Forest ditch Dyche and Manchester City look ominous: Football Weekly Extra

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:30In more traditional news, you've got your voice note yesterday. It's what we all wanted. Thomas Frank sacked by Spurs shortly after we finished recording. We'll analyse where it went wrong and how good an interim of Redknapp, Sherwood and Hoddle will do. Or Ange. Anyone? Ange? Anyone? Then back to the football. Burnley couldn't survive, could they? I mean, no, obviously, but a great win for them at Palace. For a few minutes, all of Jorgen Strand Larsson's worries disappeared, but then three goals in five minutes for Scott Parker, which sounded just as miserable as usual afterwards, but great for him.

0:56Palace aren't out of the woods. Meanwhile, another defeat for Brighton. at least if he does get the sack Fabian Herzl is young enough to retrain to do something else good win for Villa to keep the chasing pack at arm's length and a good win for Liverpool the first team to do that at Sunderland they were good and it's that ominous Manchester City we see dispatching Fulham in the first half in other news Jim Ratcliffe who moved to Monaco as an immigrant a few years ago starts immigrant bashing in the UK what a guy Barry says he has an interesting fact on every one of the 16 FA Cup ties this weekend hold on to your hats we'll answer your questions and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly

1:30On the panel today, Will Arnwin, hello. Good morning, Max. Johnny Lu, welcome. Hi. And the man with the facts, Barry Glendening. Hello. Hi, Max. John says, decent of Maranakis to fire Dyche before the pod is recording, avoiding the need of a voice note. However, knowing him, he'll have hired and subsequently fired Dyche's replacement just after the pod has been recorded. So a voice note will be needed. Let Barry do it for once. Okay, then. So the bottom of the Premier League is really interesting after the results last night. um uh Burnley 18 points from 26 West Ham 24 Forrest 27 Spurs 29 Leeds 30 Brighton 31 and Palace 32 we'll start with uh the sacking of Sean Dyche Will you were uh there last night to see the goalless draw uh what do you what do you make of what happened apart from the fact it meant you had a very late night I think in terms of the match obviously Forrest were very unlucky 35 shots non going in is surprising I mean not many Dice teams have 60 % possession but every time he has had 60 % possession he's failed to win in a match in 10 times in his career according to Opto which is quite a feat not a man keen on dominating matches so I think they were lucky on that level the ground wasn't was probably one level below Toxic from early on every misplaced pass failed shot irritation and Maranakis was in the stands and the sort of classic TV coverage.

2:57The screens kept panning to Maranakis when something went awry and he did not look happy. The jacket went off in the second half, which is a bold move in February to show that something's not right. So afterwards, Daesh came into the press conference and said, well, if he wants to sack me, that's up to him. And I was wondering a bit, thinking this doesn't seem particularly right, but maybe Even Forrest will take sort of 24 hours to review the situation because Daesh was the pragmatic choice when he came in. Daesh did well when he came in. Daesh has only lost one in the past six games. They're not doing badly.

3:32And if you appoint Sean Daesh, you have to accept that for the players who, it seems, struggled with his methods, they're going to have an intense time on the training ground to get what Daesh wants out of them. And on top of that, the football's not likely to be particularly attractive. which is what he's done throughout his career. And the only reason they had to appoint Sean Dyche is because Maranakis sacked Nuno and appointed Ange Postacogli, which was a disaster. And they needed someone like Dyche to get them out of the mess. So I think it's a bit, I don't know, naive maybe at the moment to make a third sacking of the season.

4:09You look at what they did last summer, that there's a lot of plays came in, a couple more came in January, or three more came in January. There's a lot of plays to integrate. it's quite hard for a player to adapt to a new club when you're having four managers within six months or so and this is it and it's just at the moment I appreciate them in a relegation battle but Daesh is there to get them out of that and probably would and it's just a mess of their own making and how that changes in the near future I don't know Victor Pereira is going to come in it looks like almost certainly and good luck to him for the final 13 games but yeah nothing seems particularly well on the trends and external factors can't really be blamed at this stage so Nuno had 23 days and 39 Dice had 114 days Barry what do you make of the uh the sacking it's not really a surprise because we know Evangelos Maranakis is quite a volatile character who is prone to mood swings.

