The Extinction XI

27:00Matt Turner was on the bench, actually, as USA played Portugal the night before last. Matt Freeze was in goal. Don't know who he is. But anyway, yeah, I don't mind that. That was a very sort of mid-naughties thing, wasn't it, all those lads? But I think in general, and I think a few people have suggested this, goalkeepers have become less mad, haven't they? Now they need to be calm. It's a very crucial part of the role now, being calm. You can't be a complete nutter anymore. I do like this, Coxie. I think the death of El Loco is something that needs to be documented. I mean, is there a candidate for El Loco anymore?

27:37Is Emi Martinez Loco? how loco is he really though because like using his 2022 world cup golden gov as a kind of phallic prop doesn't quite feel loco enough because it's not an on-field thing he didn't do anything mad on the pitch but he is capable of it i agree and you know when i think el loco died it was when manuel neuer at that game against algeria in 2014 and there was no chat like wow this guy's mad it was like that's the right thing to do he's calculated it this is a tactical thing but If it was Higuita who was doing that, people would be like, this clown, he doesn't know what he's doing.

28:09So, yeah, I agree. I've thought about that a lot. I mean, it used to be a saying when we were young, like, oh, goalkeepers are crazy, that kind of thing. But no, they can't be crazy anymore. They've got to be incredibly sure of themselves with the ball at their feet to slide like 10-yard passes through the lines. So, yeah, I agree. Crazy goalkeepers. And in particular, I mean, an incredible raft of goal-scoring keepers from the Latin American countries in the 90s. I mean Higuita, Chilover, Senni, Jorge Campos. I mean almost like mythical figures and you know that doesn't happen anymore. Should goal scoring really have been sort of held under the umbrella of El Loco Dave?

28:46Like what's mad about scoring a goal? That's the aim of football. Well it depends on how you do it though. Yeah true. You know if you're dribbling up the pitch like Higuita or whatever then fine. But if you just if you're purely a penalty taker then I think that's different. Okay, El Loco's in the driving seat here. I want a shout out for properly short goalkeepers. The mind goes back to Ipswich's keeper in 1992-93, Clive Baker, who was 5 '9 and he retired to go work in insurance, which honestly feels like another galaxy to where we are now with the Donnarummers et al. But short goalkeepers, Dave, don't feel like they're workable anymore.

29:21Is this just a general thing? But are all players just taller now? Nico O 'Reilly, look how big he is playing at left back. Yeah, humans continue to grow. Oh, it's definitely a thing. OK, I'll settle it. El loco in goal it is then. Let's go to our back four, three, five. Who knows? I want to start with potentially the most fashionable position in football history, but not one seen for a while, Coxie, and that is that of the sweeper. Sweepers were great. The peak era of the sweeper would probably have kind of bookended by Franz Beckenbauer and Matthias Sammer, so it could be anywhere in between that time.

29:57But that was a great position because they weren't defenders. They were very out-of-place midfielders by definition. And they looked so great. And it made me want to be a sweeper. It was such a great role. It was sold really well to the footballing public, I think. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Italy and Germany, you'd say, probably the two key positions for the sweeper. Particularly Germany because they loved converting quite elegant midfielders into this role. So, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's something that has gone out of the game almost completely, I would say. probably the closest we've had in the modern days certainly in England has been Connor Cody who was a very odd again a converted midfielder you looked at his numbers he didn't tackle he didn't win any aerials he didn't really do anything but he read the game and he commanded the back line and he played it very well but it was a completely anomalous role and and there was a great thing I think didn't Wolves play a back four for the first time in like 130 games and immediately Connor Cody was dropped because it's like well he's not he can't do that he can only stand behind everyone else and kind of just, well, sweep up.

30:57It was great. Franz Beckenbauer, Mateo Sammer and Connor Cody. The great lineage of sweepers. Yeah, it's a bit like the false nine. You can't just automatically call yourself a sweeper just because you happen to be out of place in the centre of your defence. Did Argentina play a sweeper against England in the 98 World Cup? Because when you see the Owen goal, all of a sudden, just running through, all of a sudden there's just that one defender who's just so far back. Ayala, I think it is. What the fuck are you doing there? That goal wouldn't have happened. otherwise. So thank God it did. But yeah, it must have been doing up his laces or something.

31:27But yeah, sweepers got a strong contendership here. Coxie, who else have you got for your defence? I mean, this partly comes from looking at the squad list for this international break, but where have all the Brazilian fullbacks gone? I mean, you could be absolutely guaranteed. 2010, they had like Mike on and Dani Alves, the two best fullbacks in the world at that time. Marcelo. Yeah. I mean, they were considering playing Dani Alves on the left just because they were so good and they had to get them both in the team. And to be honest, I didn't know who a couple of them were for the Brazil national team this week.

31:56That's interesting. Maybe like on a Globo TV or something, one pundit said, nobody wants to grow up to be a kafu after they do some analysis. That's it. That killed the fullback art in Brazil. But yeah, there was never really any explanation at the time, Dave, about why Brazil were creating fullbacks out of nowhere like a production line. So maybe these things just have a natural end. So yeah, Brazilian fullbacks. But on a related note, Dave, we had loads of correspondence. This is probably the headline one that we got. Loads of people saying penalty-taking left-backs have gone out of fashion.

