The West Ham crisis deepens and an EFL roundup – Football Weekly

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:30the new year. Liam Rosenia arrives at Chelsea. Martin O 'Neill arrives at Celtic again. And Darren Fletcher says he runs every big decision past Sir Alex. Seems time consuming. In the EFL, how serious is the Coventry wobble? Could Preston or Millwall last the course? We'll do a League One and League Two roundup as Cambridge have two points off the automatics. All that plus your questions. And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

0:54On the panel today, George Ellick from NotTheTop20. Hello. Hello. Welcome, Barry Glendening. Hi Max And Sani Rudravajala I must credit you with the time-consuming Darren Fletcher line It was yours and I stole it, forgive me Well that makes up for the fact that I'm late And I apologise to you and everyone else And the listeners, even though this is a podcast It makes no difference to them Well, I mean I guess if the podcast drops 15 minutes later It is Sani's fault And find him on social media I would say 18 minutes later 18, okay, blind me That's bad Not that we were counting Anyway, let's start with London Stadium in west ham one nottingham forest two martin says just looking forward to the nuno voice note i presume you've already written one tangy says instead of the post pod voice note can you do the pod as though nuno has already been sacked yeah if you're listening to this nuno has been sacked they're seven points behind forest it's such a huge result barry and i really feel i mean nuno we were saying before we came on it nuno does sad like no one else does sad but i think he was really unlucky in this?

1:54I'm not sure about that. I didn't think Nottingham Forest played particularly well, but I thought they were the better team. Alphonse Areola had to make an incredible save in the first half. Callum Hudson-Odois smacked one off the bar and then Forest went behind and I thought they went behind very much against the run of play. I'm happy to concede that Forest's winner, the penalty was the awarding that was contentious. And I think the second West Ham goal that was chalked off, I'm not so sure that should have been, but apparently the correct decision was made. If that is the correct decision, I don't think it should be.

2:35If West Ham get relegated, it won't be because Nottingham Forest beat them last night or it won't be because a bad decision or two went against them last night. They're a diabolical team. yesterday was one of their better performances in recent times and they still lost and I'm not going to say it's impossible for them to get themselves out of this mess it's only in inverted commas seven points but it's going to be very difficult and reports coming out of the West Ham camp seem to suggest that morale is at absolute rock bottom that the players don't particularly like Nuno, that he doesn't particularly like quite a few of the players, that he's very distant and aloof.

3:21David Sullivan and Karen Brady have been in charge of this circus for a long time now, and they're running the club into the ground. It's only three years ago since they won a European Cup, sold Declan Rice for 105 million quid. They've wasted every penny of that. I'm not going to say trot out the, oh, David Moyes, be careful, what you wish for. I could see the logic of not renewing his contract when he left. Yeah, it's an absolute mess. And even the fans seem to have given up. There was an awful lot of empty seats in that stadium last night and I could totally understand why fans wouldn't want to go to watch that crap on a freezing cold Tuesday night.

4:07Yeah, terrible stadium, terrible weather, terrible football. That should be the tagline, shouldn't it? On the penalty, George, you're not sure. Yeah, there's been very little controversy around this, I should say, and I should probably learn from the past that complaining about penalty decisions when no one really seems fussed is normally a way to make yourself unpopular. But I'm kind of surprised how happily everyone accepted that it was overturned by VAR. To my mind, there is a very big difference between this incident and, say, the Unana one against Wolves, where Areola and Gibbs White are both going for the ball.

4:45Areola with his gloves and Morgan Gibbs White with his head. But Thomas Suchet gets there first and therefore the ball doesn't get anywhere near either of them. So it's not the case that Areola is therefore wiping out Gibbs White who gets there first. My analogy is it's almost like a clash of heads where they've both gone for the ball, neither of them are anywhere near it. But because Areola has, he can use his hands, he's therefore been punished. it wasn't I don't think a foul in the kind of the classic sense of the word I can understand if the referee had given it a foul on the pitch why it would be upheld but I you know for VAR again it's the whole like do you want to forensically officiate every single moment of every game and yeah it's an incident where if you zoom in on the incident and you ignore the balls even in play and you do freeze frame you can obviously see that Areola makes contact with Gibbs White's face which in itself seems like it should be a foul but actually when you break it down he's a goalkeeper he is totally entitled to try and punch that ball there's no we don't know had Suchet not got there he might have got there ahead of Gibbs White it just seems like a punishment that in no way befits the crime it doesn't seem to me like the proper use of VAR as I say if Gibbs White had got there first and then Areola cleans him out then it's quite clearly a penalty but this isn't that and I can understand why Arionis seems pretty flummoxed when the penalty was awarded he looked like he couldn't really believe it because I normally hate when it's wheeled out it's a contact sport because quite often that's used to justify fouls but I think in this case if goalkeepers are allowed to come and claim if goalkeepers are allowed to come and punch then there's going to be physical contact and just because it's a hand to the face doesn't necessarily mean it's excessive force or anything like that so if I was a West Ham fan I'd feel pretty aggrieved that FIAR decided to overturn it.

