirt from Givet who was testing the quality of Walcott’s newly designed top.
If this would have been all that there was to report Mr. Foy would have a fairly good game. But for the first time this season I feel the need the bring in the other decisions table as there are a few things I should report and take in to account.
Let us start with the wrestling in the penalty area. I don’t know how the FA is dealing with the instructions from Fifa but in other parts of the world the refs get the instructions to act before a corner or long throw is taken. This means that when you seen players holding each other, wrestling each other, blocking each other, blocking the keeper, … you should stop the free kick or throw in, or corner, from being taken. You then call over the people who are doing all those kind of things that are against the laws of the game, and warn them that you will take action and then take action.
Nothing of that kind to see with Mr. Foy. As a ref you should be the boss on the field and it should be you who is telling the players what to do. Now after seeing this game (and the summary of the Stoke-Tottenham game) it is clear that Mr. Foy is not the boss on his field. He just lets players do what they want and he just accepts the outcome. If the defender wins the illegal battle, fair for him. If the striker wins the illegal battle, also fair for him. He just let things happen, in the rules or outside the rules it doesn’t matter for him. The survival of the fittest seems to be his motto when refereeing the game.
And I don’t want to say that our players didn’t commit fouls. Because when you allow attackers to start using those tactics the defenders start to react and then you get this scenes where 12 players in total are holding each other and all are committing fouls. So as a ref there is indeed nothing you can do after that because you cannot punish 12 fouls at the same time. But you have to act BEFORE the fouling starts and warn the players about what they are doing. Nothing with Mr. Foy of that kind. He just let the players do what they want and by allowing this he makes a fool of himself as a ref.
Now I could go and count all the scenes when he didn’t act in accordance with the instructions but I will keep it to five situations and a score of five points. And he gets a score of 1/5 because at one occasion he actually gave a foul when Almunia was pushed out off the field when he had collected the ball. But if I really would have to count all the scenes it would be maybe some 15 in total I think.
And then we have the question which was asked by Terrence McGovern and which I was going to take on anyway: “Yesterday, during an Arsenal attack a Blackburn defender was guilty of a blatant handball which broke to THEO who converted from what appeared to be an offside position. The offside was deemed to be the dominant offence and it resulted in a free kick even though Blackburn were guilty of a blatant hand ball on the edge of their box. How does that work exactly?”
First of all, the handball was outside the box so it never would have been a penalty. But beyond that…
The instructions are that as a ref you have to punish the first foul. If we analyse the situation we come to the following conclusion. Theo was in a offside position. But an offside position itself is not a punishable offence. You must get the ball, or interfere with play, before you can be punished. They call this the “wait and see” rule which means that you only raise the flag for offside when the offside is punishable. So if the ball would have gone to Theo without anyone being near it would have been offside.
But because the ref has to punish the first foul (this means happening in real time) he should have punished the handball from the Blackburn player and give a free kick to Arsenal. Because the first foul that happened (in time) was handball and then after that foul the offside was punishable.
But I can understand that assistant raised his flag to indicate the offside position. He maybe couldn’t see the handball and he had to make sure he made the offside signal to indicate the punishable offside situation from the moment Theo touched the ball.
It was up to the referee to then take his responsibility and give the free kick for handball. And even give a thumbs up to his assistant for signalling the offside but he then should have made it clear that the first punishable foul on the pitch was the handball. It is very easy to do for the whole stadium as you make a gesture with your hand and point to it, and everyone would know what happened.
But as we know of Mr. Foy, and as I described him earlier on, he never takes the difficult road and always leaves things like they are. He could hide himself behind his linesman flagging and he followed the linesman decision. So yet again Mr. Foy has showed that he doesn’t take responsibility and takes things in hands. 0/1 points for this.
So where does this takes us in total
Cards 1/2
Goals 3/3
This would mean a total of 75% BUT for the reasons mentioned above I have to change this and take in account his failures on the other decisions
Other decisions 1/6
And if we then make a total then the final score is 56 %. Remember 90% means a very good game and this score, even without the other decision score is far from 90%.
The only advice I can give to Mr. Foy is to work on his game management and personality, and let the players feel you really are in charge and also a good read of the rule book at times can be helpful. So yes we won the game but I really feel that the ref was poor, but it didn’t affect the final outcome of the game.
PS : I would like to add that if you have any questions about the rules just feel free to ask. Even in the comment section from other articles. If I see them I will take them in to next week article. You can also ask questions about non-Arsenal games but then I would like to ask you if you could provide me with a link to some images because it is very difficult to judge a situation and not having seen it.
Walter Broeckx is a referee in Belgium.
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Untold Arsenal, not exactly the place for facts, but still, you can’t have it all.
Arsenal Worldwide, a completely different experience
Making the Arsenal, the greatest book on Arsenal ever written
Your first time with Arsenal, live - we want your story.
By Walter Broeckx
Sébastien Squillaci, (note the right way his name should be written), is the new player we have brought to the Emirates.
If we remember Wenger is the man who never buys experienced players working with a board of directors who never want to spend money. So who is this “unknown” player and what has he done in this career so far? After all, he is the third player coming in this transfer window – so he must be someone special. Let us have a look at it.
On paper he is French as he was born in Toulon a city in the south of France. But in fact he is born of parents who are from Corsica, Ghisonaccia to give the name of his home town.
And he is Corsican and so not 100% French in fact. To explain the significance of this here’s a very brief diversion for the next two paragraphs.
There was once an independent Corsican Republic, but it was incorporated into France in 1769 – being known in French it is known as “Corse”.
In 1972, toxic waste was dumped off the Corsican coast. Some of the locals took direct action and bombed one of the ships carrying the toxic wastes, and there were further bombings and an assassination. Fighting followed by fighting between two different independence groups, there was a strong French military response which alienated lots of locals, but ultimately the troubles died down. A local referendum this century rejected greater autonomy for the island.
Now back to the football.
This 1m 85cm tall central defender played most of his career in the south of France. His breakthrough came when he was loaned to the Corsican team Ajaccio by his club Monaco.
He then returned to Monaco and later went on to Lyon and then to Sevilla. And from there on we bought him.
Has he won a bit in his career? Well I think he has won on his own more than our whole team together so far. His last trophy was the Spanish cup in 2010. And with Lyon he has become champion twice, won the French Cup, the Coupe de la Ligue and some other lesser cups.
At Monaco he won the league, the Coupe de la Ligue and played on the losing side in the Champions league final against Porto in 2004. And with AC Ajaccio he also won the league but this was in the second division.
So for those who have been asking Wenger to buy someone who has won things in his career it looks like that Wenger has done what they asked.
But as nothing is perfect in some parts of the AAA world they now moan about the fact that they didn’t know him personally. Just as they didn’t know Anelka when Wenger bought him, or Henry or Pires or Vermaelen or … I think I have made my point. For some people no one will ever be good enough I think.
And we have to see what he brings to the team in the next few seasons but at the teams he has been in his career, the trainers and the fans have always been very satisfied with his attitude and his behaviour. But for me he is very welcome and I hope that he brings his experience in winning to the rest of the team.
And maybe he will be like his most famous compatriot from France and from Corsica: Napoléon Bonaparte. He conquered the whole of Europe at first and became emperor of a big part of Europe including the parts where I live. [Err - I think it is not very politically correct for our UK audience Walter - but I'll let you off just this once - Editor]
So welcome Emperor Sébastien Squillaci let your coming to the Emirates be the start of Arsenal conquering Europe and the rest of the world.
Untold Arsenal, not exactly the place for facts, but still, you can’t have it all.
Arsenal Worldwide, a completely different experience
Making the Arsenal, the greatest book on Arsenal ever written
Your first time with Arsenal, live - we want your story.
Up next: The ref’s analysis of the ref – Blackburn against Arsenal
By Walter Broeckx
A tactical and statistical view on the Blackburn game.
As a Dutch speaking person I have had the pleasure many times to listen to Johan Cruijff when he was talking about football and tactics at half time or at the end of a game. It is not that one has to agree with all he says but when a world class player of his calibre and also a world class trainer who has been managing successful at Barcelona for many years is talking it is always interesting to listen.
So once Cruijff said that the most important thing to not concede a goal is to keep the ball out of reach of the opposing team. You can do this by keeping the ball and so the other team cannot have the ball and cannot score. This is the way that Arsenal is doing it. But to do this you need players with some skill and technical ability. Like we have. You need to train your players to do this. Like we do. You must have a manager who believes in bringing something for the people who pay a lot of money to see the games. Like we do.
Now Blackburn has a manager who doesn’t believe in that fancy playing stuff. And we can have a laugh with his approach but in fact he is just doing what Cruijff has said. How can you prevent Arsenal scoring a lot of goals? You just use some tactics like they do.
You have the towel tactic. Which is copied from Stoke but I think Allardyce isn’t going to claim it as his invention. By using the towel tactic he can take away some 15 minutes from the clock. So we can introduce the first statistic: Towel possession: 17%. And this means that for 17 % of the time Arsenal cannot score. Just brilliant isn’t it?
Next you have the corner tactic. Where you take all your time and waste at least one minute before taking it because you have to put some man in front of the goalkeeper who has to come from your own defence. But as they only got 3 corners it only got them 3 minutes. So the second statistic is: Corner possession: 3 %. Not much this time but you can’t have it all.
But now we come to the most brilliant plan from Allardyce. This is where the grandmaster Cruijff, our Lord Wenger and many more must take a bow for Big Sam and admit that he just is a genius in disguise. Remember you must take care that the other team (Arsenal) is not in possession of the ball. So you just must keep the ball out of reach. And how does Big Sam does this? He lets his team hoof the ball as high in the air as possible. So when the ball is travelling in the atmosphere Arsenal cannot have the ball and cannot score.
At times it reminded me of American Football where Robinson was the punter of the team and he was doing all day long just putting the ball up field and kick it as high as possible so his attackers could attack the ball. I have seen some American Football in my life so I know what I am talking about. It is a very simple tactic and you only need a goalkeeper who can kick the ball high and far. I think Robinson would be a sensation in American football. So the comparison that Wenger made with rugby (as American football is some kind of rugby) was not that far-fetched.
And the main thing about this is the fact that when the ball is flying in the atmosphere is not in the feet of the Arsenal players. If we have to believe the official statistics of possession Blackburn had some 42% of the ball in this game. But of that 42% if I make an estimation the ball was somewhere between 100 and 10.000 feet in the air for some 99% of the time. So this gives us as statistic: Air travel possession: 41 %.
If we add this means that the ball was out of play or out of reach for some 61% of the game. I think this is utterly brilliant from Blackburn and Allardyce. We were all thinking that we were watching a game of football but for almost 60 % of the time we played without the ball anywhere near the football field.
