Wake-up reality checks, cracked MOTD logos & the ultimate Puskas Award goal

0:00Before the season even kicks off, soccer fans are already making predictions. Who wins the league? Who qualifies for Europe? And who's lifting the trophy at season's end? On Calci, America's number one prediction market platform, you're trading against peers in a live market, meaning there's no house. And as the probability changes, you can buy in and out of your position. For a limited time, download the Calci app and use code CUP26 to get$10 when you trade 10. K-A-L-S-H-I, Calci. Trade the beautiful game. 18 plus only restrictions and eligibility requirements apply. Event contract trading involves risk and may not be suitable for all investors.

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0:59Premier League clubs will be left looking back and thinking they should have been the club to sign him. All on Europe's biggest sport podcast network. Find your next favourite sport podcast. Search Sport Social Podcast Network and listen wherever you get your podcasts. Sport Social Podcast Network. Verified comparison at content.sport-social.co.uk forward slash comparison. I'm sorry, you can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like. Is Gascoigne going to have a crack? He is, you know. Oh, I say! Brilliant!

1:33He'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 time and time and time again. Crank up the music! Charge a glass! This nation is going to dance all night. Wedding guests with goal machine names. The rude awakening slash wake-up calls slash reality checks slash non-plane sailing realisations of the Premier League opening weekend. How much would it actually cost to drive Harry Maguire to Saudi Arabia yourself? Lee Dixon's spot kick trademark.

2:19The many ripples of a Fabrizio Romano typo. Mateta wants a piece of the legislative legacy action. Curly slippers. James Trafford's unorthodox cadence. and Keezy's one word for his beloved Coventry City. Brought to your ears by Goalhanger Podcasts, this is Football Clichés.

2:41Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry and this is the Adjudication Panel. Joining me first of all is David Walker. How are things? Things are very good indeed. I wonder about the threshold. I mean, is it a mere, what, three four days have passed so i don't know if we've passed that point yet but am i allowed to ask how is married life treating you treating me very well so far or although no honeymoon so it's been straight back to business uh had a day of recovery on saturday after the wedding on friday i played 90 minutes in the baking hot sun for ribblesdale on sunday morning which i wasn't intending to do but um it was a it was a current squad versus old boys game and two of the old boys limped off within five minutes of the start so um and we are we are wading through lots of very very nice messages from people not just people who were there but plenty of people have been in touch on on social to to wish us a happy day and all that so i will reply to all these ones don't worry um but yeah it's all good had a great time um never has a pitch almost sort of embodied a hangover more than that pitch that you were playing on on sunday i think might be the driest picture I've ever seen.

3:52Honestly, absolute dust bowl, like clouds of dust coming up regularly as people were trying to kick the ball and stuff. Barely any grass on it. It's just completely parched. But, you know, that's where we are. Alongside you is Nick Miller. How are you doing, Nick? Very good. Very good. You raced to the wedding, hot off the back of a trip that could not be more Nick Miller. You flew over to Turkey for the Athletic to watch Sidney Lopez Cabral come off the bench for Travzon support. That was, yes, that was the side issue of the trip. It was technically to see Mohamed Salah, but yes, it was nice to see.

4:30I was in Turkey last week, sitting at my hotel eating breakfast, listening to the podcast. Oh. And I arranged my travel back from Turkey for various reasons to do a few things. A nice late flight on Friday, safe in the knowledge that I would be back in plenty of time for Dave's wedding on saturday and as i was listening to the podcast i realized my mistake that the wedding was actually on friday so what a way to find out yeah it was um it was appropriate and also uh a real kind of stomach drop moment um but but thankfully i was able to make some arrangements and was oh wow to be there well i'm honored that you did mate because that would have been an easy get out you could easily have gone oh mate work have fucked up my flights i'm so sorry it was but i i missed your stag and I think your birthday for similar travel fuck-up reasons, so I thought a hat-trick would have been...

5:22He doesn't want to be around you, mate! A hat-trick would have sent the wrong message, I think. No wonder he was evening only. Ease him out! Get Jake Farrell in! A bit close to the bone there, haven't we? Yes, yes. Yeah, and good to see you there as well. Dave, I was sat next to at the wedding a guy called Brett Freeman, who I took great delight in telling that he had the most would score 30 goals in League One name of anybody at the wedding. He liked it. Yeah, yeah. Big cliches man is Brett. So you'll have loved that. Yeah. More correspondence from our listeners on the wedding day. Someone said, how did the suit purchase go for Dave's best man?