5:11He was there last night sitting in the director's box looking extremely unhappy with Forrest's performance. So usually when you get those cutaways to Evangelos Maranakis mid-game, it only means one thing, that the manager who is in the technical area is not long for this world. So it wasn't a shock. I'm not sure it's a very well thought out decision but then Maranakis tends to fly by the seat of his pants and I suspect Sean Dyche won't be that bothered and he and Woney and Stoney will have a nice day in the pub today and check their bank accounts to see how the payments come through. I mean I guess there might still be time for them to get another gig to save somebody else.

6:08That Burnley win at Palace was unfortunate for Dyche because he could go back to his spiritual home or there might have been a vacancy at his spiritual home if they hadn't won that game. That's true. We'll get to that. There were reports, Johnny, that Maranakis was personally debriefing the team in the dressing room with Sean Dyche inside the room, which you can imagine Dyche would have loved. Dyche, after the game, was very quick to point out that statistically they were doing better now than when he arrived and he said when we arrived we were two points above the relegation zone now we're three points above the relegation zone which i mean statistically he is right but it isn't a huge amount above the relegation zone and i just guess you saw it with tottenham there are lots of teams panicking now that they could get relegated because the bottom of the table is incredibly tight yeah i mean uh is that really a statistic like three three is more than two I guess that's a Deich style statistic.

7:07Analytics with Sean Deich. If you look at the graph here, no, I'm being insolent as usual. He's right that they are doing slightly better. I mean, they interviewed Elliot Anderson afterwards and they said it was the most shots on goal that a Premier League team had had in 10 years without scoring. And they told Elliot Anderson this and his face just kind of fell. He's like, yeah, typical. It was that sort of night. It's been that sort of season for Forrest. And, you know, you may well ask, what is the through thread? What is the common line from Nuno to Ange Postacoglu to Deich to very possibly Vitor Pereira?

7:50And of course, there isn't one. Forrest are one of those clubs where they don't have a defined style of play. They don't have a footballing identity beyond Maranakis. It's one of those unusual football clubs where the owner is basically the defining style of the club. And whatever side of the, I imagine, massive king-sized bed he gets out on in the morning defines the direction of that football club that day. And, you know, he's right to be worried that the football is terrible. the football has been terrible but you know you kind of have to ask what were you expecting with Sean Dyche when you appoint him but also the fact that that sort of 13th to 18th area in the Premier League has really kind of concerted if you if you look at the the way that West Ham have kind of recovered in the last few weeks almost brings to mind that 0-2-0-3 season when it was West Ham went down with 42 points I think if you look at Burnley and Wolves probably adrift you have you then have a load of teams competing for 18th spot and it is quite possible that if they carry on on their current rate that the team in 18th could end up still end up with a with about a point a game you could have someone going down on 38 maybe even 40 points so that brings teams like you know leads spurs forest uh you know maybe even palace into the um into the mix if uh if west ham keep improving so that's that's why i think we're getting a lot of itchy trigger fingers because there are a lot of teams who maybe thought they were safe and now realizing hang on we're not the youtube viewers excited to have the lou family in the background uh our listeners don't get that pleasure but you can watch us uh if you like uh will do we think vito perreira is a good choice to come in.

9:41He did really well at Wolves when he came in, didn't he? He's got a few things going for him that he did have an immediate impact at Wolves when he came in that turned them around very quickly. Won the first game away at Leicester so it shows he can change things at speed. And then on top of that, he's worked with Maranakis before which is helpful for someone to understand what they're getting into which some people don't always. And he plays the right formation I think you know I suspect he'll play with what he's got with the 4-2-3-1 I think he'll utilise that he does know the Premier League he is a good man manager he gets the best out of people you know he's very likeable as Wolves fans will tell you I don't know which pub he'll drink in in Nottingham I think that'll be interesting to find out in the coming weeks I've got the text messages to prove it last week it's like if they do sack him it'll be Pereira because he's the obvious person to bring in possibly also being indoctrinated by watching too much Forrest and knowing how they work over recent years, that this would be the outcome.

