Arsenal put five past Leeds, Spurs out muscle Manchester City, and Everton win at their new ground: Men in Blazers 08/25/25

23:42Roger Bennett:You know, Man United away is a really hard game for anybody, no matter how bad United are. Jokeres against Leeds looked like the sort of player that Arteta needed, to be honest, which is a number nine who can score goals against the bottom 12 of the Premier League. That's what they were lacking. Arsenal's record against the top six or seven is great. In those tight games, Arsenal are really good. Their problem last season particularly was they would occasionally drop points to teams who were worse than them. Jokeres is designed to try and solve that problem through just being, yeah, being physical, being bullish, being kind of present, being direct.

24:16Roger Bennett:And against Leeds, he showcased that he can do the thing he has been signed to do. Oh, there was a slight darkness. Saka limped it off. Arteta said he felt something in his hamstring. The other side to the one that kept him out for three and a half months last season. Better news this morning. Word out of Arsenal is it's not as bad as feared. I do pray that the injury troop at Arsenal, which kind of undermined last season before it could really get started. Please God, we'll not kick in again. The depth that Arteta has tried to build into this squad in the offseason is going to be tested. I've got to say, irrespective, Timber then scored a second dude.

24:55I think he scored once before in the league, set-piece FC, just big buoying leads. He really didn't know what hit them and learn also that you can't play Everton every week, lads. Arsenal even had the joy of bringing on Max Dowman, 15 years, 235 days old, second youngest Premier League ever after Ethan Wigneri. Glenn in our Discord wrote, Max Dowman has read the story at the 2003-04 Arsenal season. and would have thought it happened so long ago. It was a fairy tale. Roar, he's 15. I mean, it is crazy. I think this, for me, was the first time in my life that I've realised my Premier League dream may be over.

25:36Roger Bennett:I think it is looking that way, Rog, but never give up. I don't think you should give up. It is remarkable how young Max Downman is. Testament, obviously, to the work of Hale and the academy at Arsenal. And it's also, there's something wonderful about it because I think Arsenal have, and I don't mean this necessarily critically, Arsenal have really fixated on signings for so long that there's always been this sense around the club of, well, we need to sign this type of player to solve the problem. He's the final piece of the jigsaw. We need to spend more money. There's an element of kind of criticism of the Kroenkees for not being maybe quite as generous as they might be at certain times.

26:09Roger Bennett:And it's really interesting to me that the summer when yet again Arsenal have been doing that dance, they've been through all those emotions. The most exciting thing about Arsenal is a kid they found themselves, that they've created themselves. This 15-year-old phenom who looks completely at home in the Premier League immediately. That's winning a penalty for Jock Rose to convert. That is not an easy thing to do at the age of 15. We talked about the uplifting impact of signing Eze. Downman coming through is even more uplifting. It's something else you get excited about as an Arsenal fan to watch this kid play who from everything they've heard for the last year or two feels like he might be a generational talent.

26:45Roger Bennett:You don't want to put too much pressure on him but Arsenal are really excited about him and this is a club that knows a thing or two about bringing young players through. If they're excited, there is reason for us all to be excited. I mean, there is an element where rationally there'll be a discussion about do you really need to be playing a 15-year-old? Should you be bringing him on? Is it a bit like Miss Huang in Severance? Like that is young. What is that doing? But he came on and looked so hungry, so confident, so unfazed really. It was his late run into the area, as you say, that won the penalty at the last.

27:18I was like, let him take it. Let Downman take it, you cowards. Can you imagine if he'd scored and we had a back page tabloid photo of him celebrating his own goal, like where the height would be? It's actually great management that he didn't. They sent up Jocares, who smashed it to the left, delivered the hair flicks into the camera, mocking the haters who laughed last week that he had more touches of his hair than he did touches of the ball. I'd just say celibance are a dish, best served cold. And Arsenal open up a can of whoop-ass. Leeds couldn't live with the corner routines, couldn't stop Saka or Jokeres from scoring, which was delirious for Arsenal fans.

27:58The team play in the final third, I'll say, still remains a work in progress, but they're yet to leak a goal. Injuries mean Eze is almost certainly going to make his debut, if not next week, but bloody soon. Only two teams have two wins so far. The Gunners and Tottenham, we'll talk about in a minute, Roar. Liverpool next Sunday for Arsenal, heading there with the corner routines polished. And I'll say awash with confidence.

28:26Roger Bennett:Yeah, it's perfectly set up. I mean, it's so early in the season between two of the teams you expect to be challenging for the title that it feels like it's going to be a draw whatever happens. But Arsenal will go in with the best defence in the league for the last few seasons. They will go in with a team that's scoring goals. they will go in with that confidence that even if they don't play particularly well, as they weren't against Leeds, they didn't look fantastic for that first part of the game. Then they'd score from a corner, which they're so good at. And all of a sudden, the world is their oyster.

28:55Roger Bennett:So I think it's a test for Arsenal. Obviously, it looks like Saka won't be playing. The suggestion is he's out for four weeks. I haven't heard from my mountain eerie what the prognosis on Odegaard is, but even without him, they have the depth. That's why they've spent all that money. that's why they look more convincing this year than I think they have in either of the last two seasons certainly on paper to challenge for the title it is very early we should remember that whatever the result you can't rule anybody out of the title race because they've lost the third game of the season but it's an intriguingly timed test I think for both teams Why can't we lose our heads and talk about favourites for the title Liverpool's title dream's over Shattered 180 minutes of football proof Well, everything and nothing.

29:39By the way, I do want to quickly say when I was watching Arsenal fans absolutely laugh with thunder during AZ's signing. There was one fan mocking Spurs. He talked about how Eberetje's signing would make Tottenham fans, quote, piss boil. And I can't stop thinking about the phrase. I know it's very common in England, the idea of being so angry that your very urine will just crackle. I mean, I don't know if it is 100 degrees for urine, the boiling point. I'm not that deep into the science of it all, but the idea, Roar, the poetry of it all, football poetry that those you hate are so angry that their piss is boiling.

30:18It's amazing. You know, I think, I can't stand that phrase, Rog.

30:21Roger Bennett:I think it is a social media thing. I don't know if I've ever heard anyone say it, but I might be wrong. If you use it a lot in conversation with your parents, with your kids, let me know. I think it's a social media thing. I don't, it's not my favourite use of the English language. It's not. I mean, football kids, it's like medical conditions, like twisted blood. And now just like, your urine is overheating. Yes. But does that not kind of show us where football has gone, that we've gone from twisted blood, which is this brilliantly evocative phrase of Geoffrey Green, I think, a football journalist from 50 years ago, talking about a defender being turned inside out, getting twisted blood, which is a brilliant piece of descriptive language to boiling piss.

31:08Roger Bennett:That feels like that is, maybe not even football, maybe that's society in a nutshell. I don't know. I'm imagining parents all over the north of England lecturing their kids going, you're making me so angry, you're making my piss boil. I'm writing a history of the World Cup at the moment for the World Cup where I'm working on a title and the publisher wants me to make it like emotional. And I'm wondering why they should just call it Twisted Blood, Piss, Boiling. What do you think? Twisted Blood and Boiling Piss, the history of the World Cup. We're doing work. We've done it. I know, my work here is done.

