Blown-open title races, punditspeak on the terraces & Woltemade's weird penalty

0:00I'm sorry, you can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like. Is Gascoigne going to have a crack? He is, you know. Oh, I say! Brilliant! The cheese! He's round the goalkeeper. He's done it! Absolutely incredible! He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was without a shadow of a doubt giving him lip. Oh, I say! It's amazing! He does it, team. And tame, and tame again. Crank up the music. Charge a glass. This nation is going to dance all night. Is the title race eligible to be blown open yet? Possible pundits speak in the stands at Old Trafford.

0:50Martin Keown mixes up his sporting idioms. The number one purveyor of commentary vibrato. Nick Voltemada's weird penalty. Ange Postacoglu goes big picture with the press pack. Fact-checking Jimmy Floyd Hasselbank's crossover chat on Strictly. the trigger point for becoming a former England international, and keys and grey on green cards. Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts, this is Football Clichés. Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry, this is the adjudication panel. Joining me is Charlie Eccleshare. How are you doing? Very well, thank you. This podcast will go out after the first leg of the UK and Ireland Football Clichés live tour in Brighton.

1:33Should we just assume that we spoke well in Brighton? I think so, yeah. I don't attempt fate, though. Let's not go overboard. It was fine. It happened. Yeah, it was good, I promise. Alongside you is David Walker, who I hope is a lot more optimistic about things. Oh, yeah, big time. First show of the tour. Looking forward to it. We're ready. Yeah, we've addressed it both in future and past tense now. And we'll also be in Cardiff at the Glee Club on Wednesday night. For all the shows, door 6.30, show 7.30, we'll finish about 9.30 and straight to the boozer. Speaking of Cardiff boozers, nominations for the packet, the Eli Jenkins, the nearby spoons, all seem very viable candidates.

2:15If you want to join us on this tour, go to tickets.footballcliches.com and you'll see all the venues there. Before we adjudication panel, something remarkable happened yesterday to me, actually. so I was on the way to Wimbledon Commons extensions for Ribblesdale Rovers which is really far away and hard to get to if you're not driving and I was on the bus with the athletics Jay Harris who's also our captain and our goalkeeper Brad we're sitting there just having a chat as you do and then a woman got on the bus and proceeded to launch into an incredible religious sermon like she gave it both barrels she was giving it everything She was like touching us on the knee, blessing us.

3:00She correctly deduced that I wasn't married. But then I did. Because all the stag do is ego. I invited her to the wedding next year. But she was singing. She was giving everything. And it went on for ages to the point where the sort of five or six people on the bus were all sort of looking at each other going, what do we do here? Do we just let it get on with it? Like, should we engage? Should we just not? Have a word. Yeah, it was like, honestly, you felt like you were in like a gospel church in the front pew. And then after she'd been going for about five or so minutes, she paused for breath.

3:36The bus stopped. A bloke who was sitting opposite us and had eyed us a few times got up and he just went, love the pod, Dave, and got off the bus.

3:47I was hoping for a listen fair play there. Well, I did say to him, cheers, mate. I said, which was true, we'd just seen a live For My Sins caller, because she uttered the immortal phrase several times in the most appropriate and true context. But broadly a positive message then. It's not that we're all going to hell, the world's going to end. It was just like, praise me. No, I think it was all positive. And thanks to her blessing, Riblesdale Rovers won 2-0. Lovely. There we go. Hira. She's like Eileen Drury. Eileen Drury. Is that all right? Let's not make light of it, of the Lord. Right, let's kick off the adjudication panel with this.

4:26Chris Newman, Charlie says, at the end of the Chelsea versus Liverpool game, Gary Neville claimed that Liverpool loss has blown the title race wide open. I'm not having that after only seven games. How close to the end of the season or after how many games can it be claimed the title race has been blown wide open? Can we safely assume that it hasn't been formed enough yet to be blown open? Yeah, or, I mean, there is a world in which had Liverpool won there, had Liverpool been Palace the week before and so they'd have won their first six games and everyone then would have basically been saying Liverpool had won the title, as ludicrous as that sounds.

