The washed Sky Sports News, Horlicks FC & the Transfers That Feel So Right XI

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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, he's there! 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.

1:18This nation is going to dance all night.

1:22Charlie Eccleshare:Excalibur goes again. More sarcastic past theories. Can you have a knack for scoring penalties? The summer 2026 transfers that just feels so right 11. Fletch dangles the Copper Cabana bait one more time. Footballers names in German pet food adverts. Can you blaze a header over the bar? Can a consolation goal to make it 5-1 ever constitute being back in it? An apocalyptic sounding night of the ex-footballer boxing and checking in with the boys at Keys and Grey Unleashed. Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts. This is Football Clichés.

1:58Charlie Eccleshare:Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry and this is the Adjudication Panel. Joining me first of all is Charlie Eccleshare. How are you doing? Very well, thank you. Alongside you is David Walker. How are things? Things are okay. I am very, very rare for me. I'm sort of battling a very mild sort of annoying cold. Just, what are we now, 48 hours or so before we take to the stage. Classic. I won't let it affect me, but I'm hanging in there. It's like PTSD for me here from the live show tour we did last year when I was basically battling a cold throughout the longest cold-nosed man.

2:35Watching you battle through that was, yeah,

2:38Charlie Eccleshare:as allegedly the healthiest among the three of us, was both fulfilling and alarming. But, yeah, Dave, just look after that PowerPoint finger, won't you? That's the main thing. Don't worry. How much is that insured for? my extremities are fine good to know good to know Charlie how was France uh France was good yeah had a nice holiday was there with uh sort of my family um siblings and nephews and things and actually my nephews are sort of football obsessed they're at that age so one's nine and one's six right and it did feel at times uh like I was sort of in the BN studio because you just get these sort of questions out of nowhere sort of like Charlie how do you think Everton will finish this season and i'm sort of like it'll be okay yeah no idea exactly that'll be fine and then the best which felt very bien was charlie what's your all-time world 11 uh wow that is a tough question that felt i was just waiting for the kind of best kit of all time but um yeah really kept me on my toes did you did you go through it with him well interestingly like i was trying to work it out in my head i was like i'll come back to you i don't think i ever gave a definitive 11 take it for the live show mate yeah exactly but he who's nine it's so funny because his 11 and obviously these are players he's never seen i doubt he's even seen clips but they're all their magazines and things have these like legend section it's quite nice actually because these these mags all really venerate the past like they they know our nine as much as they do cristiano ronaldo yeah and so he was going through it and he was like kafu would be my right back maldini left back puyol center back and there was another one and then it was like javi iniesta so like they they do really like build up players from the past it's quite good that's that's kind of reassuring that nostalgia is still intact the window just moves yeah looking back in a 20-year window right exactly yeah yeah but i was you know i was worried it might be just sort of all vinnie and mbappe and cristiano ronaldo or this but no that was uh yeah healthy reverence for the past let me tell you about Stanley Matthews.

4:45Yeah, exactly. Well, funny enough, the younger one, who's six, was talking to me about Bobby Charlton, which I thought was very funny. He'd just read about him and was sort of really excited by it. Blimey.

4:55Charlie Eccleshare:Oh, that's very reassuring stuff. Dave, it was 400 episodes up for you last time out. We failed to mark it in style, but I have done the calculations. This is 401 for you. How do you feel? I feel good. Sorry to miss the anniversary on the last episode. Well, there's only so many big days you can have. so that would be too much Dan Byrne-ness for you in the space of a few weeks. But to mark that landmark, here is our wrestling friend Excalibur from AEW, all in London. Osprey, with the full support of the tens of thousands here at Webley Stadium, this place has been something of a happy hunting ground for Will Osprey.

5:35He's never lost a match here!

5:39Charlie Eccleshare:That's a nice little touch, isn't it? Yeah, what a man. He just keeps on slipping them in there. And they're not quite as egregious as they were when he first started doing them. He's really found the way to just slip. No one's going to bat an eyelid at that, I don't think, if you're unaware of the term. Charlie, I'm not familiar with the evolution of wrestlers' names, but should we really be tolerating an allegedly elite-level wrestler called Will Ospreay? Sounds like a made-up rugby player. some of them do have these really like just normal sounding i don't like names in amongst like the more heroic ones do you reckon dave you could do a happy undergrounds from like the wrestling era which you were fully into like a sort of undertaker at caesar's palace or something and you'd be able you'd be able to pick out like oh yeah wrestlemania 9 he he won about there disqualification victory over giant gonzalez yeah there you go wow set you up so well that's a level two that is a level two um it's galiba got in touch actually dave uh on top of that a very run-of-the-mill cliches reference really he says i also threw in a gary tap house nod during the broadcast though i'm not sure anyone caught it amid the six and a half hour broadcast wow someone please go and find the gary tap house shout by excalibur just to just to show how things have become i assume it was a brilliantly done okay we've got to find that we will find that the six and a half hour broadcast is available somewhere i think it's just all on youtube right yeah don't make me watch the whole thing yeah i haven't got the time or the inclination for that it's gonna hook us up with the production crew surely get us the feed yeah what do you find it excalibur jesus christ bloody hell lots of correspondence dave about our chats on the listeners mhd about electronic boards and then lo and behold after we recorded it but before the episode actually went out there was a massive fuss about electronic boards in the premier league during the Liverpool game, I understand.