31:45From one side of North London to the other, Manchester City nil. Tottenham Hotspur 2. What? Less a footballing match. This is something I really do want to talk about. This game more than any other is more a symbol of football's ongoing challenge of the modern period, which is really more than ever distinguishing the signal from the noise. The game capped a week, in which everybody laughed at the Spurs. You know, injuries, Maddison, Kulisiewski, both long-term absences, the humiliating misses in the transfer market, Morgan, Gibbs, White, Eberichie, AZ, just an ongoing agony. And those two players, any loss, it felt like, I guess, going to be a phantom limb with which the team would be kicked in the face with.

32:28Thomas Frank had to talk quite beautifully in his press conference after being negged by Eze. It felt like Eze was definitely going to the Spurs, but chairman Daniel Levy had taken so long about negotiating out as if he was trying to buy the player on layaway. He said, I don't want any players that don't want to come to the club who don't want to wear this fantastic badge. We don't want them there. But the lulls kept coming. And we do need to go back before kickoff for one quick moment, Ru. There was a comment on the BBC which came from a bloke named Ian. It's worth reading. He wrote, Spurs mentality is like being a multimillionaire driving 25 minutes out of town because the petrol is five cents cheaper.

33:11By the time you get home, you've not saved anything. You've wasted a bunch of time, and everyone else is confused by what you're doing and laughing at you.

33:19Roger Bennett:I'm sure Warren Buffett would be like, well, that's where you go where the petrol's cheapest. Is that not the Warren Buffett thing? He'd be on board with that. Yeah, Ian, Buffett, have you heard of him? Daniel Lee. Come on, Ian. Come on, Ian. The rich don't get rich by spending money. Everyone knows that. Yeah, I think it's now probably fair to say that Spurs' desire to save money, not to be ripped off, to kind of be cautious with how they spend, is an admirable aim. But I think it has probably now crossed over into indecision. And that's not a novel thing to say particularly. I think over the last few years, they have gone very close to signing quite a lot of players.

33:58Roger Bennett:Eze's the most recent and because obviously where he ends up, the most emotive. But Spurs do often, or more often than they should, will miss out on players just as they are trying to be clever and do a deal at the right time, rather than thinking, if we spend the extra two or three million, then maybe, then we get a benefit of having the player in nice and early, not potentially losing out to them. There was one thing that I did find slightly odd about the Eze deal, Rog. Someone said, I think it was Matt Law from The Telegraph, who's a journalist who's very close to a lot of the London teams, tweeted to say that what had made the difference was not just Arsenal's speed and decisiveness in the market.

34:38Roger Bennett:It was Eze's emotional connection to Arsenal, and Spurs understood that. And I kind of thought, well, hang on, if you've got such a strong emotional connection to Arsenal, why are you even thinking about signing for Spurs? That kind of implies that the emotional connection is not that strong, but it will sting this one Spurs. I think for Spurs, I think this, this will really hurt. Not least because, well, not least as he's a brilliant player, but he's also a brilliant player of the type they really need. Yeah. I mean, we're belaboring this because we've got to remember that was the vibe before kickoff.

35:10I'm going to say also City have had the opposite problem this season to Spurs. Players duck or seemingly duck going to Tottenham Hotspur. Pep has so many new players in this squad. He's trying to inculcate his quite complex ideas in so many human beings. At the same time, Rinder's still learning. Turkey's still learning. Eit Nuri, et cetera, et cetera. Here, he unfilled the youngest City starting 11 for a Premier League game in 15 years. New generation, baby. This match last season, we've got to remember, was the lowest of the low for Pep. A 4-0 beatdown to Ange during that horribilis November 3-4 for City.

35:45And it was fascinating to wonder how are Spurs going to sit up? We'd seen them reactive, counterattacking in that near win against PSG. We'd seen them proactive in thrashing Burnley. It was quite surprising that at City, Thomas Frank chose to match up, pretty much fight fire with fire, set up to press City into moments of indecision, break the lines. And it worked because after surviving an early scare, I think it was Marmouche that Vicario smothered from early brilliantly. 35 minutes in, Spurs, who've been playing out the back all game, suddenly went long. Sar fed a streaking Richarlison, charged at the sluggish City back line.

36:24Sluggish City back line, by the way, that Wolves, remember, did probe until they stopped bothering last weekend. But the ball across to Brendan Johnson was stabbed to him. VAR took a moment to decide it was kosher. And God bless, it would get worse for Manchester City. 47 minutes, James Trafford, second starting goal. Poor kid. Totally botched the basic goal kick, tried to play out the back into traffic. Richarlison pounced. Trafford tried to smother, was ended up looking like David Hasselhoff, just floundering on the floor, floundering after a cheeseburger. And the ball fell to Paulinho last time.

37:01Roar, part of me is kind of like, field a goalkeeper named Trafford in Manchester. And of course, this is what you're going to get. But a question, better question from Discord for you from at Will C. my theory is we need to start talking about goalkeepers in the premier league like we do quarterbacks in the nfl like can you win a title without an elite goalkeeper rule that's a good

37:23Roger Bennett:question uh yes i think you probably can to be perfectly honest because it depends what you mean by elite you know i think if you've got a bad goalkeeper then no you can't win the lead but if you've got a perfectly good goalkeeper who's not one of the best in the world then you'll be fine i'm slightly slightly baffled by what's happened with the manchester city goalkeeping situation if you assume that Ortega was always meant to be second choice fine not a problem happy to accept that Edison is still there Edison doesn't appear to be in any desperate rush to leave it's not clear whether whether he wants to go or whether City want rid of him not sure if either of those things are true Trafford is a very promising young goalkeeper who did really well in the in the championship last season but I don't think anyone was thinking he is ready to replace edison at a team with designs on winning the title the whole thing seems very strange to me if i'm completely honest i don't think that mistake as egregious as it was i don't think that is indicative of kind of trafford's level but it does show that when you have a goalkeeper who's much more engaged with play than than would have traditionally been the case it's quite complicated getting that the patterns of the passing into them in such a way that they don't make mistakes like that there are always going to be teething problems and for James Trafford it's just a shame that it happened so early on in a game which City went on to lose because obviously if that happens and they win 3-1 it doesn't really matter but against Tottenham and again especially against Thomas France Tottenham which I think it might even not be a shock that Spurs won this game Rog because both Spurs and Thomas France have got a very good record against Manchester City so combine the two and it's not hugely shocking but obviously for Trafford it means that you know his his mistake looks like it's the one that led to City's defeat that's not a great way to start your career and Rube's now a band of PSG's elite shot stopper Gianluigi Donnarumma arriving I've got to say he's not the kind of keeper that's always comfortable with a ball at his feet which Pep's football demands so god bless I mean it is a it does feel like almost a self-inflicted wound at the moment the City goalkeeper crisis, but back to the game.

