THE BREAKDOWN: What Salah’s Departure Tells Us About Liverpool, Another Chelsea Scandal & Key and McCullum Survive (E12)

29:45Absolutely extraordinary record, 243 goals and 109 assists in 394 games. Please give Mo his dough. We want more of Mo. Now, Liverpool, of all the clubs, have been over the last decade, up until that point, I should say, up until that sort of 2024 moment, have been pretty judiciously run compared to the other big clubs. They've always been on the cautious side. They had always being on the cautious side when it comes to wages, on the cautious side when it comes to contract extensions, even on the cautious side mostly when it comes to transfer fees, they would more normally be in that 50, 60 million category rather than the 100, 150 million like Chelsea and so on and so forth.

30:28They folded. They folded and they gave Mo his dough and they gave him an absolute stonker of a new contract. Do you know how much his new contract was worth over two years, Charlie? $400 ,000 a week. So 40 million pounds over two years. And it turns out that the original theory, which is be very careful about paying huge amounts of money to players coming into their mid-30s because they can't anymore sustain the physical output, turned out to be true of Salah. Salah melted, as we put it in football, as football performance people call it, melting pretty much at the start of this season. Right.

31:05And so just as his new contract kicked in, it became clear that he lost his legs effectively. He could no longer perform in the same way that he could before. So this season hasn't been an absolute disaster. Five goals, three assists. That's sort of the normal level of a squad player. Right. So instead of paying that player 40 million pounds over two years, that kind of player would normally be paid five to 10 million pounds over two years. That kind of level. It's a bit part player who comes in, who comes out. And of course, Slott then, Arna Slott, the Liverpool manager, then did drop him. And that caused another massive explosion where he, again, went public and the whole thing.

31:39So not only have Liverpool dropped 40 million quid in this rather unhappy process, but they've also had to sustain a huge amount of reputational damage. The manager himself has been hobbled by that outburst. And you can feel that in terms of the Liverpool ecosystem, that that was the moment when Slott started to lose a bit of the trust, the credibility he built up because of the situation with Salah, etc. It encapsulates what's been, notwithstanding the title win, it's been a slightly uncharacteristically scatty two or three years from Liverpool and their owners Fenway. And I'm very loathe to criticise Fenway Sports Group because overall their tenure at Liverpool has been really successful.

32:22I mean, it's easy to forget that when they took over from the Hicks-Gillette regime, that really Liverpool was not in a good place. They had been poorly run for quite some time. And there was all sorts of rumours about what was going on between Hicks and Gillette. It was a bit of a mess. So over the following period, decade or so, much of which Salah has been there, Liverpool has been a very well-run club. It was run on certain principles and certain quite clear strategies, not all of which were popular at the time that they were being implemented, but which ended up being very, very successful.

33:02And the two main progenitors of this famously were the then sporting director, Michael Edwards, and the director of data research, Ian Graham. So that was the backbone of a new way of doing things for a big club. We're going to be tight. We're going to be data led. We're going to be very strategic. We're going to do things in a Liverpool way. Now, if you go back, what you'll find is that over the sort of period of 22, 23, that kind of thing, this leadership sort of regime started falling apart. Michael Edwards left and he was replaced by a guy called Julian Ward. And then in 2023, Ward, who was the replacement for Michael Edwards, also left.

33:40But Ian Graham, the head of data research, the director of research, left to go and form his own consultancy. And then more recently, Edwards has come back in a Fenway group sporting director situation. And his brief was popularly understood to be to start forming a Liverpool MCO, multi-club organisation, to find another club which Liverpool could bring into its umbrella. But then it was recently background brief that Fenway sports group, FSG, had dropped that strategic direction. so in the meantime a protégé of Edwards came in as the Liverpool director of football a guy called Richard Hughes that's been the last couple of years etc look I mean none of this is on when we're talking about shit shows and we've been talking about you know Chelsea you know Spurs etc none of this stuff is on a level with those clubs but I think what is the case and you're probably about to illustrate it further is that notwithstanding the title that was won at the back end of the careers of Van Dijk and Salah, two generational talents, probably two of the top four or five players in the Premier League.

34:44This was their time. This was their moment to deliver that second title. The first one, of course, came in COVID, which was a bit unsatisfactory. Great, right? But in the meantime, behind the scenes for three or four years now, it's been a bit of a mess. And don't forget that FSG themselves said three or four years ago that they could be open to new investment or potentially even putting up the club for sale. So it just seems like there's been a bit of a sort of strategic shambles going on behind the scenes, various senior people coming and going. And the point I'm going to leave you with, Charlie, is the point I always make about these things, which is in the end, that kind of stuff always catches up with you on the pitch.