32:26AJ Marsh was head of the queue of this. Nigel Winterburn, Stuart Pearce, Julian Dix, Dennis Irwin, Ian Hart, Paul Bowden, Andreas Bremer, with both feet, of course. And then penalty guru Ben Littleton wrote in and says, just full-backs generally who like to smash their penalties. Your Dixies, your Pearces, Leighton Baines, Graham Alexander, Ricardo Rodriguez, Tavernier at Rangers. fullbacks aren't really allowed to take penalties anymore. Why is this? It can't just be stat padding for strikers. I mean, and generally smashed penalties are just don't seem to be as in vogue as they once were anyway.

33:01Even though when you see a bad one miss that's slow, you still want someone to just put their foot through it. But like the rise of the no look penalty, the sort of the game of chicken that takes place now, that's kind of seemingly dominance or penalty method, isn't it? rather than someone just running at it and smashing it. If you're smashing it on target, it would have to be an insanely good save. You're very unlikely to get blamed for it. So yeah, the death of the smash, and that would sort of lend itself to full-backs. As an offshoot of that, I think, I saw a few people suggest this, but I liked it as well.

33:34It's defenders, could be left-backs or centre-backs, not right-backs, though I would say. Defenders who are their team's designated long-distance free kick-taker. So Alex Mihailovic. You know, someone who's just got an absolute rocket of a shot. Robert Huth took a couple, I think, didn't he, at some point? It's just, you don't really get that anymore either, do you? Yeah, I guess it's because they're easier to read and defend against. Like, whenever this situation does still come up, Coxie, you'll get a, well, he can hit them, as we know, and then it'll just be the same free kick every time. There's not an element of surprise when a centre-back steps up for a free kick, I guess.

34:10So it was a bit one-dimensional, so maybe that's why it's died out. Yeah, I agree. And I think with all this, like, attackers have to be good technically. these days in a way that I mean you can go back to the 90s there were players who were just good in the air like they were an aerial threat and actually probably weren't necessarily better than the left back at actually kicking the ball in the goal I know that seems ridiculous yeah yeah Les I think I'm right saying Les Ferdinand never really took penalties that's right yeah he regrets it now apparently like he says I could have scored so many more but yeah that's mad well it's your fault mate really you should have figured it out didn't really need Opta to figure that out for you did you Les Sir Les now this this has to go in our team Dave it is strikers playing as emergency centre-backs this was also suggested by Moonshine MS on Reddit and crucially this way round as well in this team because centre-backs being deployed up front is definitely the inferior way round for this because that is that's a needs must situation you know what they're there for they're going to try and win headers whereas deploying your striker as a centre-back has so much more nuance to it yes they're tall it'll be Chris Sutton, it'll be a deal in Dublin or whatever.

35:16Obviously, they have to have the physical ingredients for the job, but they're there because they're probably quite savvy as well and they know how to be defenders. So they take that job way more seriously than a centre-back just being gleefully chucked up front with no stakes whatsoever. So this is definitely the way round it should be. Yeah, and I guess this is probably linked to something we might talk about later in that there are fewer big strikers these days. So fewer big lads to put at the back if you need to. But because you have seen a couple of examples in recent-ish memory where like Fernandinho and Fabinho have ended up playing a few games at centre-back rather than Haaland or, you know, Firmino or whoever was around.

35:56But it's, yeah, I like it. I think this very specific example that comes to mind for me, and yes, it is Watford, was in the 2002-03 season. We had just gone from, so Vialli had been sacked the season before and he'd signed all these players on quite a lot of money at the time. It was the ITV digital splurge and then it all went tits up. So we had like a random squad left when Ray Lewinson took over. And he decided, after the first sort of month or so of the season where we were struggling a bit and we had a few injuries, he decided to take Marcus Gale, who at that point had been playing sort of striker, a bit of left wing at times, but he had a reasonable pedigree behind him, but it hadn't done well for us.

36:34And he converted him to a centre-back and he played the rest of the season as centre-back and one player of the season. And he was so good. He was really good. He would play out from the back. I can remember everyone at the time saying, you know, that's the thing, right? These strikers, they know how to beat a defender. So when they become a defender, they know what to do. You can't kid a kidder. That's the way I see it. Wingers should be converted to fullbacks because they're never going to get triple pass. They know all the tricks. But the thing about Marcus Gale was that he wasn't an out-and-out sort of target man centre forward.

37:05So this is a really nice example. But he was big enough. Yeah, Lewington knew. That's it. He knew. He saw it in him, which is great. So, yeah, Coxie, I really like this, but if this was ever to come back into fashion, which current Premier League number nine is the most centre-backy? That's a great question. Dilap? Dilap's very centre-backy. Pull his socks up. Yeah, that is quite good. Mateta? I'm just trying to think of big lads. Harland? I mean, Harland would be fun to see what happened if he played centre-back. Harland's built like a centre-back, I think. He's got range about him. He could play for, like, Everton in their back four at the moment.