39:29This was suddenly a woeful city. It seemed like they just melted down like Medvedev. Cherokee was bullied off the ball. The defensive back line looked so ridiculously vulnerable up high. This was just the six-time Pep Guardiola had trailed a Premier League home game by two goals at halftime. That's how shocking this was to witness. In the second half, also shocking, needing to chase the game. I think they got just two shots on target chasing it. They were overrunning the midfield the entire game. Pep could not change it with his substitutes. Bernardo Silva, Phil Foden had really negligible impact.

40:05That would worry me probably the most if I was a City fan. From a Spurs perspective, Van de Ven and Romero repelled all comers. That is probably the biggest signifier of Thomas Frank progress. This was Pep's 10th defeat to Tottenham, which is remarkable. Joint most, I think, other than Liverpool. that he's had tough run of games to come for City now Brighton Manchester United then I think Arsenal Stephen Thorne wrote in the Discord what's happened to the team that played at Wolves last week Roar is the answer in there that they played at Wolves last week

40:37Roger Bennett:well you don't want to be too dismissive but you do look at you know we've just been praising Arsenal for playing a team that we expect to be battling relegation and swatting them aside and City did look great against the team who we expect to be battling relegation and they swatted them aside So to an extent, how well you play is defined by the quality of your opposition. I think with City, it's probably reasonable, the number of new players, as you mentioned, like there's so many new players there. It's probably reasonable to expect there to be a little bit of, you know, there'll be hiccups along the way.

41:08Roger Bennett:So part of me is very much of the view that come December, City will be fine again. Guardiola will have sorted everything out. but I do wonder whether more and more teams are going to play City and think we can get at them and the thing is once teams start thinking that it will start to happen more often it won't happen every week they're not going to get relegated but it will happen more often that teams look at them and think there are ways to to hurt this team and trying to re-establish the aura that they had they once had when teams are willingly having a go at you that's really tough yeah the way you describe Pep's biggest mistake was to make opponents forget that his team are immortal.

41:46That, tactically, is what you need to correct, Pep. For Spurs, from our Discord, at Carl, explained it away. It's all still Big Ang's season three. It just happens we recast Big Ang with a different actor. Happens in television. I'm just happy we got Thomas Frank and not Liam Hemsworth. At Judge Jed said, I feel cautionly optimistic, which is the worst place to be as a Spurs fan. I'd say, yeah, Jed's Jed. He's probably still stung by the eight wins and two draws two seasons ago under Big Ange. Also the three wins out of three for Tottenham under Nuno, who ended up last in, was it, 17 games. But I've got to say, to me, we've got to talk about the truth and really the truth.

42:30Thomas Frank's Tottenham remain perfect. And, Will, this is my biggest point here. This is the football on the field right now, which feels like it almost exists in a parallel universe to the narrative in our imaginations of it. Yes, there's a negative spiral around Spurs, injuries, transfers, talks about them at the top. But yes, Thomas Frank has Kudus, Richarlison, Brennan Johnson, leading truly a collective, intelligent, tactically intelligent, really flexible, victorious footballing side. To me, Spurs are exhibit A of the reality of modern football in the moment, where we live out almost a post-truth, almost a post-results world rule, where the narrative, the emotion of football feels like utterly smothering, and the rational, what we see on the actual football field, but it's not quite irrelevant, but it's almost shoved aside.

43:24Roger Bennett:Yeah, so it struck me after the Arsenal United game last week that we were living in a post-results reality, because as previously said, the team that won was criticised, And the team that lost was praised. And it just struck me as really strange. And that was based to an extent, I guess, on footballing factors. So United looked pretty good at times. And you want to see signs of progress in United. And Arsenal looked pretty bad at times. And you want to find question marks over whether Arsenal can win the league. But I think the much bigger shift, like you say, is that it used to be the case that Saturday or Sunday, when the game happened, that set the tone for the week's discussion.

44:00Roger Bennett:So the team that won would have conversations around them that were positive and, you know, can they achieve this? Can they do that? Can they go on and fulfil their dreams? And the team that lost would have the opposite. But now it just seems like it's one part of the drama, particularly in the summer and then again in January when the transfer window is sort of rolling on. the games happen but they don't necessarily make a huge amount of of impact on what the nature of the conversation is and i guess i guess those two things are related because you can win a game and be criticized and you can lose a game and be praised we have taught ourselves not to think that results are real and therefore in terms of the overall conversation around a team or a manager or a player the vibes the thing that happen the things that happen outside the match they're much more important because as we all know what happens in a match can be interpreted in a million different ways the team that wins can actually have lost and the team that loses can actually have won so why would you change your conversation for it yeah football is becoming ever more like Chinatown the end of Chinatown Jake and we always say on this show and I have to repeat it when I was a kid the English newspapers did not even used to print a league table until four or five games into the season, they always used to say, there's no point.

45:16The table doesn't show anything week two, week three. But we now live in knee-jerk overreaction city. That's where we all live together. And I just say Spurs fans, do not let yourself live in that post-result world. Your team are magnificent. Ignore the noise. Savour the wins. God, you deserve it. Another London team flying this week. Not you, West Ham. Hammers one, Chelsea five. um graham potter who spent seven months as chelsea manager really um a hard seven months really i think mentally uh incredibly difficult identity incredibly difficult let's just hit that mark at west ham and i'll say the death rattle is so audible his team are lacking in energy organization and you know ideas the basics and the levels of humiliation of a team giving up of a fan base on the cusp once again of despair, of mutiny, were really the scenes of the night which began with misdirection.

46:13Cole Palmer tweaked something in the warm-up. He was out then six minutes in. Estevão in his first start, cuffed up the ball in midfield. Paqueta swooped, drove, saw it as Robert Sanchez in goal and just let fly. God, it looked like Chelsea were going to suffer death by bubbles. You're laughing, Roar, but last week against the Palace, it was clear that their tactical approach to Chelsea was to shoot on sight whenever they could. Everyone's shooting at site on Robert Sanchez. The word is out. But Chelsea took it all in their stride, forced their way back into the game early often. It was 3-1, I think inside, just after 30 minutes, West Ham fans streaming out in disgust.

46:51Third goal by the way for Chelsea, created with a bolting run by Estevão, 18 years of age, floated through the West Ham backline in a style that was just utterly stunning. But that whole first half roar, that is football, Paqueta, a wonder goal, pointing up into the night sky, believing that it was his wonder goal that was going to define the night. And the next, he was just being crushed by cellar-bound possession, having his team be absolutely pants. One second, you feel you're soaring to the heavens. The next, you're just crashing down to earth with your wax wings melting and your own fans, I think, delivering more wanker signs per square acre than anywhere on earth.

