Live show legends, Liverpool's 18ft 10in strike force & a new Neville noise

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0:38On Calci, you can trade every match from the opening stage all the way to the final. On Calci, you're trading against peers in a live market, meaning there's no house. And as the probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position. For a limited time, download the CalShe app and use code CUP26 to get$10 when you trade 10. K-A-L-S-H-I CalShe. Trade the beautiful game. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calshe.com slash regulatory.

1:09Are all batteries the same? That's like asking if all soccer players are the same. Take Messi, the most decorated player ever. Is there any other player who has achieved that? No, just him. Now take Duracell. Is there any other battery with power boost ingredients inside? No, just Duracell. Remember, goats only trust goats because they're built different. And Messi only trusts Duracell. I'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!

1:56Absolutely 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 time and time and time again. Crank up the music. Charge a glass. This nation is going to dance all night.

2:23Charlie Eccleshare:Clichés live show legends. Is Evangelos Maranakis just one step to Serie A for the Premier League? Soccer Saturday somehow invents a new scoreline format after 33 years. Liverpool's 18-foot, 10-inch strike force. Could a Saturday 3pm kick-off ever be the Premier League game of the season? the earliest you could not want the first half to end, and Richard Keyes'£400m stars from the 60s. Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts, this is Football Clichés.

2:58Charlie Eccleshare:Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry, I'm in my Manchester hotel room ahead of tonight's show. Alongside me, Charlie Eccleshare, how are you doing? Very well, thank you. And alongside you is David Walker. How are things? Things are good. Yeah. I say tonight's show, this will be, it's already happened by the time this podcast goes out, but I want to reflect on the Dublin-Birmingham leg of our tour. Charlie, a couple from Philadelphia at the Birmingham show, a Faroese listener at the Dublin drinks, which were crowned by a 6ft 11-inch man getting double figures on HHG Live.

3:32Charlie Eccleshare:I mean, what scenes we have witnessed. Yeah, they really were. No, it was a great doubleheader. Birmingham and Dublin both very much delivered and a couple of great shows back to back. So we head on to the business end now, Dave. Clichés live in Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow all sold out. For all the shows, doors 6.30, show 7.30. We'll finish around about 9.45 and straight to the pub. Dave, the pub scenes have been just consistently superb on this tour. Yeah, they really have. Birmingham was really good last Thursday. Dublin on a Friday night lived up to all expectations, if not surpassing them.

4:06So if this is the business end, I think Dublin on a Friday night was a triumphant Carabao Cup final for us, I think.

4:14Charlie Eccleshare:That's exactly the way I, yeah, I completely agree with this. It set us up perfectly, but we kick on from here. No laurels will be rested on. Let's kick off the adjudication panel with this, Charlie. Nottingham Forest's latest pantomime appears to be reaching some sort of conclusion with the impending arrival of Shaw Deich as their new manager. But the way that English football sort of chews up and spits out its managers, does that mean we're done with Ange Postacoglu now? Has it been decided that he can no longer hack English football on the basis of those opening seven or eight games with Nottingham Forest and that's compounded whatever happened at Spurs and that's it?

4:50Charlie Eccleshare:I don't know. I think he's still got a... You know, this could be written off as being so crazy and wow, it's an impossible job. It's a madhouse to go in and work there. I think a club that appoints him could sell it as that. You can't judge a manager on what they did at Nottingham Forest. So I don't think he's fully done. I think he's got one more crack at it where it wouldn't be totally strange for an English or Premier League club to give him a shot. What sort of club do you think would appoint him then in the Premier League if that was to happen? I mean, could a club like Everton, if there was a vacancy there.

5:29Charlie Eccleshare:Leeds, of course, have been mentioned in dispatches. Yeah, kind of heritage-y club feels quite on brand for him. So I wouldn't rule that out. I mean, Forrest was a club in the Europa League, so his stock was still pretty high off the back of Spurs. I mean, he's such a confusing manager because he's just won the Europa League, but he also came 17th. So it's a very hard one to make sense of. And it's absolutely, if he does well, then we'll frame that Spurs thing as, well, yeah, he went for the Europa League, he binned off the league. If he doesn't, as at Forrest, it so you look at his premier league record it's awful over a prolonged period of time and he flukes the europa league that's kind of just how it is would there be any chance that he could follow nuno again and get into west ham at some point in the next 18 months yeah not out of the question yeah just follow nuno everywhere that would actually be quiet just clean up clean up nuno's kind of non-mess every time he leaves a club i think that's actually quite good but on forest dave i feel like it's too obvious and potentially too terrifying to criticize evangelos marinakis for the way he does his business.