37:38Harland and Van Dijk together at the back. He'd have no chance. I'd quite like to see Haaland play centre-back. Can't they just do it on the last day if they've won the league or something, which admittedly would be a mad turn of events. Is Valtomada going to keep getting pushed back? Will he end up there eventually? I don't like gangly centre-backs. This is Dean Halson I'm really struggling with at the moment. But yeah, Valtomada would push me over the edge, I think. But yeah, so I really need strikers as emergency centre-backs in this team. Tell you what, Coxie, tell you what's really gone out of fashion in Premier League these days.

38:09own goal merchants Jinji Archer says Richard Dunn springs to mind of course because he's the record holder for Premier League own goals but mostly I feel now own goals are too diverse across different players no standout own goal specialist even Valt Fass or Maxime Esteve don't feel strong enough to this category I mean if Valt Fass isn't producing own goals then nobody is but the only player in the list of all-time Premier League own goal scorers that's currently active really at the top of the list is Louis Dunk he's third all-time in the Premier League He scored four in one season, 2017-18, which is long enough ago, I'd say, to say that the whole concept is dying out.

38:45He's last scored one in February 2025 against Nottingham Forest. But we're still in the cutback era in the Premier League. Own goals should still be happening, shouldn't they? What's happened to the own goal specialists? Yeah, I mean, when you look at the number of own goals scored per season, it's actually gone up recently. I mean, there's so much focus on getting the ball into the mixer at the moment and cutbacks, like you say, and kind of teasing crosses that might get a bit of a touch. So, yeah, I think that might just be that there's probably fewer players who rack up 400 games for bottom half clubs rather than it being a tactical thing.

39:15But I'd have to check the numbers on that. It's interesting it's gone up and maybe that's a set piece thing, like a direct thing, like you say. But cutbacks, cutbacks don't. That makes sense to me that they don't produce own goals because it's not the same as like the corridor of carnage where a fool's coming in and you're trying to divert it out for a corner and you get it wrong. and it goes in or something like that. A cutback is coming back toward... You've got to do pretty well to score an own goal from a cutback if you're a defender. Yeah, that's a good point. No, but I think cutbacks include getting quite close to the goal on the byline and then just hitting it into the six-yard box and someone goes in.

39:52There's no time to react. I remember looking a few years ago at the numbers and there was more own goals than ever scored by goalkeepers. And that was partly because of them, which I always feel like it's a bit harsh to credit or debit an own goal to a goalkeeper. Sorry, that's a terrible phrasing. No, I think we should use it. I like Dippet. I think unless a goalkeeper actually kicks it in himself or pushes it in, if it just hits him and goes out, I'm sorry, it's just, even if that's off target, I think that should go down as the attacker's goal. I think it's really harsh on goalkeepers. Yeah, good shout.

40:26Okay, so our defence is sorted. We've got a sweeper in there. We've got a penalty taking left back. We've definitely got a striker playing as an emergency centre-half and we've got an own goal merchant as well. We'll be back very shortly with our midfield and forward line.

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41:43welcome back to football cliches this is the extinction 11 we've got a very colorful defense and goalkeeper where do we go from here in midfield interesting i'll give you a little quiz first of all coxie uh keith miguel what a name that is wrote in to mourn the death of the midfield man marker but who was his example uh i mean i think the most famous man marking job in an individual game was pontius carmark in the league cup final against middlesbrough in 97 he marked janino out of the game but are you looking for someone who did it across various games like a dedicated nullifier of opponents no i'll stop you there pontius carmark was correct that was the example he gave the man who just lived to be remembered as a man marker so that's What a legacy.

42:26Incredible legacy. A relatively recent example that I can think of, I think this might have been an FA Cup game, or maybe it was just a big Premier League game, but didn't Ander Herrera man mark someone for Chelsea? Hazard for Chelsea? Yeah, yeah. And I remember it just being notable at the time because people didn't really do that anymore. But Mourinho just told him to follow him wherever he went on the pitch. Phil Neville was deployed on Zola in the late 90s, I remember. Ferguson quite liked it, actually. Towards the end, I remember him using Phil Jones in that role a couple of times. David Silva maybe was the one he went for.

42:58But yeah, definitely Zola. That seems like an unfair matchup for man mocking to me. When did you sit on him? No, I agree. I remember David Moyes doing it to David Silva. I think with Phil Neville and Jack Rodwell and one of them had the job, got booked. So he switched it to the other one, switched it to Rodwell. Rodwell then got booked two minutes into his man mocking job. So he switched it back to Phil Neville, which was quite good fun. You can have another go. This is great. The referee won't remember. They won't remember. This is great. Okay, Man Mark has got a good contendership here, but I expected this from our listeners first up.