So one can only be amazed by the fact that Sam Allardyce just is doing what Johan Cruijff once said you should do to prevent the opposition to score: keep the ball away from their feet. I’m sure Cruijff had other things in mind on and I really would like to hear his spicy comments if he ever sees such a game plan with his own eyes.
But to know Cruijff and if he would be sitting in the tv studio and would have to give his opinion at half time he just would tell the guys from TV that he thought he had been invited to see a game of football. But what he found himself looking at was one team that was attempting to play football and another team that was doing some sport he has never seen before but that should be called: kicking high and far. And then he would get up from his chair and tell them he would come back if they had a real game of football on show with two teams trying to play the game.
At the end of the game we won as in the 39 % of the time that the ball was on the ground we were the better team. And if Allardyce is feeling hard done by, well that is a nice chance to hear. I think it is great to know that he feels hard done by. It only adds to the fun that I get from winning this game.
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Blog of the week: How Inter are totally and utterly bust – the Swiss Ramble
By Tony Attwood
What a jolly day. And so many issues. I’ll combine them into one article, so we can move on to broader matters of substance for consideration and in-depth analysis tomorrow (or not if I get up late, or if you are bored and have had enough).
Wenger’s “rant” (as one correspondent described it in these august columns) was neither an embarrassment nor a rant as was claimed. In fact it was a very clever and calculated approach which arose once it was clear that the ref of our game was the man who refereed the Stoke game the previous week. By focusing on the Stoke play, Wenger was able to criticise the ref prior to the game without criticising the ref, and thus gaining the attention of the FA and EPL.
It was a brilliant strategy that paid off to the full. Blackburn were less thuggish than usual, played more football, and the ref knowing that everyone would notice him after last week, watched his step.
Blackburn we must recall are not an easy touch. Another correspondent pointed out that it was quite appalling that Wenger was unable to beat Blackburn, and it is of course quite true that we lost there last year.
But if you look at the records you will see that aside for ending the season in 10th place last year they won 10, drew six and lost only three at home. And Chelsea, Man U, Liverpool and Villa all failed to beat them at Blackburn, just as we did.
In fact the attack on Wenger for his supposed inability to beat Blackburn was typical of the growing AAA hysteria. Facts have long since departed – it is now a case of making up any statement and just saying it, without any justification.
There was another one this week (while I am on the subject) claiming that we didn’t develop Cesc, even though we took him from obscurity and no progress at the age of 15 and played him at 16. Ah well.
At Tottenham of course they don’t need an Anti-Tot group, since they are one themselves. The planet Earth (as I am sure you will know) is 4.6 billion years old (give or take a year), and in all that time the Tinies have not made it into the Champions League. Now they have, and you would think that someone somewhere might be rather pleased. But no. Following their defeat to Wigan they were booed off the pitch.
Loyalty and deep support is clearly not on the agenda for the old Middlesex club.
But still – they do have room to celebrate, and in keeping with past traditions the Tinies have now bought out a DVD of the draw for the league cup, celebrating their victory in getting a home tie when they play us in the third round. I am told a congratulatory mug commemorating the draw is also on the way.
For us the issue is, what sort of team will our Lord put out? Will the junior kiddies get a kick, or will it be members of the “25″ who have not been having too many games of late? Come to that what will the maniac Arry do? Knowing (if he remembers) that for the first time in those 4.6 billion years the Tinies have Champ League games on the horizon will he play the first team (as he has done before) or will he too put out his reserves?
Actually there is a problem there since the Tiny Totts don’t have a team in the reserve league. I think they have a youth team somewhere though, although I am not sure where.
So there we are, three games in and already two points behind the KGB, in second place. Obviously time to demand Wenger’s head and shoulders. The Tinies are in 9th, having played three and won one, scoring a mighty two goals and conceding two as well.
And what price relegation for West Ham?
And, and, you will forgive me I am sure (well really you don’t have any choice) if I point out that Torquay United won again today, and are top of League Two (the fourth division) having played four and won four. I must admit I don’t know if this is just an English thing, but it is quite common for English followers of a top club to support also a second club, in a lower division. My second club is Torquay (because I lived nearby for three years and the final football matches I went to with my dad were there), who recently suffered the ignominy of a spell in the conference. I won’t bore you with the details, but it makes me very happy to see them on the up.
Incidentally talking of lower leagues, AFC Wimbledon (the club born with Wimbledon FC left London and moved to Milton Keynes to become Milton Keynes Dons are now top of the Blue Square Premier league. If they stay up there they will get into League Two next year, and could even be playing the Dons. Now that would be a game worth seeing!
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By Phil Gregory
Here we are again, Blackburn away. Fresh off the blower asking the box office why my tickets haven’t arrived yet (they were very helpful to be fair) we’re straight into the match preview.
Arsène’s started up with the pre-match mind games, though he’s directed them at the referee. In speaking about the anti-football teams’ approach in assaulting goalkeepers, he’s looking to focus the referee’s mind on the issue so that when the game comes around, the referee deals with it appropriately.
Some would say it’s not his place to influence the referee and they may have a point, but I’d argue that if the referee isn’t observing the laws of the game, then Wenger has every right to bring his focus back to the book.
Looking at the rulebook, let’s not forget it is an offence to both hold an opponent (despite what Peter Walton and Nemanja Vidic may have thought last weekend) and impede the progress of an opponent. We saw both those offences clear as day on a few occasions in this fixture last season, but many Arsenal fans decided to settle on the “Fabianksi is terrible” line of argument instead of having a look at why he could only flap at the crosses (the poor bloke couldn’t even get near them thanks to some Blackburn oaf having illegally moved to block him off).
Unfortunately, this sort of nonsense is “part of the English game” and so fouls that would be stonewall fouls if they occurred out of the area (or stonewall arrests if they occurred in the view of a copper outside a pub on a Saturday night) go unpunished inside the box.
Hopefully Arsène Wenger’s comments will bring a little more sanity to the situation, but I’d go and put my money on us conceding from a set piece thanks to some foul not given right now if they took the bet at my local bookies.
Anyway, moving on and the news isn’t too bad (for us) on the injury front. The longer-term absentees of Bendtner, Frimpong, Ramsey and Nasri are all out, but thanks to our squad depth, none of those losses leaves us with a gaping hole in the squad. With Cesc making his return against Blackpool last weekend, and both of his deputies out, it seems likely we’ll see the Spaniard start his first game of the season along with Robin Van Persie.
Much has been made of a shift back to 442, but it’s all taking Wenger’s comments out of context really. When Robin came on versus Blackpool, Chamakh was put out wide right which works fine. Bendtner did well in the role at the start of last season. A big, tall player out in that role has a huge size advantage over the average fullback and offers a direct option on the counter attack.
One big misconception is that “he’s out on the wing” but he’s really not. He’s not being asked to hug the touchline like a traditional winger, he’s playing in the inside channel (as an inside forward). His fullback can offer an option on the overlap, while he can drive into the box in between the fullback and the left sided centreback (assuming he plays on the right).
This creates space. If the fullback follows him, our fullback has acres of space to measure a cross in while if the centreback moves to close him down, it creates space in the middle for Robin. It’ll be a fluid set-up, with Robin doing some time out wide and Chamakh in the middle but the theory at the heart of the tactic is sound. Drag players out of position, create space and exploit it.
Onto the team then.
Almunia
Sagna Koscielny Vermaelen Clichy
Song
Fabregas Diaby
Walcott Van Persie Chamakh
Most of the team picks itself. Almunia continues in net (and again I implore Arsenal fans to get behind him) while the back four that played at Anfield is seemingly our first choice, though the France international Squillaci may have other ideas.
Song returns to the holding role after a stint at the back, while Cesc resumes the playmaker role. Abou Diaby is one player who has looked good so far this season, and he’ll need to keep it up with intense competition for the final centre-midfield slot once everyone is back fit. Denilson, Ramsey, Nasri and Rosicky will all have claims to the position leaving Wenger with a nice problem to have to deal with later on in the season.
Finally up top, I’ve gone for Chamakh on the left as I don’t see Theo being dropped in his current, clinical form. Whether Theo will make as big an impact remains to be seen, as Blackburn will sit much deeper and he won’t have the same space. However he can always get away from a player, and as long as he puts away his chances I’ll be happy.
Theo and Chamakh playing wide quite clearly leaves Arshavin out of the starting line-up. The little Russian has been taking some unfair stick recently. His performances haven’t matched his level set at the beginning of 2009 but it’s fairly well documented that he’s playing with injury. With our depth of options in the forward positions, it could be wise to take him out of the firing line and do whatever needs to be done to help him return to form and fitness.
The bench should be strong, with the likes of Denilson likely to get some minutes if we are comfortable. Rosicky, Eboue, Vela, Wilshere amongst others will give us excellent options off the bench.
Prediction time. We all know what we’re going to get from Blackburn, but that team I’ve put out there has enough size and strength to dish it right back out, and has the advantage of being able to play some fantastic football too. I’m not fussed about performances here, I just want a tricky game out of the way and three points in the bag. 3-1 to the Arsenal, though I think we’ll grab the two goal cushion quite late on.
Billy the Dog interviews Fattus Samus ahead of the Blackburn fight
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by Billy “The Dog” McGraw.
As Arsenal prepare to play Bolton, or as they are called locally, Blacheborne (a name which, as I mentioned ahead of the fixture last year, is taken from the Old English name for bleach) Untold Arsenal have had the privilege of an interview with Magnus Samo a notorious northern gangster whom the police have been after for several centuries.
But first, the ground of the back.
These days the old club (who last won the league in 1314 – just after lunch) is up for sale and Saurin Shah has made a bid of 2500 pobble beads.
This is, of course, the home of anti-football, rotational fouling, rotational time-wasting, and rotundial Sam.
Last season our comparative records went like this…
- Goals For Blackburn Heart of Satan 41 Arsenal 83
- Goals Against Blackburn Heart of Satan 55 Arsenal 43
- Shots Blackburn Heart of Satan 366 Arsenal 480
- Yellows Blackburn Heart of Satan 57 Arsenal 56
- Reds Blackburn Heart of Satan 2 Arsenal 1
- Fouls committed Blackburn Heart of Satan 561 Arsenal 471
Blackburn Average crowd 25.428,
Blackburn Capacity 31,154 (7,500 of whom are Fattus Sammus)
The fact that this most appalling of teams on got 561 fouls given against them shows how frightful they are, while the paltry 57 yellows shows how well they work rotational fouling.
The location
It is generally thought that most human activity in East Lancashire these days occurs on the hilltops and fans going to the match tomorrow will find examples of urn burials among the tumulus, near Pleasington Cemetery. Sacred springs are to be found thereabouts, especially on Railway Road.
