Spurs' Drab Football in Monaco Raises Questions Over Frank's Quality | Will Dan Louw Bring Back Away Days? (Q&A)

0:00This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network Network.

0:23hello everybody welcome back to rule the roach podcast have you woken up yet from the thrills and spills of last night dan low you were in monaco how's it going mate i was i was about i say i still am in monaco but i'm not i'm in fashionable nice on the court dessert that's how you say it um yeah cocktails and you know i'm sipping some really horrible hotel coffee and it honestly pretty horrible hotel i'm really good at picking hotels uh one of the reasons i like going spurs away uh in europe is i'm quite good at getting cheap hotels and cheap flights i've fucked up this time it's bad everything's bad what's happened what's wrong with it the hotel room is about the size of like you know those like videos that used to be on on the internet about 10 years ago where people basically live in a tiny flat in paris and their shower is above their bed it's like oh here's my little jeet in paris oh look at this you have to move the cooker is in the wall it's like it's like i'm staying in the kind of nice version of that it's it's properly tiny you see those kind of like i get targeted with that type of thing on youtube quite a bit like you won't believe this tiny corridor apartment in new york city and it'll still be like 200 grand to get this place which is which is a literal corridor i just think this is it's quite dystopian isn't it but you know i don't get much content like that before but that was a golden age of kind of like algorithm like when i used to get pushed that kind of stuff i was always like yeah go on then i'll watch that what do you get most what do you get a lot i get a lot of um have you you know chiropractic adjustments there's one called have you have you seen the ringdinger have you heard about the ringdinger before the guy the guy from the south of like the southern the fat southern guy well he he does it but there's also like there's another guy around like texas as well who does it who who he always says to him before he does it make your belly into jelly as he like wraps this he wraps a towel for anybody who doesn't know he puts them into like he lies somebody on a table and puts like these two stumps either side of their thighs so it like holds you in place then just wraps a towel around your neck and literally just pulls your head up it's yeah that is the guy he's the kind of um crack addicts guy like he calls his fans crack addicts because they're like cracking it's it's have you ever had i can't believe we're talking about this instead of monaco but um i can to be fair yeah no i definitely can have you ever have you ever been to a chiropractor i have yeah after lockdown i did it was it was i found it glorious I'll be honest.

2:54Really? Yeah. I know people, are you in the chiropractors are quacks camp? No, cause I'm a, I'm a hippie now. Um, and I'll believe anything to be honest, particularly if the social media presence is good enough. Um, yeah, it's not like I wouldn't go to one. I, I, I don't really like the idea of my back being cracked and I've read too many stories about people having their spine or cord sevens, but, um, yeah, it doesn't really appeal to me, but, um, but yeah, I've been to an osteopath before for my running, and when I had a neck problem, that really worked, and it's similar to chiropractic. It's more like massaging, though.

3:33It's like massaging of a little click, as opposed. This is going way off-piste, isn't it? I'm going to bat you this one straight up, Dan. Is Thomas Frank shit? Well, the backlash has started, definitely. I mean, there was like people, the atmosphere in European away games can kind of go either way. But sometimes it's just sort of like sort of bored resignation. That's sort of what it was yesterday with a little bit of anger. The thing that's beginning to get a bit weird, and I think the, I don't think he's shit, but I don't think he is kind of, I think the optimism is probably gone now. I think he might be average because it's not very complicated what he's doing and the thing that is weird that might suggest that he's not shit is that a lot of the problems that we had last season a lot of the things that were so frustrating to watch last season are still there it's players picking the ball up on an island in the middle of the pitch with no overlap no support no system no dynamism really it's very similar to watching how a lot of the last sort of six post-acoglu months were which were you know not buccaneering exciting free-flowing football they were sort of like defensive soak up pressure and then breaking Epley football and that's kind of what we're watching again now so he might not be but I'm not very optimistic about how this is all going to end to be honest I think we could have you know maybe two years of football similar to what we watched yesterday the thing is i i actually quite like him i think he seems like an all right guy i definitely buy into all the stuff people have been saying that you know he's going to raise the floor and all this type of thing i think what you touched on there though is is pretty accurate in that my optimism for where we might be able to go under him is it's not gone i'm not like i'm not sat here saying that nothing's going to come of this but like you say the kind of the hope that we might actually be able to elevate ourselves say back into somewhere where we were under Pochettino or something like that because we've got this guy who is going to galvanize this core of young players add some new exciting players to it and all that type of thing one of the things I can't escape from that people that people keep saying is that it's like he he hasn't like he hasn't mentally adjusted to the fact he's taken a step up to Tottenham he still seems to approach every game with the sense that he needs to stop the opposition as opposed to causing problems for the opposition and that sort of feels like something I'm just parroting that everyone's saying it and that sort of seems to fit so yeah I'll go with that but it does still feel fair, doesn't it?