35:21In the end. The Salah bit, I'm going to mount a slight motion for the defence and see what you think. Then we've got the continuation piece, which is looking at Liverpool now and moving forward and leveraging this information that you've just started to highlight there as a potential indicator of where the club is going. Motion for the defence. Okay, so I hear you and I completely agree. It was a huge amount of money. The questions that really should be asked, and it's an indication to the leadership challenges, were how do you let Mo Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Virgil van Dijk all get into the last years of their contracts where they could leave for free at the end of a season?

35:59The challenge that created was therefore more than just Salah leaving. It was a group of players who the fans all revered. They loved, right? Mo Hisdo, Virgil, Van Dijk's supremacy, Trent Alexander-Arnold, the boy from the academy, Mr. Liverpool. You know, you had this broader situation around the contracts of these players. So Salah's, the need to keep Salah, I think, was escalated a little bit by the fact that Trent was going, right? He was gone. And people accepted that if you were going to lose any one of those three, now, interesting, short versus long term, but short term, they probably would have kept Salah and they probably would have kept Van Dijk and Trent probably would have been the one that was moved on.

36:38If you had lost two of those three, the ownership would have had a real issue. So I think that forced their hand to an extent, making a deal that they couldn't have done. The issue being what? The fans would have turned very aggressively on the running of the club. How has this been allowed to happen? Which is not what any football club's ownership wants. They don't want the fans looking behind the pitch going, have you been mismanaging our greatest players? You know, the people that mean that we turn up every single week. Right, so effectively what you're saying is that 40 million quid that they end up paying to Salah was almost like a penalty for the cock-ups they've made in letting all those contracts run down.

37:13Could be. So that's just an additional bit of context there was just saying that I think there was more than just give Salah his money. There was a broader problem that the club had created for itself in letting three of its star players, it's probably its three star players, all put them in a very similar situation. Now, let's also not forget, Mo Salah last season broke the record for goal contributions for 47 or 48 goals and assists. he pretty much you know and it was a very much a team effort they were brilliant last year but he pretty much won them that title and was more influential than he ever has been so when he was given this contract you were still looking at a player and it's interesting you said lost his legs you know the start of this season you were looking at a player last year that has been better than he ever has in supposedly the most competitive league in the world does that mean that you want to keep that player?

38:06Of course it does. Does it mean that you may have to submit yourself to the demands of that player? Maybe. The age is a really interesting point. Now, I don't think physically he lost his legs in that time. I think you could look at it mentally and say, once he got that contract for the next two years, have we seen a switch off to some small capacity that has led his performance to drop? Salah has always had this incredible notion, which is what the very, very top players have right and they always just see themselves as completely elite undroppable and that's what we've seen this season you drop him he's out of the team you're going to hear from me and you've got a big problem and you're going to hear from me publicly if you lose that mental edge that makes you the best that you're not going to perform in the same way that you have been for the last few years can't address that very particular point right so the truth is that when a player's legs do go that is how it happens so what happens is they're training up to a and it's the same with other other performance athletes and same with racehorses that they're training up to a very, very high level during the season.

39:03So they're at a peak. Their entire body is at a peak. They then go into the off season. And of course, for rest reasons, all of that collapses, right? As it has to, because otherwise the body will never regenerate. Then they come back into training again. And there is always a moment, there is always a closed season when a player reaches an age where when he tries to get it back up to where it was before, it's just not quite there. So this always happens in the closed season. It never happens during the season. A player never loses their physical ability between October and December, unless they got an injury, of course, but it always happens in the off-season.

39:41And you're playing a game of Russian roulette when they get past the age of 31. You know that there is going to be an off-season soon where when they come back, they will not quite be able to deliver exactly the same outputs that they could do at their peak. Now, in certain players, in certain positions, there are ways to manage that. And they can, you know, at centre-back, if they've become outstanding position, you saw this with your great hero, JT, that he became so good positionally. His anticipation got to such a level that actually the fact that his physical levels probably weren't quite what they were was being replaced by experience effectively.

40:19But when you're playing in a position which demands fundamentally pace and power, that is not going to be the case. And this is not controversial, right? So if you think about that being a position for sprinters fundamentally, and you think, okay, so why isn't Usain Bolt still an Olympic champion? Well, but the answer is because there was a moment at which his legs wouldn't take him where they used to take him. And that is just what happens. I think the rest of what you say, by the way, which is, is there a mental contribution? Probably not so much, I think, from signing a new contract. He'd signed new contracts before in his career and that never dropped him off before.

40:47But was there a mental sense of weariness with the procedure that led to that contract was there an element of him that thought that shouldn't have been as hard as it was yeah do i do i you know that manager and those suits there do i feel the same way about them that i did before i think that's an interesting question i agree and look my point i'm really making is i think this is critique that is easily leveled in hindsight but i think in the context of last year when this contract was given with the success they were having, with him performing as he was, with the broader situations around other players.