Our team…
Almunia
Sagna, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Clichy (Gibbs, Eboue, Djourou)
Song
Diaby, Fabregas (Denilson, Rosicky, Wilshere)
Walcott, Van Persie, Arshavin (Vela, Chamakh, Rosicky)
The Lord Wenger has already said that we are going to have to watch out for the rugby tackles on the keeper, so that suggests he is going to brief the defence fairly and squarely on this one.
The Interview
In the past, my requests to interview Sam the Very Big have fallen on deaf flesh, but I am thrilled to say that this year we’ve hit the head on the nail. Here’s what happen.
Billy: Mr Allardyce, your team has played two, scored two, let in two. Is that about what you want?
Mr A: We are not firing on all cylinders – and we won’t be for a while, so you can’t expect an instant goal scoring cure. But the fouling is coming along ok.
Billy: Are you in the market for more players then?
Mr A: I’m always in the market buying pigs trotters, tripe, pork pies…, but apart from that I want to buy a striker who can waste time and foul rotationally, but you will know good rotational foulers are hard to find – I normally have to train them personally.
Billy: Is it difficult to recruit players to play for a team in a city named after bleach?
Mr A: I’ve had a couple of bids for strikers turned down this summer, with the phrase “Play under a Slug you must be off your head” becoming a common statement among EPL’s less than finest. And I must admit there is a limited number of front men who are pathetically stupid enough to play for a club I manage. Anybody we get now is going to take a considerable amount of time to adjust to our system of rotational fouling. I don’t think we are going to find anyone from this country so it will take us until the best part of Christmas to get them up to being able to nudge, kick, elbow and waste time in the way we want.
Billy: But are you satisfied with your team?
Mr A: You have no idea! Nikola Kalinic, Martin Olsson and El-Hadji Diouf all need extra training – several times I have seen them actually attempting to play football! Our inability to take five minutes to take a goal kick, and to keep moving the fouling and shirt pulling around the field is a key factor. We have completely dominated the games in terms of fouls, created one or two chances, failed to take them, missed a penalty, hit the ref with a right hook, knocked the teeth out of two ball boys and killed the opposition’s mascot against Birmingham. It’s a start, but not enough.
Billy: So how do you approach the Arsenal game?
Mr A: The main thing is for us to kick the hell out of Arsenal for all 94 minutes of the game, waste time, use the elbows and allow me to do a lot of chewing. They have several new players who won’t have a clue about Notlob, so that should take them by surprise. If we get that right, we might make it.
Billy: Mr Slug, four years ago you said that your legal team would be suing the BBC after they did a programme concerning illicit players in which you featured. The BBC say they have not yet received the papers for the trial. Do you have any comment?
Mr A: Bloody Post Office!
Billy: Mr Slug, I’d say it has been a pleasure, but it hasn’t.
Mr A: It was all mine.
Billy: Next up, Phil Gregory’s preview of the match.
———————————–
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By Tony Attwood
Just a couple of days after the annual Untold preview of Arsenal’s five squads (the “25″, the cup squad, the reserves, the loanees, and the youth team) the Guardian is reporting that the EPL is looking to ban loans.
In the article “One club five squads” we all picked up on the way that Manchester City had renamed their reserves “The Elite Squad!!!!!” (the exclamation marks kindly provided by numerous Untold correspondents) in reflection of the number of players the club now carry and the quality they are now packing into the reserves.
Now the Premier League Investigation Department (turn left behind the rosebed, and its fifth portakabin on the right, just by the dustbins) are apparently trying to ban loans – and not for the first time it seems.
The argument is that part of the tactic of Man Arab is that they deliberately buy up everyone that any other club might want. It is effectively “Squad Doping”. When they get to hear that there is a a team who could possibly be a rival for a top ten finish in the EPL is interested in Fred Higginbotham, they buy him, put him in the Elite Squad!!!!! and then loan him to a Championship side.
(And yes, as you are asking, Man City really have renamed their reserve team “The Elite Squad”.)
It seems that chief bottlewasher and reserve cook, Richard Scudamore, has twice had a bash at introducing a rule that will stop loans between EPL clubs – but has now realised that such a deal would be pointless – because Man City would continue its new policy of loaning to lower leagues.
So they are looking to stop loans altogether!!!!! (sorry, I seem to have affected by !!!!itis).
This could be quite a serious blow for Arsenal, given that in recent seasons we have, on occasion, had ten or more loanees out at any one time – and already have four in place this year. Even a ban at loans between EPL clubs would be annoying – for no matter what we all think of the awful recent history of Notlob, the fact is they clearly had a positive impact on Our Jack towards the end of last season.
The EPL argument is that you don’t need loans because clubs can afford to buy, but that totally ignores the development potential that comes from a loan. Anyone who saw the way Henri Lansbury developed during his year at Watford last season will know that the chance to play competitive games week on week was of great benefit to him.
Seemingly, in the past the attempt to ban loans has been rejected, but with Man Arab happy to ignore the “25″ rule and stockpile a huge number of players (their “25″ is currently 38 and there’s still a few days of transferability left), the suggestion is that the EPL might change their vote.
A major mover in this attempt at change looks like being our old chums The Tiny Totts. It would be quite wrong to suggest that anyone at the club is involved in any sort of back-hander when a deal goes through, but there is no doubt that the club has gathered together a collection of people at the who have previously been noted as serial traders. They are getting irritated at the way that players they want to buy and sell on a daily basis are simply not available.
They suggest this is the current scenario: TinyLand Hottenspuds wants Herbert Slug from Bogshire United. Bogshire are ready to deal, but Big Brother in the north west says, “Oh I wouldn’t do that deal – we might come in for him at double the price.”
The deal stops, and then with nothing happening TinyLand try again for Mr Slug. Bogshire say to Big Brother, “look we want this deal” and Big Brother up in the north then buys the fellow and either sticks him in the Elite Squad!!! or else loans him to Torquay United (who of course have done no wrong in all this) for the year before selling him to Real Mad.
In one particularly amusing move a certain H Redknapp, taking time off from studying the fraud charges levied against him by HM Revenue and Customs, predicted that Craig Bellamy would not be allowed to go to a club with Champions League pretensions. “I couldn’t see them loaning him to someone like us,” said the old wheeler dealer who has left WHU, Southampton and Portsmouth with a string of issues. Yes, well Arry I think we could all see that.
Big Brother in the North West (motto: “Poverty is Plenty – but it doesn’t apply to us) have said, “It’s not our fault. Other clubs don’t pay high enough salaries so of course players come to us. What can we do?”
As things stand Arsenal, Man City and everyone else are able to build up multiple squads at various levels, and Arsenal as we saw in the earlier article, have done this brilliantly, particularly in the use of the loan system. But other clubs, such as Tinyland, have gone the opposite way, closing down their reserve team two years ago after they put out a squad load of internationals for a match against Arsenal, and were humiliated by a bunch of 16 year olds.
So with no reserves, little happening in the way of loans, no overseas links as a way of doing loans, only a fraction of a separate cup squad, and having also withdrawn from the youth league, Tottenham are a club built for transfer deals. And Man City are effectively closing that avenue down.
Big Brother in the north west has spent £500 million on players in the last year or so, and as was revealed in an Untold article a few days ago, has amortisation arrangements that will prevent them playing the Champs League for at least four years.
So without a Champs League route forward they are looking to mess up the game for everyone else. They are quite happy to buy players who will never play for them, just to enhance their chances of getting up the league.
Financial doping, squad doping, whatever next?
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By Bogus Cheese, our man with an argument
Mes cheery cheries. Bonjour, hello and what’s new?
A happy Limburger to you all.
Our dearest old chums of chance, the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal are up to it again! You’d have thought they might climb back down a bit having taking such a hammering over the question of the tickets sur le season upon my soul, but no. Passendale cheese? Not a bit!
On our site, on our very own site, yes right here, on our beautiful dedicated and overwhelmingly overwhelming Untoldio, comes one of their number claiming, saying and proclamating such tales as you would not believe. In fact you wouldn’t believe them. And in case you do not believe and choke on your bavaria blu I’ll quote the very same words, the very words, and no sanitisation or Stilton (Protected Designation of Origin)
“So details concerning Wenger’s contract extension have emerged and it appears that he is no longer on £5million a year, they have given him a 20% salary increase up to £6million a year. Can you believe this?”
and another…
“If we have a fantastic youth system how is it that not one player in 15 years has come through that system.”
(Which youth system is that? The one that developed Theo, or the one that took Cesc at 16 from no-man’s-land, or the one that gave us A Cole, or the one that developed Wilshere and JET and Lansbury and Frimpong, or the one that has developed Coquelin, or the one that found Anelka, or the one that found Gibbs, or the one that brought in Bendtner as a 16 year old…)
Oh my little serpentine, my little Ribblesdale Blue Goat, its the old trickety trick! Quote a non-attributed source, treat it as fact, and they argue on from there. Make up a statement that is horribly and hopelessly so far south of the truth that it won’t even stand up in a cheddar mine, and then treat it as real.
Oh come on!
Then the second bit of Kefalotyri and back with the supposed salary – they say, “How in Gods name does anyone manage to secure that sort of salary increase when they have failed…” assuming that a) the original story is true, and then b) there is a failure and that c) the world is as simple as a piece of Camembert de Normandie.
Instantly we are into corruption, and all the rest of the old Gruyère. I mean to say! Appellation bloody d’Origine Contrôlée sunshine or what???
This is the gibberish of the premier order. This is tripe. This is nonsense. This is Munster-Géromé (no offence).
First, I insist, no I demand, no I utterly utterly mean you jolly well have to. If you want to cite something that is not accepted as common knowledge (like for example the fact that an object dropped from a height towards the earth will accelerate at a rate of 32 feet per second per second) then you really do have to say where the data came from.
In the first case (the salary) no origins are posted by the scurrilous poster, but the story has cropped up on goal.com and a few similar sites, mostly using the same language and terms as each other, suggesting a fair degree of cutting and pasting. In the second, well, there are no facts at all.
It is a standard anti-Arsenal trick - plant the story, get it copied and then get your dandelion minionettes to repeat it as if true. There is no truth because there is no verification. It is the Anti-Arsenal bundle of Oak Smoked Wensleydale and Stinking Bishop.
They plant the story and then try to get us to argue about it, thus attempting to get their original premise accepted as fact while we argue about the rights and wrongs.
Lord Haw-Haw or what???