7:35Charlie Eccleshare:And talk sport were all over it the next day. We looked like we were behind it. I'm very annoyed, actually. Yeah, well, I saw a lot of people messaging us saying, oh, wow, how prescient you were, because they'd obviously worked out we'd recorded it before. But I had that same feeling. I was like, oh, this is a bit annoying. This would be a really good, relevant point to get into that discussion. So it was mad, mad timing. But a lot of the stuff we did talk about, how the potential for innovation in the boards did actually prove quite prescient. Clearly they need updating. I mean, Alisson walked off the pitch Charlie and kicked out at the subs board which I thought was a bit much.

8:14Charlie Eccleshare:It's a bit too literal, isn't it? You're too pointed. It's not the board's fault. Yes, the guy who's operating it. Kick the fourth official. Don't leave it at kicking level as well because it's just like the water bottles, they're going to get kicked. but the athletics refereeing expert, Charlie, Graham Scott, went into granular detail about this. He says the subsports are not fit for purpose. Each number has to be entered manually and they only count up one at a time. Entering number 38 on its own could take several seconds and there are six numbers to plug in here. This is great detail. I'm really pleased to read it.

8:45It was incredibly granular, yeah. And I do find it funny because it's the sort of earnestness with which it's talked about. And obviously, what else is a referee going to do at all? but you do something, you read it and you're kind of like, wow, you need to take a step back because we are so deep in the weeds there.

9:01Charlie Eccleshare:No, no, the opposite, Dave. Graham Scott needs to take a step further in and he is going to because Graham's going to come and do a former Premier League referee's mes at Harlan Dix soon. And I think he knows the pod. I think it's really good. Let's just try and ask him questions about refereeing that no one bothers to ask referees. That's our remit. That'll be great. I did have a message actually from my friend Ed, who was I think a friend of his was listening to West Ham Wolves on the radio on BBC London on Tuesday night and Paul Parker was on CoCombs and they apparently you can't really go back and get this off the internet because they don't put the commentaries up on BBC Sounds but apparently the commentator and Paul Parker got deep into a discussion about whether the electronic boards would take AA batteries

9:52Charlie Eccleshare:do you know what do you know what this is fast sort of on the outskirts of my of my mhd is just commentary you can't get again on the radio what so pathetic who who has the rights to that commentary means it cannot be stored anywhere i give it to me i want it talk sport live match commentary not available anymore after broadcast podcasts like this survive on this stuff it's our lifeblood. You don't think it served its purpose though because you're so desperate for it. It sort of elevates it. I mean Dave told the story so well, I don't really mind. True, yeah. Last week we also heard late in Orient manager Richie Wellens bemoan his side's lack of sarcastic passes.

10:31Charlie Eccleshare:We had loads of theories about what sarcastic passes could possibly mean, Charlie. Listener Michael Cox simply said that it could just mean disguised passes, which I think actually might be the best shout we've had. I think he sort of basically meant passes that should have been had a bit of disguise on them less obvious passes and then sort of went one leap too far with it how do you feel about that yeah i mean possibly just trying to think like the spirit of a sarcastic because obviously if you were being literal about and like getting across the sarcasm there is all you know you can't do a sarcastic pass to you know if someone's like you know being really selfish and to make a point you're like yeah you want to see what a pass is and you sort of like you know you really kind of overdo it so it's like you're being a bit like sarky and right dicky about it um i don't imagine you'd see them in a match no um but i really like this from joe stern dave she said i've got a theory about the sarcastic past do you think he might have been trying to say stochastic past as in one that might create chaos for the defense perhaps even to the corridor of uncertainty i reckon it might be a term he could have heard from some data analyst at the club and completely misunderstood to what they were actually saying.