10:46So yeah, I think it's probably the most sensible choice if you're going to have a fourth manager of the season. I mean, good luck to him. I mean, you know, just as a further point, obviously I got in at half past midnight. I didn't see my daughter yesterday, but I kicked her out at 20 past 7 to go to Breakfast Club just so I didn't have to deal with what Johnny's dealing with because that looks terrible. she came in this morning oh daddy i missed you i said get out i'm writing about vito pereira being appointed at nottingham forest you not understand just on the game barry is worth pointing out there is that amazing still image of that moment where forest had a six on one and didn't score it's an amazing moment in a football match it was fantastic it reminded me of that scene from game of thrones the battle of the bastards when john snow was sitting alone on his horse in front of the massed ranks of Ramsey Bolton's army and he they're charging towards him at full gallop and he just draws his sword and in this instance Hugo Bueno was in the John Snow road with these six forest players charging towards him at full pace.

11:57Callum Hudson-Odois pinged in a low cross I mean he couldn't fail to pick out a teammate but unfortunately for him he picked out Lorenzo Luca who somehow managed to shank the ball over the bar and over the roof of the stand out of the stadium into the River Trent. On any other night, you presume Forrest would have won that game very comfortably indeed, but the finishing last night was atrocious. They missed so many good chances. Wolves had a few chances of their own as well and could have possibly nicked it. Matthias Mane had a decent, reasonably good chance towards the end and shot straight at Stefan Ortega.

12:36But Forrest, yeah, they should have won by a lot. And if they win by a lot, then Dice presumably is still there, which is, you know, that's the way of this, isn't it? To Spurs then, we might as well do the sackings altogether. The statement says the club's taken the decision to make a change in the men's head coach position and Thomas Frank will leave today. Results and performances have led the board to conclude that a change at this point of the season is necessary. He was there for eight months. After seven games, Spurs were third two points behind Arsenal. They've beaten Man City away. Since then, only Burnley and Wolves have picked up fewer points than them.

13:10In nine games, no wins, two wins in 18. Frank has the lowest points per game average of any Tottenham manager in Premier League history. They are overperforming their XG. And their worst games under him, they generated 0.1 XG at home to Chelsea and 0.07 away at Arsenal. Johnny, your thoughts? Yeah, it didn't work, did it? I mean, you know, tried it. It failed miserably. Pack him off with a rifle, send him off to Greenland, send him back to Borgen. Yeah, I know. A lot of people were saying this was a pragmatic appointment after the madness of Ange Postacom. So, you know, we got a nice, sensible, let's get a nice, sensible Scandinavian man in.

13:55And I don't honestly think the decision was any more thought through than that. I really don't think Tottenham put any more thought into it. Levy liked the analytics. He liked the data, the underlying data. But the transposition of Frank from Brentford, which is a very well-run club with a very well-defined structure. Basically, it's Benham, it's the owner, it's the director of football, and then it's Frank. and the lines of authority are very clear. At Spurs, it's a lot more, they are very much going in through a period of boardroom transition. You know, they've lost a sporty director. We've had the departure of Levy.

14:32We basically now have an executive that is basically trying to learn football on the fly. There are no lines of authority, really. Everyone's still trying to learn where the lines of authority are. And this doesn't excuse any of the football, which has been awful. But I think as well as being too big for him in a stature sense, I think the job was physically too big for Thomas Frank. You know, he would turn up. There's a great piece by Miguel Delaney in The Independent. There were things that he was expected to do at Spurs that were just handled for him at Brentford. The job was physically just, there were duties that he didn't realise he was going to have to do.

15:04Which is weird because Brentford is a smaller club. You'd imagine there'd be more people to do more stuff at top. Right. But then, you know, he turns up, he says, who's in charge of the discipline here? And Spurs are like, well, it's the manager. the managers in shut but oh no but at brentford we had like an you know there was somebody on on the the sporting director you know there's something on the performance team who was who was assigned to this like who who's my point of contact on this and well we don't we don't really have that that kind of thing and then you know you get the fact that the football was was really bad and you know if you try to appoint a i i guess you know not a reactive manager because i think he did try to play football but he he was also trying to fix a defense he was he was basically try to build from a solid base and if you do that you kind of have to you kind of have to win you kind of have to get results on your side and you have to not keep giving away free headers in the in the six yard box i don't know where they go from here it's a really rotten it's a really rotten diseased club uh and i think frank is almost kind of he's he's a bit damaged goods now so so i don't think it's been a move that's been very good for anyone there's been interesting barry i don't know if you've seen it, like a Brentford fan has done this, it's about four minutes long, just saying, look what Brentford do, right?