Second, if you are going to suggest Wenger has failed, you have to do so within a certain context. Now you can say, “If for a moment we ignore the fact that in the last five years football has changed with the arrival of Chelsea and Man City’s endless finances, and if we ignore the fact that Arsenal have selected a route to long term profitable survival rather than the risk of continuous debt, and if we ignore that for the past seven years Arsenal has been building a youth team which started with the recruitment of a bunch of 11 year olds, then it might be argued that Arsenal have failed in not winning a trophy for five years.
“However to argue this we must also look at the historical context of 23 major trophies (league and FA Cup) in shall we say the last 100 years. (100 is a good number since it is exactly 100 years since Henry Norris created the modern Arsenal). So that gives us 1 trophy every 4 to 5 years – which means Wenger is not far off in the present run when there has been the biggest upheaval in football since 1939 – but even this ignores the fact that every year it is a top four finish, which makes the last six years the second longest run of being in the top four in the history of the club.
(The longest run of being in the top four is held by, oh, what’s his name – that French guy.)
(Put another way, even in the 1930s we couldn’t stay in the top four for more than five years running, and that was before Mr Hitler became general manager of Europe).
Now I know that one can construct a debate without all this complexity in it, but really to do so takes us back to the level of the Daily Star, and I am not really certain that Untold is working at this level.
If we are then we really should run the headline
Arsene Wenger and Elvis Presley lived together in a London double decker bus on the dark side of the Moon until rescued by David Dein and Captain Pugwash
I mean Icelandic Höfðingi or what?
No, my petty squiggles, my tiny footnotes to the history of propaganda,my little Marat, mon petit Robespierre, you can’t do it like this. If you want to corrupt the truth you can do it, but you have to do it with style, with panache, and with whatnot, and not with just whatwhat, if you catch my drift.
Might I suggest the writings of the Tony Attwood character in “Making the Arsenal” where he has Jacko Jones writing his King of London parody and the Swiss Navy is just one of ten different foreign groups to invade the country at once. You can do it like that, but not just by making up childish little tales, cutting out 99.99 percent of the facts and then running a rant.
(You can of course rant a run, but that is a different matter).
My dear chums, “we’ve already said… goodbye – and since you’ve gotta go you’d better go now”, as the disc jockey played at my club last night for reasons that will not become apparent at this time. And really if you don’t know that quote, you should pack up your Macedonian Kashkaval and head for the hills because this is serious.
Propaganda is an art and a science, and you, my petit Edam, my minor Gouda, my smelly Limburger you are none of these, my anti-Arsenal Arsenal propagandists, for you cannot write a believable story, you cannot entertain, you cannot amuse, you cannot convince with your dribbling little dribble, and your Jarlsberg and your Nøkkelost
What do you take me for?
Ah, one of those.
Well I’m not. Circassians Tvorok Rossiyski and goodnight. (And you probably don’t even know what cheese is). Give us an argument with gusto and phlegm, not some basic piece of wholemeal constructed out of anchovies and scribbled down in three point seven seconds flat.
Yours sincerely
Bogus.
PS – Tony do I get double fee for mentioning your book in that rather authentic manner?
OK – but don’t tell anyone – ed
Oooops. Sorry.
Managerial Ping-Pong!
By Steven Hebert
Why is it that Managers can be sacked and replaced at any time of the year?
The acquisition and selling of players is, as we all know, restricted to two windows. This makes perfect sense as it brings certain stability to the season and benefits the players as much as the clubs.
Once the season has started, a player can get on with his or her job (yes women play football too) safe in the knowledge that, until January, they are part of the team. The club and most importantly the manager can also get on with his or her job (live with it) safe in the knowledge that they have a bunch of players, that for better or worse, have agreed to all play facing in the same direction come match time. The collective noun being “a team” of course! (interestingly this is also the collective noun for Horses, Oxen and Ducks – make of that what you will).
Now, why is it that players are bound by such bi-annual transfer restriction and yet Managers are not? How could it be that, quite rightly, players cannot leave or join a team outside the two regulated transfer windows and yet Managers are not protected by such a set up.
You might argue otherwise but for me it is clear that once a club has appointed its manager come the start of the season, then they should bloody well live with that decision until January or June, whichever comes around first.
You could also argue that a team can obtain an unfair advantage by changing managers after the team have suffered a bad start or bad mid- to late season. It has happened countless times that a new manager has turned around the ailing fortunes of a club just before the impending doom of relegation to, I am told, a dark and horrible place called “Tschaempeeonshipe”. (Never been there so i am not sure about the spelling) Trust me; it’s a bad place where evil mythical creatures dwell. (I here that the half-time entertainment includes a Ping-Pong table and Badger Baiting! – yeah, best not go there then. )
Anyway, my point is this. Clubs should select a manager within the confines of the two transfer windows and not whenever it pleases or suits their wants or needs. It’s become far too silly and arbitrary for my liking and needs to stop.
I for one welcome the fact that our lordship, the Duc de Strasbourg has signed a new contract and look forward to four more years of solidity, growth and peace of mind.
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Have you tried the book of the century? “Making the Arsenal” - the story of the club 100 years ago.
And then there are the stories of people the very first time they watched Arsenal.
New feature : the weekly Untold Ref Index. How did the ref do in our game?
Do Arsenal really get more injuries than anyone else?
By Walter Broeckx of Arsenal Worldwide
Is every 6-0 the same? It is a question we could ask ourselves on the day, well after a few days in fact, when we won 6-0 and Chelsea also won their first home game with 6-0. A popular score in London for the moment.
The pundits are wild about Chelsea doing this twice against a newly promoted team(WBA), like we did with Blackpool and against a team (Wigan) that just had been beaten by that same Blackpool.
I do think that when we come in may we will see those 3 teams very close to the bottom 3 of the league. I do hope for Blackpool they find a way to avoid relegation as they seem to be a team that is trying to play football and don’t use the ‘kick you to pieces tactics’ as we have seen way to many times being used against our players.
So maybe it’s time to look at some match statistics and I will take both the home games from us and from Chelsea as it can make a difference if you play at home or you play away.
We had a total of 30 shots against Blackpool and Blackpool managed to get 5 in total. Chelsea had a total 19 shots against WBA who had 11 shots in that game.
We had 8 corners against the 2 from Blackpool and Chelsea had 3 corners and WBA had 2. We made 10 fouls in total and Blackpool only made 5 fouls so we were almost a dirty team at times. Chelsea made 12 fouls against WBA who made 10 themselves.
The passing success was almost the same as we had 87,9 and Chelsea had 88,4. It would be interesting to see how many passes actually had been made but I couldn’t find this information anywhere.
We made the same number of tackles as Chelsea did (15), but they are a far better tackling team than we are as their tackling success was largely better than our 66,7 against their 73,3.
One somewhat amazing statistic is that we only had 54,5 % of possession and Chelsea had 60,1 %. And if you compare this with the territorial advantage you see a completely different picture. We played in their half for 63,5% of the time and Chelsea played only for 50,3 in their half. This means that we spend a lot of time in the Blackpool half even when we didn’t have the ball and that Chelsea had the ball a lot but where playing in their own half.
The main conclusion you can draw from this is that we attacked Blackpool the whole game having the ball or not. But then I still had the feeling that we had more off the ball than this 54,5 %.
Because after having seen these statistics and I have found them on Sky Sports, I really started wondering if my thoughts of the game and my general feeling of the game was that bad.
And so I looked around and I found statistics on the BBC and they said we had 65% of possession. Now I will not moan about one channel having a difference of 1, 2 or even 3 or 4 % in possession compared to another, but having a difference of 10% is very much.
Who is right and who is wrong? I had the feeling that we certainly had much more of the ball and that 65% should be the right number for this game.
Maybe one of the conclusions about making conclusions about possession is that it all depends on the way they measure these things and there is a difference between them, but I just don’t know which. But who is wrong and who is right? And if for the rest the statistics are almost the same why then suddenly this big difference between two ‘reliable’ channels.
Off course a shot is a shot and this is something that we all could measure if we would take the time for it. But possession is something different to measure and I really have no intention to do this to get a third number. So maybe we could agree with 60% possession in the Blackpool game.
But we can say that we created a lot more than Chelsea did and as we almost got 30% more shots than they did. But you can also say that Chelsea are a more cynical team when it comes to finishing their chances. One thing is for sure we can enjoy the game more as we always try to bring the ball up field and bring it to the opponents penalty area and try to play our game over there. We play attacking football and Chelsea play somewhat more counter attacking play. But I think most of us didn’t need all those numbers to come up with this conclusions.
But the main conclusion could be: be careful with statistics on possession.
What’s it like following Arsenal from abroad? Arsenal Worldwide is launched
New feature : the weekly Untold Ref Index. How did the ref do in our game?
Do Arsenal really get more injuries than anyone else?
Memories of the first time we each saw Arsenal live
by Tony Attwood
Arsenal, as we know, has five squads – all of which are flexible. And within the system matters are planned and arranged – just as you would expect. We watch the players come up through the youth team, the reserves and so on. Isn’t that how it always go?
You’d think so, but there’s a story coming out that makes me wonder.
It is the odd case of Bebé the man Mr F Word signed for £7.5m with the statement that although he had not seen him play, because “sometimes you just have to go with instinct”.
Now according to our old friends at the Guardian, “his performances in training deemed so poor he was not even considered for a reserve fixture last night.”
The game in question was v Man Arab, who have renamed their reserves The Elite Squad, which is rather sweet. Bebé did not play so Sir F didn’t see him. Oh dear.
I start to wonder if there isn’t something fishy here. Estrala da Amadora, Bebé’s team, are in the third division in Portugal, which is about the same as the league below Conference South, which I think is named after a fridge. They didn’t fancy him much, so he left on a free, and went to Guimarães. Days later Man U signed him from there.
Can you imagine if this had been Arsenal. The Anti-Arsenal Arsenal sites would have been going mad. “Wenger finally loses it,” “he’s destroying the club,” “get this madman out” – and that would just be in the first five seconds.
Of course, it might all be a wind up, and maybe he is brilliant, but still, it is a funny story, or rather it made me laugh.
So, Arsenal meanwhile have no Bebé but we do have five squads – and as our reserve and youth season kicks off, here’s a little summary (in case you haven’t been paying attention.
The First Team
First off, and logically enough, there is the first team squad of around about 25. These are the guys who get the numbers and who appear on the back of the programme. There are 27 of them on the list at present, but we are well within the 25 rule since so many are under 21 and grown in Wenger’s own back garden.
(Incidentally and nothing to do with this article, the missing numbers at the moment are 9, 12, 13, 18, 25, 26, and then everything from 31 upwards save 52 and 53. You really needed to know that didn’t you?)
The Cup Squad
Players who ain’t getting much of a go in the group of 27 will turn up in the Cup Squad, possibly along with one or two others who have not go into the third group (the on-loan). I have really lost the thread of who is where at the moment, but Craig Eastmond, Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, and Gilles Sunu might be there.