11:41Charlie Eccleshare:Stochastic to create chaos. Wow. I think it's unlikely, but we can't rule anything out, can we? What a stochastic pass that was. That is absolutely stochastic. Gary Tappouse noting this one down. Stochastically done. Right, let's get on to the main event, the adjudication panel. We have to start with the transfer window. A little cross-section of what happened over the last 48 hours of the window. Joseph Powell wrote in, Dave, and says, I was reaching the end of the window and I thought I'd stick on your 2022 seminal every Premier League club's transfer DNA. Within it was a hit rate that somehow exceeded even the Turkish Super League 11.

12:21Charlie Eccleshare:Actually, we didn't get any of the Turkish Super League 11 right, but still. Apparently, in that 2022 episode, we called Weston McKennie to Leeds, Zao Palina to Spurs, and Ismaila Saar to Palace, which we described as high-grade Palace. That's pretty good. That is really good. Three really mundane predictions there from us, but they all turned out. Here's Gary Cottrell at the Emirates. Meanwhile, I don't know how Cottrell-ed out we are, but let's just enjoy slash endure his dispatch from the Emirates as nothing happened in Arsenal's transfer window. It's called, obviously based on the wing song, no one's knocking at the door, no one's ringing the bell, no one's knocking at the door, no one's ringing the bell.

13:03The fans say, if anybody does, open the door and let him in. Apologies, Paul. I don't know what's going on there.

13:13Charlie Eccleshare:I don't know what's going on there at the end. Double-sided coin there, Charlie. First of all, obviously, in a cliché context, I'm annoyed that he didn't commit to the tune as he could have done. Went on a little bit too long. But towards the end, I thought, I bet Gary Cottrell's got actually quite a good singing voice. There's a bass to his voice that might work quite well. Crooner. Yeah, I did have the same thought. Probably as annoyingly quite good. I just love the idea of like seconds after him doing that someone tapping him on the shoulder and being like could we just have a word? Like we've given you permission to use the Empress pitching let's not take the piss Is that a Wings song Dave?

13:50Charlie Eccleshare:I had no idea It's just a song from an advert for me Yeah I think it is isn't it? Wow I didn't realise It has been used in an advert for sure but I think actually Postcode lottery isn't it? It is like a middle eight or something out of a Wings song but he just went on too long I think if you just do the first bit and then move on, you're fine. He sort of had to, I suppose in a way he had to commit to it, but it just kind of fizzled out. I saw a clip, we haven't heard much from Cottrell lately. I did see a clip the other day of one of the Sky News, I think he's like Sky News American, North American guy, I think he's like Scottish, but he's a North American correspondent for Sky News.

14:29And he was doorstepping Infantino, and it was like Infantino was giving him a bit of, being a bit stochastic to him actually. like saying oh see you at the barber's mate or something because he's bald as well yeah but i did think oh that oh why isn't cotter all doorstepped infantino cotter would do it really

14:45Charlie Eccleshare:well yeah mind you but yeah would he out banter infantino and then cancel him out and then annoy infantino into saying something actually quite real for because infantino's banter is like seemingly impregnable don't send the bald guy that's too obvious he's given him a way out he just jumped about his hair for about 20 yards and got in his car really annoying actually bad journalism i reckon if we were being really honest about it but between gary cotrell and the emirates singing charlie and the chap with the guitar in the sky sports studio this really did feel like the transfer window where sky sports news became a complete afterthought or at best a novelty for the first time officially you know talks of purple dildos are so old now and someone made a very basic point which is that twitter has just completely overtaken social media has completely overtaken Sky Sports News.

15:33Charlie Eccleshare:It is not the go-to anymore. I wonder how they feel about that Sky Sports News. I know they're trying to evolve in many ways, but Jetson, your number one thing of the year in that way, seems quite strange. Yeah, it's true. I mean, it's so far beyond even, you know, the purple dildo thing. That's so long ago, isn't it? Like that kind of heyday. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I guess that is why they're trying stuff. Well, maybe they think, like, it is all on social media. So the way to be relevant is to do things that will be clipped up and put on social media and be in that conversation and so having someone coming and doing songs with a guitar is i mean often it's because it's like oh how embarrassing is this for club x that you've got this song being sung but at least you're in the conversation i felt a bit sorry for the guy ben cipolla he is who with the guy the guitar because i think he's like a nice chat and yeah and and you know he's been doing the rounds a bit he obviously had a he had the stuff in the summer with the jed spence song i saw him do the peter crouch podcast the other day and that worked quite well because it's all fit and they were laughing with it but then it's not the first time that sky have put someone put like a musical act in the studio they did it with jj bull uh there was the the fellas a couple of lads who did did an england song in the summer that was the low point i think you're just so exposed you're just standing in that studio in that big empty studio with no cavernous atmosphere and you just it's if there's one thing that tv has taught us about these situations charlie over the years is you've got to get the production staff clapping afterwards to create that element of of welcoming atmosphere you can't have charlie austin just basically refusing to clap along to the tune well hayley mcqueen says brilliant now that was brilliant no no it wasn't it wasn't brilliant it's just i don't know but no there is dave's right there is something about it's the spacing of it it's when you're in it's so big it's so empty and vast that you need you just instinctively look so wrong yeah yeah it's so exposed awful all on his own but yeah yeah but yeah some lovely little guitar picking for the man himself and we were talking on the podcast the other day i genuinely cannot remember what episode was he might even be the dreamland about the liminal spaces of the football internet just the dusty places where people are allegedly supposed to go to air their views.