4:59Had they then lost and shown like first chinks of vulnerability, like we might have a title race on our hands kind of thing. I still think it would have been premature. This feels, because it was already, I mean, they only had a two point lead going into the weekend after six games. But it's a complicated one to actually kind of pin down when you can start saying it or how many points there need to be as a gap. But I think you typically, it's a bigger lead being brought down to something that feels kind of within reach, you know. So even, you know, a sort of five-point lead becoming a 2.1 or something like that.

5:35It's interesting to me, Dave, straight away, that Charlie's reading this as a one-team dominance being brought back into a two - or three-horse race rather than a two - or three-horse race being opened up into a potential bigger scenario. Either way, it feels like a post-Christmas thing for me, Dave. This isn't a first half of the season's remit. Yeah, this is very early. And interestingly, Arsenal have gone odds-on favourites for the title now, which again feels early. I think just short odds-on favourites, I think because a couple of tricky games that they've had against the big teams have come through and they're now top.

6:09So, yeah, it is early, definitely early. I think we had something similar last season, didn't we? There's this sort of the appetite from Sky whenever there's a sniff of a title race being blown wide open, we have to get into that. But also, I think the Arsenal thing sort of plays into the narrative because it's been so close and yet so far in the last few seasons. The fact that they're now there, top of the league, when a few weeks ago it felt like maybe they weren't going to be, Liverpool were going to walk it again. I think they're going to win it. I think they're going to win it purely for narrative reasons.

6:39It just, you know, if a script writer were in charge of Arsenal's destiny, Charlie, they would script Arsenal to win the title now. They would do it now. Why do you think that? Just because they've come close. Three runners up in a row. Which they did win it last time they came three runners up three times. They're the only team to have done it. Yeah, I feel like the Arsenal narrative is ripening this season. You should be the script writer really, Charlie, in this scenario. You're the best man for the job. Yeah, I think I'd defer to my brother who's an actual script writer. He's correct him on a few things.

7:11Yeah, exactly. She's there in a fact-checking capacity. I mean, if you were a screwdriver, you might think, oh, this has happened almost in a very similar way before. I might go for something a little more outlandish than sort of just harking back to 2002. I guess not. I suppose it's just, yeah, a remake, a kind of heritage story. Well, I'm glad we've covered who we think will win the Premier League this season. Good to get that sincere chat out of the way. Right, moving on. This is from a compilation video of Senna Lamond's Manchester United debut, their goalkeeper, by the way. It's from fan shot footage from the stands, and it begins with him at full stretch to keep out a long-range Sunderland effort.

7:49Look at this face. He's got freedom of old...

7:57Nicol Chattrasaglani writes in, Dave, and says, I think the guy in clip one was going to say he's got the freedom of Old Trafford. Surely that's not normal fan discourse. Commentators slash pundits only. Yes! I really want this to be true. I want it to be true so much. I think he was going to say that, yeah. There's no other alternative, right? Lammons then makes the save, so he has to sort of stop halfway through. The only other option is he's going to go postcode or Manchester. That would be even better. But I mean, ostensibly not prohibited, I would say, Charlie, for a fan to use this phrase.

8:32But when you're actually at the place itself in real time, I don't like it. I think that's what makes it weirder. He's got the freedom of Old Trafford where we are right now. It is an odd thing for your mind to turn to in that moment. Yeah. And as evidenced by that clip, too long as well. There's too much to get out there in that scenario. He's got the freedom of Old Trafford. I mean, you really would. It's like one of those tests. You really would have to have the freedom of Old Trafford for a fan to be able to get that out comfortably. Should have got there in advance. He's got the freedom of Old Trafford.