43:33And Ricky97 wrote in, Dave, and says, the pure crossing winger. So these are wide men who go on the outside and whose first instinct is deliver a cross and nothing else. Now, this feels like a tap-in for modern football. You know, we're so well-versed in the wingers cutting in onto their stronger foot and going inside. And this isn't necessarily... You still see wingers who are quick enough to get to the byline and maybe stand up across, as we've talked about recently. But players who want to get the ball out from under their feet and whip it round a player. So you're Stuart Ripley's, you're David Beckham's.

44:05Have we witnessed the death of the pure winger, or at least the unfashionability of them? Like a lot of these things we're talking about, I guess they just get repurposed elsewhere. They'll either be fullbacks or maybe they'll be number eights or they get moved inside. You know, like Kevin De Bruyne might have been a pure winger if he was playing 10, 15 years before. but he ended up not being, you know, there's the whole Trent thing. But I don't know, maybe at some point, as the game continues to evolve or devolve, depending on your perspective, maybe we'll start seeing this again with all the set pieces have been such a big talking point this season.

44:39Maybe it's going to keep going and we're going to just get more big strikers and crossers. But yeah, I was expecting this one as well. And you've got people like, yeah, Mark Albrighton's been suggested, like Andros Townsend, yeah, sort of slow, slow wingers. I almost think there's two slightly different categories here. One is the winger who also doesn't track back. So you look at that game between Liverpool and Newcastle, the 4-3 30 years ago. Basically, all the goals come because Gindler doesn't track back. So he's in a position to attack, but also Liverpool's right back, I think is McAteer, just has the run of the pitch to himself.

45:12And then you've got players who actually did work hard. So I think Beckham was quite hard working, protected Gary Neville, but he was fundamentally just a crosser. So, yeah, I think wide players in two different ways. I don't think Gindler and Beckham were at all similar as players. And yet I think both of those type of players have slightly gone out of the game. On the pure crosser, Coxie, of all the roles that we've discussed in this team so far, most of them feel like they're terminally gone, like they're never to return. Football will come back to crossing. I've got no logic to back this up, but it feels like something that football could fall in love with.

45:46Again, a player on their strongest side whipping the ball in. is going to be aesthetically and tactically good? Or is it just so low value that it won't come back? Well, I mean, obviously there's been a bit of a return to getting it in the mixer this season from set pieces and that kind of thing. So yeah, maybe now is the time. I mean, I think a few of these positions we're probably going to talk about is you used to be able to just be good at one or two things and you could get away with it. Yes, exactly. Whereas now I think there's more focus on your weaknesses. And it kind of goes back to the thing about strikers.

46:17The strikers in the 90s were very good finishers, but not as good at linking play and pressing and all those things. And Danny Welbeck is not a natural born finisher, but actually is a good all rounder. And I think that is what football has been all about. It's been a shift from players who can do one or two things towards players who are basically quite good at pretty much everything. So maybe, yeah, Dave, maybe this kind of trajectory or on to kind of total footballers on an individual basis might explain a lot of this. But speaking of players who lack a certain attribute, a young Tom Selleck says a candidate for the Extinction XI, midfielders that can't run.

46:51Not because their legs have gone, but because they never had them. And, you know, Cesc Fabregas was a great example, sort of late 2010s in that Chelsea team, of a player who never could run. Managed to kind of orchestrate his entire game about a round not being able to run and just about managed to survive. Who have we got left in that mould? Enzo Fernandez is hilarious to watch because he cannot run, but yet still has an engine, so it's not quite in the same spirit. Cobby Mainu wasn't particularly good at running last night for England. And yeah, I'm not sure he's particularly athletic. Maybe that's one of the reasons why old Amarim didn't fancy him.

47:27But yeah, it's funny. It's sort of midfielders, unathletic midfielders. I mean, in general, as you say, Cox, the game has become more athletic. Everyone's fitter. So if you can't run, you really are fucked. I think thematically, Coxie, we should distinguish a player who can't run, but yet can still function in their role in central midfield from the sort of fabled midfielder who never leaves the centre circle, which is quite a Sunday league concept. You still hear about it. Maybe players in their sort of doting years where they're just spraying passes around. But that's that's not the same thing, I don't think.

48:00So you're talking about a kind of Charlie Adam figure, maybe Tom Huddleston, would you say? like we'll ping a 70 yard diagonal and it will look great but then when you watch them for 90 minutes you're like yeah i'm not sure about this really you do need to supplement them with two players who can just do all their running which i think is quite a nice concept in football i yeah i love that so yeah delegation of duties um but crucially dave the the the player who never leaves the center circle nobody ever witnesses his first hand you always hear it from a dad or a granddad i watched him when he was 38 he never left the center circle no one's ever actually seen it themselves you just hear it from a relative never needed to uh i i i am had a 10 minute spell the other day of playing central midfield the sunday league for the last 10 we had a couple of injuries so i came on and i thought and i could sort of switch it around i thought no no what i can do 10 minutes in midfield i can do it i'm i'm knackered but like how hard can it be um it was hard i thought i was going to do just that sort of just sit in front of the back four maybe just sort of stay in the middle of the pitch keep it simple but then you start getting you start having to track runners and you're like oh god should i be over there what should i be over here and there was a one of my my opposite number he'd been playing for a bit longer than me but he was a classic sort of he was carrying a bit of timber short guy pretty stocky guy but really good touch like didn't move much didn't run much didn't leave the middle of the pitch and he nutmegged me and sprayed one out wide and i was just like oh this is horrible amazing type of football i played in a vets league a few years ago and there was a guy in central midfield who had jerry francis's hair and Gerard Depardieu's face.