6:32I think everything that everyone says at the moment about Tottenham, sort of good and bad, is right, really. I don't think there's anyone out there who's kind of wrong. Everyone is saying that sort of Benton Corn Paulina is part of the problem. I can't disagree with that. There was a lot of people in the stand yesterday, Porro was getting pelters from a lot of people, and I kind of thought I can't blame him. He was awful yesterday. though he was really and he's been awful for most this season and the standard the weird thing is that when frank took over my mate who supports brentford i feel like everyone's got a mate who supports brentford nowadays who says interesting and useful things about thomas frank i've got a mate who supports brentford who says interesting and useful things about thomas frank he basically said that he's like he can turn um fullbacks into something sort of far better than they are and he I've said, you know, Porro could be Trent Alexander-Arnold.

7:26And he has turned into Trent Alexander-Arnold to a certain extent, but Trent Alexander-Arnold now at Real Madrid. He just is like, he's almost like, you'd almost drop him at the moment. Do you think, I was saying on my pod yesterday that I thought he's been one of our better players this season. I thought he's been all right this year, but... No, I think he's been poor given the standard we should be holding him to. You know, last season, down the stretch, he was sort of our player of the year, really. He was so good towards the end of that season. He was so important to us, kind of, you know, winning the Europa League, getting to the final in the first place.

8:03He was the only player playing well. Like, his vision, his execution, his ability to bypass that shite midfield with a great long pass. and now he just is like, you can just make him essentially give up really. Bodo was a little bit like that. He got skinned a couple of times, doesn't really put a tackle in anymore. Defensively is weak. But the weird thing is like, there's no overlap at all with those wingers anymore. Gray was overlapping on the left wing with Odeber for about the first 10 minutes. And then after the first 10 minutes, the tactics completely changed and they go to sharp shop. It's a little bit like what Mourinho did.

8:40I mean, that's the thing. It's a bit like the sort of boring years, the boring sort of months of Mourinho where we weren't, where we just lacked ambition. We try and score early, score in the first half and then try and shut up shop and sort of bore the opposition to death. We're doing that now without even being 1-0 up first. We're inviting pressure. And actually, the one thing that people are not right about, I think, is that everyone basically was saying we should start looking at phasing out Vicario. but we would have we would have lost 6-0 without Vicario 8-0 maybe last night he was very good yesterday that's his best performance for Tottenham I think I think that's as well as a goalkeeper can play and last time we came to Monaco was in 2016 and that was a sort of similarly disappointing game because we went out of the Champions League we lost 2-1 against that sort of Lamar and Bappe team and Hugo Lloris in that game the only thing I really remember from that game is that Lloris was Lloris saved the penalty and he was just out of this world he just kept it it was the best I think it was the best game Lloris ever played for Tottenham so the last two times we've come to Monaco we've basically been saved by the keeper I think that's not a good situation to be in really if we sort of turn it away from Frank a bit because I guess we have started to talk about the players.

10:09Do you think it could just be a personnel issue? I mean, do you think Frank could be getting more of a tune out of Spurs if the Lewis family do sort of halter their promise that they want to take Tottenham seriously as a sporting entity and not just a means to build hotels on the high road? Do you reckon, yeah, if we operate like the way Arsenal have been for the past few years, buying loads and loads of players that are clearly really talented, building out a squad that... Because I think we can see, if you look at our squad, there isn't a baseline of quality there, really, is there? I think we've kind of got...

10:51I think this season and last season, there's a lot more quality in that team. There's exciting players who have got the... have we got what Arsenal had when kind of they started to kind of click under Mikel Arteta and obviously we know that they sort of finished eighth and sort of lost a lot of stupid games they shouldn't have lost sort of for two seasons running then started to look a little bit more like a challenge it was very slow build as everyone knows on Tottenham Podcast because all we ever do is compare ourselves to Mikel Arteta's development Arsenal whenever we've got a manager we're always just like well it's going to be two years of pain and you know Arsenal were patient you know will we be patient um but Arteta was playing different football this is this is more this is much more boring football it's unambitious compared to even what Arteta was doing in those first two years and that's what will eventually kind of kill Thomas Frank I think ultimately because you know if you're playing the sort of postocoglou brand of football you'll get more leeway than if you're playing the kind of Villas-Boas or Mourinho style of football where it's kind of it's ugly but it wins but ugly football that doesn't win um it doesn't mean you just won't survive for too for too long and I think you know he's he's meant to be this kind of sort of developmental manager who's a bit in the you know the Pochettino mode but do we have any players like Pochettino had um when that team started to sort of take off even in you know before we signed Sun?