47:31Roger Bennett:Yeah, it's not a happy place, West Ham, at the moment. And as you say, you've kind of seen it coming. there seems to be a futility like a pointlessness to West Ham they are, my observer colleague George Sims described them on Sunday as maybe the only team in the Premier League that don't have a purpose and I think that's right, they're not going for the title or for Europe obviously they're not a sort of team that's trying to promote youth or they don't have a clever recruitment strategy that they're trying to prove works, they're not a stepping stone club for other teams particularly but nor do they really give the vibe that they think they should be battling relegation.

48:06Roger Bennett:They don't feel like they're lucky to be here. They just kind of are. And that is, there's an ennui to West Ham. Not a Thierry ennui. There's a kind of, there's a sense of they don't know why they're here. Nobody else knows why they're here. And that in the Premier League can be fatal. There is nothing that is more certain to lead to disaster than drift in English football at the moment. And West Ham have been drifting for two or three years now. Graham Potter seems to be, I don't know if he's not the cause of it, but he's certainly a consequence of it. He seems to be caught up in it. He will probably be sacked at some point and somebody else will come in.

48:45Roger Bennett:There will be a bit of a bump and then they will drift again. And that is what it is to be West Ham. God, Thierry Onwe. My dad obviously passed away for over a year now, but when he just made that joke, it was as if he was alive. Oh, the over 70s would love that. They'd love that joke. What onwe, Roger? Thierry? Thierry Onwe? And I'm very proud of himself for making that joke. God bless you, Dad. I mean, you captured a lot there. I mean, it is. I heard from more West Ham fans than any other team over the weekend when they watched Everton's new stadium saying that's a new stadium done right because obviously the move to the London Stadium, an Olympic stadium with a racetrack around, atmosphereless.

49:23God bless them. It was not messages of hate or jealousy. It was like, just enjoy. We wish we had what you had. But you're right. There's a mission that is completely abject in the core of that club right now, which is sad because it's such a wonderful storyline to be told. It is a club with such rich DNA to work with, authenticity, history, youth, a proper London set of values, really a proper local club in their pond when they were West Ham United. Graham Potter, got to do better, is in great danger. I think he's lost more games and has fewer points than Lopetegui, who was fired at the same stage.

50:02I mean, my God, he was once the bright young thing in true danger of becoming a cautionary tale. That is a real savage footballing trajectory he's on. Goals continue to fall on goal in the second half, like snow on snow. God bless the West Ham goalkeeper Mads, flapped at cross after cross. I mean, he played like a man who proper hates his manager. and the darkness. I think if I was a West Ham fan, it was almost emotionless, the buckling. It was hard to tell if Chelsea were lethal suddenly at set places or West Ham were just not trying or couldn't be bothered. From a Chelsea perspective, can we say from this game rule that they are good at football or is it just that West Ham were truly that terrible?

50:44Roger Bennett:Same for Arsenal, same for Manchester City and it's Wolves. It's a bit of both, I think, that West Ham, this is a great time to play West Ham. There's no question about that. There is a kind of, they're not particularly skillful, they're not particularly quick, they're not particularly strong, they're not defensively resolute. There's nothing to really fear about West Ham. And Chelsea punished that ruthlessly. And that is a really positive trait to have. But at the same time, last week, Chelsea looked fairly toothless against Bristol Palace, who were a much stronger proposition than West Ham. So I guess what's the biggest conclusion you can draw?

51:18Roger Bennett:That Chelsea can be like that, that it exists within them. and the more often they can access it, the better they will be, I suppose. But it feels a little bit too early to me because don't forget there is that moment when Nicholas Fulcruid scores to put West Ham 2-1 up and it's ruled out correctly for, and what was described on Chelsea TV is an obvious offside. I think that's pushing it a little bit, but it was an offside. But, you know, half a step backwards, the goal probably still happens, Fulcruid still scores, West Ham are 2-1 up. And maybe that changes the whole game. it changes the whole narrative.

51:52Roger Bennett:So Chelsea still feels a little bit more delicate than that to me, but they have the depth and the talent to be a threat to anyone. God, that scene of Fulker thinking he'd scored doing his little dancing while the bubbles exploded around him. That is Tracy Chapman. Driving, driving in your car, speed so fast, felt like I was drunk. Henri, Thierry Henri, Roger, full of one, Manchester United. one. This is meant to be an easy, kind fixture for Ruben Amirim. His team, as you've said, got all applauded last week, but they still lost dot, dot, dot to Arsenal. Traveled to Fulham, who I think hadn't met United at home since 2009.

52:33But in a way, the amount of praise, retrospectively, that they got last week, when you think about it, all the green shoots of hope, it's a bit patronising. For those of you who remember Manchester United as a winning machine, this is more actually, retrospectively, the sound of pity being buckled on to a Manchester United who in this game, again, start to have creative hunger and desire. Cunha, I think in the first three minutes, smacked one just over the bar, then hit the post. I mean, they came out the gates. We've seen this from United. And then they kind of just see control. And Fulham stepped up some of the confidence, forced their way back in, but then conceded a penalty, which was actually harshly awarded for me.

53:13But upstepped Bruno. We know this man has a black belt in penalties. But raw, as we say in America, ball don't lie. He got iced. You know, we always say you don't want to take too long to take a penalty. Boudreaux got iced by the referee bumping into him while he was doing his approaching a penalty routine. So he reset, started it all again, and then just Rashid Wallace the ball over the bar into the Thames. It was an incredible moment to witness. And Samuel Luckhurst, the Manchester Evening News journalist who covers United, he noted including pre-season games this half was the seventh successive half for Manchester United when none of the starters have scored from open play that after spending over 200 million dollars

54:00Roger Bennett:it's not a deal is it and you know the fact that they did again kind of show it's not good is it it's not great I think you want some of your players who start football matches to score goals that's what that's that's one of my understandings of football certainly yeah it's difficult. I mean, obviously it's unusual for Bruno to miss a penalty, particularly unusual for Bruno to miss a penalty like that. So again, maybe if he scores that, it's completely different, but it did feel similar in that United looked energetic and purposeful and they looked okay, but they didn't really carry that much of a threat that if you compare them to Arsenal or to Chelsea, to Liverpool, to Manchester City, they weren't carving Fulham open.

54:38Roger Bennett:And the risk was always in that defeat last week, that, not the false praise, maybe the overblown praise, disguise the fact that if they didn't go to Fulham and win, their start to the season would have actually been quite bad. You know, to not have, to have fewer than three points after two games is not great, to be perfectly honest, particularly for Manchester United. And the longer the game went on, the more you felt, okay, this is kind of undoing all that good work that Amarim did last week in losing a game and being told he'd won. this makes it look like actually the problems are kind of still there.

55:13Yeah, so just to condense what Rory just said, not scoring goals, not good, and not getting points, also not good. We do need two and goalies. Two teams did score in the second half. United taking the lead. I think there's a push in the area, which freed Lenny Yorita, heading off Moonies. But Fulham are tenacious. We learned that last week. Alex Iwobi and Emile Smith wrote, got everything coming up roses, leveled the score. And here's what was key. Down the stretch, all Amarim's substitutions seem to make them lesser. Fuller had the upper hand down that stretch. They are so well coached by Marco Silva.