41:22Don't forget also, they lost, and they probably knew they were going to lose Darwin Nunez. They were going to lose Diaz, Luis Diaz. And then, of course, the tragic happenings with Diogo Jota. That escalated the need for them to create some form of stability within that squad. No, I get it. I totally get it. But sorry, just on his part. But this is one of those things, I think, and Sam Wallace in The Telegraph wrote an interesting article on it. And he just summed it up beautifully in a paragraph. And I think for me, this really nailed it. He said, and this is just paraphrasing a part of that. He said, whatever failings might have followed for Liverpool this season would have been blamed on the Salah departure.

42:04Perhaps the Anfield crowd needed to see it for themselves to be reconciled with his leaving. And you know what it's like. You sell him, again, I say right at the top of his game. Sorry, sell him. You let him leave for free. Now this is, Charlie, we haven't mentioned this yet, but this is also the interesting bit. The fact they are letting him leave for free, I think that says a huge amount about this situation and how both sides have looked at it. You've got two parties that both accept this hasn't and isn't working. When Trent left last year for free, the vilification of the guy was extreme from quite a few parts of the Liverpool fan base.

42:40He was betraying the club for not giving them some form of financial return or departure. Salah comes to this agreement with the club he will leave for free now the free is an interesting word when you actually go yeah but he's saving the club another 20 odd million but the similarities between the two one who has had his contract run down hasn't had his demands met and then goes to Real Madrid and then actually gets about a 10 million payment I think because they allowed him to play in the club World Cup I think that speaks to Sam's point right I think the reason why not a vast amounts been made out of it is that the Liverpool fan base psychologically is like, shit, we got that wrong, didn't we?

43:17Oops. Right. Perhaps we shouldn't have given Mo his dough. Oh, okay. Yeah, probably best that he shuffles along now. I think it's on that. Now, I do take on board. I do take on board your context. And your context was, yeah, but this wasn't the only thing. There were three other things, right? So this would not have just been seen in isolation. This would have been put together with the Trent situation, put together with the Van Dijk situation, and laid the whole, as a package, laid at Fenway's door or the Liverpool leadership's door. So I totally do get that. But I do think, fundamentally, Liverpool, if I'm being honest with you, observing this from the outside, they did have a very clear strategy, a very clear way of doing things.

44:01it was very data-led, it was very structured, and they would not give contracts to players over the age of 30, and the whole thing was very, very clear. And then senior people left the organisation, and these rules started to become a bit blurry, and then you start to get big problems. So, taking on that... Because it's not just this, it's not just this, you've also got to look at the signing of Izak as well. Okay, so this is where I was going. Okay, so Liverpool internally would have known that when the summer slot came in, so not last summer, the summer before, they didn't spend any money. They didn't bring any new players in.

44:33He won that league last year with Klopp's team. That therefore gave them a lot more opportunity to spend money last summer. And my God, did they spend money. They signed Isak, Eketike, Wurtz, Frimpong, Kerkhez. I think it was about 400 million worth of talent. Now, if you have Salah leaving, what better way to create that narrative? He said very, very short-term pain, but then go and sign a load of players that a lot of the fans would have got very excited about. So from a PR perspective, thinking about that and the way you just framed it, I think they could have maybe potentially got around that through the spending spree that they knew they were going to go on.

45:11But this is the interesting discussion for us to extend the Salah situation into now more the management of the club and the challenges that they've almost created for themselves. Because to drive this point home, what we've now seen from the club over the last nine months is not the Liverpool that has been operating at the top of European football for the last 10 years. It is not the transfer strategy that has brought them success. This is them falling down a hole that they have fought so hard to not recognise. It is, it is, Charlie. You live long enough to see yourself become the villain. They become the thing they've been fighting against for so long.

45:54What I mean by that, Liverpool haven't been Chelsea and Man City. They haven't thrown money at situations to try and win. They've been very strategic. As you highlighted, they've signed players in what we would call like the middle bracket of European transfer markets. So if we say 30 to 60 million, I appreciate that's still a huge amount of money. But they have not been going after the 100 million players. You then have a summer last year where they were under increasing pressure from the fan base. There were these negative situations around players' contracts. There were players leaving that they would have liked to have kept maybe.

46:24and then suddenly they have a lot of money because they last year, or as recently reported in Deloitte's Money League, their account showed 703 million in revenue, which was the top Premier League club. What this all kind of brings together is you have two years of transfer spending capabilities because they didn't spend anything the year before. They have record revenues across the club. Oh, fantastic. We have the money to spend. We can do it within budget. shall we go out and get some of the top talent to re-strengthen or to strengthen this team those players that I just ran off all came in for huge sums you had two over 100 million in and um ISAC you had Eketike in for about 70 million um and then you know a few others around 30 40 there seemed like a huge number of decisions that were made last year that were not in keeping with Liverpool Football Club for the last 10 to 15 years and then you look at the performance on the pitch this year and you look at the challenges they've faced, it is not a coincidence.

