I Wanna Dance With Peter Drury, grinding out a 5-4 & Haaland's League One future

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 same and same and same again. Crank up the music. Charge a glass. This nation is going to dance all night. Peter Drury and Whitney Houston. Richarlison's claims to a niche world record. Can you grind out a 5-4 win?

0:50The BBC versus ITV World Cup rivalry kicks off in earnest. The latest elite level mannerism to trickle down to the grassroots. Under what circumstances could Erling Haaland find himself playing in League One? Nick Voltemada and the revelation threshold Panto Dan Byrne. How could all 20 Premier League clubs sack a manager in the same season? And some 24-carat Andy Gray co-commentary gold. Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts, this is Football Clichés.

1:21Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry, this is the midweek adjudication panel. Joining me is Charlie Eccleshare. How are you doing? Very well, thank you. I am still, 72 hours later, absorbing the sight and sound of Peter Drury accepting his award for Commentator of the Year at the FSAs on Monday night to the soundtrack of Whitney Houston's I Want to Dance with Somebody. Yeah. I think he might have even been able to hear you from the stage and we were quite away. You say, why are they doing that? What was that? Why are they playing that? Got nothing to do with anything.

1:51I mean, it was. Wow, that sounds obnoxious. Wow, fair play. It was a curious decision. Maybe he requested it specially. that's what I'm hoping for that's what I'm hoping for alongside you is David Walker how are you feeling? I'm feeling okay okay yeah I'm alright dressed like Brian Clough and you're well up for it that's good to know time Dave to add to our FSA Awards despair montage just about recovered from our evening at the Football Supporters Association Awards fruitless fruitless evening but that's fine good to be there and it remains congratulations to Max Rushton and Barry Glenn Denning and the rest of the Guardian yeah it was good it was a good evening as always well done to the guys from the Guardian Football Weekly for winning yet again.

2:31Six out of ten speech from Barry. To morale. Yeah, morale's okay. Yeah. Come to terms with Monday night. Yeah, Monday night we were at the Football Supporters Association Awards for the fifth year running. We were nominated for podcast of the year, but we didn't win because the winners were the football ramble. That's such a good snapshot. There was an amazing, wow, halfway through there for the congrats to Max and Barry. it was a really good speech by barry glendening this year so it was yeah all credit to everyone just happy to be there again aren't we dave let's face it yeah always a good night to be fair we had fun uh and yeah well done to uh to the guardian football weekly team we'll see you again and do everything exactly the same next year yeah i haven't responded to our request to do a quiz and that's also fine cricket cliches episode three is going to happen after the second test in Brisbane.

3:24So get in touch at cricket.footballcliches.com. I was heartened, Dave, in the WhatsApp group for Cricket Cliches to see Nick Miller, Charlie Reynolds and Daniel Gallon discussing the nuances between doing a job with the bat and being no mug, which I feel like is quite a universal sporting concept anyway, but it's good to know that there's a cricket twist on this. Yes. Yeah, yeah. They're really getting into it now, aren't they? So I look forward to hearing how that one plays out. I think, I mean, no mug is better than doing a job, isn't it? I think universally. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Because it implies that there's some ability that you haven't considered.

3:57And a certain level of kind of acumen, I think, and shrewdness. Even if you're not the most natural, you kind of have a way of being effective. Yeah, exactly. Speaking of acumen and shrewdness, the Football Cliché's Christmas Quiz Live in aid of shelter on the 28th of December. We're going to be live streaming from 8pm. You can get involved, fully interactive, or you can just watch along on YouTube without getting involved. £6 to enter and you can play on your phone or any device, wherever you are. Six rounds of multiple choice football trivia and some live happy hunting grounds as well. If we can shoehorn it in.

4:36£250 to the winner slash winners, depending on how you've managed to formulate your team and other things as well. Just go to footballcliches.com slash Xmas. It's going to be brilliant. Before you're stuck into the adjudication panel though, Charlie, you've noticed something. Yeah, I'm sure I've brought this up before, but I'm a big fan or sort of maybe it's an MHC fascination of that fairly ludicrous construct of if you told me a year ago that X, you know, then you just say a thing. And obviously it has happened. Like why? First of all, who are these people telling you things? And also everything they say seems to come true.

5:08So I actually would believe if, you know, if someone did come up to me and said something. But anyway, I really like this variant from Pep, which is just kind of a proportionate reaction. I think he says when Haaland arrived you would tell me he would score 100 goals in 111 games I would say are you sure in the Premier League so good it's not I wouldn't have said you were crazy I just would have gently inquired like really what definitely okay yeah it's plausible and you do know it's the yeah no no it's the Premier League okay yeah 100 yeah okay we've officially got the we've officially got the scale for this now David are you sure all the way up to biting your arms and legs off and that's it.

