Sarcastic passes, tiny football studio furniture & the most un-booable position in an XI

0:00Before the season even kicks off, soccer fans are already making predictions. Who wins the league? Who qualifies for Europe? And who's lifting the trophy at season's end? On Calci, America's number one prediction market platform, 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 Calci app and use code CUP26 to get$10 when you trade 10. K-A-L-S-H-I, Calci. 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.

0:32Prices, values, and available markets may differ from those mentioned. For more information, see calsheet.com slash regulatory. 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 see! Brilliant! For 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 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.

1:22Precedented adjective for a team's passing. Can a striker unlock their goal scoring account? unexpected deliverers of celebrity death news, why Everton are right at the front of the cup run queue, Lask 5, Celtic 4 and the saddest football TV studio of all time, the inexplicably unspoken fourth option for describing a player being introduced as a substitute, which is the most boo-proof position on a football pitch, coffees on a Bosman and Richard Keyes' ludicrous claim to coining a phrase. Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts, this is Football Clichés.

1:59Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry and this is the Midweek Adjudication Panel. Joining me first of all is David Walker. How are things? Things are good. Alongside you is Nick Miller. Nick, are you bored of watching Nottingham Forest play Leeds yet? Well, thankfully it's not going to happen again for another, I don't know when the next one is, but yes. There's this new rule that's just come in for the Champions League, which means they're basically restricting the number of repeat fixtures you can get. You can't, like, if you've played the same team in the league phase twice in the last two years, you can't play them again for the third time.

2:28That's news to me. Which is quite good, I think. Oh, yeah. It might just be the identical fixture. So it's like, I think the example was Inter against Arsenal so that you can be Arsenal against Inter. So yeah, they should have that in for cup games as well. Yeah, I mean, you'll be not left with a few options after a while. But yeah, that was news to me. Lovely bit of reactive law changing from UEFA there. Fair play. In the era of the algorithm, surely, I mean, obviously, we'd have to get rid of the balls. and can you imagine, can you imagine the uproar if we got rid of the FA Cup balls? But if you did do that, you would then be able to rule out, well, if you've played, the two teams have played each other in the league the week before, like Forest and Leeds had done, we can't have that.

3:12If you've played each other last year in the same round as the Cup, you can't have that. I don't know, chuck a few other bits in there. That would be great. My brain was completely dominated while you were talking about the reaction to if the FA Cup balls were got rid of and how deep the Telegraph's anger would be about, oh, the clinking of the balls, the jangling of the bag, the little banter they have about whether all the balls are out of the bag or not. We'll miss it. We'll miss it. I think that would probably be the final straw. Yeah. The game gone beyond any doubt. The manufactured straw that broke the illusory camel's back.

3:47Actually, I'll tell you where this is very keenly needed, Nick, is World Cup and European Championship qualifiers. I've actually now realised, I feel like I've felt this for a while now. If you've played them, say, twice in the last four cycles, you should not be drawn against them again. Obviously, you just cycle through the minnows. England play Montenegro a shitload of times. Don't have them again for at least five years. It's like the confederation rotation policy. Yeah, I like it. Maybe we should incorporate that into our lives in a wider sense. Who knows? Adjudication penalty time. Lots of things.

4:20Very midweek-y today. This first one came from Andrew Butler. Here is Leighton Orient manager Richie Wellens bemoaning his side's sluggish start against AFC Wimbledon in the EFL Trophy last week. Richie, thanks for joining us. A satisfying evening in the end. In the end, first half ball, so slow, boring. No angles, no inventiveness, no little sarcastic passes through lines. Too safe, played on the outside. Dave, when we're often faced with this situation on the pod, it's often like a really cheap shot from us saying, oh, we all know what he meant. You know, he obviously just meant to say this and he's got the word wrong.

4:57I've got no idea. I've got zero idea what he meant by sarcastic passes. Sarcastic passes. Well, we were on to something last week with empathetic performances. Now you've got sarcastic passes. What's a sarcastic pass? Just no look? Is a no look pass sarcastic? I suppose it is probably yeah like I don't know a sarcastic pass Nick could be when you're taking a free kick but the referee says you're taking it in the wrong place and you go oh okay then and you still give it to someone who's five yards away I tell you what that free kick that Thierry Henry scored against Wigan I think it was I don't know what I don't know what the I can't remember what I think there was some faff before it yeah he took it too early the first time and then scored on the second one and said is that alright referee Yeah, that kind of thing.