47:32Who's their highest performing player this year? Dominic Sobershle. How much did he cost? £60 million. So this is the thing, right? This was a strategy that was put together at the start of FSG's ownership of Liverpool and it has proven to be very, very successful. I would say in terms of pound for pound, you know, as successful as anything, right? As anything in English football, that is. Yes, of course, during that time, Man City have won more during that period, but they've spent a lot more as well over that period of time. And yes, there are other clubs who have had their moments in the sun, but during that period, Liverpool have been consistently in that top bracket, absolutely consistently, year after year, both domestically in England and in Europe, they've been in that absolute top bracket.

48:17Now, of course, the reality is knockout football, they could go and win the Champions League. you know is that's entirely plausible it's entirely possible but watching them at the moment it feels like a team which i always say that teams end up representing the personality of their manager and of the club behind them um and at the moment from when fsg talk about maybe taking a third party investment maybe selling in 2022 to michael edwards and ian graham leaving to then Edwards coming back, but in a group position, and then somebody else coming. And it just feels to me like the last three or four years has been building up to a point at which Liverpool's no longer the thing that it was before in the run up to 21, 22, that type of thing.

49:04Now, it's not to say that they can't be successful because a lot of these footballers are very, very, very, very, very good footballers. But I do not think, honestly, hand on heart, I do not think that they would have recruited Alexander Ezek six or seven years ago when Ian Graham and Michael Edwards were running that recruitment operation very, very tight and in a very careful way. Because Ezek, you don't have to be an absolute football expert to notice that Ezek's style of scoring goals for Newcastle last season was somewhat unlikely to be replicated at Liverpool this season. You don't have to be a tactical genius to think Liverpool haven't played with an out-and-out 10, but Verts is an out-and-out 10.

49:46Okay, so maybe that's because Slott wants to play in a slightly different way. But has that really panned out as it might have done? It's been caught a bit in between. For 250 million, that's epic. Epic, epic, epic, epic. It's the kind of numbers that you pay to turn yourself from really good into great, right? Not to turn yourself from great into average. I can hear people jumping down this just for a second because they will go straight away, are you joking? They haven't spent money. At no point are we saying Liverpool didn't spend money in that time. They did. Now, they will come back and they'll go Van Dijk, most expensive defender at the time.

50:2650 million. I think it was 75. 75 was it. 75 million. Alisson in 60s, I think, something. I think now that was at the same time as it's so well documented. They also sold Coutinho for an eye-watering 140 million as a business decision in case they'd looked at the squad and gone, I know what it's going to take us to really move to that next level. And you can see that process going on behind the scenes. We're going to have this incredible outlay on two magnificent players, one with Premier League experience and one the most in Van Dijk, now ready for that next step and one the most coveted goalkeeper in the world at the time.

50:54And that was the moment they went from challenges and huge potential to really being that dominating force. Van Dijk and Alisson. Big money, strategically spent. This now does not look like that. It almost looks like me looking at Chelsea's transfer dealings going, oh, that's, you know. Because you can't blame them for signing Isak and Verz. And this is the hard thing here. I completely get it. I completely understand why they spend that money. But it's just going back to the point of how Liverpool has been run and why it's been run so successfully. And everything comes to an end. So I'm not saying that that has to forever be the way.

51:38But record revenues last year, money available. 400-odd million in transfer spend. 250 million on two players that, debatably, and people have their opinions, don't fit the system that they're playing. this just doesn't look like Liverpool and from a fan's perspective and them asking us you know to have this assessment this isn't a segment as you've said to look at all the massive issues and where everything's gone wrong and what needs to change but it is a good moment with Mo's situation to look at the broader strategy of the club to look at what's going on behind those scenes and say do you know what there's something in here where you're just starting to worry and question the potential of that team to continue at the heights it's been operating at for the last 10 years.

52:26Totally agree. And I'd like to just reiterate kind of what you've just said, which is this is not a podcast to talk about tactics. So when we say, well, Florian Vert's playing at 10, I almost feel like we're stepping out of our lane into other lanes. And hopefully they can find a way of incorporating him, whatever it might be. But I think the overall point you make is important, which is, it's so different to what has brought them success before that it almost feels like a new ownership. It almost feels like a total change in strategy. And I go back to this thing that they were thinking about selling it in 2022.