5:46Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pep's not going to bite anyone's arms and legs off, is he? Great from Pep. Just blazing yet another trail. Right, adjudication panel begins with this. The big question of the midweek Premier League programme so far comes from Chris Lambert, Charlie. It says Richarlison has grabbed the ball from the net for Spurs' last four goals. Two versus Newcastle, one versus Fulham and one versus PSG. Is this a world record? It must be. It must be. That's such a great spot. Yeah, I was thinking like the obvious way to go is a sort of high scoring player for a struggling team. So would like Andy Johnson for Palace in that 0-4-0-5 season?

6:21Took a lot of pens. It's possible. And he took a lot of pens. That seems to be where you generally find this kind of thing. I'm going to look it up. It'd be so easy to fact check all his goals in the Premier League. Yeah. I like watching footballers who look like me as well. So it's going to be a great afternoon. I don't know. I'd be interested to see if that is true. But there's a different level of sort of desperation and urgency when you're a club like Spurs who are going through a bit of a rocky patch. Whereas Palace, you're kind of expected to struggle a little bit. So perhaps you don't feel the need to be performatively urgent.

6:55Yeah, a lot of practice. That's a good point, though. I still say it's fairly universal, though, isn't it? I wonder what proportion, actually, of, you know, if you do score in a kind of, you know, to make it 3-1 or 2-1 down, like, does it happen all the time and we just don't even, it doesn't even register? I'd sort of expect my player to do it One game that does come to mind is England 6-San Marino 0 at Wembley in 1993 David Platt scored four goals and I'm almost certain that he picked the ball out of the net and really earnestly ran back because it was a goal difference thing and he did it for at least two of them so that's on my research list so we'll get there Chris Lambert That's a good show Would they have done that presumably in the 7-1 as well in the away game?

7:35I mean I know it was like a completely forlorn chase but presumably they were doing that every goal weren't they because they needed to score some ludicrous number and hope there was a massive swing in the other game. Yeah, I can't remember who the goal scorers were that night. Ian Wright got a... Ian Wright got a... I think he might have got four. Right, OK. OK, we'll look into it, Chris Lambert. Onto Tuesday night's action in the Premier League day. Fulham 4, Manchester City 5. But which of the nine goals had the best commentator enunciation? Listener Seb Svard provides the answer. Here's John Champion for the ninth of the nine.

8:04Harry Wilson then. Palmed away. Chuck Waze. He's done it again. it's almost mocking it's really hard to describe that i mean it's a very subtle flourish charlie but i don't think i've heard that very often no i'm surprised that the shot got through all the forest of legs do you think it must it must be a getting caught in between two minds there and sort of ending up with a weird somewhere in the middle various points of that first half dave Bill Leslie's Sky commentary was merging with John Champion's sort of world feed commentary in the gantry. You could hear them over the same mic, which was quite the remix, to be honest.

8:45That is a bit weird, yeah. You sort of don't like to think that the two things are ever happening within earshot of each other. How should this be allowed technologically in 2025? We know there's going to be multiple commentators there. Don't let them bleed into each other's mics. Mad. From the BBC, Charlie, at full time, their live report said, Of course Manchester City will be disappointed with some of the goals conceded tonight, and many of you will say you can't win a title defending that way. But ultimately, they have now won back-to-back matches in that fashion. Grinding out wins when not at your best.

9:15Kevin Spectro asks, can you grind out a 5-4 victory?

9:22That is a really good question. And like that, those two paragraphs. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's the important thing, isn't it? If you were coming back from, you know, you're 1-0 down and you got it all the way back up to 4-all and then you scored the fifth, that could be, you know, you've sort of ground your way through that, I guess. Even then, it's such a thriller, isn't it? It's like, you know, there's so much going on. Like grinding, there is, you know, it's just a bit of a grind. Like there is an implication that it's low scoring. It's tough work. Yeah. This is too zany, I think. Yeah. I mean, you've got a four-goal margin at one point.

9:59then essentially hapless defending brings the other team to within one goal i mean that's not grinding and then i mean where would even the minis sort of micro grinding have been the last five minutes yeah well i guess yeah the 15 minutes plus stoppage time where you know where fulham were within a goal i guess that that's digging in though isn't it yeah yeah probably is more digging yeah i mean yeah to finish the point on this dave if you grind out a win and the implication is that half the grinding is getting the goal that you needed and the other half is is seeing it over the line and manchester city essentially didn't do either of those things in a pure grinding sense yeah yeah it's obviously not a grind it's not a grind it's not great danny jameson has provided some incredible information for us charlie we were talking um the other day about whether player ratings had ever issued a 10 and a one to teammates in the same game and um everton's win over Manchester United did provide that with Idrissa Gay getting the one and Kean and Dewsbury Hall getting the 10.