On loan
Francis Coquelin is with French Ligue 1 club Lorient, Sanchez Watt is at Leeds and Kyle Bartley will also spend the season in the Championship at Sheffield Untidy, Luke Freeman is at Yeovil Town until January and Pedro Botelho will spend the year having fun with Cartagena. Undoubtedly more will go over time.
Reserves – or should we now call them “The Elite Squad”
The reserve season is just starting (Bolton away since you ask).
There are three leagues – Southern, North A and North B. The Southern group has six teams, including Arsenal, and the two North groups consist of five teams each.
We play the other southern teams twice and each team in the northern groups once giving us 20 matches.
The winners of the two Northern Groups will play off to determine the Northern League Winners and then they play us (as inevitable Southern group winners) for the Barclays Premier Reserve League Play Off Winners Do-Dah.
The big change is that clubs’ training grounds can be used to stage fixtures and Arsenal will play games as afternoon kick offs at London Colney with Barnet just used in September March and April.
In the final pre-season friendly the reserve side was
- Emi Martinez
- Cedric Evina
- Gavin Hoyte
- Daniel Boateng
- Nico Yennaris
- Craig Eastmond
- Mark Randall
- Henri Lansbury
- Roarie Deacon
- Jay Emmanuel-Thomas
- Wellington Da Silva
As I understand it, Wellington Da Silva is not allowed to play for the first team until January – but we could just see him in a 3rd round cup tie then.
Youth team
The youth team have won three trophies in the past two years, but we started disastrously this year losing 5-2 away to Man City of all people. (Come on guys, we win this league – it’s our destiny). Our team was
- Sean McDermott
- Josh Rees
- Samir Bihmoutine
- James Edge
- Elton Monteiro
- Martin Angha
- Jeffrey Monakana
- Callum Webb
- Jernade Meade
- Philip Roberts
- Nigel Neita
What’s it like following Arsenal from abroad? Arsenal Worldwide is launched
New feature : the weekly Untold Ref Index. How did the ref do in our game?
Do Arsenal really get more injuries than anyone else?
By Phil Gregory
In my match preview for the Blackpool game, I touched upon how Theo looked to have filled out quite a bit and how it’d benefit his game. Now, I didn’t anticipate him quite having the impact that he did, but the results are looking to be extraordinary.
He looked to have a new confidence, and this will certainly be partly due to what looks like a fairly extensive gym workout he’s been on over the summer. Working out has been linked to higher levels of testosterone, which will make him both more aggressive and more competitive, while he’ll feel better in himself and will go out with more belief too. We certainly saw this in his game on Saturday.
Most fans disregarded someone like Koscielny as too skinny after they’ve seen them on the pitch, but such a view doesn’t tell the whole story. All you can really tell is the size of their arms and chest, which is almost totally irrelevant to football (how often do you use your arms in a football game?).
You could argue shoulders are important, but for me the most important muscle group for football is without a doubt the core. I was unsurprised to see in the photos of Arsenal training that the players were doing what looked like Russian Twists, an exercise using a medicine ball that works the obliques, the muscles on the side of your midriff. That’s an absolutely textbook core stability exercise, and exactly what you’d want a football player to be doing.
It doesn’t matter how big a player is if it is the wrong muscles which are big. The best example I can think to illustrate this is at my place of work. I’m a nightclub barman during the university holidays, and on Saturday night we had in some carbon dioxide cylinders for smoke effects or some such.
These cylinders were heavy, made of iron/steel and about two metres tall so I’d guess they weighed around 100-150kgs, and they needed taking up two flights of stairs! A few of the doormen offered to lend a hand, but after doing a couple of the cylinders two of them had knackered their backs carrying the bottom of them which means you’re bearing much of the burden.
I offered to help which they found hilarious, as most of these men are twice or three times my size easily. And yet I could do carry as much as they could, despite them looking significantly stronger. How come? Because they’d been doing a poor workout, which didn’t cover a lot of the major muscle groups in the back and legs. Applying this to football, a much skinnier player wouldn’t have a problem holding off a bigger, stronger player as long as they’d done sufficient work on their core and shoulders.
Back to Theo, and I don’t think it’s possible to overstate just how much an impact his shoulder injuries have had on his game. As someone who’s been nursing a couple of shoulder injuries over the last six months, I can testify to how much it affected my game when I played. You’re constantly aware of the weakness in the joint, which means you won’t jostle for the ball as much and you won’t be as competitive in 50:50s. There’s certainly a psychological element too: you want to go into the game capable of performing to the best of your ability, and you can’t do that with a nagging fitness doubt at the back of your mind.
I was with a top-drawer physio this morning, and when I described my injury the first thing he asked was “have you ever dislocated it?” I hadn’t, which meant rehabilitating the injury would be a quicker and simpler. My injury wasn’t too severe in the grand scheme of things, but I’ll still be out of football for a good month at least.. If we look at Theo’s case, the severity of any shoulder injury he had has multiplied significantly because of the fact he’d dislocated it too, as my physiotherapist emphasised. It’s more than likely he had some intrinsic weakness in his joint that required surgery to correct too. All that together, he was out for months at a time, which puts him back to square one in terms of match fitness.
In all, from my own experiences I’m totally unsurprised that we’re only seeing the best of Theo now. Many fans understate the importance of a good pre-season, but conditioning and the like is so, so important in reducing the occurrence of injury later in the season hence why Cesc and Robin have been used sparingly. I do worry about Denilson from a fitness point of view, his regular back and abdominal injuries don’t bode well, and he hasn’t had a pre-season at all.
What’s it like following Arsenal from abroad? Arsenal Worldwide is launched
New feature : the weekly Untold Ref Index. How did the ref do in our game?
Do Arsenal really get more injuries than anyone else?
Exclusive: the Untold Arsenal interview with Manchester City’s owner
By Roxy Beaujolais, our correspondent in foreign parts.
Well, my little Tour Eiffels, my little je ne sais quoi. Tony advertised for a foreign correspondent, I replied, got the job, and he sent me off to… Manchester.
I know it is a foreign country et al, but realmente, I mean. It’s not even in Europe. I am sure we passed Groenland on the way out.
The cause of my first assignment was the opening of Billy the Dog’s new Creationist Bar in the outer wastelands beyond civilisation, and I must say it was a night to remember. The Chums of Chance were there taking photos, and it was Such Fun. I have never seen Billy so extasié.
But first, of course, before the evening’s fun, we trooped off to the Stade City of Manchester. There was a moment of difficult when this stupid little man with a strange accent asked for my ticket, but I quickly explained that I, being a taxpayer in the UK, had paid for the Stade, and thus was entitled to free entry. He was about to argue, but Billy stepped up, fist at the end of his wrist, and that seemed to settle the matter.
After the match I managed a word with Sheik Yermoney who runs the show, and put to him the question on the lips of tout le mond, “How will your funny little club de football meet Uefa’s new financial fair-play rules Monsieur Le Sheikh?”
He looked at me with an Arabic look, which had a definite sense of narquois in it, so I explained.
“To play in the League of the Champs,” sayeth I with the air of one addressing a slow and rather rotund six year old, “clubs must not have aggregate losses of more than €45m over the three seasons from 2011‑12. Your little essaim d’abeille has a turnover of £87m to May last year, and yet, you silly little Sheik you, this summer you have spent £120m or more on these strapping young lads that any lady would be pleased to meet on a dark night.
“Now,” I added in case he was a little retarded in getting the point, “according to Untold Arsenal which knows of this stuff, the cost of players is amortised over the length of the contracts – normally four years.
“So,” I continued, hitching up the miniskirt and looking the old boy straight in the whatnot, “even if you sign no more players, you will be paying £75m a year in amortisation in the 2011-12 season. On a turnover of £87m. And that’s before salaries which the financial wallahs back at Untold Pastures will come to a further £120m a year, which leaves you with a loss of, oh, I don’t know, over £100m a year, before we even take into account the paying of the cleaners.”
He looked at me with curiosity.
“You do have cleaners don’t you?” I asked.
He looked at me again, this time in what I took to be a quizzical manner. I smiled, as a lady can only smile when she knows that Billy the Dog is not only behind her, but also simultaneously at her side.
Sheikh Yermoney looked at me a third time, with a look that I can only describe as Gallic.
So there it was. In the match, one of the teams beat the other team, and there was a lot of shouting. On the private jet on our way back to Billy’s home in Islington he suggested that Manchester C are going to by-pass the Champs League.
“If they win a top four place, they won’t care if they get banned from the Champs,” he said. “They will tour the Arabian lands, and the Sheikh will be a superhero as he races his camels. It’s all just a game.”
I sipped champagne and watched the world spin by as the chauffeur took us to the original Creationists’ Bar in Genesis Drive, Ilford, and not for the first time I marvelled at Billy’s trademark fifty foot long mirror and the huge dance floor, agreeing to do it again.
“Blackburn?” asked Billy, but I think maybe I misunderstood and kicked him in the goolies. One does have one’s good name to protect, after all.
Insane? You will be.
Insane? They were?
Beyond a joke?
By Richard Bedwell and Tony Attwood
The formula for popularity?
Given that football clubs are brands, the start of each season is a chance to re-measure each brand and see how well it is doing.
Brands, we should explain, are what all businesses aspire to be. Being a brand means that your name is recognised instantly. You don’t have to say, “We’re Torquay United, a fourth division club, currently having a good run,” you say, “We’re Arsenal” and everyone immediately thinks Wenger, Emirates, quality, style, sold out, Walcott, Henry, Bergkamp…
The name, in a brand, says it all. Think, “Coca Cola,” and “Ben and Jerry’s” and you get the idea.
So given this it may be interesting to construct a formula by which you can measure the popularity of your ‘brand’ in its marketplace.
For a football club this could be considered to be season ticket sales and the four key numbers that are associated with those sales. These might be considered to be as follows:-
- How many have they sold?
- What proportion is that of the total available?
- At what average price were they sold?
- What is the level of unsatisfied demand?
In England only Man IOU can claim a higher number sold than Arsenal but, according to Matt Slater of the BBC, their sales are ‘less than 100% of availability’ at a much lower average price and with zero unsatisfied demand i.e. they have no waiting list.
Arsenal would therefore claim significantly higher scores on factors 2,3 and 4 and could, depending on the importance given to each of those factors in calculating the overall ‘popularity formula’, claim to be a stronger brand (in its consumers eyes) than are our friends in the North.
That, we could contend, would make Arsenal, by far and away, the strongest brand in the English market and with the highest demand to watch live. And that has been achieved without winning a trophy for five years and without going into hock to gamble on changing that.
Truly remarkable and a testament to the astonishing vision of Arsène Wenger.