6:31Yeah, interesting, because I had just gone, well, that's unlucky, but it is a foul. But you have given a very persuasive argument, George. I don't know if you're right or wrong. I think George has given a very persuasive argument. I don't necessarily agree with it, but what I think is quite interesting is Rob Green was a pundit on Sky, and after the game, he thought the decision to award a penalty is correct, and you would imagine he would be on the side of the goalkeeper. but he wasn't in this instance so make of that what you will and the offside sanny is i believe under the laws is offside he's coming back from an offside position there is a tackle and but the attacking player touches the ball so but even still it's one of those moments where west ham are better off if somerville doesn't score because if he misses then there isn't this kind of the wind goes out of your sails you thought you were 2-0 up and then and then maybe Nottingham Forest don't come straight back into it yeah and that moment of relief as well around the stadium for those fans that were there there was that real kind of palpable feeling even watching on tv that maybe we've turned a corner and all of a sudden they haven't I mean as it happens on the offside because I I mean I made a snap decision after 20 minutes on the whatsapp group and Kostas Janos and said I'm not so keen on this guy I just looked at his um just just you know just lazily looked at his stats and um the fop mob app makes like a pro evo style little diagram and his his map kind of looks as if he's a big man who gets himself you know not too many touches and knocks it down and costigianos and he's a big guy he's like five foot ten so okay right so what does he actually do here and you know his opportunities didn't quite take him and i suppose it would be amazing if he'd hit the ground running but the offside came because he'd made a run and because he's new and he what we signed like the day before like the players don't quite know how to play with him yet you know obviously they're only still learning that and so he times his run he doesn't get the ball i think it was somerville on the on the counter originally quick enough and so he's already moved slightly offside because he hasn't got the ball in time and he's coming back so that was kind of the where i think that that offside kind of came up because that's like his back and his ass was offside or something so it's like the it's the finest margins when uh with based out of a player you've just signed and then they had the other their other um brazilian signing on the bench as old didn't you who came on and took one and skied one like 20 yards over the bar or something which was just it always looks worse in that stadium by the way it probably wasn't 20 yards over the bar but perspective just makes it look like it's gone into outer space yeah it was really unfortunate and it kind of sums things up doesn't it and so all in all very depressing and you're right Nuno does make some very sad faces I mean Barry's summation of it all made me feel really depressed and then George's explanation of it not being a penalty I watched the replay whilst he was saying it like 18 times now so he's kind of won me over too so I'm in a very impressionable mood clearly but overall yeah very sad very sad for West Ham it's all going to come to Nuno isn't it and also the other unlucky point is that Kyle Walker-Pieters is so short and if they'd had someone slightly taller on the post he might have headed away the equaliser Barry what do we do we think I mean Nuno is not in a great spot but what do West Ham do they've given him a lot of money to spend in the last few days I mean they could do anything nothing would surprise me having him there clearly isn't working if you're going to replace him who do you replace him with who would want that job I still think he was nuts to take it I don't know if Max is joking by the way I have no idea yeah I don't know I wouldn't be even remotely surprised if he was fired you know as is customary five minutes after we're finished here uh that would be his second sacking of the season which is uh two nice payouts but it's a record you'd imagine nobody wants i don't know i can't predict what david sullivan and karen brady will do because they could do anything yeah um meanwhile it's i mean it is massive for forest george isn't it and we were thinking you know is this squad too good to be in that position or is actually if you look most of the premier league squads are quite good and so someone will be about 16th 17th with not a bad set of players yeah i mean last season 16th 17th was Manchester United and Tottenham wasn't it so um yeah and that's that is that probably are a bad set of players but you know this is definitely the case where the premier league is getting more competitive you know this season in particular because you've got Sunderland who came up and basically completely revolutionised their playing squad into a Premier League squad over the course of one summer and Leeds who you know were incredibly strong coming up out of the championship anyway which meant which means that what's been quite a cushy life if you're a kind of bottom half Premier League side knowing that the teams coming up from the championship are generally going to be much worse than you means that teams like West Ham and Forrest are now really under threat I do think if you look at Forrest's team like Elliot Anderson will start for England in the World Cup this summer.

11:35He'll probably be playing centre midfield for a team with aspirations to win the league next season or Manchester United. Aspirations, I did say, that kind of still works. Morgan Gibbs-White is another one who could easily play for any team in the country. So they do have the quality through their team. But yeah, I guess what happened last season probably means that expectation levels rise beyond where they should be. And it's not a huge surprise that they kind of regressed a little bit, especially with the added intensity of having to play European football too on various Thursdays. So yeah, it is, you know, this is always going to happen.

12:09Teams are always going to drop off. But certainly when you look at the squads and the 11s, Forrest looks to me to be far more stacked than West Ham's where, yes, you can still point to a couple of quality players. For the most part, it's a bit of a shambles. Yeah, I think it's a massive drop from, you know, Forrest to West Ham. Moving on, as expected, Liam Resenia, as we pronounce it, was appointed Chelsea head coach yesterday. quite a short contract for blue coast standards six and a half years the last manager that lasted more than three years at chelsea was jose about 20 years ago signed from strasburg of course he said i'm so excited for the future my whole life has worked to be a coach now to be presented this opportunity at world-class football club is something i've always dreamed of uh with that is a mixed emotion of sadness what i'm leaving behind this is the last day i wake up as strasburg manager the strasbourg supporters federation are angry about this angry about bluco's involvement anyway in the club and they said the transfer of liam rosinia marks another humiliating step in racing's subservience to chelsea for two and a half years along with others we've been trying to raise the alarm about this the problem goes far beyond the mid-season sporting impact and ambitions of a young coach it is structural the future of french club football is at stake and gary and gary i was going to call you gary barry but that's because gary o 'neill is the new manager but barry they make a very good point don't they this is the multi-club ownership model will always have these problems yeah they do make an excellent point um and the dead right i don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it's a big problem for french football because nice are in a similar position but despite the fact that blue co have pumped millions and millions of into Strasbourg, these fans would rather be poor and worse, but not have to be beholden to Chelsea, which is what they are.