5:44But I suppose that's the after, that's the reactions or the aftermath rather than the pass or the kick itself. What's he trying to say? What could it have been? Because the idea was that they're crafty passes, sort of in between the lines. Because his general bemoaning, Dave, was that his team were playing it too safe and it was a bit too kind of simple. And they got to be a bit bolder. But I don't know. Does he mean sort of clever, inventive, cheeky? Cute, maybe. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, answers on a proverbial postcard from our listeners about what he meant there. The Premier League weekend, extended weekend, was wrapped up by Fulham 2, Chelsea 3 on Monday night, Nick.

6:24A really great Monday night football game. My WhatsApp was ablaze with people sort of basking in the fact that it was pure Monday night football under the lights at the cottage. Nick Boonstra spotted Chelsea tweeting out that João Pedro had unlocked his 2026-27 account. an unwelcome twist on simply opening your goal scoring account for the season unlocking suggests that you've had to you've forgotten your password you've had to ask it to come and fix it for you and for like the eighth time in two months do they do they think that the account is in like you know those those safe deposit boxes you can get in banks we have to you have to do the little key in it i mean i've seen this in films i've never had one myself but yeah me neither it looks really exciting right uh in the born identity where he gets the gets the box out and There's lots of normal stuff, and then there's a false bottom, and there's guns and passports and money and stuff beneath there.

7:15Maybe it's that. I'm really glad you brought that example. It is the ultimate safety box example. I really wanted that duffel bag for ages. It looked like a really, really nice bag. Quite practical for the purposes. Yeah, but I can never work out whether that was... He took it out of a bin. So was that like a posh bin bag or something? But yeah, it did look great. Dave, I mean, the fact that Jean-Pedro scored after around 30 seconds implies that it wasn't a difficult unlocking. He obviously didn't have to use sort of two-step verification, but then didn't know where the notification had gone. He's just signed in with Google.

7:48Yeah, simple. Yeah. Simple. That's your favourite. Always feels too easy signing in with Google sometimes, doesn't it? What's happening here? What am I giving away by accepting this thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. But no such problems for Joe Pedro. Ian Woodcock tweeted out, Nick, he says, mad to think how many people found out that Dolly Parton had died from former Football League show host Manish Bussin on Sky News. I'm really struggling to adjust to Manish Bussin being a straight news guy just telling us about the world developments. I occasionally think about him and just say you never see him these days but apparently you do.

8:26I've missed this completely. He's a hard news man now. Joining us now to pay tribute to the beloved country singer Steve Clarish. he shouldn't have delivered the news Dave he should have thrown to someone outside Dollywood to tell us what's going on in the latest Clem get him over there she has died yes but yeah multi-skilled journalist so we should pay tribute to that next up Paddy Boyland on The Athletic Nick wrote a piece this week saying Everton need to find a way of providing hope not simply existing a cup run would do that. I can see why, obviously this is from an Everton perspective, but I think in a wider sense, I can see why Everton would become the incumbent of this role, the team that need to go on a cup run.

9:15I think it's related, but rather separate from the concept of being a cup team, which we can get onto in a moment. But would you agree that Everton are the number one status here? Because as Paddy wrote in his piece, he says it's over 30 years since the club lifted silverware, the 1995 FA Cup, and recent seasons have seen Palace, Newcastle, Aston Villa and West Ham United end long trophy droughts of their own. They're basically next in line. You know, chronology alone suggests they are the cup-running incumbent. Yeah, absolutely. Did they get to the cup final about 10, 15 years ago? I can't remember.

9:472009? Yeah, that sounds about right. Lampard scoring a free kick? Saha scored very early. Oh, yes. Yes, of course. Broke the record, of course. So, yeah, not even a sniff of a final. a couple of kind of sort of scrapes with relegation. But yeah, other than that, there's not been anything much, has there? I think it's more, Dave, than simply not having won a trophy for some time. I think a lot of these clubs who have ended trophy droughts slash have had a, you know, sort of hypothetical cup run offered to them by the wider football world. They all have something in common, which is they're all slightly emotional, unstable clubs whose fan bases seem quite emotionally malleable by a cup run.

10:26I don't mean that in a bad way. I think it's circumstantial more than anything. And Everton are now front of that queue. They are a very sort of highly strung club in pretty much every sense. A cup run kind of fits with that ethos, I think. They are, because they, for a long time, and I suppose still occasionally, like relegation-threatened club, but they've got the new stadium. And similar, I suppose, to West Ham, you know that even though all the talk from the owners and whatever, and the sort of lofty ambitions might be to get back into the top four or whatever. You know that's so difficult.