12:23I don't know, really. I'm not sure. I think there are some... But everyone looks like they're regressing all over the field. Like, you know, I wanted Bergvold to play. I wanted him to have a bigger role. I wanted him to play exactly where he was playing yesterday. It was awful yesterday. Absolutely awful. Really bad. But I think a lot of that, I think with those lads, you know, because there's all these conversations about telling Odderbauer and people seem to hate the pair of them. I quite like Odeber. I think Odeber seems like a fairly talented player, but I just think we're asking too much of a lot of these players.

13:00I think that's what I'm talking about, like the baseline, I guess. I think we need more players that are ready now. I think players like Tell and Odeber should be getting minutes in the League Cup and getting minutes at the last 10 minutes of games and we can make an assessment on how good or not they are off of that, not just chucking them in and expecting them to be good enough to see us, what, go for the top four in the Premier League this year. I think it's an unrealistic expectation. We sort of thrust upon a lot of these players and put them under a lot of pressure. Gray and Bergvold, we were playing them from what, I think Gray was, what, 17, 18 last year.

13:38We just chucked him in at centre-back. Bergvold as well, 18 years old, who I think there's going to be... Well, let's talk about Archie Gray. Like, how is his development going to be helped by being played out of position repeatedly? Really, like he started to, in that number eight role in a couple of the cup games at the beginning of the season, he started to look like something. Playing him at left back yesterday, and they targeted him, was a mad decision. That's the decision of someone who is almost trying to kind of get themselves not get themselves sacked but sort of say to the board look what I'm having to do you know we had that under kind of Conte we did it also well every manager does at some point where you kind of go look what I'm reduced to doing I'm going to put this bloke out on his own and he's going to struggle you know why is he playing at left back it also seems like now that we've got used to Xavi Simmons playing Xavi Simmons out on the left for the first sort of few weeks of his Tottenham career seems even more mental given he's the most one-footed footballer um you I've ever seen and that foot is not left um he's made he's making some weird sort of decisions that I I just don't understand really you know notwithstanding um Paulinho and Bentoncourt but um you know why why Archie Gray is being asked to play left back when he was getting bullied and he had essentially no help from Roger Bear yesterday I don't understand I just I don't know what they thought Monaco were going to do because Monaco are poor and yet they they should have beaten us you know 5 or 6 nil yesterday do you think we'll what are our other Champions League games this season we've got Copenhagen we've got PSG don't we I think yeah we've got PSG away I mean we should we've got to be able to beat Copenhagen and Slavikarov We haven't played well in the Champions League once.

15:38We got Frankfurt away and Frankfurt got hammered last night. And then we've got Dortmund at home, is it? Yeah, we've got Slavia Prague, Dortmund, Eintracht Frankfurt again. And I think that's it for that. So, I mean, there's still a few tasty fixtures in there, aren't there, really? And you would have hoped that we... I mean, it's funny because, you know, the thing is, for all this conversation about Thomas Frank, Apparently he's the first Tottenham manager in our history to have three consecutive unbeaten games in European football. That's what somebody said to me on my stream last night. So, yeah, I don't know.

16:16Well, yeah, I mean, on paper, on paper so far, this season hasn't been that bad. The number of clean sheets is very impressive. You know, another clean sheet yesterday. but it's it's just about sort of like does does it does the sort of like thing does the clicking seem to be happening and it doesn't it seems to be getting very sort of kind of slowly worse although over the last two games i'd say it's been getting a bit worse a bit quickly um you know we need every game we were horrible against villa weren't we like really horrible well everyone was trying to lots of people trying to sort of sugarcoat it and sort of like say oh well um uh You know, we played better than the previous games, played better than Wolves and Villa scored two worldies and so on.