But we must almost acknowledge that other clubs have seemingly sold their season tickets for the season. Aside from us there is Blackpool, Chelsea, Manchester City and the Tiny Totts (now celebrating 50 years without a league championship).
The London threesome (also in the Champs league this year, assuming the Tinies don’t give us one hell of a laugh against Young Boys) are also the most expensive clubs – although direct comparison in prices is difficult in that Arsenal’s tickets contain lots of cup matches, which the others don’t.
We should also take into account that the KGB in Fulham and the Tinies also play at really naff stadia, adapted from old grounds with terraces. As a result they are without one tenth of the facilities at Arsenal and without a fraction of the earning power of the Club Level and boxes at what (according to the chants last weekend) has now been renamed Highbury.
All three clubs also claim to have long waiting lists for season tickets, so it seems there are more than enough supporters in the capital to go around.
But elsewhere waiting lists are not what they used to be, as Manchester United can confirm, and this is what takes them down the brand ranking.
Blackpool’s sales are to be expected – a chance to have a day out across the country in the top flight for the first time since our first double. 12,000 tickets sold, but it is not quite the 40,000 seasons in the Ems, sorry Highbury.
Manchester City don’t yet come into the reckoning since last season they failed to sell out at each league game.
At Man IOU seasons are still on sale even though we have started the season. It is just as it was at Arsenal during the early days of George Graham, when I (Tony) bought my season ticket two games into the season. They gave me a selection of places where I could sit if I wanted – and if none of those were any good, I was told to come back and have another bunch to try.
The issue at Old Trafford is what happened to their waiting list which we were told was 24,000 last year? It has gone. Although we must admit they still sell about the same number of season tickets as Arsenal – although in a ground that is 17,000 larger. But even so it is one hell of a collapse in demand.
Liverpool did not sell all their season tickets by the time of the game against us, although they claim very few were left. On the other hand they just put their prices up by 17% which is not too helpful.
Everton, according to a survey by the BBC, started the season 1000 down on last year, and many other clubs have said they were about where they were last year – that is still selling season tickets as the season gets going.
So if we come back to our initial branding question and ask which is the biggest brand in English football, here’s the answers that we have got for the winners in each group
How many have they sold?
Arsenal and Man U at the top of the list with around 40,000
What percentage have they sold?
Arsenal, Tottenham, Chelsea, Blackpool sold out
What price were they sold at?
Taking into account differences in number of games given with a season, Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea are close together in terms of regular seats. But Arsenal have massively more income from the executive areas, and have the biggest match day income in the world.
What is the level of unsatisfied demand?
Arsenal is 10 years waiting, Chelsea – we can’t really work out, but if you know, please do tell us, and as for Tottenham – very fishy.
To explain the Tinies – if you apply for a membership of the “silver membership” type Arsenal have, you are automatically put on the season ticket waiting list even if you don’t want one. So the season ticket waiting list is those genuinely waiting, plus those who have silver, many of whom are quite happy to trot along to just a few games. We have covered this issue before in depth, and the conclusion here (biased of course, but we did argue it through) is that Tottenham’s waiting list is much smaller than you might think.
So conclusion? Arsenal is the biggest brand in English club football.
Untold index
By Walter Broeckx
A few months ago we mentioned on Untold Arsenal that I was working on a project called Arsenal Worldwide and which was a site set up by Arsenal fans from outside the UK. What started as an idea brought to me by Armin Medic of the Arsenal Bosnian supporters club has finally come alive.
The idea from Armin was great and so we started working on it and then we found out that things are not always as easy as they look at first sight. The first ideas changed a bit. We had the usual setbacks when you start something new. We had Armin who became ill for a while and we couldn’t go further. So it was not all rosy and shining all along the road.
BUT finally, we can let you know that we will start with the site today.
One of our main ideas was to give Arsenal fans from all over the world an idea of what it is like following The Arsenal from abroad. And this abroad can be close, as in my case, but it can be very far. It can be in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, somewhere down under and wherever you can imagine.
From my own experiences I know what it’s like to support The Arsenal from outside the UK, and to think that you are the only one out there. For years I had been following the Arsenal on my own and then suddenly thanks to someone who mentioned the fact that we had a supporters club in Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, I realised I was not alone.
And as a result I could join them and become a member of the supporters club. And I think they also have liked the fact that I became a member and since then started writing the Arsenal Benelux magazine for them.
So maybe this is also happening to you. Maybe you also think you are the only Arsenal supporter in your country and maybe you discover some day that just around the corner there are other Arsenal fans who have organised themselves.
On this site I would like to bring stories of individuals in different countries. Stories of official supporters clubs but also of supporters clubs who have not yet been recognised in an official way by The Arsenal. Maybe you could make friends here or you could see that your supporters club has send in an article to this site to become better known in their country so other Gooners may join them.
The ultimate goal is to make the bond between Arsenal supporters all over the world more tight. Maybe as a result new supporters clubs can be founded. Maybe as a result the clubs that are out there get new members. Maybe as a result The Arsenal will get more supporters all over the world.
We will be publishing articles from fans and supporters clubs. So apart from the occasional article from Armin Medic and myself and off course we are hoping for a great article from the Grand Master of the Arsenal Blogosphere in person, Mr. Tony Attwood, (ok Walter you can an increase in your expense account, now just get on with the article – Ed) this will be a totally different set up from the Untold Arsenal blog we all like so much.
It will be written by people who usually don’t write articles to fill their spare time, but who are fans who love the Arsenal with all their heart and want the world to know that they are out there and are waiting for you to contact them.
And this will also be part of the site is that with most articles we can have a person who can be contacted afterwards and maybe you could learn to know better and become two fans supporting together. As it is always nicer to support together than to be sitting alone.
And just before you might click on the link below I would like to thank all the people who have made this finally come together. And my big thanks go out to:
Armin Medic for his great idea and the working together and hope you keep healthy. And may I say that the contribution Armin made is a really great article to start with.
Michiel Broeckx my son who has helped my through all the traps that the computer world has set up for ignorant people like me who don’t know a thing about all those difficult words in computer land.
I also wish to thank Arsenal for the support they gave this idea when I contacted them.
And finally a very big thank to our own Tony Attwood ( and if he dares to leave this part out of my article I will not write another article for the Untold in the next week). He has given me a lot of good advice, and pushed me a bit in the back when things were not going so well with the project. He has given me support with the site, the hosting of the site. Well to be honest if he hadn’t been around here somewhere it never would have come this far.
So if you like the idea and you want to read something, our first article should be on the site now, you can follow this link http://www.arsenalworldwide.co.uk/
Hope you like this first article and hope you like the next that will be coming soon. We will keep you informed about new articles that come out in the next weeks through this channel of information (Untold Arsenal) and it also should be found somewhere on Just Arsenal Blogs.
Walter Broeckx
Arsenal Worldwide
Barcelona: A lone crab
By Ann O’Gram – our girl on the spot
On this fine and sunny day Bar Bar Barcelona have announced that they intend to make one more push to sign Cesc Fábregas (with an accent) before the transfer windows pings shut at the end of the month.
The local paper “Sport” is currently running two stories. The first says that Ibrahimovic is being sold by Barca to WC Milan and the money is to be used to get Cesc from Arsenal before August 31st. The second article says that Wenger admits that Cesc will go to Barca, and that he (Cesc) has Barca in his soul, and that Wenger has already concluded a deal.
Although just the latest in a long stream of nonsense from the Barcelona based press, it is a clever piece in that it admits (for the first time ever) that Barca are not made of money and that some sort of financial reality exists within the club. This much of course we know given that the club failed to pay its players earlier in the summer.
This news of financial collapse has been rigorously censored by club within the local press, through the efficient use of a D Notice system which effectively bans commentary in the region’s papers about these problems.
In fact the sale of Ibrahimovic is essential to Barca to ensure that the banks will loan extra money to the near bankrupt club will be able to pay the players in August. There is nothing in the coffers to buy Cesc.
So, what then is the reason for this bizarre and eccentric story?
As always the actions of Barcelona are controlled by their need to manage propaganda. It is vital to Barca that the news that they are effectively bust, and have no clear way out of their financial problems, is kept from the local population. Secondly, they need to counter the endless stories in the Madrid press that Barca cannot hold on to their own children. The Real Madrid will never leave this one alone, so Barca need an answer.
Barca do have an answer of sorts in that Real Madrid’s record of late in that Real Mad’s Champions’ League record is awful for a club that spends so many trillions of pounds a week on players…
- 2005 = Champs League 2nd Round
- 2006 = Champs League 2nd Round
- 2007 = Champs League 2nd Round
- 2008 = Champs League 2nd Round
- 2009 = Champs League 2nd Round
- 2010 = Champs League 2nd Round
Indeed despite a budget eight trillion times higher than Arsenal’s they seem to have a penchant for getting knocked out in the same place each year. Quelle domage as they say in New Zealand.
Still Real Ma are nothing if not consistent – and this is the trait that Barca have decided to copy. They will say they are about to sign Cesc this week, last week, next week, and the week before.
So back to Barca, and what this story has nothing to do with is any sort of actual transfer or even whether Barcelona will make a further bid for the player, but rather how long they can keep going without a massive cash injection – and if they do get that cash injection where on earth it will come from?
No one quite knows the answer to either question – and in fact so demented is the club that it doesn’t even know what the question means. What is clear is that there really is no obvious way of increasing their income. They already own the TV rights to their own games, they can’t win any more than they won the season before last, and they can’t really increase the match day revenue. They don’t have the capital to rebuild the crumbling bits of their stadium, and even in the triple season they didn’t sell out every game because of the quality of the ground in parts. And no one is willing to lend them the capital to do the job.
Which is why selling players is all they can do.
And that’s another clue to the Cesc story – they have to cover up the fact that Barca is now the world’s biggest selling club.
And (once more and) at a time when Real Madrid is continuing to buy, buy and buy (and when you look at who the manager of Real Madrid is these days, there can be no doubt that a load of money is on the table) there is a need for news story management, and with a press that is utterly compliant with the whims of the club, the story will always get out as Barca want it to.
It did look at one time as if Barca would run with the story that they would buy Fábregas (with an accent) in January “by which time Arsenal will be out of the title race and Cesc will be ready to come to us.” But with the financial stories endlessly knocking on the door it has been necessary for the club to divert attention for the moment.
We can expect the Fábregas (with an accent) in January story to remerge shortly however.
Barcelona? Just a lone crab.
All Untold Arsenal reporting of Barcelona reaches the same high standards of journalistic competence as that found in the region’s local press.