49:33And he was fucking unbelievable. He was unbelievably good and barely moved. So yeah, these players should still exist, but maybe not quite at the top level. Dean Gripton of Football Manager fame says, in the 1970s, every team had someone who was described as a midfield schemer. Where are the modern day schemers? When did scheming become yesterday's thing? Coxie, we still have schemers, don't we? Definitely. I must admit, I've never really understood this phrase or roll and I would like some clarification for you too. What's the difference between a schemer and then somebody like a hatchet man?

50:05Wow, I mean, they are diametrically opposed. A schemer is essentially a playmaker. It's a little bit more mundane version of a playmaker. So Luka Modric is a midfield schemer and always has been. It suggests a bit of... Skullduggery? Yeah, exactly. No, not at all. Absolutely not. It's all about... Scheming, he's over there. Look at him over there scheming. I love the ideas. Paul Scholes was a schemer as well. It's players who come up with ideas and answers and options for players. That's it. Xavi was a schemer. Iniesta, sort of a schemer, I guess. Did they not have to be a bit more mobile? I think of it as players who are quite lively and mobile, whereas Xavi and Scholes and Modric are fairly sedate players.

50:49I never thought of it like that. They don't have to cover the ground themselves. They make the ball do the work. So, yeah, they're standing, they're pointing, they're probing. But that's what scheming is about. That's a very subtle art. It's not very dynamic. You don't really have to be running at defences or anything like that. So, yeah, that's schemas. But, yeah, I think schemas still exist. I don't think we could say that they've died out. But on a similar note, Dave, MikeHull84 says, what about the free roll? You heard about Grealish at Villa. That was probably the last we'll see of it. Adil Tarab at QPR, JJ Okoccia at Bolton.

51:20It's obviously been replaced with the number 10, which is now part of a system. But what happened to the free roll? And I hadn't thought about a free roll for so long because it was something you could actually grant somebody on Football Manager, no matter what position you put them in. So you could play a right back and say, OK, I'll click free roll on for you. What does that mean? I think it just meant that they were sort of immune from the pressing strategy that you might have set elsewhere. But yeah, free roll, you don't hear about that anymore. And I think modern tactics won't allow for it.

51:47It's too robotic nowadays, isn't it? But yeah, I guess, yeah, Tarratt is probably one of the most recent examples because Warnock used to go on about how he told him he'd fine him if he went into his own half and all that stuff. But that's not a free roll then, I would say. Yeah, exactly, yeah. I mean, I think it's a great shout. I do wonder whether some of those suggestions... I mean, was Big Sam really giving JJ Koch a free roll? I don't believe it. I mean, I think with players like, especially international level, your Hadjis and your Stoichkovs, I think, almost certainly had a free roll. But yeah, certainly the emphasis on pressing and defensive structure means that's not as much of a thing now.

52:28So, yeah, even in the kind of early modern era of football, Coxie, you had not only did you have to have the skill and the flair to earn a free roll, but you had to have the kind of political status to do it. So you had to be, not only did you have the ability to do what you want, but you had the clout to do it as well. So it's a huge thing. And those players probably don't really exist now because I know player power was a thing, but you have very few players like that who have all those ingredients to have the free roll. I agree. I think it was a slightly complex equation almost because they were separate from the team and given their own freedom, obviously, but they had to use that for the good of the team.

53:06So like Maradona, for all his talent and being given a free roll, was actually a very selfless player, Like a great passer, actually quite a good lead, encouraged his players, his teammates. Whereas if you look at someone like Wesley Snyder, about 2010, gradually moved into the kind of free roll status. But he was just shooting from 40 yards. He used it because he was like, well, I've got to win the game myself. But actually, that's quite predictable. You have to be separate from the team, but also working for the team. I think that's very important. Yeah, you had the stylistic potential to be a free rollman, but didn't have a kind of status and clout.

53:42This is actually quite interesting. Is Messi the last free-rollman left? Last World Cup, I think, is probably a good shout. Can you have a free-roll if you literally don't move, though? That really does take the piss a bit, doesn't it? I mean, yeah. To go back to a phrase we just used, he very much got Julian Alvarez to do his running in that tournament. Alvarez was the number nine, but also did the midfield donkey work as well that Messi couldn't be bothered to do, which I quite liked. Did Beckham have a free roll against Greece in 2001? Well, he gave himself a free roll. He wasn't granted one, was he?

