The MOTD intro scandal, Taxman FC & the most "cat amongst the pigeons" goal ever

25:22One minute is nuts, isn't it? Surely, that's a really short period of time. One minute is really hard to do. That's basically foul. In a modern Premier League game. Yeah, foul, booking, restart of play, foul. Basically, yeah. It's nuts. But three minutes just seems quite long. Meet him in the middle and just say two. Two in two. Yeah. Simple. It's a simple message. I want that to... Problem is, in court, you can't just sort of trail off like we can and just move on. This court case is brought to you by NordVPN. Speaking of David Moyes, I was thinking about this last time we mentioned him on the pod.

25:51I don't know if I ever told you this, but I once had to smuggle him out of Wembley Stadium. Right. It was the Carabao Cup final, the one where Kepa refused to be substituted when Mauricio Sarri was Chelsea manager. Chelsea v Man City. and David Moyes was doing co-coms for us on Talk Sport and he had to get back to Euston to go back up north where he lived. But he was quite worried that basically the Chelsea fans and the City fans, if they saw him outside sort of at the end of the game, trying to make his way through the crowds, would just give him a bit of abuse and stuff, just give him a bit of hassle.

26:25But he was also quite keen to get out of there pretty quickly so he didn't want to hang about in the stadium. So I had to order him a taxi to get away from Wembley back to Euston But if you've ever been to Wembley, there's basically no way of getting a taxi close to the stadium. You have to walk a little bit through all those buildings and hotels and everything outside. So I had to basically, he had like a hood on his coat that really pulled down tight. And I had to basically sort of shepherd him through the crowds. And the thing with David Moyes is, now next time you see him, you might see what I'm talking about.

26:57He does have quite big eyes. What's the word I was expecting you to say? Sunken eyes. And when you've got a hood on as well, you did look a bit like E.T.

27:12Stick him in our little BMX. Exactly, yeah. Once we got him through the crowds, I had a lovely hour with him in the back of a cab. Bloody hell. Very nice man. There you go. Always good to have a story to bookend this sort of stuff. But to bookend part one of the Clichés pod today, this came from Rory Bunk. It's a story about Alexander Isaac in the mirror. Liverpool signed Alexander Izak on transfer deadline day to end one of the transfer sagas of the summer, but it may take some time for the Sweden international to hit the ground running. James, Roy says, can you make the claim that hitting the ground running is something you can work up to?

27:47No, you can't. That's quite literally against the whole concept of it, isn't it? The very nature of it implies that. Yeah, I don't think you can kind of pre-empt that either in those circumstances. Get up to speed. It may take some time for the Swedish international to get up to speed. come on lads spot on easy solution easily done don't often do these little shout outs Dave but we've had a message from Joseph Pearson he says no disrespect to Egg but can you give me a shout out as I'm only nine years old and I was eight when I first started listening wow what a lovely little bit of information at the end there yeah that's great listening across his birthdays that's class yeah yeah yeah nice what is he eight nine ten yeah but yeah wow to our knowledge got to be the youngest listener surely yeah can't come to the pub I'm afraid Joseph but thanks for listening to the pod anyway.

28:33James, here is an example of the cliché's community at his niche but efficient best. Someone on the Reddit page, Jamnut, asked, has a Desmond ever made it 2-2? I was watching Match of the Day and Antoine Semenyo made it 2-2 versus Liverpool and it got me wondering if anyone with the first or last name of Desmond has ever made it 2-2. Obviously, I launched into this with gusto, but someone got in there straight away, immediate fee, 7536, and said, the only one I could find. Desmond and Zay scored for FC Gifu against Katala Toyama in the J2 League in 2013 to make it 2-2 in the 88th minute. Fair play.

29:15Yeah, that's nice. People could have been searching for this for years, Dave. Yeah, I mean, surely there are a few, like Des Walker, did he ever score an equaliser in a 2-2? Are there any other Deses in English football history? Must be a couple. Yeah, one closer to home if any listeners are listening. Is Richard Desmond, the owner of the Express or whatever it is, ever scored an equaliser in a charity match? Unlikely, Dave. James, have you ever wondered this? Probably not, but we'll try it anyway. CM Katak got in touch on Reddit, and he says he was inspired by the phrase of sharing a point when two teams draw.