53:01And you think almost that would have been the natural end of the Fenway era. You know, 10 years, really good success, win the EPL twice, win the Champions League, terrific. Well done, you've turned the club around. and it now feels like we're in that sort of dog days era where they're not quite sure do we really still want to be owning the club do we not do we really care about what the fans think do we not have we got the stomach in us and the energy in us to really drive the thing forward for another 10 years maybe maybe not it just feels like that that so yeah as you say so many liverpool fans have asked us to have a proper look at it revenue is absolutely fantastic a whole series over three or four years of curious, strange moments around the playing side of the club.

53:47And for those people who say, well, only won the Premier League last year, I always say that what happens on the pitch is the result of stuff that happens off the pitch 18 months, two years, two and a half years beforehand. Probably in the lower leagues, it's 12 months to 18 months because things turn around quicker in the lower leagues. At Premier League level, with long contracts and high levels of competition, it is two to three years. So I think what we're seeing right now in 25-26 is the result of stuff that was happening at Liverpool in 21-22-23, that type of era. And the success last season was the last gasp of a wonderful strategic success.

54:26Moving on, moving on. Have we done Liverpool now? Can we say we've done Liverpool? And we'll keep doing it, I'm sure. Charlie, there's been another massive story of the last few weeks that I know has got you very excited. But it's also something that touches on things we've talked about before because we have covered cricket in great detail. And we've also covered, should we say, the ECB's involvement in cricket in great detail. And this week that has come to light again because it was announced that Brendan McCollum would continue on as the head coach of England, that Ben Stokes would continue as captain.

55:01Rob Key is still in position. As managing director. As managing director of professional cricket for England. and Richard Gould is still the chief executive. So in other words, quite surprising purely based on the fact that after such an epic winter of disappointment and failure, it can only be called failure, not a single change is taking place amongst the group of people that were responsible for the team during that period of time. A big move. Big non-move. A big move for lack of... So apparently, according to Richard Gould, who's the chief executive of the ECB, they took the difficult decision by not firing people.

55:42Now, I kind of know what he means, right? Which is that in sport, and we mentioned this before, actually, funnily enough, in our discussion about managers, I said, look, you know, don't overestimate the extent to which the manager or the head coach is the real problem. Often the real problem is behind the scenes and getting rid of the head coach won't make that much of a difference, you might well find, okay? So I just want to read out something here that Richard Gould, the chief executive of the England Cricket Board has said this week and he's talking about the anticipated criticism of not of people not losing their jobs at the ECB under his control my old man was a football manager that's Bobby Gould the former Wimbledon manager my old man was a football manager sacking was part of the job and it wasn't necessarily the right thing moving people on can sometimes be the easy thing to do that's not the route that we're going to take what a brave guy not to fire the people who work underneath him.

56:37Just to be really clear, the big issue a lot of people, I think, including myself as a fan, have had recently is this kind of stoic, unrelenting self-assessor. It has an air of the continued arrogance that people have associated with this leadership of English cricket, which when it hasn't performed and hasn't delivered on the pitch, becomes very problematic. They're almost a bit like the Chelsea ownership. They're celebrating their defiance in the face of what us mere mortals would do if we were in a similar position, We're not going to do the thing that you expect us to do. We're going to stick to our morals and stick to our guns.

57:09But they're not. But they're not. Now, this is the crucial point. First of all, I just want to give some historical context. Richard Gould has only been in position as the chief exec to the ECB for a couple of years. 2024, I think it was. However, the other main protagonists here are Rob Key, the managing director of professional cricket at the ECB, former test player himself, Brendan McCullum, the head coach, and Ben Stokes. Now, that crew came in in 2022. So they have been in place for four years. Now, I can say, with my hand on my heart, I believe that getting rid of managers after two months in football or six months or even nine months or even sometimes one season can be a bit hasty.

57:54But what Richard Gillespie here is conflating two totally different things, which is that moving somebody on after four years is not acting hastily. They've been there for years. And what that means is the opportunity has been afforded to them to put in place through the entire structure every single thing that they believe in. All the things that they believe will bring success. Now, when it comes to Test cricket, which is basically what we're talking about here, although there have been very significant failures in white ball cricket as well, but just put that to one side. When it comes to Test cricket, has the last four years been successful?

58:33As an England fan, how would you judge Test cricket success, Charlie? Winning the biggest series. You have to beat India and you have to beat Australia. Right. Preferably away from home, but you do definitely have to beat them at home. Right, so during those four years, England have played Australia home and away, and have played India away and home. Four series against the two other giants of world cricket. What has been the return on those four series, Charlie? Drawn series against India at home, drawn Ashes series at home, dumped away really in India. They won, I think, the first test of that series quite extraordinarily.

59:174-1 and 4-1. Yeah, and then thumped, obviously, in the ashes. Right, so two shellackings away from home and two draws at home. So within the mini league of the big test nations, the ones who can afford to pay their players enough not to go and play white ball cricket during test tours, right? Because the other nations have got real problems when it comes to test cricket. We've covered that before. Not India, not England, and not Australia. They have their best players playing. They have access to their best players, and they have the greatest resources. They can pay their coaches the most money.