11:00Had it ever happened before, we pondered and we suspected that it might have happened in England, Argentina in 1998. The Mirror's player ratings for that day are a lot more compressed than you might imagine. David Beckham got a five. Yeah, that's surprising. I'm sure something like The Sun did go with a one. Five feels quite sort of gentle. Yeah, maybe the Mirror just a little bit. I mean, maybe they were taking his assist into account just like who scored. But yeah, nines that night. Tony Adams, Sol Campbell and Michael Owen. Yeah, I mean, they are looking at these. There are quite a lot of eight.

11:32I think only Scholes gets a seven, which feels a bit harsh because isn't he involved in the Owen goal? Doesn't he set it up? Beckham set it up. Oh, it's Beckham. But doesn't, oh, that's it. Sorry, Scholes is ignored by Owen. I knew he was sort of in shot for that goal. But yeah, it's actually like, fair enough, because I was envisioning that this ratings was going to be just a kind of jingoistic, like the headline, you know, the 10 heroes won City Boyne, that it was all going to be like tub-thumping, they were all amazing and Bexley Lettuce down. But actually, the Skulls one is not the most confident show from the young Manchester United trickster, and he should have scored before half-time.

12:07Trickster. But managed some clever moves and tricks. He's not a trickster. Yeah, I know, it's interesting. He was, well, perceived by this writer as a trickster at that point. Well, maybe, Dave, we should never take too much stock in newspaper player ratings. Maybe they are just phoned in. amongst the substitutes that day for England. All sevens. Southgate for Lesseau, 71 minutes. Did as much as could have been expected. Seven. David Batty for Darren Anderton, 97 minutes. Instant impact, but sadly missed decisive penalty. Seven. Should a missed penalty to shootout affect your player rating, though?

12:36Yeah, that's true. It's not part of the game, as the laws of the game do say. They also gave the referee, Kim Milton Nielsen, a mark out of 10 as well. Missed the Argentinian handball that should have been a penalty, he made some strange decisions. Five. Yeah, no direct commentary on the Becks, Red. Yeah, there we go. A completely tangential question now, Dave. Richard Foster writes in and says, what age is the most X years of age age? Everton versus Newcastle the other night had just 19 years of age, which feels like a really solid years of age, doesn't it? What are your thoughts? I feel like 1918 is about right for this.

13:16Yeah, it's definitely skews younger, doesn't it? I mean, how young can you go? Could you, you know, Max Downman just 15 years of age, of course? Yeah, of all the Max Downman discourse, Charlie, I don't think I've heard 15 years of age yet, actually. It's just 15. Maybe the incredulity sort of kicks in when you go under 16. So 16, 17, 18, 19, I think get the years of age. But I think the interesting observation for this, Charlie, is that you've never used it for an incredibly old player. So 42 years of age. 38 years of age. I don't think years of age. Kicks in then. I don't know. You're definitely not going to do it in the middle.

13:51So you're not 25 years of age, of course, now. But if a player is playing into their 40s, gracing the Premier League stage at the grand old age. Nah. Of 38 years of age. There's too many ages and stages in there.

14:11Very dreary. Do you know what's so weird about this? Was I listened to Ashley Cole on Stick to Football. the other last week i think it was and i noticed he exclusively used years of age for any age it was very odd and it was such a footballery thing so he was talking about every age and so it did go young it was things like you know i'd been with arsenal since i was eight years of age and then it would but then it would just carry on and be like you know and and there i was you know 23 years of age being offered this new contract so it was like it was it was as if it had been so like football language pilled that yeah it was all bets are off any age was years of age it's incredibly inefficient way of saying how old somebody is.