11:00So the next sort of thing to go for is, well, okay, we could finish in, well, it's like finishing in Europe or winning one of the Cups. Both achievable. Yeah, I mean, and it is slightly, I mean, it's overshadowed by the importance of the Premier League, of course, Nick, and the FA Cup losing its luster and that sort of stuff. But the slight anxiety caused by the possibility of a cup run was encapsulated by David Moyes being asked this question this week. Pretty straightforward question, David, just how important were the Cups to you this season? I think it's a question every journalist asks every manager.

11:34And in some ways I think, are those journalists dead stupid? Do you think none of the managers want to win the Cups? Of course we all want to win the Cups. So the answer to yes, the Cups are hugely important. Would it be more important than staying in the Premier League? If I asked you that question, Is winning a cup more important than staying in the Premier League? No. What would your answer be? I'd say staying in the Premier League for a minute. So, there you go. You've half answered it. I was about to say, Nick, that this is slightly disingenuous of David Moyes. Of course, any manager could be asked this, but it pertains more to clubs like Everton than any other.

12:11They're seen as a club for whom a cup run could do something great. But at the same time, a manager doesn't want to admit publicly that their club is of that ilk, that they're so easily swayed by the idea of just going deep in one of the cups. So I can see where the kind of tension might be there for him. He basically, he's got himself in a bit of, you know, he's got himself in some knots there, it would be fair to say. Yeah, it's just slightly strange. Unless this is just like, I'm, you know, I'm very experienced. I've been sitting here doing these press conference stages and I'm just sick of the same old questions.

12:39It's a slightly weird thing to kick off about, isn't it? I mean, it's a kind of... That's quite noisy now. He basically just gets irritated by lots of really sort of bread and butter questioning. He's in that phase of his career where he's got a fork available to him, Nick. He can either become really philosophical about everything, like, I don't know, Mick McCarthy, or he can just choose to get really annoyed by the same questions he's been hearing for 40 years. It appears he's taking the second fork. Yeah. The other thing about the one thing I caution about Everton having a cup run, particularly if they got to the cup final or something like that, the jokes in Parliament would be unbearable.

13:16Oh, God. God, now is the time, isn't it? Yeah, definitely. The thing about the Cups, right, is that it's always presented as some sort of like fait accompli of like, well, why don't Everton go for a cup? Why don't Fulham go for a cup, et cetera? And, you know, unless the manager obviously plays like a really weakened side, which most, you know, a lot of them routinely do, but they could play their first team and still lose. Like if David Moyes sat down at the start of the season and said, right, the thing I'm focused on this season is the FA Cup. I want to win the FA Cup above all else. and you'd probably get pilloried for that for a start.

13:46But then, you know, you might get a tough draw in the third round and go out. So it's just sort of, it's just assumed that if you don't go for it, you could have won it if you did go for it. Yeah, exactly. And yeah, the implication they've got nothing else to play for already, despite the season having not yet unfolded. But what I also enjoy about this kind of sentiment, Nick, is that when people talk about cup runs, they stop short of sort of including any detail about what the cup run should actually involve. Does it mean like winning it? Definitely not. There's never a commitment to the idea that they have to win the cup as part of a cup run.

14:16So what is a cup run? Is it the quarterfinals of the FA Cup and fourth round of the League Cup? I mean, that wouldn't be far enough in the League Cup. So semis are both? Semis, I think, surely. Right. But the FA Cup, though. Because Forrest got to the semifinal of the League Cup a few years ago. And no one, I mean, at the time it was like, oh, we've got a semifinal. But no one ultimately, we got absolutely hammered by Manchester United. And no one really cares. the thing people remember from that season is quite dramatically staying up in the Premier League so yeah and uh maybe kind of some kind of occasion like yes like the semi-final like yeah again for a couple of seasons ago Forrest got to the semi-final the FA Cup like Man City at Wembley got quite frustrating yeah that that should be fairly yeah I guess that's a fairly good benchmark for a cup run isn't it oh fair enough but there's also the kind of the like other thing of well okay We went for it in this cup and we got to the quarterfinals, but that fucked us in the league.

15:14A key player got injured in the quarterfinals, so now we're kind of scrambling around in the league as well. So we've had all these extra games that ultimately mean nothing and it's made us more miserable. Dave, I want to hear a fan base slash manager declare that they're going to do well in the league this season. That's what they're aiming for. We want a nice run in the league, if possible. Yeah, nice league run. That'd be great, actually. Tell you who's not going on a cup run, certainly in Europe at least, it's Celtic. I mean, bloody hell, Dave. I mean, their ability to out-Celtic themselves over a sort of 20-year period.