55:50The squad all know their roles. Lots of good players. None great, but they play together, which is the opposite of Manchester United. They look like a team with a keeper who can't catch crosses. A new striker still finding his feet. Zero goals so far this season as a collective from open play. That after signing two of XG's greatest overachievers last season. A midfield can't control games. And the statistics around Amarim are terrifying. I mean, Twitter seems purpose designed for him. How his coaching record of his seven wins in his now 29 league games, win percentage of 24.1 % is exactly the same as legendary duffer Neil Warnock, who was twice well negated from the Premier League.

56:31Roar, you know, Amorim told his team, he said, we need to grow up in his interview. But at a certain point, looking at Marco Silva, making so much out of little and almost no new transfers, watching where Ruben Amorim is, don't we have to say a huge part of this?

56:47Roger Bennett:It's got to be coaching. But it was the same last year when Amorim, kind of at the same time as he was pleading for patience, for time, making it sound as though it was ridiculous to expect any manager to kind of have an immediate impact. Vitor Pereira pitched up at Wolves and immediately turned them into a really good team. And he thought, well, hang on, if the old Portuguese man can't do it, why can't the young Portuguese man with much better players do it? The old Portuguese man. And now he's run into a slightly older Portuguese man who has limited resources. They're not really signed anyone this summer, Fulham.

57:17Roger Bennett:You know, there's been a little bit of a suggestion on this side of the Atlantic that maybe Shahid Khan's focus is elsewhere, that Fulham are kind of just bubbling along. They're okay. They're not going to get relegated. They'll be fine. Silva's a safe pair of hands. But they are incredibly well coached and they never appear anything other than very well coached. Whereas United still seem to be, they are in moments, they look great, Manchester United. They look really, really kind of hungry and energetic and intelligent. And then for other stretches of games, they look totally haphazard. And at some point that kind of is on the manager, I think.

57:56in other games featuring Iberian managers of great renown Bournemouth won Wolves nil massive win for Bournemouth the team we've lost so many players over the summer truly gutted but not apparently lost much of their self-belief at all I think they had five new players featuring in this game won by an early early goal from Marcus Tavernier a goal created it needs to be said by a signature thumping Tyler Adams' bone-shaking tackle. When I watch him play this season, it's like, I do think in another life, dude would have had a really great career as an SEC defensive back. Walls down to 10 men in the second half.

58:32I've got to say the end, despite that was nervy. Massive win though for Bournemouth to prove honestly themselves to themselves. They can pick up where they left off last campaign and not feel like they're a one-season wonder. And that again has to be because of Andoni Erola, the manager. No moaning about players lost or on players needing time to bed in. He just stood there on the sideline, a brilliant communicator. And also, Leroy, what you need right now in that mid-table, in that fierce battle of the bees, tactical difference make him.

59:05Roger Bennett:Yeah, he has a clear vision of how he wants to play. And I think he understands that the players will come and go to an extent. And as long as they are replacing them with players who can do something similar, he's happy to coach them. There is a really pleasing freshness to the way Iriola handles himself, I think. he's really hard not to admire. I saw him at Anfield on the first weekend of the season and obviously there was loads of stuff going on in that game. Bournemouth had every reason to feel as though they could easily have taken a point from Anfield. But at no point did he kind of say, well, what do you expect?

59:33Roger Bennett:They've sold three quarters of my defence and replaced them with one guy yesterday. He was just like, yeah, this is fine. We played really well. Got to be a bit better in both boxes. Liverpool can do, they've got this individual talent that can hurt you in moments. There was a real graciousness to him. He's really hard not to like. Ira Ola is a massive Murakami reader. I just love the idea that he's kind of coaching all the players in magical realism. And that is the tactical difference down there with the Golden War Cherries. Burnley 2, Sunderland nil. Last season's championship game redux. Got to say some stunning Burnley football in key moments.

1:00:11Most importantly, clinical finishing. That is going to be the key for their season. They had it in this one, delivered the win and also brought Sunderland right back down to earth in quite gruelling fashion, teaching them this is going to be some knife fight. We are living in a remarkable world where each one of the newly promoted teams have had their first win already this season. And this Clarence win in that bottom six mini league feels ultimately like it should count double to Brentford one. Aston Villa nil. Oh my God, how the turntables. Roar, I am old enough to remember when Brentford's new manager, Keith Andrews, was meant to be a joke.

1:00:51When losing Brian Mbumo and Johan Wieser, refusing to play, was meant to kill the bees. Not here. Claudia Schiffer's team. Yes, I really mean that. This is Claudia Schiffer's boys, Brentford. Rode W route one goal from Django Wittara. And suddenly, the coach in the hot seat is who? Unai Emery. It is remarkable how quickly his villainous answer. It almost feels like it's a short blip of history. Two losses, two goalless games to start the season for the first time since 2002. Raw, I mean, it is amazing. They had 76 % possession. They had 17 shots in this one. They're most about scoring in the Premier League since 2022.

1:01:30And now, forensic accountants are pouring over their spending and their losses and wondering if they are utterly trapped by that failure to book Champions League play this season, and the financial riches that come with that have almost put a handbrake on the club's progress because of financial stability, profit and sustainability rules. It's incredible. Since their promotion back to the Premier League in 2019, Villa have spent more than$950 million. But it's their wages to revenue ratio which is really the problem. It was 91 % in 2024. They kind of went all in and that is unsustainable. Just by reference, Tottenham, I think their wage to revenue ratio is less than half, 46%.

1:02:15Manchester United and Arsenal were just over half, 51%. That kind of shows how extreme Villa are here. They're kind of caught in this hex rule. Do they continue to pay wages that can get the kind of players they need to reach the Champions League dream? Or do they reduce the wage bill and almost certainly stay outside, weaken the squad?

1:02:37Roger Bennett:Yeah, I wrote a piece about PSR last week, Rog, and I had some feedback on it from both Aston Villa fans and Newcastle fans, because my view was basically that you can 100 % argue that Villa and Newcastle have been limited in the last couple of years by the PSR rules. But they've both spent more than basically every club, apart from maybe 10 in the world in the last five or six years. It's really hard to make the argument that they have been limited in their spending. They haven't. what's happened is that as you say Villa kind of went all in and I think both of them I think both of them traded well to a point and then stopped trading well and Villa if you look at the teams they've been playing this season there aren't many recent signings in there and what that kind of indicates is that they've maybe misjudged the market in the last year or two obviously you know there was Rashford on loan Asensio on loan which were both smart smart decisions last season they've both gone but it suggests that they've kind of not thought they've maybe their hit rate has dropped in the last year 18 months and that has stopped them churning through players which is kind of what you need to do to thrive in PSR and whether those rules are good or not they are the rules and Villa have been limited by them the wages the turnover thing I think is different I think that's just bad business to be perfectly honest I think to be committing that much money to your current playing squad and assuming you will make the Champions League to make up for it.