Even more eccentric stories
Less eccentric stories
Just stories
Untold Injury Index – Gameweek 2
By Dale Higginbottom
I wrote an article at the end of last season (found here: http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/archives/4610) about how I felt the squad had developed since the era of the invincibles and how much injuries to players seem to have been a factor on our own title challenges over the period.
I wanted to follow that up with a comparison with our rivals in the league but finding the reliable data required, months after the games is a bit long-winded, if at all possible. It’s difficult to know when for example, Fabio of Manchester IOU is injured or just out of the squad because everyone else in front of him is fit, unless you really follow each team and keep up to date with the details.
I therefore thought that we could try and create a comprehensive week-by-week list of players out for each round of the league and, in a similar way to what Walter as done with the referee report, try to prove or disprove the belief that we have injury prone players or that we are hit harder than other teams with injuries to key players.
When the 25-man squads are announced that will make things even easier to follow and analyse. I thought the best plan would be to look at what the media have now termed “The Big Six”; the teams with a decent shot of the Premier League title (although I don’t agree that the Tiny Totts have a squad anywhere close). So here’s Gameweek 2.
Arsenal Vs Blackpool
Arsenal (8 injuries)
- Goalkeeper – No injuries reported
- Defence – Djourou (unused sub returning from injury)
- Midfield – Denilson, Frimpong , Ramsey, Nasri, Fabregas (second half sub, lack of match fitness)
- Attack – Bendtner, RvP (second half sub, lack of match fitness)
Point to note: Djourou was declared fit but did not play.
Stoke City Vs Tottenham
Tottenham (8 injuries)
- Goalkeeper – No injuries reported
- Defence – Woodgate
- Midfield – Bentley, Modric, O’Hara,
- Attack – Defoe, Pavyluchenko, dos Santos, Keane
Wigan Vs Chelsea
Chelsea (3 injuries)
- Goalkeeper, attack – No injuries reported
- Defence – Bosingwa, Bruma
- Midfield – Kakuta
Fulham Vs Man Utd
Man Utd (5 injuries)
- Goalkeeper – No injuries reported
- Defence – Ferdinand
- Midfield – Hargreaves, Anderson, Carrick (unused sub, returning from injury)
- Attack – Rooney
In tonight’s game the reports are the following.
Man City Vs Liverpool
Man City (4 injuries)
- Goalkeeper, midfield – No injuries reported
- Defence – Boateng, Bridge, Kolarov
- Attack – Balotelli
Liverpool (3 injuries)
- Goalkeeper – No injuries reported
- Defence – Agger
- Midfield – Mascherano
- Attack – Torres
Point to note: There may be additions to these before the game but the players above have been reported as at least having knocks or niggles so may not be able to complete 90 minutes.
So far, Arsenal are already one of the worst hit, in numbers at least. Tottenham and Man Utd have some key individuals out and this has been shown up by this weekend’s performances. Luckily, we’ve not had too many key players out against difficult opposition and Chelsea’s performances so far have obviously shown what you can do against weaker teams when all of your best players are fit. It will be interesting to see if our injuries have an impact in the next game or two or whether Chelsea get some tough luck when they start facing tougher opponents and that’s what this weekly list will show.
I aim to do a report for each game of the season, looking solely at players missing due to injury or fatigue as a result of international away days. We should hopefully then be able to build up a picture of how we compare to our rivals and how big the impact of injuries has been on our campaign.
If I’ve missed any details or players missing please let me know. I want to be as accurate as I can with this.
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In addition I’ve looked at Gameweek 1 and here is the break down
Liverpool Vs Arsenal
Liverpool (1 injury)
Arsenal (7 injuries)
- Djourou, Fabregas, Denilson, Song, Ramsey, Bendtner, RvP
Man Utd Vs Newcastle Utd
Man Utd (4 injuries)
- Ferdinand, Hargreaves, Anderson, Carrick
Chelsea Vs West Brom
Chelsea (3 injuries)
Tottenham Vs Man City
Tottenham (5 injuries)
- Woodgate, Bentley, O’Hara, Defoe, Pavyluchenko
Man City (2 injuries)
Overall comments
In this first week Arsenal were hit by injuries to key players more than any other team. The 1-1 result was therefore made all the better considering our opponents were without just one player. The other teams fared quite well considering their injuries but it’s early days and there are plenty of difficulties ahead.
Untold Arsenal
By Tony Attwood
You might recall I have been a bit miffed previously about the Guardian newspaper in the UK taking the occasional story from Untold. Now the Observer is following suit. (You might like to know that the The Observer is the sunday version of the Guardian and is Britain’s oldest newspaper still being published – and they proved themselves to be very anti-Arsenal during the unbeaten season).
The last time it (the nicking of an Untold story – not an unbeaten season) happened was with the piece we did about the cause of England’s poor showing in the world cup. Untold analysed the number of people in the country, the number of pro footballers, and the number of clubs and coaches in five countries, and showed that it was the coaching to player ratio that was key.
The Guardian ran the same story a couple of weeks later, selecting the same countries, quoting the same figures. No mention of Untold.
Anyway, yesterday’s Observer ran this story (it is now on the Guardian web site here)
“New from the 2018 bid process last week: leaked documents from the joint Holland/Belgium bid setting out what’s in it for Fifa. On the list: Fifa, its officials and partners will receive full tax exemption, covering “all revenues, profits, income, expenses, costs, investments and any and all kind of payments in cash or otherwise” for an “unlimited time period”. (Fifa’s estimated profit from this year’s tournament, via a similar tax exemption in South Africa and charitable status in Switzerland: £2.5bn.)”
If you are an avid reader of Untold, and particular Walter Broeckx’ pieces you might remember this headline on Untold on 4 august
FICK FUFA: Fifa demand their own car lane, no tax, and total control of clothing and street advertising
Walter’s article appeared here and it by and large tells the same story (although the Observer piece doesn’t give you the depth of analysis that Walter always does).
I’ve written to the newspaper and said they are welcome to run the rest of the article as long as they credit Walter as the author, and Untold as the publisher. I’ll let you know if they reply.
But I would say that the Guardian’s report today on the match is good in that if centres on the insane black humour that passes for Match of the Day these days on BBC TV. Although come to think of it, maybe they picked that up from the comments in the “Welcome to Plan C” article. In fact, maybe the paper’s journalists just read Untold first, and then writes up the stories.
Of course it is not the only accurate prediction here – we did
Untold Arsenal doesn’t do transfer predictions but if we did…
on August 19 predicting the transfer of Sébastien Squillaci along with a fuller biog and complete with the acute accent. Most other blogs ran the story at the time so not too much of a coup, but they didn’t get the accent right in most cases – and it is the detail that counts. Hello Sébastien with an accent. I hope you enjoy it here.
In the meanwhile, you can rest assured that you get all the tasty bits here at least two weeks before they reach our ever valiant press corps.
————
More stories weeks before they hit the press
Stories that have never ever been in the press
A story that is politically so hot it will never ever be in the press.
by Walter Broeckx
It all evens itself out at the end of the season is a much used line in football. The same phrase is used if we are talking about having luck or not, about injuries in comparison with our opponents, and off course on bad or good decisions from the refs.
Last season I tried to have a look at the refs and their decisions at the end of the season. But this is not that easy. Because after 38 games you can forget some incidents which could have changed a game when a ref did not what he had to do or did what he should not have done. So from now on we are going to try to do this on a game per game basis. So after each game I will be analysing the decisions from the ref and try to keep up with a score on his decisions. And at the end of the season we should be able to see if it really evens itself or if it does not.
To do this I will have to make some kind of way in giving points to a decision. After each game we should see a final result. And we could be seeing how many good or bad decisions he has made.
I was thinking of dividing it in some categories. I only will take the things that could have an immediate impact on the game and on the result like:
- Giving a yellow card which is correct,
- giving a yellow card not correct, or
- not giving a yellow card which should have been given.
And some more important decisions:
- giving a red card which is correct,
- giving a red card not correct, or
- not giving a red card which should have been given.
The same importance:
- giving a penalty which is correct,
- giving a penalty not correct, or
- not giving a penalty which should have been given.
And of the most importance:
- giving a goal which is correct,
- giving a goal not correct, or
- not giving a goal which should have been given.
So we give a point for each decision or non decision was made and add the numbers.
To give an example: when a player makes a dive and a team scores from the resulting free kick I consider this as giving a goal that is not correct. We can argue about this until the end of time but if anyone comes up with a better way of doing it I will take it in to consideration. I might be a ref but I don’t think I know it all. Another example: not given a yellow card to a player can influence a game. When the player later gets another yellow card he should have been sent off. But because not given the first yellow card he can stay on.
Off course every game is different and in some games you have a lot of decisions to make as a ref and sometimes it is more easy. So I will calculate his decisions in to a percentage. But you will see how this works later on. And I know that some other things can influence a game. But when this happens, let us say a corner is given from which a team scores, but it shouldn’t have been a corner and then I will try to bring this in to it.
The second game of this season brought not only Blackpool to the Emirates but also referee Mike Jones.
1-0 Arsenal: correct goal - Good point for the ref
13th minute Chamakh goes on goal on the left flank and is brought down: should have been a yellow card but was not given. Bad point for the ref
30th minute red card against Evatt from Blackpool for a foul on Chamakh. This was the only correct decision the ref could give. And later in this article I will come back on this as Paul C asked me a question about it. Good point for the ref.
2-0 Penalty CORRECT. Now this may surprise you as even I said yesterday in a first reaction that the foul was outside the penalty area. Replays I have seen since then, showed that the foul began just outside the penalty area but when both players slid in to the penalty area the defender still was bringing him down There is an instruction given to the refs that if a foul starts outside the area AND CONTINUES INSIDE the penalty area that you should give the penalty. This rules mostly is used when you have a shirt pulling foul but it can be used for any foul that still is going on when moving inside the penalty area. So we must give the ref a good point for this.
3-0 Arsenal goal: correct and good point for the ref
4-0 Arsenal goal: correct and good point for the ref (btw: good advantage given by the ref)
5-0 Arsenal goal: correct and good point for the ref
6-0 Arsenal goal: correct and good point for the ref
For the rest the ref had to give no cards or had no real problems with the way the game went on. Maybe we can applaud the way that Blackpool played in a fair way and not went to kicking our players down.
Where does this leaves us for the ref:
Cards: 1/2 points
Goals: 6/6 correct so no deducting on points there. The penalty was correctly converted.
Penalty decisions : 1/1 as the foul was outside but continued when moving inside the penalty area.
So in total this gives us 8/9 or 88% on his report. And in all honesty this surprises me as I had the impression he would have got a higher score. But the result is what it is. Could have been better and so you see how one decision can make a big difference at times.