29:49So he's made a statistical analysis of the Premier League since 1992 if a taxman team, that is, a team who collected the third point from every draw, was competing in the league. So every time a team draws, they get a point each. And the third point goes to the taxman team, which is a hilarious concept. HMRCFC. Yeah. So he dove deeper into the statistical phenomenon that is the one point lost and dug into the EPL archives. Of the 33 Premier League season, the taxman would have won 23 of the titles, with only Chelsea in 05-06, Man City 11-12, 13-14 and others. and Liverpool 19-20 pipping them to the title.

30:32Do with that information as you will. How has this not been done before, James? This is class! I mean, it's an incredible number of points if you break it down. In those early Premier League seasons in particular, looking at this table, they're absolutely miles ahead. That's just a complete waste of points. The Premier League has just been pissing points away. From what I can see is 93-94, the taxman team got at least 140 points. Why were there so many draws? There's more games, I guess. A bigger league. Yeah, true. Yeah, true. All these points just sitting there on the shelf, collecting dust.

31:07Put them to good use. For all the chat of the evolution of Premier League tactics and how much it's changed the game, it is a fairly steady line from 1999 through to now, isn't it? There's not much deviation in terms of the number of draws there have been. We should have a wealth tax in the Premier League. So if the top teams draw, if the designated big six draw, the promoted teams get the extra points. Even things up. Yeah. If Liverpool-Man City draw, the extra point goes to the team that's bottom of the league. Not bad. On a weekend, all of the points could go into a pot on one weekend and then whoever gets match of the day, man of the day, gets all the points for their team.

31:46I know they don't do that anymore. Okay, good idea then. Thanks anyway. Nice work. I don't know whether to be blown away or not that the tax man would have won 23 of the Premier League titles since its inception. Extraordinary. Don't know who'd be playing for this lot, but there we go. Alex Keble, Alex Murr and Lee Warner all spotted this, Dave, when they went to see the new film Court Stealing. Alex Keble says, I'm sure you've been sent this already by now, but the new Darren Aronofsky film Court Stealing contains what must be the first ever example of the reverse premiership misnomer. When annoyed about someone using a baseball analogy, Matt Smith's character says, how would you like it if I started talking about the Premier League despite the film being set in 1998?

32:25Yeah. Lee Warner says it's set in 1998. And someone makes a comment about the Premier League. But in 1998, it would have been called the Premiership. It really bothered me because everything else in the film was so well done to match the era. Dave, I'm not sure about this. Because, of course, we know that the official name of the organisation is the Premier League and the competition name has changed over time. I still think it would be acceptable to call it the Premier League in 1998, wouldn't it? I don't know what I was saying back then. I can't remember. I think, obviously, Premiership would have been more widely used.

32:52But in the same way that if someone says Premiership now, you still know what they mean. And it's sort of still just about allowable. Yeah. If you say Premier League in 1998, you're not going to get anyone looking at you strangely. Like it would be obvious to see. I actually saw this. I actually saw this film last week. And it's true. Like it is very a big part of the film is the fact that it's set in late 90s New York. There's lots of faithful attention to detail. Like flip phones. What's going on? And, you know, they recreate like the old New York Mets stadium, like Shea Stadium. There's a scene where that's in and they go to a baseball game and stuff.

33:27But I think I went to the toilet when this when this happened, because I definitely would have noticed this. And I'm pretty sure I know the scene that it would have been in because I thought, you know, and you sort of pick your moments. You go, right, I don't think much is going to happen in the next few minutes. The Tamagotchi scene, was it? Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, I must have missed this. James, think back to 1998. Were you calling it the premiership? like by default? I really think it might have been interchangeable back then. And I know we've kind of lent fully into Premier League now, but I'm sure, you know, the kind of fans chanting, we are Premier League, we are Premier League when they've been promoted or whatever, or Premier League are having a laugh when teams have been relegated or failed to get promoted.

34:06I'm sure that goes back to then. I'm certain they were interchangeable. Yeah, it would never be changed in Premiership, would it? I've got a real mental black hole here. I really cannot remember whether Premiership really caught on as the thing. But then the kind of cultural hangover, James, of people still calling it the Premiership by accident suggested it did. Yeah, I guess. And that's the power of the branding, I guess. I've done a fantastic job of the rebrand. Yeah, there you go. Right, here's some classic cliches questions for you. Dylan Brady writes in and says, I don't know if this has ever been discussed before, but are there clear rules for what can mar a game and what can merely overshadow it?