9:00That is quite a lot of time. Yeah, he should have said it while the player had the possession of the ball. That would have given him more time. And here's a very straightforward one for you. Here's Martin Keown on TNT after Arsenal's midweek win over Olympiacos. You see the game out and then Saka gets the winning goal. So, you know, if it was a game of chess, then it's a game set match to Arsenal in the way that they set out. Got a bit tricky in the middle. I mean, the appeal of this is very basic, Charlie. It's the sort of butchered soundbite that belongs in a gift book of the funniest footy quotes, doesn't it?

9:30I mean, it's perfectly formed in that sense. Did you see Keo recently in the same sort of format in that kind of TNT sort of on pitch studio informal vibe? And they had Nonny Madweke came over. It was after the Forest game. And Keo just said something to him and was like, I have to say, I thought you were really selfish. I always thought you were a really selfish player before, but you're not. You're not like you're really helping the team. It was so weird. And Nonny was like, you just don't really expect that sort of grilling. You know, it's not like light stuff, just like, oh, you've been so great since coming in.

9:58And he was a bit like, yeah, I mean, I don't think I'm selfish. Just chill out, Martin. Christ. Basically, yes. It was so intense. This all feeds into just the growing concept that he's one of the most intense men in football broadcasting. How far are we, Dave, from a Dreamland episode all about Martin Keown? I feel like we need a couple more months of content and then we're right there. I think it's ripe for us. He's getting there because as this clip shows, he's now starting to add to his normal sort of intense punditry, almost Stuart Pearce-esque weird phrasing phrasing and stuff as well. So it's all in there.

10:34Yeah. Yeah. There are some amazing ones from back in the days. Do you remember that one he did about Vengo? And he was like, you know, he thinks retirement is for old people. Old people die. He just suddenly... It's so weird. It's like, what? Like, where has this come from? I've got an addiction to life, if anything. Yeah, an addiction to life, that one. That's it. We're doing it. Yeah. Him saying, like, it should be pronounced Kee-Owen is another, like, quite interesting little quirk. Like, where has that come from? Oh, God. Anyway. Right. Let's return to the lovely concept of musical commentary and a real new candidate in this growing field, the commentary vibrato of Mike Minet.

11:09He was on commentary duty last week for Cairat versus Real Madrid and Monaco versus Manchester City. And it's Brahim Diaz. It is five. Pulls it back for Rinders. Rinders goes for it. I mean, the first one had the kind of anticipatory aspect to it. The second one just felt genuinely nervous, Charlie. It was very strange. Yeah, it is that kind of like, what's going to happen here? Is it an effective device day for a commentator? I mean, there are so many situations in attacking passages of play that it feels like it is quite appropriate because, as I say, it's a kind of provisional state, isn't it?

11:48Yeah, I'm not sure you should go to the well too often with it. Right. Unless you really want to sort of make it your calling card. I think he's out vibrato-ing Chris Wise at the moment. So one of us has got to really step up at the moment. We should have a commentator's choir, really, shouldn't we? Christmas charity concert. Would listen. Drury doing the solo. I've taken the liberty of editing them together a little bit more tightly, and I think they go together superbly. Reinders! Brahim Diaz! Reinders! Brahim Diaz! Reinders! Brahim Diaz that's nice particularly he's like saying Brahim there's like a particular flourish there somebody's got to put that to music yeah there's got to be a listener out there who can have some fun with that are you born with this Dave or is it taught nobody knows right an observation from the weekend Charlie I genuinely like things in football in a really subtle way that I've never seen before and Nick Voltemada's penalty for Newcastle against Notting Forest was genuinely weird I've never seen anything like it i've never seen a penalty clipped into the top corner like that i mean you see plenty of penalties dispatched into the top corner with power perhaps even sort of placed deliberately but that was kind of he sort of clipped it across his body really tightly it was amazing yeah it makes you feel a bit nervous doesn't it because he and it's it goes so high yeah it looks it's weird to sort of get get under it that much but in a really controlled well you know you see someone get under it you're like oh god that's going yeah that's going miles over.

