Carabao curtain-raising, regrettable stepping stones & FSV Bachmünden

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, he's there! Brilliant!

0:13Charlie Eccleshare:But G! He's ran the goalkeeper, he's done it! Absolutely incredible! He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was eyewip without a shadow of a doubt giving him lip. Oh, I say! It's amazing! He does it time and time and time again. Crank up the music! Charge a glass! This nation is going to dance all night! What's the quick-fire hat-trick threshold in childbirth terms? The Carabao Cup as curtain-raiser, Kim Helberg, clamps down on non-question questioning, a nuanced language barrier issue for Middlesbrough's new goalkeeper. Would Vinicius Jr. have been the biggest Premier League arrival of all time?

0:58Charlie Eccleshare:Incredibly mundane swap deals. Vardy to West Ham off because he's not London Stadium enough. Anthony Taylor to Turkey, and not for that reason. North London football hipsters being stared at by Keir Starmer. And the germanified names of Premier League clubs. Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts, this is Football Clichés.

1:20Charlie Eccleshare:Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry and this is the Adjudication Panel. Joining me first of all, he's back. It's Charlie Eccleshare. How are you doing? I'm all right, thanks. Yeah, hanging in. Yeah. Alongside you is David Walker. How are things? Yep, things are good. Wedding fast approaching, but stress levels reasonably okay at the moment. On that note, between Charlie's newborn baby, and indeed your relatively newborn baby, Dave, and the wedding planning, there is a decent chance that I am, for once, the least stressed out member of this podcast operation this is the best chart the crack at this i've got but both of you seem quite unflappable actually so that's quite annoying something will come along soon to knock you off won't it a delivery you've got like a delivery coming that's going to be late or something or late to this afternoon yeah late to this afternoon so yeah uh yeah that could be that could rattle me later on um charlie how is how is third time parenthood i mean so what what are the age differences between your kids uh so there's almost exactly six years from the oldest to the youngest right and then the middle one is two and a bit years after the first one so six years does that count as a quick fire hat trick in child having terms i i think it's i think it's close i don't know i think like given that i'd say two years gap is the fact is fairly standard isn't it so i think then you're taught you could be talking four years between from oldest to youngest i think six is a bit more a bit more spread out right so like maybe maybe a 30 minute hat trick something like that on that note i mean they're obviously you know so many parenting footballing things but on the minute thing i had we did our first like longish journey with the baby last week it was like it was like a 90 minute journey and it was one of those where it was like if she wakes up we're fucked kind of thing you know it's like please just please just stay asleep because if you wake up we're putting over on the hard shoulder it's all of that faff and i realized like the clock watching i was doing was so like the sort of clock watching you do when you take an early lead away at a team who you know you were just going to be up against it for the whole rest of it so you're like i can't look every minute that's obviously mad but i'm looking pretty regularly and there was such similar rhythms of things like we'd hear the baby sort of stirring and that was to me in my head i was like that's a period of concerted pressure like corner after corner you're heading it away then my oldest who was sat in the middle would be like sort of wanting to you know like stroking her and stuff and that to me was like a defender not clearing their lines like just fucking leave it stop doing that and then as we got right towards the end and and by the time there was about five or ten minutes left we were at a point we were like we could now just withstand her crying if she was to wake up that to me felt like getting the second it was like we've done it it's just like getting one on the break and it was then like oh the bliss of that last five or ten where the pressure was off is like, we've won.

4:10We've won in the clear. What could have been the remontada in that scenario? Like the miraculous late comeback. If she started crying hysterically and then somehow just as we were thinking we're going to have to put on to a hard shoulder, she'd stopped and just gone back to sleep miraculously. We could have just carried on. But yeah, luckily it didn't come to that. We got our 2-0 win and felt amazing.

4:31Charlie Eccleshare:I'm enjoying this. I'm enjoying this football analogies for parenthood. Davey, you scored just before middle age. so it's the psychological blow that you've struck i'm one of them and i'm parking the bus which is a genuine euphemism for a vasectomy so actually that could be quite good yeah it works quite well um in in real football terms though dave minutes in the tank for you and ribblesdale rovers yeah back at it on sunday in sweltering conditions and if you obviously we both have played on 4g pitches in in the sort of summer months and It's incredible how hot the actual surface gets itself, isn't it?

5:11Charlie Eccleshare:That really comes across in photos and video as well. It's a glean, it's a shine, but not in a good way. Is it like the rubber? Like the black rubber just absorbs all the heat. And you can almost sort of smell it. You can kind of smell the sort of hot rubber. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, we had a good game against Shepherds Tuesday. Nice. And managed by some athletic staff members, actually. So that was the connection. But we won 4-1 and I did shamelessly pull rank as manager in the second half when we got a penalty. And there was the person who won the penalty sort of gave the ball to our striker who didn't fancy it.