16:59But it doesn't matter, you know, the XG was low, but we are not creating chances. We don't look like we're going to score. It is a problem given that, you know, we're injured in the sort of attacking half of the field. That is a problem because there are certain players that you kind of can't really replace. Richarlison is either not getting the support or has gone back to being what he was before where he just hides you know Richarlison is supposed to be more than just a sort of like kind of tap in merchant who kind of gets on the end of crosses he's supposed to be harrying around chasing people down putting himself about a bit and he isn't doing anything like that now Colin Mawani when he came on looked better I thought you know he looked he looked in his little cameos so far as so in the other two games he looked I thought he hadn't really played but he looked a bit off it but I thought he put himself about a little bit and you can see what he's there for and you can see him, if he starts on Sunday you think there's a bit more chance but without Solanke without making a nuisance of himself without Madison without Kulisewski, that midfield has kind of got no drive and Xavi Simmonds needs a good game soon because he looks like he's getting worse before he only really played well as sub I thought and now he's coming with sub and sort of making the team a little bit worse I think his confidence is down there was that moment when we broke yesterday and he just decided to not break anymore yeah people didn't like that people didn't know that in the crowd I don't know what that looked like on TV but it looked very bad from where we were it was horrific it was almost inexplicable as well yeah there was a huge there was a huge groan when he did that and but i hate that i hate that kind of like oh he's lacking he's just lacking confidence it's just like we're paying you tens of thousands sort of hundreds of thousands of pounds a week to not lack confidence like i just that kind of stuff you know football is a confidence game i get it but i think like we always seem to have half a team lacking confidence tells lacking confidence other of it is lacking confidence.

19:08Xavi Simmonds, one of the hottest young players in European football although I think that was his reputation a couple of years ago. I think there was a reason Leipzig wanted to get rid of him. They all lack confidence. Get your confidence back. Come on. Do something. Watch a YouTube video. Listen to Lose Yourself by Eminem.

19:34Do you reckon a different manager sorts this out though, Dan? I guess that's the question right now if you could bin off Thomas Frank and put Oliver Glasner in there would you do it? No I wouldn't I wouldn't get rid of Frank I think it's just going to be a bit more painful year than I thought we were going to but then we're going to have I'm just already a bit pissed off at the football I kind of thought this is how we'd end up playing with Frank he would play this Brentford we'd probably get good results against the big teams and then we'd struggle to beat um teams away um we struggle to beat teams at home which is sort of like you know Brentford a little bit like that um yeah I just think it's going to be a painful year and I think if we're not sort of top eight then I think there'll be questions as to whether he's going to sort of stay um and I think we'll struggle to make top eight but yeah I think there's a good chance that he might not be that good and I think we're just gonna have to suck it up it's gonna be yet another year of just sucking it up and writing it off maybe would you uh would you say Ange back there's a lot of people a lot of people on uh on Twitter now being like see you should have kept it you should have kept Ange their locations may not be generally around Sydney and Brisbane and places like that.

21:02That doesn't sound like the Australians, are they, mate? Would I take the edge back? No, I would not. I still, I really think last year did something to me. Like it's, I think it might have sent me into some sort of bipolarity that I don't think I'm ever going to kind of get out of. So like the abysmal league and then winning a Europa League right yeah yeah yeah yeah the highs and the lows I mean because I went to so many games over the sort of Ange period I only in the two years he was in charge I missed four games across two seasons and they were all lost um uh yeah I sort of went all around Europe I only missed one game um going to Europa League final which was French virus away went to all the others and so I was sort of more exposed I had a lot of like kind of dark nights of the soul driving back from wherever on a on a sort of cold sort of Sunday or Wednesday night and um I did kind of get to the point quite a few times last season I was just like can't really do this anymore don't really want to um but yeah no 100 % of course I wouldn't take Ange back not sure who I'd want instead I sort of just don't really want this but I don't I don't you know it's too early to say sort of you know that I just think Frank's probably not going to turn out the way that we want um but he kind of has my support until um until Sunday 6 15.

22:40I said uh when we when we signed him I said in one of my early pods that he could end up being he could end up being our Klopp um which you know I mean maybe maybe he could be I would you know he's basically our Nuno I think isn't he it's definitely going that way very it's very similar football like yeah at points I was looking at the midfield yesterday thinking where the fuck are they like what yeah do we do we have nine players on the pitch I couldn't I couldn't quite work out what it was that we were trying to do really yesterday I think that I think that's the thing that worries me a little bit about this so soon into this and i do understand like and i i definitely definitely you know do understand that we do have personnel issues we do have a lot of you know a lot of our best players are still injured solanke madison kulisevsky um romero now who just seems to be you know perennially injured doesn't he perpetually perennially evil one but yeah both he uh you know i get it i get i get that there are issues and chad sort of similar last year as well so you have to sort of be understanding of this but like you kind of said it just it feels like we started this season looking all right and i wasn't really buying like when people would i think a lot of people wanted to go early and say oh this is murderable this is terrible and i didn't really feel that way as i was watching sort of the the few early games under frank i I thought, yeah, we're definitely approaching games in a more defensive fashion, but I still see what we're trying to do.