13:19And also because he's so tall, he sort of lurched over the ball. It sort of towers over it and he sort of has to dig it out from underneath him because he's so big. But he also did the sort of Ivan Toni-esque I'm going to look directly at the goalkeeper not at the ball thing. Normally when you do that though, the only thing you really can do is side foot it because you want to be sure of your technique. So to do a no look, not look at the ball penalty and clip it into the top corner. Well, that's the thing. Yeah, he kind of used his laces rather than a side foot so he kind of sort of dragged his foot across the turf.

13:54I mean, I'm focusing, Charlie, on how weird it was but I think it actually might be a really effective way. I don't think, I think there's a big margin for error. I don't think that would go wide. It potentially could go over but I want to see more of this. The over is the other thing. Yeah, I remember on that topic of like seeing a penalty you've not seen before, I remember Spurs beat Brighton at home in February 2024 and Pascal Gross took a penalty. it felt like you've got he just sort of like cut across it into the corner in the most deliberate technically accomplished way and it was like wow yeah these players have got really really good so they can it look you know when people do things that it looks like they're sort of just in training kind of just experimenting with penalties and voltima had a bit of that as well it was very training ground actually just like he was mucking about uh yeah incredibly casual right next up this came from anthony groot he says i i came across this innovative term for a goalkeeper on the latest subscriber episode of your Goalhanger Stablemates, the rest is history.

14:48And I immediately thought it would be worth a mention on the pod. Historian Dominic Sandbrook and his co-presenter Tabby Sirrett are discussing 20th century French author Albert Camus and his youth as a goalkeeper in Algiers, when Tabby comes out with this superb piece of vocabulary. Yeah, everyone makes a lot of his association with football. Didn't he play in goal? Because he was kind of too sickly and weedy to be involved in the rough and tumble. I actually had a Camus football shirt, which I used to play in, in the 1990s. So people can read into that why they will, but I didn't blame goal.

15:19I was going to say, I was going to say, I didn't think you were a goalsman. A goalsman? Did you say a goalsman? Yeah. Wow. You've actually been to football matches and you believe the word is a goalsman? Yeah, a goalsman. Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. All true footballers know that. That's the single best thing you've said ever since you joined Goalhanger. So Camille was a bright, precocious goalsman. He was. Oh, the synergy here, Dave. It's wonderful. There we go. More of this. Yeah, very nice. You should get Dominic Sambric on. And Tabby, by the looks of him. I reckon a high proportion of our listeners will have had an Albert Camus football t-shirt.

15:56I was going to say, he's right at the top of the list. Is it philosophy football? Is it that range of t-shirts? Because there's this quote he gives about, like, everything I learned about morality comes from football. I've slightly butchered that. But yeah, you can find that on a lot of T-shirts from our sort of listener demographic. Yes, definitely. But I really admire Tabby just sort of sticking by the term there, Dave. No backing down. I mean, could it catch on? It sort of evokes goal scorer too much there, doesn't it? I mean, look, it's a nice clip, but it's not right, is it? Goalsman. Dave, no, not less than it.

16:30It's right in the back. Goalsman is the other end of the pitch, if anything, surely. Let me be clear. Yeah, the last thing we need is another term for goalkeeper. We've got too many. Finally, Ange Postacoglu, Charlie, after seven games in charge of Nottingham Forest, has already got to the stage of addressing the media in a very meta way. If you're given time, Ange, will you turn the situation around? No, no, it's a lost cause. I mean, seriously, what's wrong with something being hard? Seriously, what's wrong with it? why does everything have to be so, why do we want everything just delivered nicely packaged?