5:49And at that point, I just thought, fuck it, I'm just going to run forward and I'm going to have this. I'm just going to take this pen. It's a friendly, I never get the chance to take them. Why not?

5:57Charlie Eccleshare:Well, I'm glad that that nuanced detail in there answered a question I was going to have. You didn't bring yourself on to take the penalty. You were at least on the pitch. I was on the pitch. That's a level of rank pulling I couldn't really tolerate. Charlie, you can't just bring yourself on for a penalty like you're some hockey player in the 90s. I think you're losing the dressing room at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I was on the pitch, but then helpfully it was timed perfectly. So I scored the penalty and then we had a hydration break. So I took myself off having just scored it and then sort of buoyed by my penalty scoring exploits, I brought myself back on up front for the last 10 minutes.

6:35having been playing at the back before. And I hit the post and had a free header from six yards out. I could have got a hat trick. I'll never have a better chance. Have you got a career brace to your name? No, yeah, I don't even have a brace.

6:49Charlie Eccleshare:Wow. Would a friendies count? I don't know. Yeah, they would. Well, OK. But yeah, slightly Glenn Hoddle behaviour from you all round, really. Yeah, good to see. On Glenn Hoddle, by the way. You know, last week with Jake, we did the if England players were 40 and what tournaments would they have played at. There was a couple that I've been playing in my mind since we spoke about that on the pod. Glenn Hoddle's a really good one. Glenn Hoddle could have picked himself a World Cup 98. It's so good. It's amazing. Because it's like everything led up to that. He had the mentality to actually do it. Yeah.

7:22He turned 40 a few weeks after that 0-0 draw in Rome against Italy. And Gazza, if Gazza had played till he's 40, he could have gone to Euro 2008. he would have played in the Croatia game at Wembley

7:34Charlie Eccleshare:oh my god it's amazing yeah that's mad I've really enjoyed this I mean yeah obviously some heavy lifting being done by the physiques of some of these players but just the idea of it and then someone sent a picture of Alan Shearer wearing the 2010 World Cup kit in Soccer Aid game and it made it flesh and it was very very odd to see so yeah right adjudication panel time whilst Ruppersdale Rovers was sharpening up for the new season at the top level the Carabao Cup first round weekend officially opened the domestic season, Charlie. Everyone seemed to be enjoying the novelty of this, the idea of a cup competition, which usually takes place under the lights, kicking off the season Saturday 3pm.

8:12Charlie Eccleshare:It seemed like a nice soft opening for the season. I don't know what, there's no real logic for it. It just felt like a countrywide community shield. Yeah, there is something definitely weird about the Carabao Cup being on a weekend. But yeah, I mean, Dave, your team were very much involved. Like drama. Yeah, once we beat Crawley. absolutely battered them but like our terrible strikers just can't score for love nor money and we scored in the 99th minute our left back Mark Bowler smashed one in I think we had a long throw headed out and he's just he has he's left-footed obviously left back and he's just swung his right foot at it and it is like the most textbook wrong foot swinger goal you've ever seen absolutely flew in past the despairing Vito Manone of all people and but like sort of people are going people are going, oh, wow, what a goal.

9:02Goal of the season contender in the first game. No, it's not a good goal. Adam loads those goals. It looks terrible. Could even be a shimpat. Could even be a shimpat. It went that straight, I think, possibly shimpat.

9:14Charlie Eccleshare:It's genuinely unsatisfying. It doesn't matter how good the goal technically is. A good test for that would be to just show either a non-football fan or someone who'd never seen that player play before, is this a good goal? And they'd spot the weaker footness of it a mile off I reckon. Yeah I saw a really good Rodri scoring in the Champions League quarterfinal I think it was against Bayern Munich with his left foot and it's like on Pro Evo you used to press R2 and it made it like a controlled finish which was really good on your weaker foot and again it's like that it's like it's such a good goal but it's like that I don't know there's just something Deliberate about it.

9:47Yeah exactly it's very deliberate and it's like I am going to do all the technical things I've learnt and apply that now and it will go. But it won't have felt good for him. I'm sure he hated it. You can see in his celebration, he wasn't even happy. Definitely.