14:02And I don't think it's right that a top-flight team in one of the big five leagues in Europe should be basically like a spare parts shop for a top-flight team in another league. I think their use of the word subservient is absolutely spot on. It's technically a partnership, but they're very much the very junior partner. And Chelsea just used them as somewhere to farm out players they don't want or cherry-pick players they do want. And now cherry-pick manager they want. Strasburg are seventh in the tough flight. They're not some minnows who just stumbled upon promotion or something. They're a good side, but how are they supposed to progress if whenever anyone at Strasbourg is doing well, Chelsea just go in and go, oh, we love that.

15:01Yeah, thanks. And even if they were minnows, the principle still stands. George, I just wonder, have any League One or League Two sides, I don't know if you know this, kind of been on the radar of a big side in another European country you know we don't sort of see it that way that that you know someone in League Two gets picked gets picked up by Barca I remember when I was about five years old the front page of the Oxford Mail saying that we're going to get bought by Juventus uh we being Octo United but um since since then I haven't really heard of anything uh off the top of my head I don't think any League One or League Two side has been part of a multi-club model as of yet i mean surely it will happen i guess there's probably a financial you know the the cost of investing in um clubs lower down the pyramid in other countries will be far far smaller and and and much less than than buying one and lead one lead two right now but i guess with the you know if the independent regulator is successful then that might change over the coming years um it's something that i would absolutely despise frankly having really hated the idea of B teams entering the EFL trophy which happened as a possible way for them to come into the EFL.

16:10I think multi-club ownership would be just pretty similar to that in terms of things we wouldn't want to see happen to our pyramid. Are we forgetting Roman Duchatelet who was owner of Charlton and his multi-club ownership included owning a series of clubs across Europe that were all terrible and progressively made them all worse at the same time. I don't know if that really counts but But yeah, Charlotte Vance were happy when he left. Maybe not. But it does mean you can do the best. It's the best name to say is Jim White, isn't it? Roland de Chatele. Celtic parted company with Wilfred Nancy. What a pity.

16:46His 3-1 defeat by Rangers, his sixth loss in eight matches, his 33-day run, the shortest in the club's history. Martin O 'Neill is back and his press conference, Sani, was great fun, wasn't it? I mean, clearly this is a guy that just doesn't really... I wonder if he feels so liberated. that that will reflect to the players immediately. It's just this sort of carefree saying stuff about players who wanted to leave and didn't and going, should I have said that? I don't know, who cares? It's like the Heineken advert, isn't it? Heineken, Schmeineken, champagne, caviar, whatever. Yeah, it was amazing.

17:19The start of his press conference opened, and I put it in our WhatsApp group, opened with him saying that he'd had a seance with Elvis and Frank Sinatra and they were both upset with him that he's had more comebacks than them. And then he goes, don't put that in. Let's start this again. That was a crap joke. Not realising that this was essentially going out live on Sky Sports. But what I've noticed is I don't think anyone else has reported this. I think it went out and then no one else has, everyone's gone, oh no, we really don't want to upset Celtic. We don't want to upset Martin O 'Neill this early.

17:54Let's not mention it. But it's gone out on live TV. I can't have been the only one who's seen that. but we don't want to upset the estate of Elvis perhaps yeah maybe and then there was a player that he mentioned sort of wanted to go Dyson Maeda yes so Dyson Maeda one of the reporters I said but Dyson Maeda and he just reveals that he was going to go off to the Bundesliga I think it might have been Wolfsburg he says it in that sort of tone and they're like is that news to you oh he wasn't going to go there that wasn't going to happen but it's great but i guess when you've got he's the scrooge mcduck uh in this situation when it comes to credit in the bank at celtic like he could do whatever he wants and he's okay because of what his record's been because then he came back and won every game like uh and because they are completely up the shitter and they've had to come back to him again i mean i saw a great uh post online that he basically just needed christmas and new year off in between his job and just took the leave and came back, which is a great way to look at it.

19:01And if that press conference is anything to go by, yeah, he's his own man, and I have no doubt that he'll make a success in the short-term period of Celtic boss. I mean, he can't do worse, can he? I feel a bit sorry for Wilfred Nancy, I have to say. He leaves Celtic with his reputation in tatters, I think, and his spell in charge was shorter than Martin O 'Neill's interim spell before he got the job. I mean, that is... You can dress it up any way you want. It's humiliation. I notice all his backroom staff have gone as well, and Paul Tisdale, who we spoke about a couple of weeks ago, Celtic's director of football, he also got the boot.