59:46The whole thing is gold-plated, right? So that's your competition. And I don't think anyone debates that. Everyone knows it's about India and Australia. That's how you judge an England tenure. So over four years, an entire cycle of playing both of those two other countries home and away, they have failed. Failure. Proper failure. During that time, we have been the third best test-playing country of those three leading nations. Just with the caveat also, rebranding yourself almost the saviors of cricket, playing this brand new style that's going to be superior to what we've seen before. Right. So this is where it gets, to my mind, even worse because the issue here is to do with accountability.

1:00:31You're given a four-year cycle. You fail. You have to take accountability if that's four years. It's not four months. It's not one year. It's not two years. It's four years. You have to move yourself on. You have to resign. You have to accept and hold your hands up and say, we've given it our best shot we haven't succeeded because then you're looking at another four-year cycle so why would you get another four-year cycle if you've if you haven't succeeded in the previous one it's actually worse than that though alluding to what you said which is that effectively this leadership hasn't hidden their light behind the bushel they have been very loud and proud about the fact that they simply know better than other people everybody literally everybody they know better than India and Australia, right?

1:01:11They know better than former England coaches and former England captains. They know better than all the traditions of the game. They have certain, what I would call, foundational beliefs. And for this, I have to say, I quite admire them. Because you know, we're speaking just now about Liverpool, about how their strategies become blurred. So you don't quite know what they're trying to do. So each individual decision that they have to make It becomes, oh, what are we going to do, right? But this England leadership, Key and McCullum, and Stokes to a degree, but he's obviously out on the pitch and having to perform, and that's a slightly different thing.

1:01:46Key and McCullum laid down certain fundamentals that they basically believe they were going to change Test cricket with and obviously succeed. And I'm just going to read down them, see if you disagree with these. Number one, they believed that all-out aggression with the bat can work versus top-class attacks in test cricket. Fair? Number two, traditional preparation for test series doesn't matter. Number three, pace bowling is all important in Australian conditions. Right? The faster you bowl, the more wickets you take, right? Number four, a freewheeling type of team culture has no negative consequences.

1:02:26So letting the players do whatever they want will not come with negative consequences. It will only be positive. Number five, and this is a crucial one, because it's something which is often spoken about in sport, but which they firmly believed in, and they state themselves on it. Form is temporary, class is permanent. We are going to select the players who we think are the most talented players, and no matter how badly they play, we are going to stick with those players, whatever happens. So even if Olly Pope has a terrible run of form, and even if there's a player who plays in his position who in county cricket is averaging 60, 70 a game.

1:03:01That player in county cricket is not going to get given a chance because we have decided that we know best. We have decided that Oli Pope is just a more talented player and therefore he is going to be our number three batsman and that's the end of the story. Number six, better to have no spinner at all than to have a journeyman spinner, right? So we'd rather go into matches just with pace builders. If we can't find the next Mushtaq Ahmed, then we would rather just have pace builders. Okay, fine. Number seven, critically, we don't want specialist coaches. We don't need a fielding coach. The players know how to field.

1:03:31And finally, county cricket doesn't really matter. It's irrelevant. County cricket's an irrelevance. We're only interested in the elite game. We're not a player. So those are eight, what I would call foundational beliefs, by which they differentiated themselves from everything that had gone before and from other candidates for the job. My God, that is a depressing list. Right? When you read that out. So this is what they state themselves on. Now, they were called out on all of these beliefs, not by me and you, not even by newspaper journalists. They were called out on it by former England stars, big ones, Jeff Boycott, Michael Vaughan.

1:04:06Some of the best players in English test history called them out on all of this. And in return, they went very punchy. let me just quote what Ben Stokes the captain said when Ian Botham, Jeff Boycott and Michael Thorn, three of the ten greatest England players of all time called them out on almost all of this stuff. Yeah we can't prepare how the has-beens may be used to prepare. We are very confident and comfortable in the way in which we prepare for everything right? So he described their critics as has-beens and Basie said they haven't got a clue okay? Let's not imagine that Ben Stokes was not saying what Brendan McCullum thinks and what Rob Key thinks because that is coming right from the top and it's being fed right.

1:04:50These has-beens, they don't understand the modern way. We're changing test cricket, right? So I'm just going to hand over to you on that list of foundational beliefs and ask how can this leadership have any credibility when effectively now it is being background brief, Charlie, out to the media that they are going to change a whole bunch of these foundational beliefs in order to keep their jobs. I'm trying to find the root in here. It all comes down to a perception of arrogance. It's the we know best. Now, I think we said this before on a previous show. I have no problem with that if the end product proves that you knew best.