24:16And now, like, I don't know, the memes are sort of becoming a reality in terms of like, it literally seems like we basically give it kudos and say, go on, just do something. There doesn't seem to be any sort of idea of an attacking passage of play factored into our games. And that's kind of, you know, when I look at like that Javi Simons thing yesterday, I'm like, why is he doing that? Has he been coached to do that? Is it a confidence thing? Is he just not very good? I don't know. I don't know. Well, he had no runners, to be fair. I mean, I couldn't see because it was the other end of the field.

24:52I think Mourani was on the far side going over past him. I mean, Javi Simons' ability to sort of thread through first-time balls, particularly on his right foot, his only foot, you know, in the Bundesliga, he's very good at doing that. So why he didn't do that time? I mean, it's really like it was under Ange. So many touches required. The ball getting trapped underneath kind of feet by players. Like, you know, that sort of Bergvaule thing yesterday where he got sort of swarmed on by a team that wasn't even playing the press and which they nearly scored from. It's just another example of a player who needs to look up, who needs to sort of bring the ball under control, wheel around and then look up as to where the players are because they don't automatically know.

25:37and you know that's that wasn't how we played against Man City there was a fluidity against Man City and really Man City away that was the best we've played away at Man City in pretty much all the games we've beaten and we played better on you know earlier this season than we did when we beat them 4-0 which really was like a kind of camera attacking sort of master class and a game where we could have conceded two or three or four even in that game um but but you know the early signs of this being a kind of coherent team that was clicking were there. I think we're just going to have to be patient really, but goddammit, like it isn't.

26:14The signs at the moment aren't very good because I just don't know where the next goal is going to come from really. And he seems to be playing so many players out of confidence, like Brendan Johnson. I know a lot of people don't like him, but he was, without his goals last season, who knows where he would have been um and now he looks like he's kind of uh you know he's back he's back to sort of deleting social media brennan johnson again well and pap sarr what's going on like pap sarr's one of our best players at the start of the season he's just seemingly just jettisoned him from the team for no reason well no i don't yeah i don't because he was building the team around pap sarr and then and then he was also kind of bigging up kinski at the beginning of the season i love him he's a fantastic player and so on and so forth and now there's all these reports coming out that they don't fancy Kinski after all I don't know I mean I've never been that hot on Kinski I'll be honest after that first game he looks alright but he does look really young and really raw yeah he's very good with the ball at his feet and is he brilliant at everything else I think it's like if you could take Kinski and Vicario and make them have some sort of man-baby together.

27:31And then we could wait 20 years for that to grow up, be a good goalkeeper. I would think if – well, actually, I think we are entering a place where you can take two sperm and make a baby. So I don't think it's that far-flung of things. We should do that with them. We should do that. I mean, we could – I mean, that's a 20-year project. But what if the baby ends up being shit after 20 years? them's the breaks i'm afraid we could get we get someone involved in animal husbandry to um extract while they're asleep trust the process trust the process

28:12how was uh how was monaco anyway dan as somebody that you know is famed for away days do you i was because because i've always like monaco is one of those kind of uh the stadium has always been one of those that you know i recall as a kid the super cup always used to get played there right and the big arches it looked very nice but i saw loads of spurs fans last night being like glad i didn't go to monaco shit don't like it yeah i mean as uh as european away trips go monaco itself is pretty rubbish really it's kind of soulless it's a bit boring um I'm staying in Nice and Nice is Nice it's it's Nice enough um so you know I I I think I think as an away trip goes this you know this is a decent one but Monaco is like the stadium really it's kind of a bit sort of concrete a bit kind of a bit cramped a bit soulless and not many people in it really um yeah it's i mean there's loads of people yesterday although the toilet situation in the stadium yesterday was i've seen some things it wasn't like milan away which is like inhumane and the sancero yeah the sancero is legit legitimately the worst stadium i've ever been to I think it's ugly and the away end is like a war crime.