17:11I'm sure your parents had a struggle in their life, right? And they didn't give up. You may have even been a lost cause at some point, but they didn't give up on you, right? So what I'm saying is, what I'm saying... No, no, no, no. But what I'm saying is, right, I'm not having a go at you. Please don't take it that way, is that, you know, it seems to be these days that as soon as something goes wrong, well, that's it, it's wrong. We'll change it, break it up. Like, everything that needs kind of something fixed is invariably going to go through a tough time. This is not unfamiliar territory for me, as I said.

17:46This is very Ange, Charlie. I have to say straight away, I'm not entirely on board with his logic here, but I defend his right to deploy it. I feel like he's the only manager now, perhaps the only manager for a while, who consistently goes big picture like this. We used to have Arsene Wenger sort of going off on a, we live in a world of, and that was different stuff. Here he's basically turning the media back on itself and saying, why do we do this? His general point is, there always has to be one manager under pressure. Why? And I like it. I mean, it's great for our purposes. I sympathise with that aspect of it.

18:17It's not going to go down well. I don't think the press ever want them to be turned back on themselves. It's just going to go down as a weird little footnote in his Nottingham Forest career. You remember that moment where he talked about the media? Oh, that was the beginning of the end for me. what was it was it that point about the managers i mean that's kind of duncan alexander's pin tweet about premier league yes there's always got to be one premier league crisis club the goal is never to be it yeah two two big thinkers of the modern game and and duncan yeah i think yeah i mean he does do that i think he does do it quite well especially when you are the person questioning i've been there like it does kind of make you stop in your tracks a little bit yeah it's good to have a thought a genuinely thought-provoking press conference from manager dave i i doesn't it didn't feel like a desperate move from him and and a sort of attention deflecting move but i you know i reiterate it's it's not it's not going to catch on with the media they're not going to have it please don't tell us about ourselves is basically the message i'm getting here yeah i mean it's not the first time he's done this sort of thing is it charlie you'll have seen it before probably been on the receiving end of it i'm sure at some point but um he sort of took it in a slightly different direction to where i thought he was going to with the with the question asked when he went you know he was sort of the sarcastic no it's a lost cause mate sort of answer i thought he was going to sort of say why are you asking me this why what do you want me to say to this yeah but he sort of went he went off in the direction of like like you say why is there always a manager under pressure well you are under pressure mate like you haven't won a game yet so like you know that's why he's asking the question yeah could have phrased it a bit differently perhaps charlie has ang postacoglu to your memory ever uttered the phrase i'm big enough and ugly enough because i feel like i feel like if he hasn't said it it's so funny you say that because i was thinking like that i find that expression so funny when the deployment of that especially a friend of mine once used it about like their five-year-old son it's a bit harsh it was the son themselves yeah he was saying yeah i was like you can't say that about five-year-old that's like that's what you know grizzled managers say uh you know the point was sort of making like don't worry about him he'll be fine kind of thing yeah yeah oh yeah yeah but yeah i don't specifically remember saying it even though yeah it couldn't be sort of more up his street and so you know it's like self-deprecating it's kind of but also don't worry about me kind of thing and you're big enough and ugly enough aren't you to take to take this definitely definitely don't raise it yourself just someone who's big enough and ugly enough i just wondered your take on as a man who knows a thing or two about being big and ugly no no we're taking it too literally here anyway um that's it for part one we'll be back very shortly

20:56Oh, look at that! That is wonderful!

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21:41Get them what you can. Just on Dreamland. So last week we published the latest episode of Dreamland, which was all about the Champions League. And in that episode, Charlie, you remarked upon how the Champions League has given you a heightened knowledge of European geography and all the cities and everything. I had a similar moment this weekend where we were talking to one of our neighbours and this neighbour's from Italy. We were asking, oh, whereabouts Italy you're from and stuff. And she said, oh, I'm from a little place called Piemonte. And I went, oh, yeah. Nuiturin is it? Italy my eyes would have been lighting up that is a deep cut how pro-evo improved my job that's absolute class right then mad statistics I am dangerously close Charlie to emerging from my athletic writing hiatus to do something about this you know the stat packification of football here are a couple of lovely examples this one I completely sympathise with because it's from an account purely dedicated to Colombian football statistics.