34:38He thinks an injury can do both, but bad refereeing can only overshadow. What else can mar or overshadow? I think marring, Dave, is worse because marring is like serious issues, crowd violence, racist abuse, for example. That can mar a game regardless of the results. So it leaves the football behind and says the whole spectacle was marred by this very serious thing that transcends football. Things that can overshadow a game are things that are just quite incidental but don't threaten the spectacle itself like a bad injury. David Boost's broken leg overshadowed. Yeah, that game wasn't marred. Did it mar it?

35:14It might actually, it might have marred it. No, I don't think it was marred. I think you're right. I think marring is like outside influence. It's, yeah, a step away from football. Like, it's more important than football. It's like the game could have still been a good game. Like England a few years ago when they were away in, I think it was, was it Bulgaria? But there was, they won the game, but the game was marred by the fact that there was racist abuse. And that kind of takes centre stage, rightly. whereas yeah overshadowed is doesn't seem quite as serious my take on this was actually that a game would be marred by something that was kind of peppered throughout so like bad challenges or racism from the crowd or whatever else whereas an overshadowing would be like one isolated incident so actually i would say the dave boost leg break which was the thing i was thinking of earlier as well that overshadowed that game rather than marring it but then the whole thing around it maybe marred the game as well because obviously it was just like unprecedented premier league injury so it's a poor example.

36:10It's Michael vomiting on the pitch maybe. Yeah exactly. I mean yeah that's close to a marring. What about Cantona's Kung Fu kick? Did that overshadow that game? It definitely overshadowed it. That whole season if anything. Yeah it met the overshadowing threshold but did it mar the game? I don't know if it did. But did Roy Keane clobbering Gareth Southgate mar or overshadow the game? That's the question. That was the same game wasn't it? Was it? That's not the same game is it? I think it was wasn't it? I thought it was. The one where he tried on his balls? I think so. That was an FA Cup semi-final, I think.

36:41Was it the previous game when that's why there was Needleman? Right. OK. But yeah, so yeah, like a big, like a straightforward broken leg or a cruciate ligament injury could definitely overshadow a game, I think. What about a particularly bad VAR error? So the Liverpool-Tottenham game was overshadowed by an inexplicable VAR cock-up. I think that's fair. He's not marred by VAR. VAR couldn't mar unless the truck blew up or something. It's miles away anyway. It doesn't matter. Yeah, it's 200 miles away anyway. Don't want to let me hear it. Not even in a truck. You're thinking of Andy Townsend, mate.

37:24Okay, I think we've established it. Big, serious things are marring. Incidental, specific situations are the overshadowers. But this is more fun. This came from Angus Wakefield. It's a BBC Live blog update during Oxford 1, Coventry 1. and Peter Rhodes Brown, the former Oxford and Chelsea winner, was on BBC Radio Oxford saying, that goal and the timing has certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons, hasn't it? Angers Wakefield asks, James, what exactly is a cat amongst the pigeons in football terms? This was a grotesque use of the phrase as it was describing an equaliser from Oxford in the 19th minute.

37:56An equaliser in the 85th minute, perhaps, but not midway through the first half. Please advise. What kind of goal, what kind of scenario is pure cat amongst the pigeons? Who scored the first goal for QPR at the Etihad in the Aguero game? Because that is the definitive kind of version of it for me. Like, big match, the end of a season, an obvious favourite, an obvious underdog, and the obvious underdog go in front and kind of threaten to derail the bigger club. So yeah, I think it was Jamie Mackey, I think, who scored. No, it was Gibral Sise. It was Gibral Sise scored in the 48th minute to make it 1-1 in that game.

38:30And he seems like quite a good cat amongst the pigeons man as well, doesn't he? A cat among the pigeons, man. Do some players lend themselves a cat amongst the pigeons? Bit of a controversial character at times. Right. Would the second goal for QPR that day, James, that put them 2-1 up be cat amongst the pigeons? Can you put two cats among the pigeons? I was going to say, two cats amongst the pigeons. If anything, less spectacular, I imagine. I think that's all right. I think, I mean, what I also think, I mean, whilst that is very cat amongst the pigeons game, Dave, I also like cat amongst the pigeons for a two-legged situation, especially when the away goals rule was still around.