1:04:07Roger Bennett:We have seen that before in England. In the dim and distant past, that is exactly what Leeds United did. And it is still the cautionary tale. 22 years ago, Leeds took the risk. They went all in on we will always be in the Champions League. We can afford these salaries. And the club took 10, 15 years to recover. that much more than making sure Newcastle can't make the Champions League that is why there are profits and sustainability rules in English football it's to save clubs from themselves Villa took the risk and to be honest just they they didn't win at Old Trafford on the last day of last season when everybody was winning at Old Trafford they're not in the Champions League that is what has kind of ground it all to a halt I'd like to think they'll be able to trade their way out with it they sold Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle that will help there may be one or two others that they can do to kind of get the gears moving again.

1:04:55Roger Bennett:But there is a little bit of a sense of status at Aston Villa at the moment. It does feel as though the club as a whole feels as though it's run aground, that it's run out of road, which I don't think is true. If you look at their progress from the championship to the champions lead in, what, five years, it's possible. You just have to be good at it. Let's carry on this theme of bad at business and dwell on the furor at Selhurst Park yesterday. they Crystal Palace won, Nottingham Forest won. Football needed this, Roar. We needed another sudden grudge match. We don't have enough. Extra police put on alert for Palace Forest because, well, the game was a draw, but this wasn't about the football.

1:05:34It was about the business of football, specifically the role Nottingham Forest played in Crystal Palace. It's quite cruel demotion from the Europa League for winning the FA Cup to the Conference League, a move which played to Forest's advantage. They went the opposite way. The two teams have spent the summer essentially accusing each other at the court of arbitration for sport. Yes, Cass, hence El Casico. And now we dance once again with Forest owner Evangelist Maranakis, very much public enemy number one at Selhurst Park. I say the banner that Palace fans unfold at this game. It's on our Instagram if you need to see it.

1:06:08It depicted, amongst other things, the Nottingham Forest owner holding a gun to midfielder Morgan Gibbs Whitehead. it was quite startling. But it wasn't just Palace fans who were beefing with the big Greek. His own manager, Nuno Espirito Santo, on Friday, kind of out of nowhere, although it has been crackling. Just talk to the press conference to say his relationship with his inimitable owner. Sorry, sorry, his blind trust trustor, I think he is, was, quote, not good. Rumours abounded. He wanted to be sacked, would be sacked, but nope, he was there on the sideline. That man who'd taken his team from 17th place to Europe, saying there is, quote, no smoke without fire.

1:06:46I mean, Ro, we have joked about the essence of modern football, that we're just cheering for shirts in a way, or at times just cheering for spreadsheets. Our La Cien Forest fans at this point just cheering for their estate planning attorneys, their technical drafting skills. And this is where football gets to kind of bureaucratic legalese, litigated, first technocratically in court, and then again in quite extreme ways by fans, who I think are reeling by their feelings of true impotence and almost irrelevant.

1:07:16Roger Bennett:Yeah, it does feel at times that football's too big for itself now, doesn't it? That there are forces being exerted upon it that the game isn't really qualified to handle. So yeah, I mean, Evangelos Marinakis is one of the richest men in Greece. He has incredible kind of legal power behind him. He's used to getting his own way. I think that's probably fair to say. I hope Evangelos Marinakis doesn't take exception to that characterisation of his personality. and you're dealing with individuals, sometimes nation states with the sorts of resources that football leads and competition organisers they kind of have but that's not really what they're meant to be spending their money on the idea is not that the Premier League has or UEFA have these colossal legal bills and all of these owners are trying to shape the game so that it works for them they don't like the idea that it might not work for them and it does feel Jonathan Wilson has made this point a load of times that football used to be a player's game, that you'd go to the stadium to watch a player, that it would be defined by, you know, the magician in the number 10 shirt.

1:08:16And I think for the last somewhere between 20 and 50 years,

1:08:20Roger Bennett:it's slowly become a coach's game that we think of games being decided by the sort of mega mind strategy of some philosopher king. Pep Guardiola could have been kind of the zenith of that. But really it's an owner's game. That's what it's become. It's a game contested between who is the richest person, who has the most money to spend on players, who has the best accountants to get round the financial rules, who can get the right nominees to the Court of Arbitration for Sports independent panel. Like this is what football has become. And as fans, this is hopelessly naive given my week on social media talking to Aston Villa and Newcastle fans.

1:08:58Roger Bennett:But at some point, I think as fans, we kind of have to think, is this what we want? Do we want it all to be settled by which rich man has the best lawyers? I'm not sure we do. I'm not sure that's healthy for the game. And if you want an example of that, it's in the rivalry between Palace and Forest. Because you have certain rivalries that kind of illuminate football because they're geographic or historic. Because they're battles between great powers. Juventus and Inter Milan is the derby dell 'Italia. It's the two great powers of Italian football. Liverpool and Manchester United. Barcelona and Real is not just about soccer success.

1:09:34Roger Bennett:It's about kind of political identity, cultural identity of Catalonia. And then in the last 20 years, you got this set of rivalries that felt a little bit less deep-rooted, a little bit more petty, that were not just because teams played each other a lot on the pitch in big games, Liverpool-Chelsea, Liverpool-Manchester City. It was because one represented the old and one represented the new. and now we have a rivalry that is because nottingham forest got crystal palace thrown out of the europa league and that is that is enough to prompt all this toxicity that is where football has gone it is so petty and it's related not to the clubs but to the owners same time raw it you could say it's a lovely thing a beautiful thing football's getting ever more popular it just opens up the funnel of fandom now when people are asked what got you into the premier league there's a group of human beings I think I got into it for the jurisprudence yeah exactly just the accountancy I think some of the accountancy is really smart I just love the legal philosophy that's at the core of the thing so welcome legal minds you can listen to more about the Premier League in our other podcast Criminology Today where we go deep on this stuff by the way Arsenal fans are listening to this they're like oh my god just when we got ourselves a number nine football's suddenly about super silks barristers and your lawyers.

1:10:54We can't get ourselves one of them. I mean, that's where it is. It's not about the players anymore. God bless. Talking about beefs tonight, Newcastle hosts Liverpool. But God bless the most popular team in the world that everybody wants to play for visits the team who I think feel about as popular as Chris in Everybody Hates Chris. I expect this game to be a true knife fight with the spirit of Alexander Ezek just floating above it. Roar, when I think about Isaac and Newcastle desperate to cling on to him for various reasons, some of them geopolitical and pride, I think about the quote from David Foster Wallace who said, he said that everything I've ever let go of in my life has claw marks on it.

1:11:44Roger Bennett:Yeah, it's a really strange situation now. We're recording this on Monday, the 25th of August, Roger, I guess we have six or seven days left of the transfer window. everything at the moment points to the fact that Alexander Izak will still be a Newcastle player by September the 2nd. That's going to be awkward. I think that's going to be really intensely awkward for all concerned, to be perfectly honest. My reading of it based on not that much information is that I think Liverpool have misjudged it slightly. I found that the way that the one bid they have made for Izak, which was for£110 million, so like$130 million maybe, it's a British record.