19:47So he's clearly been blamed for this mess. I think O 'Neill you know he's in his mid 70s he seems to have quite a lot of energy he seems well up for the job but he's a chippy character he's quite spiky I like him I hasten to add I'm a big fan of his at least him being there now and I reckon Sani's right he probably will be successful they do need to plan for his successor and if they get the next one wrong but yeah just like West Ham there's a lot of blame to go around at Celtic but at least they seem to have hit on a decent temporary fix I saw a really good about 10 days or so ago someone said that Wilfred Nunzi might be committing the perfect footballing crime where he could go to Celtic in the MLS off-season get sacked before the season starts and be back in the dugout for Columbus Crew in his previous job having had the payout from Celtic but annoyingly for him Henrik Rydstrom was appointed manager of Columbus Crew five days before he was sacked so that opportunity is gone I hope he does come back in some somewhere somehow but you're right Barry I do feel for him Darren Fletcher gave his first press conference ahead of Manchester United's game against Burnley he spoke pretty well I thought lots of cliches of course can't disclose if he'll play a back four he did say the back four is a club formation though he's reached out to Ruben Amrim but not heard back two blue ticks but nothing he doesn't make any big decisions without speaking to sir alex to and he and he wanted sir alex to give him his blessing as well i mean which i mean it reeks of dna that it's exactly the right thing to say isn't it it's like every bit do you think is it is it not exactly the wrong thing to say because isn't this manchester united's problem that oh yes kowtows sir alex ferguson and by all means ringham ask for his blessing ask for his advice to ask for any pointers but don't tell everyone that's what you've done because you know this is half the problem at Manchester United he's this specter at the feast well maybe but but the fans the fans love it you know that's what Ollie for his whole tenure would come out about young players and say he's the new Michael Carrick he's the new you know whoever else it's all the Manchester United DNA because it's been so long since any kind of tangible success beyond moments it feels like at times where things are darkest they need to lean on that just for basically pr reasons um to win people over which but football is nostalgia right you know football is nostalgia you know like like that's that's sort of part of why we love it so you know if somebody can come back and do this i always think everybody talks about sir alex phoning them up or them phoning he can never he's never off the phone the guy you know give him a break let him watch macgyver he's not got any time because he's on the phone to every ex-manager he's constantly talking to you know young players you know just you know i don't know his data he must be running out of data yes sir just on that nostalgia right so last night i went into the guardian archives and found the guardian republished frank mcfee's analysis of alex ferguson getting the job uh in the wake of all the previous managers who hadn't got the job so that's in 1986 um and it almost read like it was now and alex is matt busby and how every other manager had hadn't had that gravitas or had lacked that option that part or they had the enthusiasm but they didn't have the tactical ability it i haste to say uh it might be that we are uh just repeating ourselves over and over again but it was exactly the same it was that it was an incredible uh incredible bit of writing there's a bit where um he recalls one of the directors had tried to tell Matt Busby about tactics and what to do.

23:44And Busby just pulled him over to one side and said, don't you ever tell me that ever again? And his director never once did. So it felt very similar. So this idea of nostalgia, it's actually rooted in the fabric and the DNA of the club. We've been in this situation before. And if you listen back to Football Weekly from 1986, we are having the same conversation. Anyway, that'll do for part one. Part two, we'll begin our roundup of the EFL and the Championship.

24:14welcome to part two of the guardian football weekly so the top of the championship looks like this uh coventry have 52 points middlesbrough 46 ipswich 44 have a game in hand preston and millwall on 43 watford on 41 and hull on 41 they both have a game in hand as well stoke at eighth on 40 wrexham at ninth on 40 as well chris says oh coventry gonna do a walsall uh this season winless in their last three sort of two wins since the start of december they are six points clear george but what is this a wobble the blip a crisis what's happened it's somewhere between it's definitely not a crisis but i'd say they've been wobbling for too long that they're kind of really off balance now you know i think all be the wobble you're still maintaining your center of gravity i think they're starting to lose that true at the moment um because not only have the the results turned you know they they haven't won in their last three they've won one of their last five and that was a pretty unconvincing one they'll win at home to to Swansea but the I would argue that the performances haven't been great dating quite a long way back to kind of the end of end of November they they lost 3-0 to Ipswich on the 6th of December and since then the the performances even in their good results haven't been great um their best players have gone from being you know Victor Torp early in the season um who now is you know has lost that goal scoring touch Brandon Thomas Asante who had a ridiculous purple patch uh Hadji Wright at one point these attacking players are now kind of struggling for form and instead it's Carl Rushworth their keeper who I would say has been the the main part and the main reason for the points they have got in this time Ipswich have kind of done a double over them and twice but by far the better team so yeah having kind of thought that there was an unassailable lead they have to improve because they are both in terms of results and performances way off where they were early in the season i mean middlesbrough have been on a pretty dodgy run as well sanny so it does sort of concertina if that's the right i'm trying to think does that does mean that doesn't it you know like it it makes it more exciting yeah it does um just just briefly going back to coventry because i've watched quite a lot of them uh five life keeps sending me to coventry in a literal sense um and you know frank lampard said to me that he's complained about his squad being quite thin relative to other clubs in his position and and if you think about the run that they had it was like a it's almost a different player within a period would then perform really well Victor Torpe was was a great example actually before that had you right and they've kind of burnt through quite a few matches um they've had a few bugs going around as well I shook Frank Lampard's hand after my interview and then realized that he had the flu but thankfully I'd had my jab so I was okay okay good that's that's a good phone in that's a great text topic for a radio have you ever got ill have you ever got the flu from a footballer i'll keep that in my back pocket so so um they need reinforcements uh they really do and i think that they would be able to to steady the ship but yeah uh george is right like carl rushworth has bailed them out a lot for middlesbrough i mean they had that great start and and and helberg was like get everyone forward get it get it going and we'll just get the results and then yeah it was uh four games uh we've had losses or defeats uh losses or a draw and in a 4-0 win against Southampton to kind of if you think that Middlesbrough and Coventry both are like non you know they're not recent Premier League teams are they they've not got any of the parachute payments they're not got any of the the players of that quality I guess with thinner squads you're expecting a drop-off and key players if they aren't on it every game they're easily shown up in a in a league where it's quite similar team so then you look below them and someone like preston which you know was that was that last for when i don't know what day it was i was there the last game it could be any day um and you know they've got a couple of players coming back lewis dobbin from injury uh militant osmaiic from his his ban for the racial abuse of hannibal medjbury for which he uh vehemently denied and then you think right well they've all of a sudden raised their level significantly having those two back and that could give them a real a real chance so it's a real kind of middling league especially when you think that the those teams were expecting albeit ipswich are up there i haven't been there this season at all yeah and actually on that financial thing george can coventry like afford to go big in january and actually for those clubs like preston and millwall you know watford and hull you know the teams that do not often make it you know the you know i've never been in the premier league like preston or millwall so i feel that do you gamble do you go this is january below we're this close do we do we gamble i would say that most championship clubs are gambling every single season given the spend versus revenue it's part of the reason why the league's in such a mess but yeah it does for this season in particular there is there will be clubs who will look at their potential to get the premier league at the beginning of each season so for a millwall or a preston that's probably going to be what two three four percent and look at what that percentage chance is now and think you know we have to make the most of this we have to capitalize this opportunity and January is obviously the opportunity to do that with Coventry I wonder you know Doug King there since he's come in as their owner he has definitely supported them financially I would say their recruitment has been very good rather than just spending big like they spend their money incredibly well interestingly the only player they brought in so far is Yang who has been at Portsmouth this season and really struggled to make any kind of an impact until he was the player that scored that that goal um that you wrote a piece about max um that shut up the the Charlton Athletic fans uh who are singing we never lose a Fratton Park moment of 2025 I loved it so I've watched it so many times Frank Lampard obviously read read your piece and thought yes I want to buy this guy I want to sign this guy so he's now been sent packing from you know to to have a loan at a team struggling to avoid relegation and not get in the team and then suddenly turn up at the top of the league is uh not a move that we're used to seeing but yeah I I don't think we'll see Coventry spend huge amounts of money.