6:03We need the info. Well, there was an intervention staged. And between me and one of the other groomsmen, we sort of made him go and get one on Thursday because we were just like look I mean I know it will probably be fine on Friday but just in case you just never know what if something goes wrong just like that we can't risk it so just get one Thursday evening just to be sure and lo and behold what happened on Friday morning to this best man in question he got locked inside of his house he's just he's just moved house and he was I don't know whether he was going in or out is that an excuse like does he not know how the door works doesn't know the key right because the key the key snapped and it got stuck in the door so i don't see he must have been going but i couldn't quite work that out because he's is he using the key to get out of the door which is a bit of a weird thing but anyway he got locked inside his house because there was a key in the door so he couldn't open the door and they had to get a locksmith and it was like a proper peep show style situation like literally it is literally the plot of an episode of peep show can't get to the christening of his of his son and he climbs over the wall.

7:10And my best man, Sean, was looking at the wall and thinking, is it too high? Could I jump over? But then I think it was blocked in by a lorry on the other side. So in the end, yeah, they got someone out and he got there. But he cut it fine. That is not top operating, Sean.

7:29Right, adjudication panel time. Dave's wedding rudely overlapped with the start of the Premier League. Arsenal 3, Coventry 0. but we overlooked that because it's Friday night and that doesn't really count. But more importantly, Jamie got in touch, Nick, and says, this is the second time in three seasons that Liam Dre, front man for the indie outfit, the Cortinas, has done the opening day of Chris Sutton's BBC predictions. He also did the opening day versus Loro in 2014. He is basically the most possible BBC Premier League predictions guest you could possibly imagine, isn't it? Yeah, it feels a bit like the producers of Soccer AM going, Should we get Kasabian on again?

8:08Yeah. All right, yeah. Okay. They'll do it. The one with the pointy shoes will do it again. If you do Premier League predictions three times, Dave, you are actually automatically granted an MHD, I understand. So Liam Dre, come on. I know you're a cliches listener, Liam, as well. You were at the last Manchester After Show, wasn't he? Was he? Yeah. What? Don't you remember this? Yeah, the Cortinas were at the cliches After Show in Manchester last time. Absolutely top bloke, as were his bandmates. so yeah you always were welcome lovely looking man as well extraordinary oh yeah no i think i do remember okay that took to memory yeah but what a what an opening weekend of the premier league it was um some serious travails for the big six and the big six adjacent most of which nick i think we can categorize among these categories of rude awakenings wake-up calls reality checks and reminders that it's not all going to be plain sailing so let's let's try and headline all of them with some of these.

9:02For Manchester United, Gary Neville has rather conveniently done our job for us. And they have struggled at times more against what would be teams that play deeper. But it's a massive wake-up call. So, Gary Neville going for a wake-up call for Manchester United after their defeat to Hull, Nick. How do you feel about that? I don't know. Just a wake-up call. Has there been an air of complacency about United? A wake-up call implies that they've just been, you know... snoozing. Snoozing a little bit. They've been, yeah, they'll be fine. Don't worry about it. It'll be all right when Manchester United.

9:35So maybe there is a little bit of that. There is a little bit of that, Dave, because it's this assumption that Michael Carrick is at the wheel. It's all very Solskjaer all over again, but maybe that's where the complacency set in a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I guess there was positivity towards the end of the season. They've made a, I don't know, obviously they've made a couple of signings in midfield and stuff, but I don't know. It doesn't, is it a wake-up call? I'm not sure if I quite quite onboarded calling it a wake-up call. But if not, then which other bracket would it fit into? Reality? Is it more of a reality check?

10:04Reality checks suit the first day better. No, no, there are subtle differences. I'm kidding. Maybe wake-up calls don't really sort of lend themselves to opening days, Nick. Reality checks may be the more sort of prominent sort of opening day things like, oh, you thought you were good, did you? Well. I think it is slightly more reality checky because it is, you know, appointing the caretaker situation. and you know they had this what was it three or four month spell where where everything was great and now we're into the harsh reality of a new season with a permanent manager do you know the the big man united element of this i think is yuri tillemans because when he was signed there was i would say broadly sort of positive of like oh you know good player like proper premier league proven player to go back to what we were talking about last week but now all of a sudden he's had one game and everyone's going well I mean he's never really had much he's never really had the legs has he no this is the thing I'm really that's what slightly surprised me about the move it's like United fans are not getting a box to box operator here legs in midfield has been the issue for Man United for ages now yeah yeah in that sense slightly odd but in the 74th minute Nick 2-0 down at Hull Manchester United's misery was compounded

11:48a really good way and the sort of way you would expect for that sort of thing Nick. Was it Fletch there said? A classic if it doesn't rain in pause situation. I think the Hull fans should be booing in solidarity. The shoe will soon be on the other foot lads. Come on. When you're down in London and the trains get cancelled back to Hull on a Monday night. There was a bit of people very earnestly saying it was like a betrayal of the noble brotherhood of football supporting to take the piss out of United fans for doing this. There was a lot of serious... it's not great but come on guys there was a lot of serious reactions to this Dave, someone tweeted I thought it was a bit of lack of class from the stadium announcer, he wanted his time in the spotlight today and he got it it's a public service announcement what else can he do?