29:37And I've been to some really bad grounds, but people were debating whether Monaco is the worst stadium they've ever been to. It's just, it's a bit naff. It's small. This is for all the people who grew up in Northwest London, which is probably not too many of them, but it's basically like Wollstone Sports Centre. So it's the pitches at Wollstone Sports Centre, sort of big running track, kind of weird concrete block by the side of the stadium. yeah it's not one of the great stadiums and and the the lack of atmosphere is sort of funny really like it's kind of it's exactly what you'd imagine um a it's so unintimidating it's actually funny um because they do they do that kind of thing where they've got someone that they do at european stadiums where they've got someone who sort of shouts out arsenal do it as well where they're like kind of Thierry and they want to shout Henri in response and absolutely so when they bring players off they shout out the first player's name and then the response from the crowd is nothing it's just absolutely zero yeah it's a rubbish stadium and frankly a rubbish city state or whatever you want to call it what is it is it a principality yeah I think that's yeah it's a principality let's call it that yeah but you can you can get to you can get to it from Nice in sort of 20 minutes on the train it's not one of the kind of great away trips um that you'd uh that you desperately want to go on um I would say I mean Paris in a few weeks will be better I've got mates who live in Paris so it's kind of you know I do quite like Paris's I love Paris but it's going to be I mean going to watch Spurs in Paris it's going to be probably quite hairy isn't it maybe but i like it when it's hairy it's not this wasn't hairy enough to be honest i mean i like it when there's a little bit of um i'm sort of addicted to being in situations that seem dangerous but aren't really and that's i suppose why i've always just liked to go into european away games like the first european away game i ever went to was finaled away in 1992 with my dad and um you know they were chucking flares at us um they were a it was it was an intimidating atmosphere but i sort of loved it really and i've kind of loved it ever since and i feel i don't really get that enough like marseille away three years ago was proper sort of like oh they really want to kill us and uh and we were part of this intense police cordon um where they were just driving us round and round on the ring road and these buses for hours before the game um it was like speed but much much slower um and yeah i like it i like it when it gets a bit hairy where there's a chance of sort of you know their ultras are sort of like following you and it it feels a little bit like something could kick off but and I went to Galatasaray last season um and that was that was 100 % worth the trip that was one of that was probably the best trip away I think uh all of last season all the places we went to um the atmosphere it was unbelievable and I really really love Istanbul yeah the sort of the Turkish police were were good I thought it was well policed and this was just flat and meh it's the stadium the football yesterday fit the stadium and sort of kind of fit Monaco as a place really were you at the Seville game all those years ago when the police just decided to start battering all the Spurs fans no I wasn't but I often I often wish that I was.

33:11I mean, we, Barcelona a couple of years ago in the Champions League, that game, in that 2019 game where we just made it through Lucas Moura. The stewards in that game had batons for no reason. I've never seen them before. The stewards? The stewards. They were genuinely stewards. They weren't coffers. They were stewards. 100 % stewards. And yeah, and they were just, they were just battering people randomly. There's a guy, there's a guy like next to us, this bald guy who just got whacked on the head by this steward with his baton he goes what did you do that for and the bloke kind of raises it like i'll do it again it's random love it i'm sorry for you that you just got hit on your head but um yeah it's just it was basically just anyone who just got out of prison or didn't have a job was given a battle and just told like go on spurs barcelona hit whoever you want why then go and do it yeah and that that was that was the game that was the game that we made we just made it through in the last minute in that it was a good game where it looked like we were out about five times yeah happy days happy days watching people getting smashed over the head with fans I've got some questions in Dan from the adoring listeners as you can imagine there's a lot of love for away days on there Billy T asks well, he says, Away Days was really ahead of its time.

34:38Now that content is so popular, would you ever be tempted to bring it back? No, I don't think so. I mean, look at how much stuff has kind of come and gone since then. Like, look, all the things I didn't cover. I didn't cover the end of the old stadium, White Art Lane. That should have been an Away Day. I thought about it a lot, and then I just didn't do it. And I wish I had, because that was one of the most sort of important and meaningful days of my life, really. And I downplayed it at the time. I was like, well, you know, the stadium's kind of getting knocked down and it's going to be built back in the same spot.