54:17Yeah, exactly. Also, he was putting in tackles, and that's not part of the free roll remit. You know, I'm not allowed to do that, mate. So it's different from covered every blade. I think Beckham was a covered every blade of grass, but not really a free roll. Absolutely spot on. Yeah, I've got something to throw into the mix, and this is not position specific. It really could be anywhere on right from goalkeeper all the way through the team. But I just wanted to mention it. And it's something that I really miss, particularly as a fan of a team in the EFL, is the short term loan signing. Now it's just six months or a season and it's a cut and dry thing unless there's an injury or whatever.

54:57Can they get recalled? But you used to get routinely Watford and teams like us would need a player for a month or two months or three months. and they'd come and maybe there would be a clamour to get them back because they did so well. And they were often players from the Premier League who were quite exciting. So we had all sorts of players. We had like Gabby Agbonahor came to us for like a couple of weeks. We had Jermaine Pennant, Danny Rose. We had Andros Townsend, like Johnny Jackson, Jack Cork. We had Josh McEachran. I don't remember any of these. This is amazing. We had all these sorts of players.

55:29Chris Baird, I think, had a good few months with us on loan before he broke through at Southampton. And like those sorts of guys, he just, they've just gone out of the game now for administrative reasons or what have you. But I used to really like the fact that a player like that could just turn up for a month, like Jermaine Pennant coming to us for a month, having a few really good games, helping us get through a few rounds in the FA Cup and then he disappeared. I like how they call it work experience. They're like down in non-league. It's just incongruous words to use in football. It must be like a, I don't know, legal loophole when it comes to regulations, but what is work experience?

56:01King Stoney must have had someone on work experience I do remember there was an opposition goalkeeper who was on work experience and some of the things people were shouting at him people were shouting at him does he have to print out the team sheet or something like that no I remember someone shouting out like some kind of classic work experience joke like can you go and get me a bucket of tartan paint or something like that the classic work experience tricks You can't call it that. They need a new name for that role, surely. Well, there's also dual registration at non-league level, which I really like, where you're contracted to two teams and whoever needs him more on the Thursday or Friday can phone up and say, yeah, sorry, we're man short this weekend.

56:44He's going to play for us. That's great. Clapham Chiefs heard about that, Dave. They've been an absolute uproar. I can't have that. Any advances on the midfield? Quartets, perhaps? Well, I've got one. it's quite specific but it's it's the player in the mackalaylee role which you look at players i mean mackalaylee scored twice in 150 games for chelsea and at roughly the same time lucas laver scored once in 250 league games for liverpool john orby mikhail once in 250 games for chelsea and you look at players like you know the equivalents these days supermendy scored five times this season for arsenal moises quesito can score goals for chelsea casimiro seems to have been you know seven or eight goals for the last five or six seasons you don't really have players who just don't score and I remember like 10 years ago Tim Tim Sherwood was talking about McAlealy's impact on English football and he was like yeah he never never got into the box never scored goals and everyone was like no he's he's stuck in the past Tim Sherwood but you know what maybe he was right maybe actually he can play defensive midfield and contribute three or four goals a season rather than two in 150 games one of which was a rebound from his own save penalty Yes.

57:50I love the fact that Coxsey has raised the Sherwood case study on McAuley here, Dave, because we always hear about his merits in the McAuley role and obviously, you know, essentially inventing it by the looks of it as well. But I've never, ever heard anyone bemoan Claude McAuley's refusal to make late runs into the box. Maybe he just didn't have the knack. Maybe he didn't have the knack. He didn't have the Lampardian knack of making late runs. He just couldn't work out the timing. So he stayed back. Well, all he had to do was look at him in training. He had the master to learn from. But I don't know if it's a tactical thing.

58:23Do our midfielders with the sort of horseshoe possession style that's so often the case now, the defensive midfielders have find themselves a bit more chance to shoot? I don't know if it's a thing or not. I mean, I think it's partly because of pressing, right? I mean, McAleary's job was just, well, he didn't leave a centre circle, did he? And he didn't leave the position in front of his defenders. Whereas now the equivalent to like jumping. so they're marking someone on the edge of the opposition box and it feels like actually they just find themselves in the positions and end up scoring some goals almost without really that being their intention.

58:54Yeah, often ending up in actually really quite presentable goal-scoring situations actually. Okay, so yeah, I like this midfield. Yeah, let's get someone in the free roll for sure but we need a man marker as well doing their work for them. Let's have a midfielder who can't run and we can't have schemers So we'll have to have the crossing winger out on the right-hand side as well, perhaps. Right up front we go. A bit of a tap-in, Dave, but I think I'll go with five-cap Brazilian international from the 1990s, Dodo. There are still loads of Brazilians called Dodo. There's a couple of fullbacks are still going.

59:29But yeah, a cheap gag. And well, we won't go with him. I'm not necessarily going to say that this type of player is extinct, but it does raise a different question. the massive kind of barrel-headed target man let me just pick you up on that i saw this on the running order yeah is it not barrel chested barrel headed i deliberately did write i know it's barrel chested i think i just wanted it more for emphasis yeah i mean that's absolutely fun i'm glad you raised it but yeah i want to know between us for the sake of our relationship that i did it deliberately so that's important yeah i wanted to emphasize just how kind of They're meatheads, basically.