In the part of the world where I live and in referee circles they say that you have a very good game as a ref when you get 9/10 of the decisions right or 90%. So the ref did not spoil the game like Holloway said but he had an almost excellent game. It could have been even better if he just would have given a yellow card at one moment. Just to give you this information: If he would have given that yellow card like I said, he would have had a score of 9/9 or… 100%. So I think he has missed the chance for a perfect game.
The question is : did the penalty change the game or the sending off? As both decisions were correct it doesn’t matter. So whatever they tell you we did what we did, we didn’t get the help of the ref, everything what the ref did was according to the rules.
After the game Paul C came up with the question: “Walter, would you not agree that the rule should be tweaked a little bit so that when such a foul occurs inside the box and a penalty is given anyway, that the punishment should perhaps only be a yellow card? I just think if you are giving the red card for “denying a clear goal scoring opportunity” but award a penalty, then surely the “clear goal scoring opportunity” is being given anyway”? I would be interested to hear your views on this as a referee.”
Paul I can understand your question but the instructions and the rules are very straightforward on this: last defender, clear goal chance then it always should be a red card. In or outside the penalty area has no influence on this. Even if the players is just starting to run from the half way line but alone on goal it should be a red card and the same if it is in the penalty area. So the ref did what the rules told him to do.
But the question is if the rules should be changed if a penalty is given. I think it should not be changed as the chance is always there that the penalty is being missed or saved by the keeper. And that would have as a result that you have been denied a clear goal scoring opportunity and the other team would after that still have all their players on the pitch. So the team that has done something very wrong would not been punished in that situation.
When they came up with this rule it was to stop the hacking down of players going clear on goal and hoping to bring more fair play in to the game and more goals and more attacking play. But I agree at times it does looks harsh on a team like it was with Blackpool, who didn’t play it dirty in this game. But we cannot change the ruling according to the possible fair play for the rest of the game. So I am supporting the ruling as it is today and I really hope that Fifa keeps it like that. And we cannot change the rules because the opponents looks to be a nicer team than Chelsea or so.
I will be trying to do this from every game until the end of the season and so we can see how the refs have been doing their job and if we have suffered or have benefited from the mistakes from the refs.
For those who have any remarks on the system used, please let me know so maybe we can find an even better way of doing this.
Untold Arsenal
The AISA Arsenal History Site
Making the Arsenal
By Tony Attwood, Block 99
You remember that old thing: Arsenal are useless because they have no plan B. Well you can forget all that – because we now have not only a plan B but also a Plan C. Given the way our Lord Wenger is working we probably have a Plan D E F G H and I as well.
The old Plan A was easy to get: 4-4-2. Everyone played it. They even named a magazine after it. Flexible, definitive, how could we ever have thought of doing anything else.
Then along came Plan B: 4-3-3. Until we were cut to death with injuries and had no centre forwards left in the club it worked a treat and a half. We launched it on an unsuspecting EPL and went and beat Everton 6-1 away in the first match.
Now here is plan C: 4-2-4.
Almunia
Sagna Song Vermaelen Clichy
Wilshere Diaby (Fábregas)
Rosicky Walcott (Vela ) Chamakh Arshavin (Van Persie )
What a line up, and what wonderful use it made of Wilshere. I thought he would still be getting the odd game until the injuries really set in, but no, he’s there and he looks like he is set to stay.
Of course I am not saying we are going to play 4-2-4 against the KGB in Fulham but as a waiting of taking on lower clubs who have the openness, and willingness to leave the team coach in the car park, it is a great way to play.
So we won by 24 shots to 3, and around 12 of our 24 were on target. Everyone is raving about young Theo – and that’s right, they should, but we should also say thank you to Mr Cappuccino for deliberately ignoring our kiddie over the summer, (Walter was so keen on this point being made he texted me from Belgium at half time to make sure I remembered). Just a word Mr Walcott – the old monster known as the FA will come stalking you over and over again. Always take a witch doctor with you when you play for them. You can’t be too careful.
And Tomas Rosicky, oh I hope he’s happy. After that dreadful year plus of injury, and the slowness of getting back to form, the guy is now at last, the Little Mozart we were promised. God knows where Nasri fits into this when he is back, but Tomas, have fun my old mate. Just do it like that, and we’ll be with you forever.
If you weren’t there, and have just seen it on TV, you may not have got the notion that I had (it always looks different in the ground) but pause for a moment and think of Henry and Pires when they were just working out how to play the game together. Now for Henry think Theo, and for Pires think Rosicky.
Is that too much of a comparison after one game? Yes of course, but football is about imagination as well as fact, and here in middle England it is a bright sunny day for once, and we had a lovely day out yesterday, so why not?
Of course one game doesn’t an epoch make but still, you never know.
We also had the renaming of the ground sections, and there is a lot of the new naming inside the stadium too (all the stairs down my end carry the slogan, “The North Bank Arsenal”). Unfortunately for the club and the sponsors the singing is “We’re the North Bank Highbury”, but there was hardly a peep out of the Clock End. Don’t know what they were doing. Mucking about probably.
So there we are: the Creature from the Black Lagoon (take a look at the new Humour Index that has just started if you missed Billy’s piece) was slain, we all had a very jolly time, and we did it all for most or all of the game without
- Cesc
- Van Persie
- Nasri
- Eboue
- Koscielny
- Ramsey
- Djourou
- Bendtner
- Denilson
which is not a bad selection for when the going gets a trifle tougher and more injuries come along.
Oh yes, and Torquay United are top of League Two. Which may seem irrelevant to you, but means a lot to me.
Untold is an index upon life. It is all there. You just have to poke your nose in a bit.
And when you have you should read the book. It is rather fun.
Tottenham are brilliant at stealing our history and re-writing it. We’re taking it back.
By Walter Broeckx
Some fans have only bad words for Arsène Wenger. It might be worth having a look at some of them – especially in the light of a 6-0 win.
Wenger doesn’t want to buy. Yes Wenger doesn’t want to buy just for the sake of buying a player. He isn’t interested in showing off to the other managers and saying: ‘Just look at me, I bought player X for £50M, how about that’. No he thinks that prices are too high and maybe they are.
Just for Cesc I would make an exception, he cannot be priced high enough. Wenger does buy but he will only buy after having a very close look at a player. After following him for 1 or 2 years even on training with their clubs. And believe me in Europe a lot of training sessions can be visited at all time by people like you and me. Even at big clubs like Ajax. They just train next to the stadium and you can see them train looking on from the pavement.
Wenger has been buying players all the time but he rarely spends silly money. It has happened a few times but no buy is 100% certain even if you do thing the way Arsenal are doing it. If you see the merry go round at times at other clubs where players are coming in and the same players are getting out at high speed I think we do rather nice.
Wenger is filling his pockets. Yes I agree with this. Wenger is filling his pockets. Just like I do at my work and like you do at your work. And yes it is a fact that Wenger earns a lot more money than I do. Don’t know about the rest of you but I can imagine that he earns a lot more than we all do. But this is the wages that are being paid in football for managers. We can think it is too much and I think in fact it is. But there is nothing we can do about it.
Football managers are very well paid for their job. Off course some are trying to suggest that he is filling his pockets in a slightly suspect way. Now how could this be? By getting a percentage on transfer dealings? And then to think it are mostly the same people who first say that Wenger doesn’t buy players and then suggest he is filling his pockets with his dealings. One has to make up his mind.
Wenger is stubborn. I think he is. Like most successful managers. Mourinho is very stubborn. He keeps holding on to his “killing the enjoyment of the football supporter-tactics”. When they criticise him for this he just goes on and does it his way. I dislike his way, but he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t listen to what people say and he goes his own way. Stubborn yes indeed. Just as Ferguson is stubborn. So being stubborn as a manager is more the mark of a good manager than of a bad one. If a manager would change his mind every week after a game and start changing it all, the players will no longer respect him. And you must have the respect from your players to be a good manager. So I hope Wenger stays stubborn for the remaining years at Arsenal.
Wenger likes us to lose things or Wenger doesn’t want us to win things. Now here is something so stupid I could not argue on this. Whenever we lose a game we know that Wenger will moan about something. If he didn’t mind losing he wouldn’t speak about the ref making bad calls. He wouldn’t speak about his players being kicked to pieces. He just would accept it with a smile and carry on with counting his money and filling his pockets.
No, he is upset when we lose a game, you just have to look at him and you can see it all over his face and body. It is also interesting to see that most people who say Wenger hates losing are the same Arsenal fans who want Wenger to shut up after a defeat and tell him to stop moaning. Maybe because they know that Wenger does hate it to lose?
Wenger has lost it. The only thing he has lost since he came to Arsenal that I can see are his glasses. He has exchanged them for contact lenses as he sometimes couldn’t see what happened on the pitch. But for the rest I cannot see what he has lost apart from some hair on his head. But we all do after a certain age, well I do anyway. He still is a man that is living for his job night and day.
Maybe he has lost a few things during his time at Arsenal. He has lost the chance to go to Madrid or Barcelona. That is an opportunity that he has missed. He could have gone on a few occasions. But he always remained faithful to his contract and his word. So maybe he has lost a lot of money by staying at Arsenal.
Wenger has his favourite players. They say this whenever he plays a player they don’t like themselves. As the fans have their favourite players themselves. So they say Wenger should drop X and play Z. X being the player they don’t like and Z being the player they like. But they forget that for each match the manager is having the players in training, is looking at the other team they have to play and for some matches you need a certain type of player more than another.
They don’t realize that maybe he gives a certain player a certain task to do on the pitch. Something we don’t know and the manager and the player don’t talk about to not alert the opponents. Or maybe some player is having a physical problem with a minor injury so the manager picks the other player to give him a rest. All things we don’t know so we can’t really comment on them. Unless you don’t like the manager and anything will do to throw at him.
What Wenger has done in the last 5 seasons looks not much for the moment, certainly to the people who write rubbish articles in the press. What Wenger has done for this club will be written in gold in a time that we are no longer here. In some 100 years maybe a new Tony Attwood will write a book about this period and call it the Re-Making the Arsenal. Supporters who now even have to be born will look at the Wenger era and will say to each other: It must have been great to have been an Arsenal fan in those days. And hell, yes it is great being an Arsenal fan these days.
Being led by a courageous manager who accepted the risk of going through a period with a smaller chance for trophies and even then he came close a few times, a manager who has led our club through the move to the Emirates and accepted money was short for buying players. A manager who accepted for taking the blame by some part of the fans and stuck out his head during the last period. How easy he could have turned away and go to Real Madrid and leave us in tatters. He didn’t. He stayed because he cares for this club. Maybe he cares even more than some of the fans do who tell all those bad things of him can imagine. Thanks for staying Arsène.
And the 6-0 was good fun too.
Untold Index
Making the Arsenal
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