22:45But it's a stat from last week's Champions League about the tallest goalkeepers ever to be scored past by Colombian footballers in the Champions League. Wow. So, yeah, Vanya Milinkovic-Savic, two metres, two centimetres. Fraser Forster, two metres, one. And Thibaut Courtois, a mere two metres. They are the top three tallest goalkeepers ever to be scored past by a Colombian in the Champions League. Brilliant. Love it. You'll never sing that, et cetera. Right, so that one I can sympathise with. This one is odd. Much was made, Dave, this weekend of Ruben Amarin reaching the 50-game landmark for Manchester United and much reflection on his record so far.

23:26A tweet came out saying that Ruben Amarin becomes the first Manchester United manager since Sir Alex Ferguson to win his 50th game at the club. A completely empty stat. So he's the first one since Fergie to win his 50th game. The actual game itself. The actual 50th game. Matt pointless yeah oh my god that's where are we going with this that's such a good example I've spoken with these before of when there's like this compulsion to just say that if you're a journalist or a fan or whoever like you know you'll be told it and you'll just be like oh that's a number and that's a thing that involves a lot of Manchester United managers so I guess that's interesting enough without a second without a thought of like what's this saying and maybe people are doing it and they're like oh it's fine it says nothing it's just it's about manchester united people find it interesting but it's it says absolutely nothing almost less than nothing but that is one of these yeah these stats that is it's a curiosity it's a it's a something that somebody has trivia but don't even qualifies well no but in that you know what i mean it's attempting to be that it could be a quiz question yes but it's presented in a way as if it's something meaningful i mean if you were in any doubt about its you know statistical credibility there was an abacus emoji at the end dave right So just to really ram it home.

24:41Okay, nice. Some calculations gone into it. But yeah, incredible stuff. A couple of absolutings for you. This came via Pi from Brentwood Town FC. Goal! Max Hudson swings in another corner on an absolute sixpence. And it's finally converted by the new boy, Alejandro. I mean, on an absolute sixpence, Charlie. That's class. I like that, yeah. I really like that. Hang on a minute here, though. So Max Hudson swings in another corner on an absolute sixpence. I don't like sixpence for corners. Has this been headed in? I think a sixpence has to land on the ground for me. I'm glad you raised this. I'm very glad you raised this.

25:15But yeah, I do agree. You're planting the ball on the floor where a sixpence has been laid. And it's not stuck to somebody's head. No. 50p. This all works really well. But yeah, concerns shared. Elsewhere in the East Anglian derby between Ipswich and Norwich on ITV, here is Lucy Ward on Jadon Philogene's lovely goal.

25:52I don't think I've ever heard absolute effort before This is brilliant It was, it really was It's increasingly obvious to me, Charlotte That there is simply no phrase that can't be enhanced With the word absolute stuck in the middle of it Yeah, well one of the most I laughed on one of these episodes And I can't remember if he said it on our affair but Bobby Fagini said, described soccer base as an absolute sight and that just absolutely floored me. I mean, said knowingly from him, it was amazing. Knowing or otherwise, I'm fully on board with it. Yeah, great to see its real resurgence in football broadcasting.

26:22Start dropping it in, yeah, in real life. Could be the new Listen Fair Play. What an absolute pint that is, mate. I'm sure that is said. Don't rinse it. right um let's return to the fascinating phenomenon of jimmy floyd hasselbank on strictly he it seems he emerged unscathed from the latest round charlie and instagrammed this i don't think i've ever been as nervous as i was on saturday night taking a penalty in the last minute when it's nil nil is a piece of cake compared to this so you know classic referring back to his previous existence to tie it in always useful thomas jones writes in and says has jimmy floyd hasselbank ever taken a penalty at nil-nil before to experience those nerves.