1:00:07Yeah, slaphead. Yeah, exactly. But I think those sorts of players do still exist, Coxie. But what I want to talk about is, can any other player in football be described as a throwback? You can't have any other throwback, can you? He's a bit of a throwback. And it's always big number nines. Is it not the odd... Was Jack Grealish not a bit of a throwback in the kind of free roll wide player thing? I don't know. I think of it more as kind of like... Stylistic throwback. The socks down and the hair flowing. I do know what you mean with that. But performatively though, isn't it? A little bit in some respects.

1:00:40Yeah, I think that is true. I mean, I was kind of maybe appropriately feeding off that. My approach up front was a big man, little man combination, which you obviously don't get because you don't see 4-4-2 or two striker systems anymore. But that was, I mean, I'd be interested to go back and look at that Sunderland season when Kevin Phillips scored 30 goals. How many goals actually came from Niall Quinn's flick-ons? I mean, in our minds, they did that literally every game. And he got 30 goals from 30 Niall Quinn headed assists. I know what I'm going to spend my afternoon doing now. I will have an answer for you within an hour.

1:01:16We were trying to do this recently, weren't we? I think on the WhatsApp group, me, you and Charlie, of just how many big man, little man partnerships were there. Can you name that many? Not really. Maybe it's more of an 80s thing or whatever, but yeah. Yeah, this is very much at the crux of a lot of our listener correspondents. Liam Walker writes in Dave, says, second strikers. what happened to the concept of the second striker because it's been muddied by the sort of slightly misunderstood concept of the false nine which aren't really second strikers obviously because they don't have anyone to be second to but yeah he cites Dele Alli as the last second striker of the Premier League era or authentically a shadow striker shadow strikers were all the rage a decade ago says range is good and now they're extinct so yeah I quite like this I mean it's a bit of an offshoot of the big man small man but second strikers Dave that's That's a real art form that doesn't exist anymore.

1:02:03It's not just a position. I can't think of any players who could do that really well. But are those players like Dele Alli and like Havertz, for example, players who get labelled as second strikers or whatever, but if they were shorter, they'd be called false nines? Yeah, very possibly. Yeah, definitely. You can't have a massive false nine. It just doesn't feel right. But yeah, I think managers get annoyed, Coxie, by being asked if someone's a false. I think Tuchel got asked if Foden was playing false nine against Japan. And he just said, yeah, yeah, he's playing up front. All right, just leave it.

1:02:33Well, I saw recently, I think it was Ryan Babble tweeted a video of like, you know, Roberto Firmino's best goals. And Ryan Babble tweeted, where have all the true false nines gone? It's funny for two reasons. One, because it's such a modern kind of dimension. And then to have true and false next to each other in the sentence, I really enjoyed as well. That passed me by completely. I don't know. I mean, it's too soon. Maybe in 15 years, this pod will be going, oh, I remember false nines. It's all the local government cuts, all the cages they're going. On that note then, on that note then, a wash of indigo says pure poachers from elite ones to Inzaghi to guys like Francis Fox in the box Jeffers.

1:03:12Strikers need to be so much more well-rounded now. And even if they're not the best technically, they need to be either super quick or big and strong to play at a decent level. There are very few strikers these days at the top level who basically only play to only be there to finish a chance and when it forces them. Can we herald the death of the poacher, Coxie? Are they gone forever? I think probably every generation thinks that that has happened. I mean, if you go back and read reports of like the players I assumed were poachers in the middle of the 20th century, like Jackie Milburn started out as a winger.

1:03:42I was amazed to learn that as people always go on about him like he was a pure goal poacher. And Jimmy Greaves as well. You listen to people talking about Jimmy Greaves like, yeah, he wasn't just a finisher. He was the best player, you know, could play any position. So, yeah, I think it has kind of happened. I mean, I obviously watch quite a lot of non-league football. And one of the nice things about that is you do still have players who don't really do that much, but are so good in the penalty box. And I think it's so impressive and so admirable. You know, players who aren't necessarily great physically, but they just do know how to anticipate knock-ons and loose balls.

1:04:16It's such a good skill. And to a certain extent, I think it is quite sad that you probably don't see it that much at the Premier League level in an age of pressing and everything. But even like, I mean, I've been watching eighth tier football and there's a couple of players of that level that are so good in the box. Can we go back to the first one? Go back to the barrel heads. So, you know, we trailed that I was going to talk about fat strikers. And now here we go. I know, again, it's to do with fitness and it's the modern game and stuff. But even I saw a picture the other day of like Gaza in it was it was it was a young player who'd played with Gaza when he was at Middlesbrough, I think.

1:04:48And he posted a picture of him in the dressing room as like, oh, what a memory this was. couldn't believe I was playing with Gaza. I can't remember who the player was, but anyway, Gaza had his shirt off. And like, yeah, he was late career Gaza by this point, but he was still playing in the Premier League and would still have shown flashes of ability. And he was quite chubby. The fact that there used to be footballers like Mickey Quinn or whoever, you know, Neil Shipperley at the end and John Parkin, like properly porky blokes playing Premier League football, some of them. It's just amazing that that even used to be a thing.