30:02They've got a very good squad and a lot of depth in that squad too. I would imagine that the club are, it feels like they are run in a way that they won't panic because of a few poor results in terms of who they look to bring in. But yeah, I think because Southampton, they'll be miles off it this season. Leicester are obviously not going to be troubling. Well, it seems like they're not going to be troubling the top end of the table, especially if that points deduction ever comes in. There will definitely be non-parachute payment teams who are currently in the top eight or nine who are looking at this window saying, this is the time that we've got to go for it because we're never going to have a better chance to get there.

30:36Sure. And Wrexham could be one of those as well, George. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know, the romance has now gone, Wrexham. Is that how we're meant to describe them now? Was there ever any romance? But yeah, maybe. I think we have to just assess them for what they are in terms of a team now. And I think Phil Parkinson deserves massive credit. I know that people like to... when teams spend money it's fashionable i guess to downplay the achievements of a manager as if it's just easy to win games of football and win promotion when when your your owners are giving you lots of cash i don't think that's necessarily playing out generally we see a lot of teams who spend a lot of money who have high budgets underperform uh for parky to come up into a league where he's really struggled in the past his record in the second tier is poor to turn this rexham team very quickly into the very worst and mid-table championship side especially given when they were 3-1 down after 25 minutes on Boxing Day against Sheffield United in the late kick-off they weren't that far clear of the relegation zone and at that moment in what was a really poor run of form it looked like the wheels were kind of coming off and they came back and won that game 5-3 they've won every game since and now they're on the fringes of the playoffs and again because the league is so open and because it kind of feels like you know if you look back at previous championship teams at the top end there's normally a kind of relentlessness to them whether that's burning leads last season and as soon as Sheffield United kind of stopped being relentless in terms of their winning they fell away very quickly whether that was Zipswich and you know whoever else finished around them the season before Leicester, De Mureska like normally the top teams just churn out results consistently that isn't really happening now that Coventry have dropped off so yeah I think Wrexham have a huge chance if they continue the way they're going and finishing the top six.

32:20If you're in the championship, basically, you're either in danger of getting relegated or you're in with a chance of getting promoted. Or both. Yeah, or both. Do you expect an awful lot of championship sides to just sack off the FA Cup with the third round coming up of the week? Yeah, this weekend, isn't it? 100%. I think so. I think there's a lot of managers going, we need to give our players a rest. and we'll do that in the cup. I think we're seeing that increasingly. Hope Birmingham do. So I do think we'll see a lot of rotation. What is it, 22 games on TV? Yeah, I'm not so sure how many of those will be as great as they could be.

33:01Well, you know, reserves against reserves. Who knows? You mentioned lots of teams in danger of going down. Yeah, so Sheffield Wednesday on minus seven, but then they've all played different number of games, but Oxford have 22 points, Norwich 24, Portsmouth 25, Blackburn 28, Charlton 29, West Brom who just sat Ryan Mason 31, Swansea 32, Sheffield United 32, Southampton 33. Sadly, we just saw Ryan Mason. They lost 10 on the spin away from home, hadn't they? They started the season really, like first four games or something, they started really well, but it just hasn't worked out. Yeah, it's very unfortunate because, you know, his reputation as a coach is there.

33:37But I think sometimes there've been some big moments where some of his decisions, which come back to him as far as like substitutions go, have kind of hurt him as well. Mikey Johnston who continues to be really good like anytime you might you might see him pop up on highlights or you know on social media doing something like he's still that guy again against Leicester he was excellent they were in the contest and um he hit the post at one point he was still causing loads of danger but I was at West Brom's trip to Coventry a couple of weeks before that where they were leading at the break and Mason subbed him off at half time for no reason and And it completely derailed the momentum.