10:02Charlie Eccleshare:Elsewhere in the Carabao, this came from George, Wolves 3, Port Vale 0. Port Vale missed a penalty at the end as well. And George says, I just heard Daniel Bentley being described as being in the right place at the right time when saving a penalty. Dave, I was insisting you were going to say I don't like this, but actually, I mean, it works really nicely. But would you happily adopt this for penalty saving? yeah i mean i guess it's if you dive just went the right way dive well that's the thing could you potentially dive maybe if you've died early and but then the the attacker has still somehow fucked it up and like fucks up their technique and ends up just sort of giving you a little soft one that they shouldn't have done is that would that be sort of right place right time especially if you microanalyze it i suppose that does allow it in i mean but where do we stop charlie could you have johnny on the spot for a penalty saving but that's the thing i think it's so against the spirit of right place at the right time because where else are you going to be as a goalkeeper?

10:57You know, it's a set piece. It's so kind of prescribed that you're going to be there.

11:03Charlie Eccleshare:And right place at the right time, it's an enshrined thing about striker savvy and I want to keep it like that. I want it to be, you know, naus in the penalty area whereas a goalkeeper going the right way does not meet that threshold. Next up, this is a pre-match interview with Middlesbrough manager Kim Helberg on Sky Sports and this is the new season clampdown we all want to see. Kim, it's Clinton Morrison here. You've done some good business. You must be really happy. The owners have backed you. I know you spent a lot of money on players. You obviously lose Hayden Hackney, but you brought in some really exciting players this season.

11:36Charlie Eccleshare:Was there a question, or was it just like we are good or bringing in good players? No, I'm asking you... Is that on practice, Kim? Is that the summer? No, I'm asking you... I'm asking you, are you happy with the business that you've done so far? Absolutely. Now I'm very happy. Like... Charlie this is good we want to see non-questions being dealt with in the right way I mean there is a to be fair to Clinton Morrison there is like a you must be happy early on when he asks the question which I guess he thinks of as the question but yeah I like I like the the breaking down of what's actually being asked feels quite a Scandinavian thing Dave to bat that sort of question back yeah just be completely unimpressed with the question you've been confronted I found myself in a similar position to Clinton Morrison over the summer oh yeah when when we were when I was doing the rest is football show uh we had Emma Hayes in for one of the couple of the shows but there was one one time in particular where I fell upon me to kind of give her a bit of a briefing before we went on air and she's incredibly very nice and very good but but intense right really intense and I just gave her some sort I think I just gave her like a general sort of talking point and what and she just looked at me like what's the question and I was sort of like uh well there isn't really a question it's just that we might talk about this but it was like yeah she did put me on the spot I did flap for about half a second they introduced a new module they've introduced a new module for the pro licence this year so that's it no non-questions allowed to any top level manager you can do it on football manager now it's a good move it puts everyone all the pundits on their toes it's good to see let's stick with Middlesbrough came from Ben Brindle who is Radek Vitek Middlesbrough's new goalkeeper signed from Manchester United this summer new challenge for me new stepping stone in my career permanent move so now I'm really excited His description of his move to Middlesbrough Charlie as a stepping stone has caused something of a ruckus to the point where he had to issue on social media a clarification he says I wanted to clarify what I meant by stepping stone I just want to assure everyone I have not meant that in any negative way the point of the comment was that this is a very important step in my career going forward I can't wait to get started art emoji I mean the classic line at the end to really smooth things over but this is something that fans get really sensitive about isn't it stepping stone yeah it just feels so harsh this guy's like obviously english isn't his first language speaks amazing english he's 22 years old and he's he's just used something he would not realize is the footballing idiom and has all these connotations and uh yeah he's had to come out and apologize you feel for the lad very unlucky with his phrasing there david obviously he had no idea of the effect it might have but it's it's it's a there's red flags with that phrase especially with a championship club i imagine yeah but and it just is like the sort of thing that football fans will get really pissed off about when when really like you they shouldn't do it doesn't matter you know no that's we all know the game it's fine but um it's mid-august dave i've got arsenal fans literally drawing lines on sean matty ellis's offside decision at the end of the game against baricia dortmund for God's sake.