15:51I mean, of course, they've had some insanely memorable nights at Parkhead in Europe over the years, but they tend to sort of swap them for absolutely comical qualifying moments. In this case, losing 5-1 at Austrian outfit LASC to go out 5-4 on aggregate and miss out on the Champions League group stage. How do they manage to do it in such a comical way every time? It's incredible, isn't it? And Rangers and Hearts have both already gone out as well, haven't they, of their respective competitions in similar fashion. Hearts on the brink of tumbling through all three competitions, which isn't unprecedented, but it is just inevitably very funny.

16:26Yeah, yeah, it is astonishing, really. You know, we don't wish to mock our friends north of the border, but can you just, I think I said this the other day, can you just can you just get there come on lads yeah yeah i completely the other thing about the other thing the added thing about this game was that they they had they were what they were 3-0 from the first game and then they scored after about 20 minutes your classic kind of nerve settler oh well that's probably sealed it hasn't it goal and then they go and somehow managed to fuck it up from there as well incredible it's amazing absolutely amazing few things could have embodied this night, encapsulated the sort of bleakness of this night, Nick, than the Amazon Prime studio for this game.

17:07I mean, of course this game was on Amazon Prime. I was drawn to it when I heard what was unfolding. So I pressed play and faced with the post-match scenes of the studio, Alex Aljo having to work with the smallest possible piece of football match day studio furniture I've ever seen it's a plinther basically the size of a very large carry-on suitcase if you include the extended handle it's a terrible way of explaining it but that's the best i can do that's sort of where it fits uh compared to her and um and then sort of neil lennon and stan petrov sort of stood next to her rather have nothing to lean on lennon always cutting quite a sort of hapless figure at the best of times um there's something really bleak about the studio the only saving grace for their studio was the fact that the background some sort of generic cityscape um sort of responded to the time of day so they started off in the in the daylight half time was kind of sun sunset and then it was in the night and i don't know where it was supposed to be it definitely wasn't the austrian city of lintz i don't think in the background but i mean that's about as budget as it gets it looked a bit more like a cup drawer sort of scene it wasn't they didn't like have the the bag of the and the balls and stuff to take them out.

18:22But yeah, it did look like a really kind of low budget Monday night after a game cup draw. I mean, there's a couple of things here reminds me of. I think when you sent me this last night, I responded with an image of the final shot of Fight Club when they're standing in that office block just looking out with Pixies playing. But it also looks, because they've got the Champions League sort of branding behind them, and it's on like three sort of six-foot floating panels that look like office dividers. It looks like a hastily arranged sort of PR launch for something that's sparsely attended. Well, I guess this is why.

18:58I mean, it's a one-off game that isn't part of a sort of wider series of sort of competition fixtures for the broadcasters. I guess they just had to cobble together one studio. But I'm embarrassed on Alex Aljo's behalf about the size of the plinth she had to work with. Her notes are overhanging the edge of it. It can't work like this. But that's the Champions League qualifiers for you. In The Guardian, the comedy continues. Their report says O 'Neill's side looked like they would cling on, but Florian Flecker nodded home from close range in stoppage time to spark an additional 30 minutes. Can you spark extra time, Nick?

19:29I don't think extra time could be sparked. No, but I suppose if you could, this is a relatively sparky situation. They've kind of come back from a seemingly impossible position to spark it. No, it doesn't sound right, but it also... I mean, a force. Force would do. Yeah. Yeah. How about this from the Carabao, Dave? Joe C says the Sky commentator for Blackburn versus Sheffield United called the League Cup second round the round of 46. I can't believe this would have been serious. Who is this, Daniel Mann? It sounds very Daniel Mann-y. No, well, Blackburn, Sheffield United, I mean, that's probably Sky Sports Plus, isn't it?

20:08Yeah, all sorts of commentators on there. But the round of 46 is, I mean, this is the now widespread adoption of the round of 32 in the World Cup and in the Europa League or whatever. The round of 46, I think, is a step too far. I spend a lot of my life, Nick, editing out the formulation of round of 16, round of 32 in athletic pieces and changing it to last 32 and last 16 in the old style, the way that Richard Keyes would approve of. It's basically FIFA speak and I don't like it. Some people cap it up. Cap up. Round of 32. Like it's a competition in itself. Like they're in the PR department of a football club or something.