1:05:27Exactly right. What we're really talking about here, and you said I just really want to drill in because it's actually the most important point. Having a really strong set of beliefs and sticking to them is not the critique we're leveling here. It's the actual opposite. We just described in Liverpool what that has created in a success time. Now, that's why when we're discussing Liverpool, when things start to change, you're almost going, is this happening? It's a bit of a concern because you're looking back on the set of beliefs that delivered them success. This, as you've highlighted, has been from a results perspective at the top of the game where you're really judged, it's been a disaster.

1:06:04And therefore, what we're calling over a four-year period, a long period of time in sport, the self-reflection, the accountability therefore is required when failure exists and that does not seem to be the case here you've listed out a number of things there that you know as you were reading through them genuinely you're kind of creasing and then even you have additional things of you have kind of tried to find room for a spin bowler you pick someone and back someone in Bashir for two years or so leading up to an Ashes series and then you don't play him for five tests yet you persevered with him for all the rest of it.

1:06:37So it's very easy to say that you recognize things have gone wrong and that changes need to be made. Do you genuinely believe that Brendan McCollum believes that mistakes have been made? Do you genuinely believe that he is going to come into this now, shall we call it, this new cycle and significantly change his philosophy on coaching, on man management? Because the man management thing is a really interesting point here, which as we know has brought a huge amount of criticism recently, quite rightly so. Do we believe that that is actually going to change? I think it's worse than that, which is they're going to end up betwixt and between, right?

1:07:18Which is the worst of both worlds, which is where Liverpool are right now as well, where you had a foundational set of beliefs that you've now been forced or have allowed to be forced into changing by events, but you can't change totally because then you have no credibility so with the players in this instance so if McCollum were to say to one of the to Zach Crawley for instance Zach the conditions out there aren't that great at the moment I don't want to see you driving on the up in the first five overs then Zach Crawley is going to a bit of him is going to die in terms of his respect for Brendan McCollum because he's going to say for the last four years you've been telling me this and now you're telling me that and he's going to go out on the pitch thinking am I batting to try and impress the old McCollum or the new McCollum?

1:08:03I'll give you a good example, a current example of this. So the thing about county cricket no longer being considered important. This has led to a slow revolt amongst the county cricket clubs and the technical directors, the cricket directors of those clubs have been in slow simmering anger about the way in which McCollum has ignored them for the last three years. He just picked his guys and then didn't even bother speaking to the county credit guys after that. Right. So the ECB then says, right, OK, we need to try and change that situation. So I'll tell you what we need to do is we all need to get together and we need to sort this out.

1:08:43They need to feel love. They need to feel a bit of love would have been the sort of, you know, just OK. So can we get Brendan in? No, actually, Brendan's on holiday until the end of June and until the end of May. Sorry, what? Oh, OK. Right. I'll tell you what. Should we get him on a team's call? Right. So this is now what's happened. That a team's call has been produced for the county cricket cricket directors and Brendan McCollum. And apparently this is going to repair the relationship between the counties and Brendan McCollum. Now, scrape back what the county cricket directors are actually upset with McCollum about.

1:09:23What they're upset with him about is that as the England coach, a big chunk of his job is going and watching county cricket to see which players out there might improve the England team, might be the next generation of England players. That motivates county cricketers when they see the England coach. County cricket starts in April. Brendan McCullum is on holiday in New Zealand when the county cricket season starts, but it's been decided by the ECB where we need to repair relations with county cricket. so you then get a situation the worst of both worlds where you don't get the clarity of leadership of a leader saying no i don't care about county cricket and i'm clear about what i do care about it's this elite bubble around the england team but also you don't repair the situation with the county cricket directors because effectively they're being told listen if we get them on a team score for half now will that sort you out will you be happy now etc which of course they won't be happy because that wasn't the problem the problem is not not having a team score the problem was he never turned up you think for reportedly the highest paid coach in international cricket that that would be a bare minimum it astounds me to think that he is going that apparently he is taking a six-week holiday who gets a six-week holiday in any job six-week holidays just don't exist that is the atmosphere that surrounds this entire england setup accountability clarity about objectives clarity about what happens when objectives aren't met clarity about which foundational beliefs they still believe in and which they don't.

1:10:48Because I've heard Rob Key talking about the foundational belief that you can go all out aggression and that can work against top class attacks. So he gave interviews this week which went something on the lines of, yeah, obviously, I still want to see batsmen be really aggressive and be really positive, but they also need to stick around and bat all day as well. And you're like, that's not a message. That's an aspiration. That's dreamland. dreamland is is that you can is viv richards is you can be unbelievably attacking batsmen who can also pull off double centuries at the same time or brian lara or whatever it might be so that's just to use one example of why i think you know richard is richard gould's job as chief executive and don't forget that he didn't appoint these guys he came in after these guys it's his job to look at these foundational beliefs look at the results and say guys look you've given it a great go.