35:15But how much it kind of affected me and how much I still sort of think about it now, I really wish I'd done that. And then I didn't do any of the Champions League games. You know, also, we were sort of like kind of average-ish kind of to good. and and we've you know we've touched sort of kind of greatness since uh away day uh was last done you know we i was thinking about doing it for the bringing it back for the uroka league final but the thing is you don't watch the game like you don't feel connected when you're when you're making the video if you're just constantly taking photographs it does like or doing videos it does put distance between you you know and i go there because i go to these games because i want to feel um anger excitement I want to sort of just completely lose myself and I want to behave in a way that wouldn't be acceptable in any other sort of like part of society um and where I'd kind of get sacked if my sort of bosses at work were watching so um yeah I did kind of get to the point where it I loved loved loved making it it was one of the most kind of creatively fulfilling things I've ever made but I did get to a point where one I sort of felt I was slightly running out of things to say and it was kind of the same and I didn't really like the last few videos that we made and um and it did feel a little bit like it made um going to Tottenham away feel like I had a job a little bit um and so it's so it's I stopped it at roughly sort of like the right time but then you know we had the Pochettino years since then and I think I think Tottenham being good the videos were always better when Tottenham were a bit shit and it was like you know a little journey of acceptance oh well we're rubbish but it was worth it all the same um but fun fact um monaco in 2016 that game we were talking about earlier where um lorise um had a blinding game that's one of the great lost away days there's two away days that i made and then never put out and monaco 2016 is one of them was that just losing the the files or because you didn't like it no i still got the files i didn't like it yeah i didn't like it i just i just thought it wasn't i just thought it wasn't that good um and i was kind of you know that was almost about sort of two years after the last one that i'd made so because i did make a couple under the pochettino the other one i didn't put out which i did make kind of feel like i should have put this out i mean i'm not going to put out now was newcastle 5-1 at the end of the day wow Yeah, where Andros Townsend kind of kept scoring, where we lost 5-1 to 10-man Newcastle on the last day of the 2016 season.

37:53I think the thing about making content and stuff now, because you do touch on something there, when we were still a bit more like Spurs, right, before Pochettino, before we touched greatness and everything, like you say, it just felt like we were all, to obviously varying degrees still, but all on a similar plane of acceptance that Spurs are a decent side, we're a side that will win an FA Cup here or there, and we're quite happy with that. We're quite happy to sort of mug ourselves off, call ourselves shit, but always know we're better than West Ham or whatever, and that's sort of our place in things.

38:29And I spoke to a guy called Joel not long ago on here, and he sort of made the point that we've got a bit of an identity crisis nowadays as Spurs because we don't really know, how good or not we are. And we don't really know kind of what level to accept anymore because, because we have been so good and because we do have this massive stadium and we do have this big global brand and fans are charged the amount that they are to come and watch Spurs. You sort of, that is naturally going to lend itself to having this idea of being more in. I don't, I sort of hesitate to even call it entitled. I just think it's fair enough that fans will want their club to win stuff that they will want when we've come so close to it.

39:16Right. You always want to dream of taking that next step. And that next step would be to win something like the Premier League. Really? I mean, that's the sort of thing, or at least win FA Cups, League Cups and stuff consistently, like a team like Chelsea does. Even when Chelsea are poor, they will still win trophies like that sort of every now and again. Manchester United as well, really, to be fair, as much as we talk about how terrible they are, they still win stuff all the time. All the time. Yeah, the nature of our relationship with Tottenham would change if we did win consistently. And I think the funny thing is that, you know, you look at Arsenal in the sort of like post or the sort of like second half or the sort of final third of the sort of Wengi years, you know, they basically were incapable of enjoying anything because they'd touched kind of greatness.

39:57They'd been one of the best sides ever. And now they were sort of adjusting to being this kind of sort of like better than average team that sort of finished fifth or whatever. They had seen, they had at various points been sort of close to being the best team in Europe. And it bred an entitlement. It bred a kind of sort of customer sense. And their atmosphere has changed and it's taken years for them to kind of sort of get back to where they were. But they were a new stadium with silent fans who all left early. And a lot of that was bred of the fact that they'd been so good for so many years.

40:33And they were now in this kind of sort of like, sort of hinterlands between being kind of good and bad. And we've ended up in that position as well, really, without actually really winning anything except the Europa League. Like after the Pochettino years, we kind of felt we needed to kind of kick on. You know, we saw the best team that we're probably going to see in our lifetime, the 2017 team. And yet we still didn't actually win anything. and yet it still changed us. The stadium did that as well. I think years of sort of like, you know, being run by Daniel Levy, I think sort of frustrated people and took some of the joy out of it for us.