12:36it's true, someone said what next traffic updates that's not the same, that isn't the same imagine traffic updates that would be class you have got to pick your moments though, do you think he gets that information and thinks right, just got to get it out there as quick as possible to give people as much time to plan or does he wait for a particular moment in the game because this was a spell of Manchester United possession yeah but like when they weren't really going anywhere better than probably better than doing it when Hull are on the attack and the crowds are crowds up and you know I just yeah it's sort of trick the timing of it is tricky 74 sounds about right Nick for a train update give give the away fans 20 minutes or so to kind of percolate the information yeah and obviously you don't want to do it when there's any danger of there being an attack because uh you could you could go announcement for the manchester united fans unfortunately and then there's a home fans attack and the crowd noise drowns it out and you know what so what what was that was it sorry and there was obviously an element of glee in the announcer's voice dave he knew obviously he knew the situation they know the power of their words in these situations so you have to forgive him a little bit for for the sort of slight joyous inflection in the voice shall we say yeah so So it's opening day.

13:47Everyone's happy. The sun's shining. Give him his moment. I think we have already, after day one, Dave, stumbled across 2627's Fletch-Copper-Gabana crisis. Yoda's Goldfish on Reddit says, Twice now in the first 24 minutes, Darren Fletcher has claimed that Hull City play their home games on the banks of the River Humber. The stadium is 2.3 miles away from the Humber. Dave, how do you feel straight away about that being described as on the banks of the Humber? I think you can give him a bit of leeway in that you know they are near enough it's not like the brazil one where it was like what like hundreds of miles like yeah certainly serious distance away yeah however the fact that there are many grounds that are literally on the banks of of the river you know craven cottage the city ground it saved him with light near the river well i haven't done my research on on all the full distances of the stadiums yeah i actually i have clarified the distance here nick it's actually 1.1 miles as the crow flies um so that mitigates uh fletcher's declaration a little bit more um i mean if you're a mile away from the river uh can you say you're on the banks of it generally speaking uh i mean i mean the south coast club wouldn't have an issue with this would they would you say well yeah would you say the southampton is on the the shore the you know the he would say shores that's for sure in the docks i think the only way to adjudicate this properly is having a little look at Google Maps here.

15:16I mean, okay. It's sort of, it is close enough. You can get the river and the stadium in the same shot without too much zooming out. Well, what a threshold that is, by the way. I mean, this is all academic because someone with a completely unpronounceable username on Reddit says he's had an absolute mare here. The Humber's not even a river. It's an estuary and his title for its entire length after the Trent and Ouse beat. The river is, in fact, the River Hole. The place is called Kingston-upon-Hull. Yes, this is the first time I've ever considered that. But yes, so it should have been on the shores of the Humber, says MJ Bones.

15:52Despite being an estuary man myself, I've never really thought about this. We just called it the seafront. There we go. So yeah, so it is technically a coastal club. But yeah, more misery compounding for Manchester United. This was the first caller into 606 on BBC Radio 5 Live, getting stuck into Harry Maguire. The man is an absolute liability and he needs to be gotten out of the football club tonight. I am sick and tired of him. Honestly, if a Saudi club came in for him now, tonight, I'd drive to Manchester, I'd put him in the car, I'd drive him to Saudi myself and I wouldn't even claim the petrol.

16:32I'd want him gone. Absolutely gone. So many lovely little elements to that piece of classic want my player gone, Nick. the fact that wherever he is, it wasn't specified on the phone call. It wasn't specified where he lives. So he's going to have to drive to Manchester first in the middle of the night, like no mucking around, and then drive Maguire to Saudi. But get him in the car, which is the implication that he was going to bundle him in himself. He's really sort of embellished the whole sort of classic cliche there, isn't he? Yeah, and I don't know, it just seems impractical. Is there an element of drive him there myself that you want to make sure he is actually there firsthand?