1:12:22Roger Bennett:That would be more than any English team has ever paid for a footballer. And yet it's still being presented as some sort of insult to Newcastle. And you think, well, hang on, that is quite a lot of money. And I mean, opening offers aren't always the final offer. So, I mean, maybe it wasn't a joke. But I do wonder whether they've underestimated to some extent Newcastle's pride in terms of what being seen to let Isak go to a currently more successful team would feel like to the club's ownership. I think Liverpool have misjudged that. There may yet be a U-turn. It might be that Newcastle can find two strikers.

1:12:55Roger Bennett:It might be that Liverpool can put an offering that tempts them. My guess is even if they did reach the point that Newcastle had privately thought, maybe we sell it 140, 150, whatever it might be. My guess is now it's become so toxic they'll say no. So Liverpool will have to kind of retool and rethink. And Izak, who, you know, to a lot of people does not behave well, but he's now caught in a really difficult situation because either he doesn't play football for four months or he has to go back with his tail between his legs. And that's really difficult. I will not let you go. No, no. Newcastle, if you need a new striker, bet out for 100 million, call me.

1:13:33And in case you missed it, on Friday, we released a really lovely interview, I think, even though I'm in it, with your goalkeeper, Alisson Becker. Talks about on a slot, the transition, the wonder, the evolving back line. also how he decides to go beard or clean shaven uh talked about his faith too in some depth um i will just say give it a watch i hope it brings you closer to the human being he's really quite a spectacular bloke um even though he's a red um but enough liverpool to cap it all well let's get back to the big dickinson energy roar everton 2 bright and nil in that new sci-fi home with our new anthem.

1:14:13We've now started to play There She Goes by the Lars at the beginning of the ritual that signifies the game. It's about to kick off Raw. It is probably so Everton to have a song written about heroin abuses as one of the songs that suggest that our team's about to take the field.

1:14:28Roger Bennett:There was something really nice about seeing this sort of ultra-modern stadium and then hearing the quite quaint tunes of Everton's pre-match music. I quite enjoyed that, Rog. It's good. It's called juxtaposition. A little bit of Gunnison will stay with them forever. Yes, steampunk fans, come and support Everton Football Club. We've talked about it up top. It was a historic day. It was an emotional day. I think it was so critical from a footballing perspective that all the emotion in the stands was refracted by the team right from the off. After that surrender against Leeds last Monday, this felt different.

1:15:04Energised football, frantic football, greelish, flinging himself into tackles. Brighton, your sense were just like holding on to let the adrenaline burn out of the Everton players and then pounce once it had burned off. Let history remember, Matouma hit the ball with a delirious warning shot. Welbeck somehow missed from like a yard out. And then it happened. Grealish fed beautiful, beautiful. Illiman and Dye scored the last goal at Goodison. And now the first in the new gaff. He started to move deep, he played out the ball, eventually found Grealish on the flank. I couldn't believe it. Sweet, sweet football, flowing football, real football.

1:15:46Grealish, a gent who we've been holding out for, a hero like Bonnie Tyler since the morning, was like, I made a noise when that ball went in. It was like genuinely like a small black-footed ferret being strangled and put in a bag. Felt the kind of joy roar that I did as a kid, as a child when Everton scored. For a second, you said it earlier, it felt so naive to watch, so magical. the game just fell away for a second i felt i felt relief yeah i felt love man i felt a sense of untainted optimism fleeting optimism obs but man love because there's only happy memories at

1:16:24Roger Bennett:the big dick that's the thing there's there's no there's no there's no stain there's no there's no kind of echoes of darkness it's just happy memories at the big dick all the time and that is really important. It sounds stupid, but it's really important that Everton won that first game, that they took the lead in that first game, that they survived that kind of Brighton. Oh my God. To kind of, what's the word? To piss them off. Piss in the punch. To boil their piss, Rog. I think I've pissed and boiled. Do you know what? I love goals like that. I think goals like that are amongst my favourite types of goal.

1:16:58Roger Bennett:Whipped ball across the face of goal, flailing leg, far post. There's something magical about it. Me, me, me. You know, I've talked about how the first ever game I went to at Goodison, there was a man who sat by me, gave me his coat to sit on so I could see the game and shout. Oh, one big family here at Goodison. Does not quite have the same face. Oh, only happy memories here at the big dish. But I workshop it. God bless. Happy. Jack Grealish. First assist in the league since September 2024. Incredible. Brighton, by the way, kept coming. Van Hecker hit the post. Pickford bailed out Tarkovsky after a quite suicidal back pass.

1:17:38By the way, not being booed off at halftime was a surprising plus to me. And then the moment, second half, another flowing move. Tark feeding a Raboon in the ball. It was worked out again to Crown Prince Jack Grealish-Brice to charge at the back line. You could see the whole Brighton defence just folding to try and stop whatever Grealish was going to do. And instead, he just rolled it backwards to a charging James Garner. probably my top three James Garner's the charging one, last the ball, first time, through the legs of the defender and it just flew into the net. It was ecstatic. It was an exclamation point moment.

1:18:12He charged away. The first goal, I was deliriously happy like a kid. Watch James Garner's face when he's celebrating that. Yes, a professional footballer, but man, the way he beamed with pride, it was truly nipple-tingling.

1:18:24Roger Bennett:Yeah, it's a brilliant goal. And it's, again, a memorable goal. That's the thing that we talked, I think, when Grealish signed for Everton, that in a season where you're not expecting to kind of challenge for Europe or whatever it is, certainly shouldn't be facing relegation, you need someone to get you off your feet. And goals like that, I mean, Grealish will get the assist for that. Maybe it's a relatively cheap assist. I'm not sure how much work he did to lead to the goal. It was a fear of Grealish. Honestly, you watch that goal again. The fear of Grealish, yeah, maybe. Yeah. But to have a goal like that, effectively to decide the game, creates this positivity.

1:18:59Roger Bennett:and that is what Everton need. Yeah, I think Greal's to say, James Garner couldn't miss because of the quality of the pass. We had the Jordan Pickford penalty save to cap it all, preserve the clean sheet. I will say above all, to see Jack Grealish's redemption journey, I hope it's a redemption journey, begin at the heart of this victory. I find it very moving to watch him post-game, how moved he was in this moment, trying to rein it in emotionally. I can't wait for him to talk to the media a little bit more. I think it's really amazing. And in this historic day, his assists, by the way, two assists, as many as he's had in the last two seasons at Manchester City combined.

1:19:38Just say, may they be the first and many more to come. The world feels like a happier place when Jack Grealish is just enjoying his football as much as he does his post-match salt and pepper chips. And Rob, we've talked about how new stadiums are hard. They can be complex emotionally for fans. They can be hard for players to adjust to. and there will be a lot of that to come. There will be bumps. That's the future. But in the present, a perfect day at this grand new home. So many magical memories made. The prospect of young, creative, fellow Tiny Shimpad brother, Tyler Dibbling incoming. But above all, the noise of the fans, it was their passion, their commitment that have gotten us here through a terribly hard decade.