14:41Charlie Eccleshare:Everyone's lost their minds already. Yeah. The thing is about this stepping stone, Dave, is that he's moving. I mean, I know he was on loan in the championship last season, but he's moving from a Premier League club to a championship club. If anything, the stepping stone's going the other way. He's on his way to League One. So it's a permanent deal, is that right? Yeah. So if it was a loan, fine. But yeah. Yeah. I mean, what could he say to annoy them next? Who knows? A move that didn't happen this summer, Charlie, was Vinicius Junior to Arsenal. And if any Arsenal fans had got their hopes up about this deal, going through then they should have listened to richard keys really after the event of course does anyone really believe vinnie jr was ever on his way to arsenal not a chance um if he does this as an insta video charlie it will it will be slightly amended to does anyone really believe vinnie jr was ever on his way to arsenal no no no oh vinnie ruthless finisher um have you been keeping up with uh with keysy's insta presence charlie during your yeah i mean obviously the the algorithm is clever enough to work out that these are of interest to me and i'm sure they're you know helped by the fact that i do tend to you know watch most of them some of them i do get a bit bored by like they're quite meandering yeah the three minute ones are just like can you just get to the point yeah exactly like the blogs were so punchy and sort of in your face whereas there is quite a lot of expositions on them but there might be something in there like the watch time probably is quite strong because you've got to keep watching.

16:08Yeah. He could drop a little Charleston fuck off thing like he did the other day right at the end. But I do, I am a bit like, I agree with you, Charlie. I find it, because I've still got him on notifications for Twitter. So I keep up to, bang up to date with anything that he tweets and that's fine. Yeah, I've got a dedicated column

16:24Charlie Eccleshare:on tweet down just for him. But when I see the Insta, I'm like, oh, okay. Yep. Four minutes. Right. Fine. I just want to know what it is. Just do some captions, Keezy. Mix up the backgrounds a bit. I know you've got three caps in the same colour, which is a good move. You've obviously got them in a three-for-one deal. Fair play to you. But yeah, you could mix up the backgrounds. Nicer garden as it is. But the collapse, for want of a better word, of this move, Charlie, meant that we were denied what would have been a seismic Premier League move. But it didn't really dawn on me how big it would be in the whole tapestry of the Premier League until I read a piece by the excellent Conor O 'Neill in The Athletic.

17:02Charlie Eccleshare:He said, Why Arsenal signing for this junior would be the biggest transfer in Premier League history. And I was editing this and I thought, at the start, I thought, I'm sceptical about this. I reckon, I reckon I can think of a more seismic move in the Premier League. And the more I read about it, the more I read the sort of rationale for it. And then he listed some of the examples of some similarly sized moves that felt like coups for the Premier League. And he mentioned Andrei Shevchenko to Chelsea, which was a British record in 2006. Rubinho to Man City in 2008, which was also a British record.

17:31Charlie Eccleshare:and then Paul Pogba to Manchester United in 2016, which was a world record. And I still think that Vinicius Junior to Arsenal would have been by some distance bigger than those in pretty much every sort of context. And that's quite surprising to me, given that we think that Premier League is the centre of the universe. Yeah, I mean, it's not comparable necessarily to those two, but Fernando Torres, I remember at the time feeling like a sort of, wow, that's a Liverpool. Liverpool, yeah, just because he was like, you know, he was like the best young player in Europe or one of them. It cost, he was a lot of money as well.

18:03I think that may have been a British record or some kind of record.

18:06Charlie Eccleshare:But he wasn't an established star. It's a bit like Haaland to Man City, Dave, which now is up there as having a player of his ilk in the Premier League is great for us. But at the time, the move wasn't a big stellar world shaking move. So I don't know. I'm surprised that this is so streaked ahead of everything else. And if you think of other, relatively speaking, big moves, Rude Hullet to Chelsea in the mid-90s felt utterly mad, utterly ridiculous. But he was, that's retirement home and stuff. So Klinsman to Spurs was a little bit like that, but not as big. And Bergkamp to Arsenal had had a hard time in Italy and stuff.

18:41But yeah, it is crazy that you think of players like Ronaldo, the Brazilian Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Figo, Zidane, guys like this. And it's just like there was never even a whisper, really, that they would join the Premier League. Like they're so, some of these superstars, especially, you know, I guess one's coming from Brazil or from those from South American countries. It has always felt like La Liga and Serie A still have that edge.

19:09Charlie Eccleshare:So it feels just we've dominated the market day for seven and eight out of ten world stars, but never the nines and tens, really. Yeah, I mean, because it's, I mean, it's, without getting too, I'm pretty sure Libero have done an episode on this in the last week. But, you know, even if a club wanted to buy Jude Bellingham, they're not going to be able to do it, are they? You'd have to pay like 250 million, whatever the release clause is in his contract. It's probably like fucking half a billion or something mental. We just never seem to be in the mix, do we, for that sort of stuff? I think you're right.

19:38Like Vinicius Junior probably would be much bigger than those other ones that you suggested. because he's Champions League winner, in his pomp, superstar, big net. We just don't do that stuff. We make our own, don't we? But it is weird that now all of that was more understandable in an era where Real and Barca were the biggest clubs in Europe by some distance. Whereas now, obviously, we hear so much about how the Premier League is so rich and all the clubs are so wealthy. And I think probably even the fact that Arsenal were in for Vinny Jr. speaks to that. The idea of Arsenal even thinking they could sign a player like Vinny Jr.