6:27Charlie Eccleshare:But more specifically, and I think this might be my most current this league of ours opinion that I hold, I really don't like sort of Serie A style chaos ownership in the Premier League. I feel like it has no place here. And some might say that Watford essentially began this, they opened this can of worms. But Watford's chaos is a little bit, it comes with a bit of a size. This is just how we do things. But Maranakis is deliberately chaotic. It just feels like this shouldn't happen in our Premier League. I know what you mean. And I'm glad that you are distinguishing Watford, perhaps, from some of the other clubs.

7:00Because, you know, we still have this tag, and obviously, to a certain extent, rightfully so. But there are loads of other clubs that have also hired and fired in quick succession. It's not just a Watford thing anymore. I do think there is a fair element of chaos with us. It's actually not that well thought out ever. It's not some sort of ruthless, cold, steely-eyed strategy. It is chaotic.

7:23Charlie Eccleshare:More of a shrug of the shoulders, isn't it? A little bit, yeah. But I know what you mean. It is more pronounced when... Because we didn't do it too much in the Premier League. Only that season that we went down, well, the two seasons that we went down, we did have three managers in each. But before, we were just changing the manager every summer, which feels neater. Whereas, yeah, Forrest hiring Ange and getting rid of him so quickly. And even getting him in the first place felt a bit chaotic. There's also the element, and far be it from me to tell a group of supporters how they should feel about a manager, especially one where most of my colleagues support Nottingham Forest.

7:58But I don't know, it's just like, what's the limit now? Like it felt like they just weren't having him basically from the start. And it was five Premier League games, three of which, or certainly two of which were Newcastle away and Arsenal away, which they'd been massive second favourites for. And you'd sort of expect them to lose those games. So you're talking about three Premier League games where, you know, there were real points up for grabs and the results were bad in those three games. But it's like, I don't know, we're at such a point now and fan power, I guess it's a good thing in some ways.

8:27You know, maybe Marinakis doesn't care, I don't know. But it does often, Chairman Duté noted this sort of thing. And I don't know, I just don't know where it ends now. Like, I feel if fans don't like a manager, maybe people will say that's a good thing, but it just feels like you're basically doomed. And maybe that's on an owner to get a sense of, well, are the fans going to sort of warm to this guy? And if not, don't go for him. but it's like it just feels like such a short pit you know we make these judgments so quickly nowadays and i i don't know i just don't really know where that ends maybe you know is it because you know you hear things as well and i i tweeted about this so i got a lot of feedback from forest fans basically being like he was crap we had to get rid of him but then it's like well after one game are we going to reach a point where after one game we're kind of like you know what it's just this guy isn't work it's clear that this guy just isn't going to work so there's no point carrying on we may as well just get rid of him well do you say that charlie after javi gracia's first game in charge of his second spell on Saturday we lost one there away at Sheffield United I mean I'm some of this is probably knowing but there were people on Watford Twitter saying getting gone well there you go Watford sensing that Forrest were coming for their title and just yeah go for

9:31Charlie Eccleshare:it but Charlie like many things in football this process will accelerate so yeah as you say if this is going to happen after five six seven games then it will happen after one two three games there's no reason for it not to and also I'm speculating here and it doesn't really matter what club it is Do you suspect that some people just enjoy the spectacle of having a tangible effect on the turnover of their managers? Quite possibly. Yeah. All right. Nice, sincere chat to kick things off. State of football. This is great, isn't it? Osto Lizo writes in next, Dave. It's Peter Crouch in the build-up to Nottingham Forest versus Chelsea on Saturday on TNT.

10:03Charlie Eccleshare:This was great stuff. He said, Cole Palmer was so on absolute fire last season and Chris Wood was on such fire. I love on such fire. This should definitely catch on. Oh, he was on such fire. He was on such fire. This is great. Why doesn't it work grammatically? I mean, there must be an expert out there who can explain why such fire doesn't work, but I can't think of an obvious reason. It's an abstract noun. It should be fine. Oh, he was on such fire. Yeah, it sounds like there's a wistfulness when you see it written down. Those heady days. We were young. We were on such fire at that time. Speaking of things that I can't find a grammatical reason against, but sound utterly odd, this came from James, who was watching Soccer Saturday.

10:41Charlie Eccleshare:Now, Charlie, Simon Thomas has been doing Soccer Saturday for quite a few years now. He's completely well-versed in it. And I suspect he's got to the point now where he's run out of new ways of expressing scorelines. But this is no slight against him because I've just simply never heard this before. Finally, Scottish League 2 and an athletic inning starting by a goal to nil. Dumbarton are trailing by goal to two at home to the leaders. There's nothing actually wrong with that, Charlie. And I literally have never heard anyone say that before. That's a classic. Well, also because he's just done it in a way we're familiar with.