34:13In this game, in this run of 10 without a win, there have been some strange moments where it didn't have to go that way. And the UA fans are understandably frustrated. Had it been 10 home games, I think he wouldn't have lasted this long at all. And I think that record is like a century old or something. They're approaching that. I mean, it's really bad. And as it happened on that post-match interview, I actually didn't ask him a question. he looks so kind of defeated and you know you're saying it wasn't good enough and he said quite a few things of that sort of ilk post-match i just let bbc radio wm's reporter ask the questions and i was like it's all right brian i don't have anything else to ask you don't want to rub it in so i feel i really feel for him um he's been ground down and uh i hope he can bounce back but it's yeah it's a very it's a really difficult one and um they've had to sell a lot of players as well but within that someone like Hegeber has been amazing he's like a proper poacher in the box you know running at full tilt and getting his toe on the end and getting a goal so they've got like some of the tools there they've lost quite a few but yeah he's just not managed to pull it together it's very unfortunate and wherever they are where are they now on my little crib sheet that Barry definitely didn't look at 18th on the table it's not great is it I mean you can't call the league table a crib sheet Barry doesn't need a crib sheet he's a EFN expert exactly i think they're readily readily available league tables um oxford sacked gary rowett oh gary rowett just before christmas george uh your very own oxford united how do you feel impatient because it's been it's been a while since we sat him and we're still waiting for you manager i think fans are kind of getting a bit concerned as to why it's taken this long you know i know there was a bit of a public outcry when gary rowett got sacked the perception being that you know can oxford get any better than Rowett possibly not in terms of a previous CV but you know he gave an amazing post-match interview where he basically said he'd run out of drawing boards and I think you know Rowett himself would probably concede that you know despite the amazing jobs that he's done in the past maybe you know the his grip on the team and the performances were sliding and he wasn't necessarily sure how to get the best out of this side and I would definitely think that even though the perception is that Oxford should get renegated this season we've seen in certain games that this is a squad very capable of winning games and doing so on the front foot with a kind of a core of very good attacking uh players um and or technically good players which isn't necessarily what roward likes in terms of of the success he's had in the past where it's mainly been built built on really good out of possession shape and good defensive unit which is something that we maybe lack so intrigued to see who's going to come in as far as i know and and again sound perfect oh my god um yeah but it's as far as i know that you know the club kind of concluded an interview process uh just after christmas and you know i've been basically waiting for the owner to to make a decision as to um which of the candidates he wants to be the manager and yet it's the 7th of january and we still don't know so and there doesn't seem to be any um you know white smoke uh yet coming from the from the stadium so we'll have to wait and see um but it's going to be a big job whoever takes it on and i think it's it's always so difficult for managers to come into a job now because you know oxford are odds on to go down in the relegation zone far away from from safety but i can guarantee you that if oxford get relegated this season the finger will be pointed at the manager regardless of the job that he's done which is just the way that what the world works so i can see why it might not be the most appealing and why maybe eric to here our owner who's a very ambitious very wealthy man um you know he might want a manager that is possibly unattainable but we'll have to see uh cheville wednesday of uh three members of the consortium selected as the preferred bidder have been revealed uh they describe themselves as a privately funded group of investors led by james board and felix romer will with al-sharif faisal bin jameel described as the consortium's chief executive sani george do we know anything about these people uh james board is someone who seemingly has made a big name for himself in the in the world of poker.

38:16You know, there's quite a long list, I would say, of people involved in gambling, having quite a good record working at football clubs, given I think an understanding of probability and chance is quite an important thing for someone who's going to make decisions in football to have. The only concern for Wednesday fans is that James Board is also the man who is kind of credited with his AI company being the company that flagged up certain players to another championship club over the summer, who just happened to be their rival Sheffield United and this AI tool flagged up some players from Bulgaria and various other places around the world and they have not played a single minute and the club are trying to get rid of them at the moment.

39:00So that doesn't bode too well in terms of recruitment, although he's also the part owner of Dunferman who have done some quite interesting things in recruitment and a couple of these, I think they've got a centre-back who they brought in who's done very well a young player so I have to wait and see Did the AI players not work well because they were actually AI and that affected them They didn't actually exist Fair enough They kept having to give them prompts in order to actually do what they were doing on the pitch Just away from Sheffield Wednesday and just looking at any of the clubs just to quickly flag I would flag Blackburn Rovers who have been absolutely atrocious at home this season only won two It's a pretty depressing place when I've been there this season They did get a win against Millwall that was a couple of games ago and then two nil nils and then lost again so uh before before a two-two draw with um with producer joel charlton but it's it's really bad and uh lazy as this might sound but the return of todd canwell i think will be the difference between them staying up and going down they put a lot for him he's the only one who can kind of thinks about breaking the lines a bit and kind of gets play gets the fans off the feet and they need a bit of that it'll almost justify the fact he's got personalized gloves i believe um but that and some teams around them being even worse they might be the only reason they stay up it's been they've sold a lot of key players you know we know the the venki sort of model of selling on but it's it's very it's pretty depressing were it not for a very good academy and someone like campwell still available i'd be very worried for them aaron cashen's a very good signing for them as well i should say um they bought he had a really bad spell on loan at birmingham this season but he's not a bad player at all he didn't show what he's about what he's about there smart pickup i think will be a good one all right that'll do for part two part three we'll do league one and league two