16:20They brought in Uwe Rossler, they did well, Rossler did better there than anywhere before, he thought, I'm good at this, went somewhere else, failed. They brought in Mark Warburton, same thing, didn't have a lot of experience in the championship, he did better than they'd ever done before, he went, oh, I'm good at this, went to Rangers, failed. The same with Dean Smith, right, who went to Villa and it didn't really work out, and now Thomas Frank. And so somebody show this to Keith Andrews right because that's a really interesting part of the dynamic at Brentford that they have working that the manager is just a cog rather than the whole damn machine yeah it it kind of reminds me of uh Wilson's uh hero Valery Lobanovsky the former Dynamo Kiev manager had this wonderful Dynamo Kiev football team and other European teams started signing players from them but the transfers never worked out because they were just small cogs in this incredibly well-run Dynamo Kiev machine that couldn't function elsewhere once they were taken out of that machine and put into a different one and maybe that is the case at Brentford and you know could be similar Brighton or a similarly run club we we would need to see a a greater sample size, I think.

17:41I don't think Thomas Frank is a bad manager. I just think he was the wrong fit at Spurs. I thought he would be a good fit, but clearly he wasn't. Yeah, I agree. I thought he would be a good fit. And I thought at the Super Cup, I was like, oh, look, a pragmatic manager. Kevin Danso has a long throw. This is exciting. We're doing things differently. We're adapting to a better team. And then it sort of ended up being, actually, all they do is Kevin Danso has a long throw. And that isn't quite as good. I mean look we talked about Dyche and needing luck right if they win last night it's different Thomas Frank a bit like Antipas de Coghoun he's had loads of injuries right he's missed his whole creative force there in Madison and Kudusevsky and you know other players have been injured he's got this weird attack and you sort of think is that worth if that's worked three wins say that are defeats at the moment then they're pushing on the door of the Champions League I don't know I think you have to be lucky as well as good and I think he was probably neither Will.

18:34Yeah where last night at Forest every time there was a mischance it went to Maranakis every time on Tuesday at Tottenham it went to this collection of injured and suspended players sat looking slightly miserable and to sort of sum up the issues on the pitch and I think that is I've said it every week obviously Post-Coglu's failed Frank's failed maybe the problems are bigger as Johnny was saying and recruitment has always seemed a bit odd and it is fantastic that you're signing the best young players in Europe and that's your model and I'm sure Frank was in favour of that but the balance of those signings never seemed right.

19:15The top quality experience, I know Perlini's been there but he had a good start but not been pulling up trees since and the defence has always looked a bit off and problematic when your captain is layering off on social media repeatedly but then getting sent off at the weekend. So I think he has been unlucky. it's quite hard to turn a team around for finishing 17th to become, I don't know, the Champions League team that the club think it should be in such a short period of time when you're changing tactics. These things take time and by having those injuries he's not earned it. You know, similar when the fans go Tuesday night I was watching the game and just seemed pretty silent whatever was happening apart from the equaliser and there's no belief and so those things will count against you as well and the reason there's no belief because you're not getting wins the reason you're not getting wins arguably because you're missing some of your best players kudos these are the players that make things happen these are players that excite fans as well and you're sort of lacking a bit of that Xavi Simmonds has never you know he should be one of those players but isn't you know Solanke missed a long period and I think Frank's probably just been a little bit unfortunate you know you can look at his coffee cup with the Arsenal badge on that he brought from home and whatnot.

20:36But yeah, I think he has just been a bit unlucky in that the problems are far bigger than the dugout and even the injury list. Arguably, he's done nothing well. There were a few good results at the start, but the attacking data has gone off a cliff. The creativity has gone off a cliff. They haven't defended well. He hasn't made good substitutions, really. He hasn't used his squad well. he hasn't and ultimately hasn't spoken very well i think as a spurs manager it's it's really really important this is why andrews was such a such a good fit initially you have to speak well because you have to bridge that that incredible gap between expectation and reality spurs are a club that that has to have a story about if spurs is not a story it's nothing and frank had no no idea of what what he wanted to be and i think for a lot of fans it meant accepting kind of a smaller sadder colder place in the world and i don't think that is what inspires people so who should they get johnny they need surely they need a vibe they need to win three or four games and then see what happens in the champions league so they need i think a vibes person they need vibes yeah deserve it is a name that i like they obviously they want pochettino i don't think i don't think pochettino is the right fit at all you know he's pochettino 2026 is not the Pochettino of 2014.