17:47Charlie Eccleshare:And this came from Andy Thorley, who directs me towards a decrepit corner of the Stoke Sentinels website, where there is an embedded poll in the page leading up to deadline day saying, is Sorba Thomas on the way from Stoke? And then underneath is the poll again saying, will Sorba Thomas get his move? Yes or no? At this point, Charlie, what is the point in voting in this? What is the point in predicting whether a player might leave or not. You're not the ones with the expertise. You tell us. That is a fair point. Engagement, isn't it? It's the watchword. Yeah, so an embedded poll, Dave, that's always the cheapest move of all.

18:30Charlie Eccleshare:But what's even worse, zero votes. Nobody cared. I know. It's not even a sample size, let alone a small one. The whole thing's so depressing. The photo that he sent us, is there's a banner ad for Care UK next to the poll, which I think just sums the whole thing up. Underneath just a boringly pleading message to join the Stoke Sentinels WhatsApp chat to get Stoke news delivered directly to your phone. What's the point? I genuinely think Andy Thorley might be the only person who visited that very webpage. And now, by extension, three more people have done it. Awful. I do think that, to that point about, like, you know, your job is to tell us I do think that sometimes with like or not so much that but season predictions and it's like when you're basically asking people to predict like you know whether how many games or whatever a player will play and it's like you're kind of asking them to predict their medical future and it's like what do we know really you know it's like asking fans to have their say on it how many games will Sorba Thomas play this season I think we need a real rolling back of people having their say actually yeah in general I think it's less democracy please yeah yeah what's going to happen now is that the Stokes Sentinel will have a surge of votes a few days after the fact after Sorbo Thomas has actually got his move to Hull and they're going to be like that's weird thousands of people have voted on this poll from the other day maybe we should do more polls evergreen content yeah yeah people who vote after the event even more pathetic over to the supposedly superior Guardian now and they have their full rundown of transfers from across Europe including at Mikel Vesga's free transfer from Athletic Bilbao to Almeria.

20:14Charlie Eccleshare:And a little blurb, says Dave, veteran holding midfielder with a knack for scoring penalties leaves San Mamez after 275 appearances. Benji Landau writes in and says, I came across this transfer and he was described as having a knack for scoring penalties. I don't think that one could be described as having a knack when you really should be scoring every single one you take. Yeah, this isn't a knack, is it? This isn't even close to being one of the great footballing knacks, is it? Well, I'd like to know how many penalties he's scored. Is he their regular penalty taker or is he someone who, if the regular penalty taker is not on the pitch, you could be an occasional penalty taker who's quite dependable in that situation?

20:49Charlie Eccleshare:I could tell you, actually, he's taken seven since the start of the 2022-23 season and he's missed two of them. Oh, wow. Not even close to being a nap. That's under the average. Yes. I think as well, it would make a difference if he was doing it in penalty shootouts. if it you know those players who are kind of like surprisingly quite reliable will sort of like Ashley Cole for England I know he missed one and I think it's year 2012 but he he was um he took them in sort of major tournament shootouts and was quite good and it was like I don't do that no I don't think it's a knack but it's more that's more knacky I think because at least it's like oh that's quite because I guess because to your to Benji's point about the expectation being that they should score penalty shootouts there is an understanding that the pressure's so mad that players are going to miss them.

21:36So if you are someone who can just dependably pop up, I'd say that is sort of exceeding expectations rather than just meeting them. I don't mind it in a way though. Again, I think there's a distinction between, like no one's going to say Cole Palmer or Bruno Fernandes has got a knack for taking penalties. Someone who's like obviously the penalty taker and scores almost all of them. That's beyond knackiness. But Watford have got a midfielder, Edo Kayembe, who is quite bad at most of the stuff that he does on the pitch. Like he's not very good, but he's got two things about him and he can absolutely twat it in occasionally from the edge of the box.