40:46welcome to part three of the guardian football weekly uh so league one the top of it looks like this uh cardiff have 51 points uh lincoln 48 bradford 46 huddersfield and bolton 39 and stockport 39 stevenish 37 luton 35 and reading 35 played a few you know different number of games um how do we see league one then sammy well uh first off i'd say that lincoln continues to just be an amazing story and the prospect of lincoln west ham is a real possibility next season which would be very exciting for the away away fans to lincoln which is lovely and you've got a great view of the cathedral which is which is great uh 60 000 uh it's 60 000 stadium at west ham and lincoln might not work quite so well um so they've done amazingly well they're on this incredible run um very excited uh and kind of giving giving cardiff a run for the money so very happy about them um and uh you'll notice stevenage kind of dropped down to the into the play out of the playoff picture at the moment i kind of hope they can get back up there only because the the the job that Alex Revelle's done is essentially with you know not a massive amount of signings and they've all been just playing out of the skin but it does feel like they you know something like Huddersfield who was very slow at the start of the season but brought in all these players have kind of caught them up so yeah it's an exciting league league one yeah I think a sigh of relief went around Cardiff um because early speculation that Brian Barry Murphy might have been of interest to Strasbourg which wouldn't be a huge surprise given he was formerly he was Enzo Moreska's successor the Manchester City development team and we know that Chelsea like to recruit from the Manchester City Academy given the background of some of their kind of staff he looks well he will gladly staying I just cannot overstate what an incredible job he's done you know I know there is a perception that Cardiff in League One should be one of the better teams of the league but you look at what's happened to Luton this season already gone through our manager and Jack Wilshere not you know having having the best time of things albeit with a couple of better recent performances and you know Cardiff didn't really strengthen in the summer he inherited this group of young talent who hadn't necessarily you know the championship is a hard place to showcase it but he's brought them all on like now if as and when they return back to the championship I'd say Cardiff have four or five players whose market value will be well in excess of five million pounds and that's down to Brian Barry Murphy coming in and coaching them and implementing a really attractive style of play and it's a reminder I think especially as we hit the second week of January that fans were so obsessed with players' recruitment and there seems to be this idea that the only way that you can improve as a football team is to go out and buy players and Cardiff is a reminder that actually going out and being clever in your managerial recruitment can be the best value thing that you do and getting someone in who can take the group of players that you've already got and breathe some life into them, develop them as players is actually can often be a much kind of more streamlined and more efficient way to improve um i think he'll go right to the very top and um yeah cardiff you know i totally agree with sani that the job that michael scobar are doing pound for pound is is incredible but cardiff to me are the you know the best team in the league i'm sure they'll win it i still put i've just brought in josh stokes on loan who's the only good thing for cambridge last season he's a really good player uh sort of number 10 bustling number 10 from uh bristol city's really good just on josh stokes by the way um when they were playing huddersfield a couple of scenes ago i was walking back from huddersfield's stadium and the car park for the media is a bit away and the guy next to me was just wearing like a cambridge jacket so you didn't do too badly today and he's like yeah yeah i was like what what's your involvement in the club oh and i'm a player it was josh dokes i'd just be watching him for 90 minutes i didn't even realize he was the best player i hadn't noticed at all so i hope he does well um at the bottom then portvale a little way adrift 18 points or though they won the last game.

44:46Doncaster have 23, Rotherham 24, Burton 27. That's a relegation zone above that. Orient, Northampton, Blackpool, Barnsley. God, I mean, it is. Barry mentioned the championship was tight. This, George, is ridiculous in League One. Yeah, and we kind of joked in the championship that you can be in danger of relegation and promotion at the same time. I mean, it's no joke in League One. You absolutely can be. Like, if you are Peterborough, you know, going through a brilliant run of form, you are currently seven points clear of, sorry, seven points behind sixth, stop port on 39 points um but you're also five points clear the relegation zone like peterborough as wimbledon manfield those teams in there there's no doubt at all that they could either finish in the top six very very comfortably if they only could run a form or if they slide they could finish in the bottom four it's a it's a brilliant league um it's unpredictable this season you know there are the couple of of class teams but you look at cardiff lincoln and brefford at the top who have a big gap to huddersfield bolton and stop port but if there are three teams who you reckon could really make a run at the end of the season to crash that party it's probably those three given their the quality they've got on their team and their ability to to recruit in january as we've seen already from stockport and and josh stokes so yeah um and amazingly i wouldn't like to predict now um although i'm gonna have to next week who's gonna be going up and he's gonna be going down apart from as i say i think cardiff i'll be very surprised if they're not in the top two some run from peterborough at one point i was very excited to see that we would just we would bypass them on our way up from League 2.

46:09Sorry, who's the manager of Peterborough? I am aware of the Luke Williams. Do we have any more information on Luke Williams before for listeners who aren't totally across his life? The Swansea one. He was working in an airport in between jobs as well if you recall. He's been a porter. He's very good. He was the manager of Notts County who led them back into the EFL and then he got the Swansea job and as is often the case with Swansea managers he started well then it kind of tailed off a little bit but he's come into Peterborough and really improved them kind of plays good football and they've got a striker called Harry Leonard who they brought in from Blackburn who I think will be the it's been a while since Peterborough bought a striker for a million pounds and sold them for kind of seven million pounds but if they're going to do it again it feels like Leonard could be that because he is pure goals Max by the way sorry has there been any Australian reaction to John Brady taking it at Port Vale is he now like every Australian's third club or something has anyone noticed that at all I will say in the environs of melbourne's inner north there has been precisely no reaction to that news but more as we get it uh so the top of league two uh bromley have 48 points on a great run swindon 46 walsall 43 salford 43 mk dons 41 cambridge 41 chesterfield 40 knox county 39 uh i mean look sanny if bromley uh you know it would be some story if they won this if they went even if they just went up yeah it would be amazing uh it kind of feeds into the wider narrative of the the three up campaign from uh the national league because bromley uh were very recently in the national league of course weren't they so it's been an incredible run i feel like it's almost lazy to say you know michael cheek's just doing great but he is 12 goals but you know the team around him seems to be just doing so well uh the manager uh whose name escapes me at this moment yes andy will be i was gonna say he's a very charismatic man so charismatic i forgot his name he's gareth southgate's best friend that's all we need to know yeah woody and nord they wrote they wrote a combined autobiography together wow tell us more yeah it was called woody i mean i knew i know this because andy woodman was oxford's goalkeeper so i read it when i was about 12 they came through crystal palace together um gareth southgate is freddie woodman uh the goalkeeper's godfather godfather who's andy woodman's son again they wrote a book together called woody and nord which I can't imagine there are that many copies, but there is one on my bookshelf and it's just about them growing up as friends.