17:11rather than, say, driving him to Manchester Airport and putting him on a plane. Yeah, not as fun. Not as fun. It really doesn't sort of reflect the desire to get him out of your club, Dave. I feel bad for Harry Maguire because he obviously gets a lot of this. But Oli Blanford wrote and says, wonders how much petrol money you'd actually need to drive Harry Maguire to Saudi. Obviously, I looked it up. You're looking at the best part of 4 ,000 miles factoring in whatever journey he had to do first to get to Manchester, this cooler. So you're looking at about 10 to 12 tanks of petrol. So you're looking at the best part of a grand on fuel alone, which actually doesn't seem that much.

17:41Like flights to Saudi are probably around the same. Round trip for two. First class, I assume. Can you not get the Saudis to chuck the petrol into the deal? Quite cheap over there as well. Yeah, they're on top of it all, aren't they? Oh yeah, didn't factor in the drive back as well. Maybe you get there and go, you know what? I might just stay here actually. It's all right. To shack up with Harry Maguire in Riyadh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Save yourself some money. Harry, I know I want you gone so much that I have driven you to Riyadh, but is there any chance I could bunk up with you for a few days? because it is quite, I do need a bit of a rest before I go back.

18:12Probably bonded really well across the 67-hour drive. They're best mates by the time they get there. Well, on that, Nick, you're a man who knows a thing or two about driving to the Middle East for bizarre reasons. It's doable, do you think? Well, yeah, sort of. There was a slightly tricky bit where you'd have to drive through Syria, which doesn't, you either have to drive through Syria or you have to get a ferry that I think at the time we tried it. For anyone that doesn't know, me and a couple of colleagues, we didn't drive in the end, but the plan is that we were going to drive from London to Doha for the 2022 World Cup.

18:48Yeah, you either have to drive through Syria or you have to get a ferry from somewhere that we were not entirely sure existed. So it's a tricky one. What a coin toss that is. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Don't recommend Syria at this time of year. Next up, Graham Greed asks Dave, on the basis of the Hull City fans chanting mauled by the Tigers. What other club nicknames could work in the setup? Stung by the bees? Choked by the cherries? Overthrown by the citizens? Now, I'd love to discuss this, but we're not going to cover this again. If anyone wants to go to listenfairplay.com, an incredible resource, and search pick off cherries, you'll get to enjoy some absolutely golden clichés analysis on this subject from a couple of years ago, the height of which was Dave's pondering about whether a bee could sting another bee.

19:34It really is glorious. We don't need to get into it again. Some early season rustiness all round, Nick. No words to use, wrote in and says, on talk sport comms for Hull versus Manchester United, co-commentator Steve Bruce says, it's their new signing at the back. Oh, you can pronounce it better than me. And the commentator said, Nobel Mendy. Come on. Get easing into the new season. There's this kind of creeping co-commentator assumption, Dave, that foreign names will be hard to pronounce no matter how simple they actually are. In this case, four syllables. And Mendy presumably a name that Steve Reuss may well have actually uttered at some point as well in his career.

20:12He must have managed a Mendy. I want someone to fact check this, please. Has he ever managed a Mendy? But it's only four syllables. It's such a common thing, though. You do get it all the time. And I think, yeah, I think there is just the general anxiety that I'm going to get this wrong. I don't want to be disrespectful. I don't want to mangle it. I don't want to make myself look silly. It's all of those sort of things that are in there. fine but there are some that you can legitimately i think have a go there's no accents on there there's no umlauts there's it's it's it's just say what you see steve i even tried to go and find you know those pronunciation videos that the premier put out but noble mendy was nowhere to be seen maybe he was signed too late i'm not sure let's move on um tottenham's three nil reverse on the banks of the thames at bredford for our categorization purposes here sky sports commentator and one-time clichesman Bill Leslie went for this.

21:11Don't mind reality check here, Dave. I think that suits the situation quite well. Yes, because I think it's been, as Bill said there, like the influx of players has been more pronounced than Manchester United. Even De Zerbe himself coming in very late into the season, he feels he basically feels like a brand new manager yeah it's a new era they've got rid of a few players so yeah I think reality check because and and there was there has been this cautious assumption because I think people are still burned after the Spurs second bad season in a row last time but I think people have generally been predicting that they would be you know doing well enough this season so reality check I think is is pretty good actually and Brentford are such a great club to give a reality check to as well it's nice that they're the ones dishing out the reality check.

21:59Historic reality check giver out as well. They obviously beat Arsenal in the first game a few years ago. Didn't they beat United? Beat United 4-0, I think. All three reality checks, really, in their own ways. Yeah, I like it. They've obviously spent an awful lot of money on midfielders. They've basically redone their defence and they've still got someone in goal who's not great. So that's quite reality checky, isn't it? Still got Richarlison playing Mikey Moore. Yeah, more to come from Spurs perhaps. Over to Man City on Sunday, who were headed for, at best, a point against Bournemouth. But up until that point, when Bournemouth held the lead, this felt, Nick, like it's not all going to be plain sailing for Enzo Maresca.