1:05:22It's so alien to us now, right? I mean, yeah, physically, it is another universe, the current Premier League. But yeah, I've said it before on this podcast, you see a footballer in the flesh, it's insane how skinny they are. Like, it is ridiculous, there is nothing to them, and they have to be like that because they play 60 games a season. And yeah, but it's actually, there's something slightly disappointing, because you want them to be absolute specimens, you want them to be massive, but no, we're talking 4 % body fat. Yeah, no, it's a completely different game. And they don't have, I mean, they don't even really get any time off now, do they?

1:05:57I mean, they have three weeks off in the summer and first thing back, they're doing two hours of physical tests to see if... They're trying to put on the weight in the summer. Exactly, it's true. They just can't... What a sad life, that sounds. I haven't got enough time to put on weight. It's quite interesting when you see, like, legend games, and sometimes it's only five or six years after players retired, and they've just, the body shape is completely different, isn't it? Yeah, he's amazing. But yeah, I guess they've earned it. But the big rival for the fat striker up front, Dave, is the beanpole because Juggernaut Saboteur says there will never be another Peter Crouch playing at the level he played at.

1:06:36I don't understand how it worked then and I'm absolutely certain it wouldn't work now. I mean, let's be honest. Peter Crouch had people chanting freak at him when he was playing football. So his kind of body shape is well documented, clearly. But he's the scorer of so many goals and so many types of different goal, including a perfect tactic against Arsenal, of course. So I don't feel like Peter Crouch is underrated as a footballer, but I think he's anatomically under-respected because he's an incredible looking bloke. And there are so many tall strikers, like there are loads of six foot seven strikers, but none of them are quite as skinny.

1:07:14as Peter Crouch. And to do all of the things that he did and not really be known for being a target man is an incredible achievement for a footballer. If he was 5 '4 and did all the things that Peter Crouch did, we'd be lording him for overcoming his physical limitations. It should be the same for being 6 '8 and being skinny as a rake. He has the gait of somebody who's walking on stilts. It looks like his legs don't bend properly. None of it looks like it should work. But I saw a clip of him recently on TNT training with Macclesfield before one of their FA Cup games. And again, it just looks like this guy shouldn't be able to kick a ball properly, but his technique is still good.

1:07:52Like he actually was technically quite good. Like that goal he scored for Stoke against Man City, the volley from out wide and the overhead kicks and stuff. Like he was not in a derogatory way. Like he was a freak of nature. Like it's just so unique. Yeah, Coxie, I think when you're dreaming about being a footballer or you're thinking about the perfect footballer, you have a certain body shape in mind for a certain position. And Peter Crouch's body shape would not be like that. So it's hard to compute when you see a player like that operating at elite level with great technique. He says, well, you're not built to do that.

1:08:20But I guess training and practice supersedes all of those things. You know your own body. You can engineer all your limbs into the right place to do the things. It probably just takes a little bit longer to do it than a properly built footballer. Yeah, I mean, the weird thing about Crouch was he scored the most hated goals in Premier League history. And yet I honestly don't think he was that good in the air. He couldn't really jump. his heading technique wasn't great but he was just he was just taller than everyone else like chances are it's going to hit his head do you know what i mean and he kind of spent his whole career kind of fighting against the idea i'm not just a target man i'm not just and then he ended up at stoke and scored the most headed goals in family history i think he was struggling in the var era because his hands were just so always naturally on people's shoulders weren't he whenever he whenever he whenever he tried to head it because that was just the proportions of everyone there's just where they were um so we've got we've got a number of different roles here i think we might need to combine some of the attributes we're gonna have to have like a really like a beanpole and a fat little man i guess yeah we can combine the concepts yeah then someone playing in the hole behind them maybe as a third striker there's one um extra thing i want to mention because this is the first reply um and one of the most upvoted on the reddit thread which was from a real sloth and his suggestion was again not not position specific um elite baldies and it's true wherever all the bald footballers gone the hair transplant era is meant and and just the general sort of fashion consciousness perhaps of like the social media era means that there are no top level footballers who are prepared to like be bald unless they really go early and like properly shave it completely i would say that there's a distinct lack almost well zero I would say ball deniers out there they're either shaving their heads or they're going to Turkey to sort it out but no one's clinging on to hair that you know certainly no one's got their kind of hair around the sides but nothing on top situation like you know Lombardo exactly no one's doing the Lombardo these days because that I mean that would make you look ancient so it's not good PR but there must be a top level footballer out there who still is rocking the Lombardo because they don't give a shit it's not a stretch we need to find someone who's doing that i need to know um because it would save me hours a week if that got back into fashion quite frankly um on that note on that self-deprecatory note uh thanks to you michael cox it's been a pleasure to have you select this 11 really enjoyed it thank you very much thanks to you david walker thank you thanks to everyone for listening that was the extinction 11 we'll be back on tuesday see you then

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