48:33Is it a page-turner? Is it every bit as good as Grisham? Look, you know, if you're an Oxford fan and you're 12 years old, it was a page-turner. I haven't read it since. I can definitely read it and let you know next time we're on the pod. How do you see the rest of the top of League 2, George? Just incredibly competitive again. League 2 is mad in terms of runs like Bromley's because the cliche in the Championship is that anyone can beat anyone. I don't necessarily think that's always the case, but in League Two, it's so unpredictable. So when you win five games in a row or six games in a row, you tend to fly up the table, which is what's happened with Bromley.

49:08Swindon having a brilliant season under Ian Holloway. I've doubted their staying power, but they're making me look like that might have been bias rather than any analysis, because they continue doing it. Walsall under Matt Sadler, for them to go again after the difficulty of last season has been incredibly impressive. I think a lot of people thought that they would drop off and sadly we get sacked but he's I think showing what a good operator he is um MK Dons despite being fifth have probably been a bit disappointing like with the money that they spent in the summer and I'm led to believe they're going to spend pretty heavily again in January and with kind of master promotion winner uh Paul Warn in charge we probably thought that they would have mounted more of a challenge on top spot than they have so far but you know I still think Cambridge are a team that because they're so solid and because they give very little away and because they've got neil harris who i think guarantees you a certain um benchmark um yeah i'm i'm still as i said last time i was on i'm still pretty convinced that cambridge are going to have something to say in the business end of the season yeah we look quite good i mean there's obviously that's when it gets worrying but i sort of started to you know just got just solid the peli rudder campenzu obviously went all the way up the leagues with luton is such a great player there was a really great moment uh i think it was gillingham away where um gillingham had a penalty and our keeper saved it he's very good at saving penalties and at the corner like you can hear someone's filming it might even be like one of the cameras and he is just saying to the crowd you sit down you sit down you sit down you sit down the corner comes in gillingham score a header and it's like okay mate maybe you you know it's not quite as good as the uh charlton fans but it's up there at the bottom uh harrigan and newport christian fuchs is newport both on 17 then shrewsbury 19 crawley 19 bristol rovers 21 barrow 24 and a bit of a jump up to them um who's who's going down chaps since we last spoke christian fuchs has got his first win that's a two nil against crew so that that's something so whether he's still being held to ransom by the guy who runs his academy for him and he can get back there i don't know he's two points off safety because that's that's all you need is a couple of wins so that that's a big uh push um harrigat it's Simon Weaver, isn't it?

51:17Whose dad's the chair. So he's never going to be in any trouble on that side of things. But maybe, are they running out of time now, I think? Have they burnt all their matches? Are they kind of, I don't know where else they can really go. They've been doing so well for so long, kind of punching above the weight. But then again, they're also only two points from safety. So it could be anyone, really. By the way, just very quickly at the top, I do think Warsaw are very much dropping off. I don't think they'll be going up at all. I'll spay the details for next time we beat them 2-0 and they didn't look great I suppose the interesting thing at the bottom of League 2 is those sides that were in league weren't you?

51:52Shrewsbury, George Bristol Rovers you know Bristol Rovers are our big team to be down there yeah I think they're probably going to get away from it now they had that horrific losing run which eventually Steve Evans managed to stop with a draw and then they were 2-0 up against Bromley on Boxing Day had a man sent off and lost 3-2 which is pretty frustrating but we saw them last time out go to Shrewsbury in what was a massive game for both Evans in terms of trying to get his first win but also for Shrewsbury given where they both were on the table and they went there and they won 3-0 and given the quality of the squad that Evans has got and given the underlying numbers their XG data was net suggested they were just getting ridiculously unlucky in terms of that they had something like 120 shots to score two goals in this run like it was a crazy run that couldn't really continue the turnaround was probably going to come and I'd be surprised if they got relegated big concern for Shrewsbury Michael Appleton is their manager who you know there is a bit of a history at the moment of teams going down from League One and then falling straight out of the EFL we've seen a couple of clubs do it Forest Green being one of them and a couple of others Carlisle being another and they look in massive danger of doing it again it's a club that have been looking you know for outside investment for quite a long time the fans I think are really frustrated with the inability to do that and to sell the club there were rumours in the summer that a sale was coming but it didn't come and it feels like a club that is just basically just falling behind the rest of football right now in terms of what they're able to do you know the perception from the outside is that they shouldn't be down there but I think and we said at the beginning of the season I think if Appleton keeps them up then that would be a pretty a job well done given the demise there and with Newport Newport are definitely improving under Fuchs but the difficulty for them is Sammy Braybrook who is their best player by miles and I'd also almost say in kind of a weird it doesn't often happen that one of the best players in the league plays for a team in 23rd or 24th.

53:46But I would say that he has been one of the stand-up players in League 2 this season on loan from Leicester. And Leicester recalled him and sent him straight to Chesterfield where he played 90 minutes on the weekend. So losing one of the best players in the league out of a team that are already struggling is going to be hard for Fuchs to deal with. But they're definitely in a better spot now than they were previously. So you mentioned Steve Evans there. Did you see how much weight he has lost? Oh, incredible. when he was unveiled as Bristol Rovers manager. It was quite incredible. I would say inspirational to all us chubsters out there.

54:20And then he sent five loan players back yesterday. So he's obviously in the mood for shedding weight. Yeah, no, it's quite an extraordinary. I didn't believe it was him. You know, yeah, you're right, Barry. Credit for the guy. Anyway, that'll do for today. Thanks, everybody. Thank you, Sani. Cheers, thank you. Thank you, George. Thank you. Cheers, Baz. Thank you. Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove, our executive producer is Danielle Stephens plenty of Premier League tonight and we'll be back tomorrow

54:49this is The Guardian