11:11It's just a classic. We've never heard it. So it sounds so alien and weird. Dave, how do you feel about trailing by a goal to two?

11:17Charlie Eccleshare:Trailing by a goal to two. What was the score? It was 2-1 to the other team. So they're trailing by a goal to two. Yeah, it's weird. Yeah. I mean, there's no other words for it. To be fair, you wouldn't even say that they're trailing 1-2. Like you'd always go with the leading team first. So if you're going to do it, you could do it that way. It would still sound really odd, but at least that would be a bit more consistent with what we're used to as a construction. Maybe he's just invented a whole new way of doing things and bring that on. Time for footballers' names in things. This came from Josh Blanco.

11:48Charlie Eccleshare:This is FBI agent Scott Payne, known as the hillbilly Donnie Brasco, who risks his life to expose violent neo-Nazi cells threatening national security, including the KKK and biker gangs. So we start watching, and it's just spewing hate, and that's not illegal. you know first amendment protection in the united states and we knew that pretty much the leader was a guy named ronaldo nazaro it's great that you specified the actual ronaldo el fenomeno yeah i mean i we've expressed before charlie on this podcast about how uncomfortable it is that um the old ronaldo has to have an you know we have to fumble around for ways of of of referring to him but um someone else also um referred to you know remember adriano of course the Brazilian.

12:33Charlie Eccleshare:He is now referred to as... Shot 99 power. Exactly. He's now referred to as Adriano Imperador, which I think is... Oh, really? We can't embrace this stuff. There's no... There shouldn't be any confusion about which Adriano you're talking about. Please don't just incorporate just nicknames, grand sounding nicknames into people's names. Where does it stop? No, Nigel, no! There isn't another... I mean, there obviously have been other players called Adriano, but not of an equivalent standing as the two famous Ronaldos. So there's no need for it. There they go, yeah. But turns out Ronaldo has a whole new sideline anyway.

13:08Charlie Eccleshare:This came from Adam Schaefer, Dave. It's an absurd story from the mid-1960s. He mailed himself across the world trying to save money on airfare, and what was already a bad idea on paper was a disaster in reality. 19-year-old Brian Robson was living in Australia and wanted to get back home to Great britain but couldn't afford a plane ticket brian robson it's about exactly the same as well brian robson should be said in an american accent this is just you know a similar problem we've had with many other names that pop up in american things charlie brian robson's just not an american sounding name very odd yeah tried to mail himself back home from australia wouldn't put it past captain marvel right this came from hinge here is arnie slot falling into a classic trap in an interview and just about climbing out of it i think do you think he's one of those players that you need to play into form or do you want do you feel like you almost have to remove him from the firing line almost it's a bit of both maybe uh not a bit of both it's just he of course he has to play and he played a lot good to see charlie people showing discipline about this isn't it and arnie slot he's not lost it yet yeah no i've really had more respect for him i think this is brilliant from him the sort of because you can see in the clip he's really sort of annoyed at himself for falling into the trap and then does really well to be no i'm not going to just do that actually no i'm better than that i'm going to think about it in real good to see it happening in real time he's the muscle memory has kicked in there but then he's yeah he's he's got enough about him to say actually no sorry no i'm better than this it's not it's not a bit of both you say muscle memory but um charlie maybe it took someone with a strong grasp of english as their second language to question it to have that critical distance and just say do you know what English shouldn't work this way you can't just you can't just say this stuff so maybe he's just sort of constantly sort of checking himself because I've seen him in in press conferences say you know sort of question his English his real subtle sort of use of English to make sure he's saying exactly what he means so he's obviously always on on guard about this sort of stuff so maybe it took someone like this to say do you know what it's not a bit of both you can't just say that well yeah it follows on what was the thing he was asked in the frame or in the oh in the fray yeah yeah in the Fray, that was it.

15:15Yeah. And he sort of interrogated it. And yeah, I think he's probably seen people say a bit of both because he's probably watched, you know, as part of his prep, how managers speak to the media, seen it a lot and then dismantled it before our very eyes. I really hope there's a module in the Liverpool media training about this. That would be fantastic. Well, I do know that managers, you know, it's quite common when clubs are appointing managers, they'll look at their, you know, how they are with the media and that sort of thing. And I wonder if then, by extension, managers do that with other managers to kind of, yeah, see what the opposition are doing.