21:55De Zerbe is what I like because I think he instantly lights a bomb under the whole thing and you want to see how they're going to play. Obviously, I think it ends in tears, but all Spurs managers, all Spurs reigns end in tears. They're like political careers. It's just the journey you can take people on in the meantime. So what about Ange back? Is this totally ludicrous for vibes? I mean, it would be amazing. A lot of fans would have it. I don't think they should have sacked him by the way i mean people you know i don't i don't think they should have sacked him after after winning the europa league they should have you know they needed to ride that train all the way to the end again is it different is it different when it when you come back for a second spell when when you're almost trying to to prove yourself where you're trying to to prove a few people wrong is it is it ever right to go back i don't know but i think spurs need a manager who can light a bomb under them you know things are bad at a football club and lighting the bomb under it is a positive.

22:52This will sort it out. We've got the fella from the quarry coming to just sort it out. Yeah, the house, the roof is leaking. What are we going to do to sort it out? We'll bomb it. No, but they do need somebody who is in the dugout for that Arsenal game that the fans like. Like the fans go, yeah, I want this. You know, everyone has to be on it. If it's hiding, you just go, they're all just go, meh. And, you know, Arsenal take the lead after 10 minutes and that'll be, oh God. anyway anyway more on that and on uh that'll do for part one part two will do bernie's brilliant win at crystal palace welcome to part two of the guardian football weekly uh rich says look we are still going down but can you have a huge shout for us somehow scoring three goals in five minutes it's nice to remember just how much fun football can be uh bernie only the second team to go two down in the first half of a Premier League away game and still go in ahead at the break after Spurs at Newcastle in 1995.

23:51You've watched a lot of Burnley this season, Will. Good for you. Did you think they had it in them? No. Absolutely not. 2-0 down. They've had some positive performances that haven't led to results, especially in recent weeks. I think in the past couple of games, the West Ham game, they were pretty awful, absolutely terrible and it looked like I'd say they'd gone mentally that the season's over, we can't compete at this level and going 2-0 down away at Palace a team who have done well in the past but not having a great season you'd have thought maybe this is the end but they've changed things up in the last couple of games, I think Hannibal playing is to add a bit of fire into what can be quite a passive team at times because you know he's a bit of a headless chicken uh often but you know he showed great composure uh for his goal like any headless chicken would that's what was known what we know about headless chickens is composure it shows the variety that Burnley have available you know Jay Dante is a really good championship player which is no shame in that and you know he can on his day you know perform for the 19th best club in the Premier League you saw what it meant to Parker at the end you know he's not always the most animated person on such a line but he probably enjoyed the celebration you know and the other thing about it it's fine having that five minute period where everything's going really well but did manage to hang on for a whole 45 minutes you really thought you were just waiting for the palace to equalise you know just going out corner after corner later on you're like this is never going to end well and it did yeah Joe Warwell in there you know a bit more experience amid the headless chickens.

25:40Quite sensible. I think Walker's looked suspect in recent weeks, you saw for the opener. It got done by Strand Larson. I want to stick up for the headless chicken. I want to stick up for the headless chicken. What other animal can you chop the head off and it's still walking around? Are they walking around like a headless chicken? That's a miracle. Still doing a job in the lower reaches of the Premier League. They do die quite quickly though. It's not like they don't carry on, do they? I'm pretty sure there's Still impressive. Yeah, obviously. I have decapitated quite a few chickens in my life, and I have never seen one run around after losing its head.

26:18You're just such a cold-blooded killer, Barry, aren't you? When you do the job, you get it done. What's your kill count, do you reckon, on chickens? My chicken body count, I'd say it's in the high hundreds. Wow. I suppose you lose feeling after the first few. First one's the hardest, Max. Do you ring or is it a... Do you have an implement or do you just bare hands? God. God, this is bleak. Yeah, just to be clear, I'm not some sort of bloodthirsty murderer who doesn't kick. I was working on a friend's chicken farm for a couple of weeks. When was your last kill, Barry? I would have been 40 years ago, probably.