22:45Because the plainness of his sailing was up in the air anyway, post-Pep. But this was confirmation that it wasn't going to be all plain sailing. And I think that's what the kind of conclusion was from that game, result aside. Yeah, I think so. And they're definitely not reality-checky because there was too much uncertainty in advance having a new manager, lost a bunch of very experienced players. So I think not plain sailing fits perfect. Elsewhere in this game, Al Stewart writes in, Dave, says, I was watching the highlights on Match of the Day and commentator Steve Wilson described a Bournemouth shot thus.

23:17And that isn't far away. Well, he curled. Not in the end enough, but it's another little warning shot across the city bow. Shot from Marcus Tavernier there. Al Stewart says an innocuous enough and common phrase at first glance. However, this was said after Bournemouth were already 1-0 up. Surely you can't have a warning shot across the bowels when you've already hit the target. What are you warning about? The blow has already been delivered. Surely firing a warning shot cannot be used if a team has already conceded. Yeah, completely agree. You're 1-0 down. You've been struck. You're taking on ball water here.

23:50But the shot itself was quite warning shotty. I like where you're going. You know, from distance, curling initially looked like it was going to go in, but then it was just past the post. It was, I was watching this game in the pub after we played on Sunday morning and it elicited like widespread, oh, like everyone thought it was going to go in just after they'd conceded the first one. So it kind of, I get the vibe, but technically I'm not sure it works. Oh, this is a good analysis from Dave, Nick. I think Al Stewart's analysis of this on a literal level is quite true. But if you think about the parameters, that is Manchester City so historically strong, Bournemouth coming on the opening day.

24:30I think if you're 1-0 up in this situation, you probably could fire another warning shot to say, look, things could get worse. So I think I might allow it. Yeah, I think it would work better if it was Pep City in their pomp. Because even if they went that 1-0 down to a smaller team, there would still be a sort of expectation that they're going to win anyway, aren't they? So this could be another warning shot of warning that we might actually beat you here. Whereas this time they're less strong. It still kind of broadly works, but I think it would work better if it was Pep City. Perhaps the two-one defeat just proves the theory even more.

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27:27Over to Aston Villa, who was sunk at Brighton 4-0. In fact, he continued all for just after half an hour but red mist ultra on reddit dave says the bbc headline of brighton thrashed 10 man villa in opener does scoring all four goals before the red card negate the 10 man moniker we've had so much correspondence along these lines before but i think this is quite a nice twist on it is 10 man necessary here because i feel like you do need to tell the story of the game as well as the context in which the four goals were conceded yeah you're not really telling the story of the game in that what you know you've got seven words to play with there so it's a tricky job to get it into that that little headline but how how could you do it because the 10 man is incidental to the four goals but but it wasn't like 93rd minute either it formed quite a large part of the game was first half there were 10 men in the first half so what i would say is that the sending off was one of the most it had been coming sending offs i've ever seen chargames looked like he could have been sent off maybe even before the maybe not before the first goal but really early on.

28:32Had he been booked? He'd been booked for waving an imaginary yellow card already hadn't he? And then got the straight red for kicking out. Yeah he'd been booked for and then he could I think he could have been booked for quite a rash tackle. But there was certainly an element of yeah this was coming. So there is that to factor in as well I think. I think what you could do actually get rid of in opener. We know that. It's the opening weekend. We're across that. If you just add in Brighton thrash hapless 10 man Villa. because they you know just to really emphasize how bad villa were regardless of the 10 man thing yeah i think i would be happy to lose 10 man and and play up just how sort of pathetic they were so i'd take sorry sorry villa would work um but i don't mind hapless at all because i mean one of the goals was genuinely hapless as well but um the sort of result that perhaps doesn't fit neatly into our categories it wasn't a rude awakening it wasn't a wake-up call it wasn't a reality check and probably wasn't even a reminder that it isn't all going to be plain sailing for Unai Emery either because of course this is a Charlie Eccleshare special.

29:34It was an issues run deeper defeat. I mean, a lot of chat every season, Nick, about how the transfer window overlaps the start of the season. This was a great case study for this because it is a bit of a shame that a team isn't ready for the start of the season. There is stuff going on off the pitch that basically renders their first game not meaningless, but it's completely overshadowed. All the things that you should take for granted on the opening day are basically not available to them, which is a real shame. Yeah, and I always wonder how, obviously, football clubs are or certainly pretend to be much smarter about these things these days.