39:07But I had a little search for Cat amongst the pigeons in my Twitter feed and there was a huge outpouring of Cat amongst the pigeons when Villarreal scored twice in the second leg of their Champions League semi-final against Liverpool in 2022 to bring it back to 2-2 on aggregate. Francis Coquelin scoring just before half-time and that was deemed to be a Cat amongst the pigeons situation. Liverpool then scored three times in the second half to remove the pigeons. Remove the cat, if anything. Okay. Save the pigeons. Yeah. Yeah. What about San Marino's goal against England? The really quick one. Is that Cat Amongst the Pigeons?

39:39You can't really deny its credentials there, can you really? But was there ever going to be any doubt that England were going to come back and thrash them? Is it too silly to be Cat Amongst the Pigeons, that one? I mean, there was the goal difference thing, but I don't think it ever felt like that was the moment that it was going to kind of threaten to derail England or whatever. Yeah. That kind of been and gone, hadn't it? Yeah, but Cat amongst the Pigeons, it's not saying that the... You know, you're expecting the Pigeons to still get away, aren't you? Here we go. The Cat's not going to kill all the Pigeons.

40:05It's not going to kill all the Pigeons. He's just going to get in there. He's going to stir it up a bit. Cause chaos. Might get one, yeah, but most of them are going to get away. So it's not a fatal blow for all the Pigeons. Here's Peter Drury's commentary for that Villarreal equaliser, by the way. Capuz, cross, cockerel!

40:25now the cat is amongst the pigeons

40:30seems quite weird to actually hear someone say it out loud on the commentary needs a couple more adjectives in there sort of yeah here's the is the mischievous cat amongst the perturbed pigeons doesn't feel dreary-ish to say cat amongst the pigeons he went a bit too literal there as well You sort of would say, oh, they'll have put the cat amongst the pigeons. But he's actually gone, the cat is amongst the pigeons. The yellow submarine among the liver birds. I don't know.

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42:19OK,

42:23let's move on. Here's a fascinating question from Visual Cantaloupe, James. They say, are Sunderland the most badge in the centre of the shirt club? It looks much more fitting than Spurs' for some reason. So both of the clubs have got their badge in the centre of their shirt this season. Spurs are quite centre of the shirt, but I wouldn't say it defines No, and I'll tell you why it works with Sunderland as well. It's stripes, definitely. Right, that's interesting. I didn't consider that. You think that lends itself to it better? Does Sunderland have a central stripe or are they kind of entirely offset?

42:52It's a central stripe. It's a central stripe, yeah, yeah, yeah. That gives it a nice kind of sense. It's not symmetry, is it? But you know what I mean? It feels like level. It all feels kind of like neat and tidy. The Spurs one just looks a bit naff, I think. I mean, I put it to you, and this is quite a big punt. no club in history has ever, no club's most iconic kit has a centralised badge. I'd love to be proven wrong on that, but I just don't think I've spent a lot of time looking at that this morning. I don't massively like centralised badges, Dave, to be honest with you. No, the current Chelsea shirt with the centralised, they've had to centralise the badge to make room for the Club World Cup winners badge, haven't they?

43:34Because that's on the left breast where the club crest would normally be. And it just looks, yeah, it looks rubbish. It looks like, on first glance, it looks like Chelsea have changed their badge to a big gold circle. But yeah, I think it's quite hard to pull off a stylish central badge. But if you do, you could have a real classic shirt on your hands, I think. I reckon Dave and I have the same favourite centralised badge shirt. Go on. Mine, I would say England at Euro 96. Yeah, wow, you know what? I didn't even think of that. Yeah, of course. Of course. It's purely incidental. It was just a sudden design movement in the mid-90s to go, do you know what?

44:16I thought we'd do centralised badges for a bit. There's a lot of Umbro having looked through it. Manchester United had a couple in that era as well with centralised badges. Not much fuss was made of the centralised England badge because we hadn't had one before. I certainly don't remember. Before social media, mate. That'd be kicking right off about it now. But I asked our listeners, Dave, who are the most centralised badge-y team, that's club or country, in football history. Chris says Bolton, not sure why. Gary Regan says Bolton or Charlton, not sure why, which is always the greatest answer to this question on the Clichés pod because that means they can just feel it in their bones.