27:01Wow. So you were doing it as an 11-year-old or something? 12. 12 I reckon 12 or 13 12 that's no age to start people decapitating chickens really is it I don't know does sound like the first chapter of a of a true crime story to be fair doesn't it well Max when you're when you're having your Thai Green Curry or your KFC those chickens didn't jump into the pot voluntarily you know someone had to get them there yeah small children child slave labour getting them to your running around like an oliver glasner defense exactly has has barry killed more chickens than james milner's made premier league appearances asked producer jolt's hard to say up to what's he up to now uh 653 maybe milner's got it but listen you know milner won't go on forever barry could go back to killing chickens we're gonna have to keep a totalizer aren't we um burnley couldn't get out of this barry could they no okay no chance nine points off forest they only played well for 10 minutes yesterday so do you feel for your interest around last and baz because you know a bit like brennan johnson but perhaps even worse you know he suddenly he's left walls everything is fine look i just there i kick it it goes in i head it it goes in this is fine football is easy and then it isn't.

28:26Yeah, it's a sickness, isn't it, for him? Oliver Gadsden was interesting talking afterwards. He basically accused his players of having gone 2-0 up or trying to show off and playing like they were having a kickabout in the park or playing with your kids in the garden. But he was quick to stress, obviously you don't tackle your children when you're playing with them in the garden. but there weren't too many tackles going in from Palace players they were losing 50-50s they were giving the ball away and yeah it was a good mugging by Burnley but I would be astonished if they kick on and go on a long winning run from here but who knows 8 points clear of the relegation zone Palace they know Glasner's going Johnny but they could get dragged down to it, they are sort of playing badly enough they always had that massive win against Brighton but really you know that is one sort of bright spot and a very poor run and there's a there's you know there's chaos at that club I think they'll just about be okay I think there are just about enough goals in that team just enough creativity but what what happens is I mean they've had they've been through hell this season on and off the pitch and what happens I think when a team starts to really flag is that they you know they still score goals because people like people like scoring goals what what tends to slip is like the organization the the spacing you know the last ditch stuff that the bodies on the line stuff and that's how i think you end up you know conceding three goals in in 10 minutes um and i think you know there is a physical and mental exhaustion to them which uh i think is a product of everything they've been through this season i think they will just be be about fine but but they are they are flagging quite badly uh villa one brighton nil matthew says don't do the pod until Brighton sacked Fabian Herzler.

30:18Really big three points for Villa, especially with Chelsea and Manchester United dropping points on Tuesday. They are, what, eight points clear of Liverpool in sixth, if we presume fifth will get you in the Champions League. But, Baz, one win in 13 for Brighton. Yeah, they're having a bad season. I think Brighton fans are making no secret of the fact that they're not happy. This wasn't a good game, but Villa did just enough to win it. Ming's header that kind of went in off Jack Hinchelwood at a late corner. I think Villa should probably have had a penalty as well as one of the Brighton players, I can't remember who, blatantly shoved Tammy Abraham.

30:57But that led to a corner, and it was that corner they scored from, I think. So they got their just desserts in the end. But I suppose the main talking point from this game is James Milner equaling Gareth Barry's record number of Premier League appearances on 653 so congratulations to him no doubt he will go on to beat the record and I don't want to take anything away from what is a brilliant achievement from Milner who I have a lot of admiration for I remember making his debut as a 16 year old but the disparity in the number of minutes both players have played is enormous so Gareth Barry has played almost 14 ,000 more minutes in the Premier league than Milner, which is the equivalent of about 155 matches.

31:49And I have noticed a lot of Villa fans are a bit chippy about the fact that Milner is going to take Gareth's record because Gareth has played so much more than or spent so much more time on the pitch with him. But phenomenal achievement from both players. I don't like Gareth Barry purely because he missed a sitter for Villa one time years and years ago that cost me a lot of money in my coupon a coupon busting miss at the death i think it was a penalty actually he missed but anyway um so i'm i'm in team milner on this one when he was so tired after all those minutes wasn't it good of you to bring an interesting fact before your 16 interesting facts but we'll get to that i feel we may not get through all 16 well we can try our Might have to do a bonus track.