14:47I think we really need to... It's really weird. There's no real gravitas to it either. Well, this is real second half of the midweek adjudication panel fodder already, but no, no, that's just the luck of the running order draw. A classic strand of World Cup discourse is kicking in this week, Charlie. The early knockings of BBC versus ITV. Daily Mail sticking in the boot on the BBC for the stay-at-home World Cup because the BBC are allegedly planning not to send pretty much anybody out there. presenters commentators whatever probably a couple of reporters and that's it and so until the latter stages isn't it until the latter stages yeah so cue a lot of chat about value for money and then some further chat about you know do we really even need commentators and presenters to be physically at the tournament just to essentially produce a televisual product for the for back home and i guess in 2025 that's not an that's a fairly pertinent discussion to have technology is pretty advanced you know off-tube commentary is pretty tolerated now especially sort of in the europa era it's not a technology it's not a technology thing though really is it but technology makes it more plausible and viable to do it maybe but it's the argument for people working on these tournaments to the reason they would say that they should be there is because it's the same reason as if you go to a live game yeah you're gonna you're gonna notice different things and if you watch it on tv and they're the people get broadcasting the the games their job is to tell the story that they can see in front of their eyes and they can provide color see things exactly so i think there is value but you know obviously the bbc have different financial pressures to perhaps some of the commercial organizations and it's such a mad world cup they it's not like germany where it's kind of simple to ever just in berlin and you can kind of get around easily like where's your hub in north america across need a hub you know got out of a hub continent but what i don't know is like obviously for people who work in the industry and are aware of the things Dave's just described this is hugely important I genuinely don't really have a sense of like what the average football how much the average football viewer would care or even necessarily know I mean they would know but would consciously you know like if you said the average football fan like oh you know do you think that they would have a studio in Brazil or something or they would do it from home like I don't know I mean I guess most would assume they're there how much that would bother them I don't know and like I remember talking to someone who runs a a friend of mine runs his own business and he was kind of like to Dave's point he was like um but he was like why and I was telling him I was going some far-flung place for a game he was like is that really worth the company's money like how much about how much are you getting whisper it quietly but I do agree but you know what I mean like yeah you know sometimes you need people outside of the bubble to slightly question like is it worth sending our correspondent to Baku to cover Carabag Chelsea you know just as a hypothetical like you're getting you're spending a lot of money to get a press conference before and after the game, quotes are going to be out anyway.

17:37You know, and it's about showing face. It's about the colour and stuff. But to actually quantify that colour and stuff is maybe difficult. I don't know. I think over time you would notice a difference, I think. And that's always the danger. Yeah, you're just a road, you're chipping away at something. Yeah, before you know it, the whole thing can crumble pretty quickly if you just stop going to stuff. So I sort of, I get the fears and they get the anxieties from people within the industry. I mean, look at the cricket. I mean, they talked about this a lot on Cricket Clichés in the last episode, but TNT have come under fire for the way they've attempted to cover the ashes so far with a mixture of people out there, some people doing it back here.

18:17It's a muddle. Exactly. You don't want the coverage itself to become a story, do you? You want to do it as best as you can so that people wouldn't notice anything like that. But on the topic of whether people care or not, Charlie, I mean, that's a quite a fluid concept when it comes to televised football. Lots of people claim to care about things that they don't really care about. And I think one of them is, does the studio have a kind of local backdrop behind it to demonstrate that they're there? It's one of the traditions of World Cup broadcasting. And we are starting to move away from it. And I do think people will pretend to care about that.

18:49But the Beyond Parody Daily Mail columnist Jeff Powell has jumped on this. And he says, the BBC's work-from-home World Cup is a new low in the posturing arrogance of their woke fifth column. John Motson and Brian Moore will be turning in their graves. John Motson and Brian Moore used to duel for millions of viewers on the greatest of all matches. Mercifully, Father Time caught up with both before Aunty gathered up her skirts and hid behind them. Wow! That got better as it went on. Mercifully, Father Time caught up with both of them. thank god they're dead i want to dig into this in the most cliche cliche way possible dave it's not john motson and brian moore's job to turn in their graves over this they would turn in their they would turn in their graves over whether commentators are behaving themselves and you know conducting themselves in the right way not about how they're treated and where they're deployed that's not their job don't turn in your graves you mean that deceased bbc executives would be turning in their graves exactly former heads of sport and commissioners Lord Reef or people who held the purse strings you can't do a game off tube no oh no okay jalski

20:07I applauded oh dear well there we go this one will run and run but this episode is brought to you in association with NordVPN for those who don't know VPN stands a virtual private network it secures your connection protecting your personal information and online activity, especially on public Wi-Fi. A VPN can also make your phone or laptop appear as if it's in another country, which is great for accessing content while travelling. Indeed, down under we go. This came via George, who was watching a very tedious first half between MacArthur and Perth Glory in the A-League the other day, and heard the halftime whistle greeted with just a very Australian reaction.

20:46Taking this long is daring for the halftime whistle to be blown.

20:53a long throw is the answer in the end Sawyer able to outmanoeuvre his opponent but illegally so and that will take us to half time we need to have more of this no more booing just people bellowing boring at half time incredibly Australian delivery of it as well so there we are thanks George for that one if you want to try NordVPN for yourself go to nordvpn.com slash cliches and our link will also give you four extra months on the two year plan it's the best discount available There's no risk with Noor's 30-day money-back guarantee, and the link is also in our podcast description if you need it.