44:48Bolton had a centralised badge from 1993 to 2003, 10 years of a centralised badge. That's a good stint. Charlton had five years in the Barclays era, 2003 to 2008, so both instincts were proved correct. In a more literal historical sense, James, Ajax had a centralised badge from 1973 to 1981, And so that was the first time they'd ever had a badge on their shirt. Central stripe. Next question. Yeah, okay. And then from 1991 to 2008, they're regular central badges, but you've explained it. It's a centralised stripe as well. There you go. The one that leapt out for me, and this is purely instinctive, was Bournemouth.

45:25And again, stripes, I don't think always centralised. But I've done the research. They've never actually had one in the Premier League. But between, where are we? 1988 and 2002, they're five. and between 2008 and 2011 they had three in a row. So they've had like eight in a sort of 25-year period. So maybe it was against Premier League rules for a bit, you know, when they said you couldn't cut stripes into your pits or something. So that would kind of have that. It needs to be consistent, please, if possible. I think I had a Barcelona shirt. One of the first football shirts that I got, I went on holiday in like 99.

45:59And I think that was centralised. Was it the home or away? Home. I had the away one. I had the orange one. It was 98, 99. It was an orange one with a centralised badge. Fair play. Kindred spirits. Yeah. There we go. But do you know what? My theory about this, to rival your centralised stripe theory, James, is that it's a vaguely communist thing. I think it's a vaguely sort of central to East European thing. Yeah, you've been to Bournemouth. But do you know what? I'm backed up by this. Hungary had a centralised badge from 1950 to 1989, the longest stretch of a centralised badge I can find. 39 unbroken years.

46:38Czechoslovakia had one from 1954 until 1990. So there it is. Their most iconic kit is going to have a centralised badge, then is what you're saying, isn't it? Absolutely. So Hungary 1953 at Wembley, when they threw English football into a state of self-doubt. Centralised badge. Antonin Penenka, 1976. Centralised badge. Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bolton are all going to have their most iconic kits. Yeah, there you go. Wow. What other podcast is covering this? Nothing. Right, final item from our listeners. Tom Holder writes in and says, I was at the Oasis gig in New York the other day and noticed during the first song that Liam was berating a sound engineer due to a problem with his setup.

47:16After a few seconds, it appeared to be fixed and Liam pointed to his head and clearly mouthed, fucking switch on, eh? That, just great. It's perfect. It works. It's a universal concept. When could I use that in my life? Would I say it to my child without the exclusive. Come on, switch on. No. Bonehead turns to the drummer and goes, oh, they're arguing amongst themselves here. We're in trouble. Not again. Excellent. I haven't got to speak enough today. It's time for Keys and Grey Corner.

48:05Ford Super Sunday.

48:10Yes, it's the international break. So, Keyes has been in Mallorca. He says it's his second home. I feel like he needs to mix things up a little bit, Dave. Especially just another sunny place, isn't it? His second home. So then, does that mean the UK's third? I don't know about his tax situation. Is Doha number one? Doha is surely number one. Doha, yeah, this beautiful little country is his number one. but yeah I believe he thinks poor old Cove relegated to third yeah maybe I don't know how often he goes back to country but he's been in London this week James specifically at the old American embassy which was bought by the Qataris in 2009 and turned into a lovely hotel some of the old features have been kept the big eagle still there on the roof of the old American embassy tonight my Qatari friends have done a magnificent job thank you Mr Trump

49:03so strange to just have Keezy and Trump in the same sphere of conversation there is it though I'm not sure it necessarily is he's tweeted about him several times none of them favorably I can tell you which is reassuring yeah um if Charlie was here he would he would he would say he's not surprised by that he wouldn't have Keezy down as a Trump fan would he Dave yeah I don't think this is him praising Trump is he is he sort of saying thanks for selling it off exactly in the way that You did, yeah. Exactly. But do you know what? You know how he said the other day that the Titanic was birthed in Liverpool when he was talking about the Everton Stadium, and it turns out that the Titanic had never been in Liverpool ever.

49:39No. Despite the fact that Kesey claims he's a big Titanic buff, and he's got a scale model of the Titanic in his Doha home. So he got that wrong. He's got this one wrong as well. The sale of the old American embassy was actually completed during the Obama administration. Oh, there you go. Imagine Kesey going, Andy, we're going down. I found us a sub. We're going down to see her. magnificent animal there she is don't worry we won't implode okay yep yep uh on that note thank you to you james moore thank you thanks to you dave walker thank you thanks to everyone for listening we'll be back on thursday see you then

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