32:36Okay, fine. To the top of the table, then Man City are now three points behind Arsenal, having played a game more. Arsenal playing Brentford tonight, of course. They beat Fulham 3-0, 3-0 up at halftime. This looked like a sort of classic Manchester City, I think. I mean, Fulham had a couple of breaks, didn't they? But apart from that, this was City playing good football, exciting football, lots of players involved in the goals. And I don't know if this means they're not going to start one of those runs, but it's exactly what they needed to do. Yeah, and obviously you look at Semenyo scoring lots of different types of goals.

33:11That's five and a half a city already. It's always difficult in the January market to sign players and they probably cost you a bit more money than you want to pay. But the role of those players is to instigate change, to ignite a season. And you look at Gay, you look at Semenyo, they're doing that. You know, the change in how set you play, they're looking a bit more solid at the back. they're looking more aggressive in the final third and that's really helping City, you know, you talk about the good play but the intensity in the press which I think sometimes lacks when things aren't going well for City, that wasn't the case, everyone was on top of Fulham making them, you know, make mistakes at the back and things like that and, you know, Haaland's going from open play is always useful and you know, even when he's not been scoring you see how well he takes that goal it's really impressive.

34:00Foden maybe should have been sent off for a nasty foul on Calvin Bussey but on the upside did look a bit more back to himself a bit more lively a bit more creative when he was on the ball so he can gloss over the old red card Well actually I don't want to because it is just such Johnny a frustration with VAR when you look at that and you're like how all we want is consistency Brian you know Humans aren't consistent and football is is a game of a million subjectivities where no scenario ever actually perfectly recurs twice it's not a it's not a closed system game so you can't have you can't have consistency there's always going to be a subjective opinion is someone interfering with play is someone attempting to play the ball the whole idea that you can get consistency is is it's just nonsense it's this sort of thing people like to spout on i was going to say talk sport i forgot i forgot you both work for talk sport hang on it's not subjective that rate the guy's ankle and that's his ankles is it i mean that is no but the what's subjective is you know the the the judgment over you know level of force level of aggression these are these are kind of value judgments well in the big consistency versus common sense debate in this game kenny pulled antoine's deadlocks and didn't get sent off whereas michael keane got sent off for doing the exact same thing to Tolo Arakadere, the Wolves player.

35:25So you could argue neither should have been sent off or both should have been sent off, but one was, the other wasn't. I don't really care one way or the other, but it's just different officials have a different opinion of what constitutes a red card defence. Just the other thing on City in recent weeks, that Pep's decide that Rodri really can't play that defensive midfield role by himself and there's lots of extra support in there which is really helping him and quite a pragmatic move from Guardiola which you probably didn't want to do but O 'Reilly's not really good in there Bernardo Silva being in central positions is really helpful and a sign that this is how City are going to play and look a bit more formidable a bit sturdier in that position so they're not suffering on the counter as much as they have been recently so I know Rodri did try to pull someone back when Fulham did count at one point because that seems to me his go-to move at the moment but you know it's a good sign for City that maybe they've accepted their own flaws and moved to correct them rather than being a bit headstrong potentially they have been in the past expecting Rodri to get back to Ballon d 'Or winning ways very quickly when it's quite difficult after ACL and you know injuries in recent months.

36:41So the Stadium of Light, Sandalyn's first home defeat of the season in the league they lost one nil to liverpool they missed granite jack a lot and actually barry liverpool played really well in this game and should have won more comfortably probably yeah this was ostensibly a 90 minute sumo wrestle between ibrahima canate and brian brobby brobby brobby with a football match taking place around it and liverpool were the vastly superior team Florian Verthes was brilliant again. Sunderland defended well. Liverpool had to rely on a corner to score from Virgil van Dijk, but I don't think the scoreline reflected Liverpool's superiority.

37:24Certainly no shame in this defeat for Sunderland. And as you say, they are really missing Granit Xhaka just for his qualities as a player, but I think more so his qualities as a leader and surrogate head coach on the pitch because I thought Sunderland were a bit meek last night. I thought they could have done more going forward. It's basically a free hit for them. This game doesn't matter if they lose. I thought they could have done a bit more on the attacking front. Sadly, for Liverpool and for Wataru Endo, he suffered a really bad ankle injury in that cursed right back position for Liverpool.