20:47Would you accept in this scenario, would you therefore accept last 46? No. No, I wouldn't. It's an absurd number. You know, until all the teams are introduced and the competition has really got going, then you really can't have round of, last of anything. It is useful, though, in that if you'd asked me last night how many teams are left in the competition, I don't think I would be able to tell you. No. So actually, hearing it in those terms, at least kind of gives it a bit of context. Yeah, but is it helpful context? Is it context that you need? No, it's not. Not really. Ben Hart writes in next day, he says, I was in the pub with my dad on Saturday, and as I was walking to the gents at half-time, I'm sure I heard Jamie Redknapp describe Brentford new boy, Mamadou Sangare, as a revelation on the Sky coverage.

21:31Immediately, I thought, he's gone a bit early there. It got me thinking, what is the appropriate time frame for the use of Revelation? What's the start and end point? Could Keith Andrews still be heralded as a Revelation, for example? Wow. So could you call a 45 minutes of your debut a Revelation? I think it's got to be a cross-game thing. You've got to have a body of evidence, haven't you? Well, if he gets sent off in the second half. Yeah, exactly. It's the fact that Revelation just feels bigger picture, Nick, than just playing well for even one game. like a whole 90 minutes it doesn't feel enough revelation means not just played well and played well unexpectedly as we've covered on this podcast before that's the definition of revelation you have to be a somewhat surprise package compared to the to the scale of your move but it's about continuing to surprise people and and and taking in the reaction of people to your performances it's it's it's almost self-referential in in that way you can't just have 45 minutes of someone playing well yeah i suppose the only thing you would say as long as as well as the kind of the the idea that Sangari was slightly...

22:32If Sandro Tonali had played well in that game, there's no way he could have been revelation, but Sangari is slightly more unknown. Does it matter that it is in the context of playing against a big team, that he was a revelation in that he was playing against a midfield that they spent Christ knows how much money on? Does that matter? Probably not. I mean it will certainly add to the sort of perception of his performance but Dave I'm provisionally setting the the parameters at three games to 12 months that's the range that you're allowed to work after 12 months you're no longer revelation but you can't be revelation before you played three games consistently well yeah 100 % yeah you need you need some body of work you need some sample size to to judge it on he's he's well on the way to being a revelation I would say after the first game, but has to back it up.

23:27If you think about how it's phrased, Nick, the pundit will always say, he's been a revelation, which suggests an ongoing process of revelating. Do you also have to have a slightly more tangible impact than just playing well? Because Senghor didn't score, did he? That's true. Did he register an assist? I can't remember. I think he had at least a hand in a goal, but I think you can be a revelation in any position. I don't think necessarily you have to be an attacking force. As long as you're conspicuously good and unexpectedly so, then I think that's all right. Anyway, this episode is brought to you in association with NordVPN.

24:02For those who don't know, VPN stands for 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. Next up, we go to the World Feed. This came from Chad Rooker. Here is Michael Owen, the ultimate Premier League productionsman, on Premier League Productions' World Feed studio duty, talking about the unfolding mess at Aston Villa and what it means for Oli Watkins. Well, I was just about to say, if I was a centre-forward, if I was Oli Watkins and I saw Rodgers leaving, Tillemans leaving, et cetera, et cetera, I'd be thinking, well, I'm not going to be the only one that sits here.

24:47If everybody else is departing, then, you know, I better jump off this train as well while it's sinking in many ways. So I do get it from his point. That's the disaster movie we're yet to see, Nick, isn't it? The sinking train. Because that sounds terrible, a sinking train. If you were being extremely generous, you could say this was one of those deliberate malapropisms where that train has sailed and it's not rocket surgery, that kind of thing. But I'm not giving Michael that much credit. the only other the other thing minor point in this is uh he said at the real start if i was a center forward and i know he's kind of putting himself in the situation but you were a center forward michael that seems slightly superfluous yeah i think what's happened there is he's he's got himself into the into the cul-de-sac and he's and he's started with the train analogy and then he's realized well you can't jump off a train it's moving because that's you're in big trouble if you do that.

25:46So then he's had to pivot to ship, which he can jump off a sinking ship into the water. That's okay. Oh dear, he's got himself in absolute knots there. 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 Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. And the link is also in our podcast description if you need it. We'll be back very shortly.

26:17Before the season even kicks off, soccer fans are already making predictions. Who wins the league? Who qualifies for Europe? And who's lifting the trophy at season's end? On Calci, America's number one prediction market platform, 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 Calci app and use code CUP26 to get$10 when you trade 10. K-A-L-S-H-I, Calci. 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.