21:29We'll be back very shortly.

21:39Oh, look at that! That is wonderful!

21:47Welcome back to Football Clichés. A reminder that Dreamland Episode 12 is out now. Now, Premier League years, a great reaction to it, Charlie, but it's opened up a strand of discourse on the Reddit. Jagged Corpse 43 says, relating to the recent Dreamland episode, what is the transfer you most associate with Premier League years? Interesting question. What angle would you go for with this? Yeah, that's a really good question. I mean, I would go a mid-season one because then I feel they can really go to town on it, whereas otherwise it gets lost a little bit. And Liverpool were the big spenders in the summer.

22:16You want it to be like a specific thing. and I mentioned on the episode that 94-95 was my favourite episode. There's a great bit in that where Newcastle sell Andy Cole to Manchester United and Kevin Keegan. I don't know exactly what it seems like sort of impromptu Q &A with fans. On the steps of St. James'. Yeah, on the steps of St. James'. Because they're all out there. Yeah, that's it. They're out there protesting. And he goes and sort of justifies the decisions and explains it. I mean, you know, when you talk now about, you know, oh, these managers and executives in their ivory tower, they never talk, we never hear from them.

22:50And there he is just, you know, explaining it to the fans. But yeah, that for me is one that sticks in my mind. Yeah, I do like mid-season transfers for this, Dave. Your Christoph Dugarees to Birmingham, your Paul Kitsons to West Ham. Players who have come in with the express remit of reversing some fortunes, especially in a relegation battle, and, you know, proceeding to do so. So that provides Premier League years with at least two ins as well for that story. So, yeah, transfers need some hooks, I think. Kitts and Ad Hartson as well, so it's almost like a bit of a double thing, which I think adds something.

23:23I do like the earlier era, the pre-transfer window years, where, like you say, you can have a player signed in March or something or in February. And that seems like a real weird curiosity now. We're so used to the rhythm of transfers. I do quite like the early season ones and there's a lot of shots in Premier League years of you don't tend to get now now you now the managers and players tends to be like in the boardroom arm round him signing the contract or whatever. Whereas before it used to be like stood outside the training ground in the car park or in the stands holding the shirt with the manager with the arm round.

24:01And there were quite a lot of those. I noticed when watching them last week. I quite like the early season ones though, Charlie, like you just said. They'll do a little round-up at the start with Liverpool. What year was it when Liverpool signed Bruno Sheru and all those random players? Yeah, so post-World Cup with Juve and Salif Jiao and stuff like that. I quite like a summer of new arrivals. Oh yeah, big statement signings as well. Your Verrons, your Rio Ferdinands, things like that. Or Sol Campbell to Arsenal, of course, which I think would have the attached baggage as well. One of the interesting things, we didn't touch on this in the episode, but you go back and you watch from the early 90s all the way well into mid-noughties, I guess, is just the amount of press conferences that used to happen in the Premier League.

24:48I was going to say that, because I think I noted that while watching something. You get new signings are doing them and things like that all the time. Because there's no other way to speak to anyone, is there? You can't do a social media announcement video in 1994. for you know you have to if you want news to get out there you don't have a website you just got it you've got to do a press conference whether whether it's a new signing whether it's a manager resigning whatever it is whether it's bad good or somewhere in between like you have to do a press conference maybe that does explain the slow death of premier league years or it's always sort of recent collapse as a concept because you can't just put you know instagram montages on premier league years and get away with it that's a good point anyway if that tickles your taste buds go to uh dreamlands.footballcliches.com for 5.99 a month you get ad-free listening of all of our episodes two episodes a month of dreamland and other bits and bobs as well right adjudication panel resumes with this from aussie o sullivan he says i was playing five aside tonight we won a penalty for them touching it in the box it'd been a pretty spicy game few arguments i'm the pen taker i bend down to tie my laces and i look up and come to the spot my mate had the ball pretending to be the taker and handed it to me trying to protect me he got roundly ridiculed in the puff i can so see this catching on that's amazing i would be so annoyed if i was the penalty taker because then you look like you're complicit in it and everyone's just going to be absolutely baying for you and desperate for you to miss it and be the prick who was so self-important who tried to do like the professional bit of little switcheroo thing that is that is a very good shout dave this has you know wider ripples this act doesn't it yeah exactly um you know It's not exactly a long walk, is it, either, to take the penalty in five a side, the one-step penalty.