1:11:39I totally respect the intent which you've brought to the job. I totally respect the way in which you've been consistent. It hasn't worked. You've got to go. Let's be under no illusions. I'm going to complete my thoughts on this. If this set of beliefs and that set of results have been delivered in India, by India, or by Australia, they wouldn't have got to four years. They wouldn't and the justification for some of the mistakes, because what they're talking about here is, well, we recognize there have been mistakes, almost like those mistakes were the first time that those things have been aired, but they weren't.

1:12:20They were aired continuously. When we went to India away and got thrashed, there wasn't enough preparation. You were too aggressive at moments of the game when you shouldn't have been aggressive. You've stuck with the same batsman, even if they're out of form. All these things were leveled by Ian Botham, Jeff Boycott, Michael Vaughan and Co. then. So for them to turn around now and say, oh, yeah, well, you know, we have made a couple of mistakes, but, you know, they've only just come to light. We've only just recognized them. We've only just seen them. They didn't exist before. Listening to Richard Gould, it was almost like the previous three and a half years had been all success.

1:12:57And this Ashes series was what he called a road bump, right? No, it has been a continual succession of road bumps, all caused by the same foundational beliefs having been proven to be wrong. Yep. Four years. Accountability. Final point for me just to ask you, because I want to make a potential differentiation while we've been packaging everything collectively. Where would you sit on Ben Stokes in all of this? Look, I think when it comes to the selection of the captain, who obviously also has to be a player who is selected for the team as well, right? I think that that is a different matter because effectively he is being appointed captain to carry out a strategy that's been determined by the head coach and agreed with by the managing director of Cricket England.

1:13:40And I think Stokes' position in the team has to stand and fall on his own performances. And that, you know, he's in his mid-30s now, and his body is really struggling to stand up. But I think when you look around the rest of the England team and ask the question, who else in that England team would you trust to competently captain the team? I think most of us would still say Ben Stokes. And I think that if there was a new head coach who had come in and had said, I'll tell you what, Ben. Look, I think you and Brendan did some great things. And we still want to be, broadly speaking, a positive team.

1:14:10And we still, broadly speaking, want to trust players and not be too dictatorial and that type of stuff. So we're not going to throw out the baby with the bathwater here. But we are going to have a fielding coach. We are going to prepare for tours properly. We are going to be a bit more what might we call professional about things, etc., etc. So just to be clear, are you okay with that? He's got a lot of credit in the bank. I mean, Ben Stokes, as a player, has got vast amounts of credit in the bank. let's be honest hero hero hero absolutely hero provided some of the greatest moments across sport yeah not even cricket um and i you know i actually really i've loved moments of this cricket and this leadership i've hated it as well because obviously we live and die by the results but it has been incredible and a lot of this isn't necessarily you know it's nothing personal it's not an attack on the individuals and their styles the point is all we're saying is that when a style doesn't work over a long period of time and the moment for accountability comes you have to acknowledge it and that doesn't seem like, well that hasn't happened here so who knows, going into another summer, you know really again all we're really talking about is well the next point of accountability comes at the next big series against either India or Australia because Charlie, I've got a funny feeling I've got a funny feeling and you can postmark, bookmark this and we'll come back to it I think they're taking for granted that we beat New Zealand and Pakistan and when you get this kind of lack of leadership and these fault lines and when you get a situation where foundational beliefs that have been built up over a long period of time have been proven to be false and then when you get yourself caught betwixt in between when you're not quite sure do we believe in county cricketers do we not believe in county cricketers not quite sure do we believe in out and out pace bowling or do we think we need it when you get caught betwixt in against New Zealand and Pakistan this summer.

1:16:05I dearly hope we don't, because I said this is my England cricket fandom is my cricket fandom. You know, watching England and Gloucestershire in my county cricket team play, that is for me pure fandom. I only want them to win. But I've got a fear in me as a sports administrator that the lack of leadership shown by Richard Gould might prove to be fatal when it comes to the next two years as well as the last two years. And breathe. Thank you. What a show. Thank you so much. I hope you all enjoyed it. Please, there was so much in there for you to respond to and comment on. So please continue to do that.

1:16:40And yeah, we'll see you next week. Thank you, Charlie. Thanks, Charlie. That's a wrap on another big week. Liverpool, what a discussion this was. And I cannot wait to see what the broader response will be as the news properly sinks in. The conversation around what this says about the club more broadly is where we really want to drive the conversation. So Liverpool fans, non-Liverpool fans, please get in touch and let us know your thoughts. Thank you so much, as always, and we'll see you next week.