20:12would have been ludicrous not that long ago, or, say, any Premier League club. So maybe, at least this feels like it might happen in a way that years ago it still felt completely impossible.

20:23Charlie Eccleshare:But this certainly wasn't designed to be a kind of earnest discussion about the Premier League's place in the food chain. It's more just, Dave, I'm trying to think, now this transfer hasn't happened. I'm trying to think of what the next transfer could be where we all stop still and go, wow, I can't wait to see this guy in English football. I mean, there are some players that arrive in the Premier League and think, I'm curious to see how he gets on, but none that will just look so out of place. Has that era just gone now? You know, a bit like Hullet at Chelsea, you think, well, I can't imagine him bestriding a Premier League pitch.

20:50Messi would have been that guy. If he'd come to Man City when he possibly could have done, when he left Barcelona, right around that sort of time, that still would have been like, what's Messi going to look like in the Premier League? I think there might come a time when Bellingham, because Bellingham is such an outlier, the fact that he had his initial spell at Birmingham, then he's been in Germany and now he's in Real Madrid. It feels like there might be a gravitational pull to get him to the Premier League at some point because he will be England's main player for the next 10 years.

21:21Charlie Eccleshare:It needs to happen soon though, because familiarity will grow and grow to the point where we feel like we basically know him enough already. At the moment, Charlie, it would feel like a foreign player coming to the Premier League if Bellingham came here? I think like if Kovaric Skellier or Dembele came to the Premier League, that would feel like mega. Because they operate in such a different world, PSG, I think some of those players might... They're two-time Champions League winners. These are superstars. Elsewhere, though, are you tuning in just to watch Bradley Barcola at Liverpool if that comes off?

21:53Charlie Eccleshare:No, he's not quite at that level, though. But I do think those two are slightly different from him. Yeah, absolutely right. A fascinating theory emerged from a transfer that did happen, Dave. Bruno Guimarej finally completing his move from Newcastle to Arsenal. Fascinated by this. I'm not saying it's true, I'm not saying it's definitely a thing, but I'm fascinated by the logic of it. An Arsenal fan tweeted that he said, Guimarej being on holiday and then getting the deal done one day after he arrived back cost Newcastle nearly a million pounds in wages and saved Arsenal a million pounds in wages.

22:25Charlie Eccleshare:I just, it blows my mind the idea that clubs might even factor this in. Let's get the deal done late so that we can save some money. Yeah, you do hear this stuff now and again, don't you? Like, you don't know whether it actually bears any relation to reality because of how contracts work and how payments are spread out and various signing on fees. And I don't know, like, does it actually, on paper, it's sort of quite a nice seductive theory, isn't it? but does it actually does it actually work like that in reality? I'm not sure. Well it flies in the face of the logic Charlie if it's good to get your business done early doesn't it?

23:00Charlie Eccleshare:Yeah. Rubbish in fact. You're paying for their holidays. Yeah. It's like you get a new job yeah I already had some holiday booked in is that right if I still go to it? Yeah. That's always really awkward. The Gibbons would have had to have that conversation. I do. Is that going to be okay? Yeah no it'll be fine. It'll be fine. We'll do it informally. Oh God. So there we are. Yeah. Inner workings of the transfer market. Here's some more mundane ones for you, though, Charlie. Crystal Palace and Everton are in advance talks over a deal that would see Brennan Johnson and Dwight McNeil move in opposite directions.

23:31Charlie Eccleshare:How mundane is this swap deal? To the point where it just looks really mechanical. It just looks like you're cleaning the cupboards out but moving it to a different place. Yeah, I've seen a lot of people are getting sort of misty-eyed about that, you know, like a good old-fashioned player exchange, which I do sort of understand there is something quite satisfying about it. I mean, I haven't quite realised this. Johnson's 25 McNeil's 26 I thought Dwight McNeil was older than that I thought he was older which way he thought the deal was quite disparate in its balance but maybe not then because Brennan Johnson's fallen off Dwight McNeil's been fairly consistent I didn't know they were basically the same age that's blown my mind a bit wow but yeah there's just something really is it satisfying or unsatisfying Dave it can't work out it's quite bleak I like the cleanness of it though it's like you know let's not fuck about because there's so much PSR stuff now like these are totally separate deals I cannot stress that enough.

24:21Yeah, they haven't cared about PSI here.