22:11And he has taken the odd penalty and usually scored them, but he's never been our designated penalty taker. I mean, the definition is possessing a natural talent skill or an intuitive ability to do a particular thing.

22:24Charlie Eccleshare:Intuitive ability is the key thing here. It's that sixth sense for doing something. which is why Charlie we often relate it to Frank Lampard-esque penalty area popping up, ghosting in. Is that the only knack? Are there any other knacks? He's got a knack. Yeah, I mean it is mainly that. He's got a knack for popping up right place at the right time or that sort of thing. Are there defensive knacks? Can a defender have a knack? He's got a knack for reading danger. Again, if you're not a defender where that's your job, but if you're someone who just, he's good at tracking back. It's too nebulous to be a knack.

22:56Charlie Eccleshare:It's too hard to describe. but it ticks the boxes. It's that kind of sensing danger. So I don't mind it but I think a knack is more opportunistic which is why it lends itself to goal scoring. Goalkeepers definitely don't have any knacks. Surely not. I don't know. A knack for saving penalties? Oh yeah, you can have a knack for saving penalties. I don't mind that. A knack for saving with your feet. Yeah, a little specialist goalkeeping knack. David De Gea was quite good at saving with his feet, wasn't he? He's got a real knack for just sticking his leg out. Getting himself in the ways. One-on-ones could be a knack, maybe.

23:30Charlie Eccleshare:Anyway, this episode is brought to you in association with NordVPN. For 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, appears as if it's in another country, which is great for accessing content while travelling. Indeed, this came from Joel Goodwin. He says, I was listening to a podcast and I forgot to turn off my VPN, and I heard an interesting name in a Purina dog chow commercial from Germany. Listen closely.

24:09Charlie Eccleshare:There's definitely a Phil Foden in there somewhere, right? Oh yeah, I heard it. Wil Foden? Footballers names, you sound like plausible German words. Excellent. 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.

24:48Charlie Eccleshare:Welcome back to Football Clichés. Episode 30 of Dreamland is out now. Now, I'm glad so many of you enjoyed the football cliches Q &A. I think we're going to do one of these every quarter or so. I don't use the word quarterly lightly, Charlie, but that feels about right for the football cliches Q &A. Yeah, yeah, very pleased that it was well received. We've got a lot of questions in reserve as well. So, yeah, we'll do that again at some point. You can sign up for Dreamland for just£5.99 a month. You'll get ad-free listening of all of our episodes, plus two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive show.

25:18Charlie Eccleshare:Access to the premium section of the Happy Hunting Grounds quiz and lots of other things as well. Just go to dreamland.footballcliches.com. Live show on Saturday, as Dave has already mentioned. If you want to get involved in it anyway, you want to send something in, you've spotted something, you've still got time to get something in. It may or may not make the show because it's looking good. I'm excited about this show and can't wait to show it to everyone on Saturday afternoon. Anyway, yeah, the transfer window has slammed shut and it is time for the summer 2026 transfers that just sound so right.

25:52Charlie Eccleshare:11. 4-3-3 formation. I'm not mucking about yet again. In goal, your options are, Dave, Martin Dubravka to Spurs, Karl Darlow to be Manchester United's kind of, you know, elder statesman backup, or Sam Johnston to Celtic as the kind of surprise English goalkeeper at Celtic. I mean, the backup goalkeeper market is just, it just ticks every box, doesn't it? I mean, there's almost, you could have any goalkeeper in any club and it would feel right, really, wouldn't it? Yeah. That's where we've got to. Scott Carson could be anywhere. Yeah, anybody can play anywhere. Like Dubravka, Darlow is obviously, Manchester United have really set their stall out with kind of essentially retired ex-pros doing a job and filling the homegrown quota, that sort of stuff.

26:34Charlie Eccleshare:But Dubravka to Spurs feels like he could potentially play Charlie, but he has now settled into that idea of just being a fairly well-paid backup goalkeeper. And that's why it feels quite right for him to be at Spurs. Yeah, I also, yeah, because I wouldn't be surprised if he had just rolled on to one of the newly promotes because he was at Burnley last season, wasn't he? So if I was told that, oh yeah, he's now going to be the Hull or the Coventry or Ipswich keeper, I'd be like, yeah. Well, Jack Butland has signed for Hull. Wow, that's good. That's actually very good. He was at Rangers, wasn't he?

27:05My only other one here, Adam, would be Emi Martinez going from Villa to Chelsea just for a couple of reasons. One is that Villa and Chelsea, that's been quite a lot. In cahoots. Yeah, they're the PSR bros. and yeah, I don't like that. He just, he feels quite chelsea.