1:20:21I feel so proud. I feel so relieved. I feel so happy in equal measure. I think this win was important, Raw, but not to lose was probably even more so. I know that sounds slightly weird, but stay with me on this. It kept the club away, crucially, from just the scorn of social media pylons and fume. And now, please God, they can just build with respite. And I hope a modicum of camp.

1:20:50Roger Bennett:Yeah, well, Grealish said afterwards, didn't he, that he'd not particularly enjoyed football for a while. And I think that's also true of Everton, that no one at that club has been enjoying football for quite a long time, that it's felt like a real grind. And the new stadium is meant to be a chance to have a fresh start. It is a chance to kind of bid in again. And the more they can kind of, the longer that feeling goes on, the longer that endures, the better for everybody. Because it gives Everton that sense of optimism, of freshness that a new home should. Raising the glass to Everton, rejuvenation and 133 years of memories to be made in this new place.

1:21:26Come on, you blues. Roar, let's cap this with a letter from our quite bulging mailbag. You can write to us at meninblazers at gmail.com. Send us any questions you've got for Roar. Here's our letter of the week from Hunter Gilbert in Tucson, Arizona. What a beautiful part of the country. Roar, do the honours.

1:21:44Roger Bennett:Yeah, and Hunter writes, last week you read an email from a GFOP, Spencer Hughes, where he spoke about his personal experience with the growth of soccer in our nation, made me want to share my own side of the experience with you. Sometimes it's tough to see how far the United States has come as a soccer-supporting culture when you look at it from a bird's-eye view, but it's changing rapidly at a smaller scale, which I've experienced in my own life. I work for the fire department in my city, and it's safe to assume that the culture in my department is about what you'd expect when it comes to sports.

1:22:11Roger Bennett:Very American football, baseball is America's pastime, and a bit of NBA sprintled in the mixture. As such, a lot of the perspective around soccer is the classic American approach. The game is too slow. The players dive too often. There's not enough about the owners. There is not enough scoring. The bit about the owners was me, Rog. Wait till you hear about the jurisprudence. Has anyone mentioned Evangelos Maranakis? These are the classic comments I would hear around the fire station when I would throw a game on in the background of our day-to-day activities. I noticed a shift, however, during the 2022 World Cup.

1:22:44Roger Bennett:Games were on in the mornings, and I was fortunate enough to put them on the dayroom television set between our work activities, due to no other American sports being on in the morning. A curious thing began to occur, particularly on December the 9th. I really noticed a shift. This day had two significant games, Netherlands against Argentina and Croatia against Brazil. If you remember both of these games, if you remember, both of these games went to penalty kicks. To my surprise, deep into the second game, I turned to look behind me at the commentators in my station, and I saw four of my co-workers standing in the background like a bunch of dads pretending not to be interested in a movie their kids were watching.

1:23:19Roger Bennett:We're getting totally sucked in anyways. That's a good stance, that. They'd stood there and watched the entire first game and were now deep into the second, poised on the precipice of fandom, ready to celebrate Messi's win with me. Fast forward to the final and I was receiving continuous messages from my co-workers during the entire game. I felt so honoured that they allowed my passion to seep into their world to the point they could not enjoy it without my presence. they'd gotten hooked on one of the best games that has ever happened and i now have many supporters of the sport within my classically soccer averse work fire department in place long story to my final it's good when you've got the when you've got the when you've got the fire you know you're winning exactly and then we've won uh long story to my final conclusion which is that the sport within my own world is growing immensely on a small scale in grassroots interactions everywhere i'm sure i'm not alone and every fan out there has opened the eyes of someone they know to the immense emotional impact of the sport, the absolute ecstasy of a goal against the flow of play to the utter devastation of a penalty shootout.

1:24:16Roger Bennett:In my experience, it wasn't even my pressure for the love of the sport, just proximity to it that turned sour approaches to joy. I feel this is happening everywhere in the country, not just my little southwest city. The culture is growing rapidly, and we have glorious times ahead because of it. That's a lovely letter, Rog. It is such a beautiful letter. Hunter Gilbert also wrote, Tucson is a city of gastronomy, Rory, and I have many restaurants to showcase the top Sonora Mexican cuisine as a recommendation when you visit. Roar, we've got to go. I've been to Tucson. My sister lived in Tucson for a year and I went out a few years after that to stay with the family that she lived with on my way to Mexico.

1:24:54Roger Bennett:So I have been to Tucson. It's lovely. It's very hot. It is. We've got to go in spring when the flowers are blooming there. It is truly, truly stunning. I've got to say, this Hunter Gilbert story, you beautiful man, We want to come out. We should do a live show in Hunter Gilbert's fire department. That'd be amazing. Why don't we do that? I mean, let's just play all the fire department. Maybe I don't know. Will that grow football or will that actually kill it? If we do a fire department tour, it's a delicate thing. Maybe, maybe we don't do it yet. It's genuine. We didn't start the fire as B. Joel once sang.

1:25:29I do want to say when we started men in blazers, we used to do a series called I testify, which was like one American after another. we asked for stories of how you would all fall in in love with the sport. You know, many of the letters were like, I used to hate it with a violent hatred. And now somehow I've got a Tottenham Hotspur tattoo on my forearm. And now it got there. We do need to get back to it because it's happening. As your letter says, Hunter, faster, more often than ever. The stories are powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, always beautiful and moving. Send us your stories in depth to meninblazers at gmail.com because just logically we are growing so fast at this network because of these stories, because of this new passion, because of this sense of discovery.

1:26:13I couldn't love it more. Hunter Gilbert, send us your postal address. We will send you a coveted Men in Blazers patch. And maybe, maybe one day we will play. Oh, the Tucson, Arizona Firehouse. That is it for today. We've got an incredible interview with LA Rams head coach, Sean McVay, coming on Friday, which we talk about his love of football in general and his relationship with Mikel Arteta, which is really fascinating in particular. Roar, God bless. How long have you got left in France, your Crown Prince of Harrogate?

1:26:42Roger Bennett:A couple more days. I'm going to go, I think it's quite hot here as well, not as hot as Tucson. Just up the road, there are some little water pot, like holes, little pools, plunge pools that are full of alpine glacial water. So I might go and jump in one of those, Rog, and cool off. Feel the spine-tingling kind of freshness of meltwater. Just to re-inviterate myself for the season ahead because look, we're two weeks in. You're knackered. Well, we've already learned lots of things and immediately unlearned them and I just can't keep up with the pace. I love it. You can either live life like Rory and jump into natural glacial waters or you can live life like me and have to take with Ian Graham and Fabrizio Romano transfer deadline specials forthcoming.

1:27:23Yeah, I know. Those are the two. I know, I know. Why don't you do that and I'll do the glacial water roar. Why don't we do Ian Graham in a glacial meltwater pool? Oh my God. Well, next door to a firehouse in Tucson. Let's take down all the big dreams of our life in one jump. This is Rog sending you big love. Let's not take a second of watching football together for granted. Big, big love and courage.

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