15:50Yeah, good.

15:51Charlie Eccleshare:Speaking of Liverpool, Dave, they ended the game against Manchester United, obviously, naturally searching for a goal. So they were pouring forward and had a very top heavy team towards the end. But what I don't like about Liverpool at that stage is they had three rangy slash leggy forwards on all at the same time. And has history ever proven this to work? I mean, there's no real... Someone else pointed out that all three of those leggy forwards, that's Alexander Izak, Hugo Eketike and Cody Gakpo, could all be about five foot nine and it wouldn't change their game in any way whatsoever, which I thought was quite a stupid observation.

16:25Charlie Eccleshare:But, I mean, you need to have some variety. I'd rather have three small players than three leggy forwards. I'm not saying they cancel each other out. In fact, I don't know what I'm saying, but I don't like it. Well, it's the old classic big man, big man, slightly less big man front three, isn't it? they are literally six foot two six foot three six foot four which i think is absolutely wonderful is it just to ease you know so we can say as a collective like what are they i mean six two six three six four and you you kind of nail it just by saying they are yeah that's completely accurate yeah i think uh yeah two of them six foot three one of them six foot four dave which makes them a total of 18 foot 10 wow you can't have an 18 foot 10 front line you can't no it's absurd That's absurd.

17:06Charlie Eccleshare:If a double-decker bus can drive under your front line, then that should be the threshold. Now, Harry Maguire's winner at Anfield, Charlie, resurrected the now presumably about, what, 15-year phenomenon that is the Gary Neville noise. And we've heard all sorts of variations on the Gary Neville noise. This wasn't necessarily a brand-new breakthrough moment for it, but just listen to his reaction to Maguire's winner. In by Fernandes.

17:39is he making those those additional noises they're like yelps i'm sure that's him yeah i'm sure it is

17:44Charlie Eccleshare:him but um but that particular tone from neville just out the back quite scratchy quite high pitched and it instantly made me think of this and that's when the begging starts and then they come to me and they go oh david we've got rid of him you're all along can you come back you're the man for this job you're the best man for this job we come back yeah sure how much money have you got because this is going to cost you this is going to cost you i don't know if he's bang on or not it's interesting that's how your brain your brain went i mean the two moments gary neville celebrating a last minute harry mcguire with her at anfield and david brent pissed on his hotel room bed lamenting his place in life they're not exactly the same energy i mean is it a sense of can you i mean i can sort of imagine Gary Neville thinking about that with Valencia and still being bitter about how that ended and having this fancy of them coming crawling back to him and him saying this is going to cost you you can I will do it because I've not managed since but I'm not happy about it oh yeah maybe um but yeah uh yeah as you say Dave funny where the brain goes um finally for part one um this came from James it's Wigan manager Ryan Lowe on Sky leaving no stone unturned in his analysis of the average squad age in League One.

18:54I think the average age of that squad that we're doing is some stuff on our recruitment today, and I think there's a 28, 29, so it's old. There's a lot of clubs that are 24, 25, 23, you know, maybe 26, 27, of course, it'll go right up, but their average age, I think,

19:08Charlie Eccleshare:is 28 and a half, so. Has he said all the numbers in the 20s there? I think he has. That is amazing. That's sort of like peak of that genre. Dave, I'm pretty sure no one has ever said the numbers between 20 and 30 in that order before ever. It's like hearing the lottery numbers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He really had to concentrate there. And he said 24, 25, 23 at one stage as well. Yeah, no one has ever done that. And, you know, he's a forward-thinking manager, so maybe this is a new way of doing things. But yeah, 24, 25, 23 is unprecedented. I love it. Absolutely love it. But yeah, there we go. Right, that's it for part one.

19:44Charlie Eccleshare:We'll be back very shortly.

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20:20Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calshi.com slash regulatory.

20:27Charlie Eccleshare:This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies 18 plus. Hey, it's Bill from the Bill Simmons podcast. FIFA World Cup 26 fans, listen up. Is the official beer sponsor of the FIFA World Cup 26?

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21:32Charlie Eccleshare:Welcome back to Football Clichés. A reminder that you can sign up for Dreamland for$5.99 a month. For that, you'll get ad-free listening of all of our episodes, two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive news show, and other bits as well. We're recording episode nine on Tuesday. It's going to go at ASEP after that. It's going to be a good one, Dave. It's all about a cultural cornerstone, or is it? Yes, we are tackling Monday night football, and it's something we've touched upon here and there in the past, but we're really going to get stuck into it this time. and already just by doing even the most cursory bit of research, there's so much stuff to go at.

22:11It'll be good.