41:10And then I think lots of other things in society has kind of sort of happened to us as well that have made people a bit less capable of enjoying things when they're happening and feeling like they're getting ripped off. But I think if we won the league, it it would be you know a monumental thing it would completely change all of our lives totally but then the room the next 5 10 15 or 20 years would be a bit miserable but i do feel like football in general not just spurs as has just become a bit more serious i don't i don't know i don't really see much in the way of like football parody anymore but when i think about like me doing all my life sort of flappy head animations i used to do and stuff like it used to be fun because i didn't have a podcast i didn't really have my opinions out there or anything like that i just do stupid animations every now and again drop them do a few sort of tropes or make a few sort of jokes about what spurs were or where we might go and it was fine it was kind of funny when i've sort of tried to dip my toe into it over the past few years just every now and again if i'm like you know between sort of contracts at work and i've got a bit of time or i have an idea i'll sort of do it and the problem is now you know i don't know if like the whole thing sort of jump the shark a bit i don't know if it's because i'm on here now talking in the way that i am i just find it like when i put something out that's just intended to just be a bit of a parody a bit of a you know just a little joke about something the comments will always be reflective of people that are just wanting to dig into well no you would say this type of thing because you're the type of fan that and i just think it's not that deep mate like it's just a little kind of 2d i think i think you've really hit upon something there i completely agree with that i I think football now takes itself, we take it too seriously.

42:52And one of the things that was kind of a way they really was sort of like trying to stand for, if it was standing for anything, was just like the stupidity of the things that you laugh at when you go to the football. It's like, look at that bloke's name. Look at this thing we found on the floor. You know, the simplicity of kind of football humour, which is like the main thing that sort of, you know, I've really laughed at for the last 40 years or so. It's just stupid. It's quick. It's dumb. It's simple. it's taking the piss out of your mates it's taking the piss out of you know parts of the country you would never normally kind of go to on holiday it's like look at this road sign look at this look at that isn't this player terrible one of the bits that's always stuck with me i just remember in one of them when he said and tim got served slices of ham on a piece of wood when you were i can't remember where you were somewhere but well it's like isn't foreign food awful like you know kind of aren't aren't isn't it terrible the way they treat us but it was just it never sort of like kind of forgot about the joy of going to these things and I think that's you know that's the thing I've always tried to sort of maintain I go to European kind of away games you know one because I can sort of afford to although I'm really good at doing it cheaply nowadays and two because it's just it's joy like you know football and Tottenham it has been the you know sort of obviously beyond kind of the people in my life my partner my cat etc etc etc football and Tottenham Motspur has been the biggest thing you know in my life and and I love it I'll never stop loving Tottenham Tottenham is you know it's etched in my body uh and as much as I've got a tattoo that sounded a bit weird and erotic um but it you know it is the most important thing to me it is when I die that's what I want my identity to be I want people to remember that I was you know I was a Spurs fan I was loyal and I you know I loved every minute of it and I think like but it also made me laugh a lot and I think you're completely right footballers got no sense of humor and there's certain things that i really hate about modern football and i think two of them just to be an old man ranting about stuff it's kind of a do you know what i hate more than fucking anything in the world at the moment i hate the overlap i hate it i hate it interesting i hate it it's this kind of curated kind of like sort of this sort of two-tier system i mean i like a lot of football coverage at the moment and i i like galatso the bits and pieces of it the sort of cbs champions league show even though it's kind of cringe and a bit pathetic and the energy is very sort of manufactured and it basically is soccer saturday except with but it's a bit of a throwback though like you say isn't it it's kind of it's a bit of a throwback but it's a well-made it's a well-made program and it is sort of you know it's entertaining and it's energetic and i think you know the americans now basically doing their own version of sort of you know what we've done for years um but the overlap is this kind of like we're the we're the ex-professional so we know the game and then you're the fans and you talk when we let you type thing and i think like you know players don't understand fan culture they don't understand it they're not they haven't been part of it for such a long time and i think this kind of sort of curated version of fan culture um when programs try and do that you know i find it it's just basically sort of opinion it's it's overly serious opinion it's not funny and it all feels like it's kind of filtered through a small group of ex-professionals who are just boring really it's like sort of you know Mark Lawrenson and Alan Hansen doing a chat in a pub um somewhere in Preston and I find it annoying and I think the you know the other thing I find annoying is like I know podcasts wouldn't exist without this but betting adverts like football betting adverts it just feels like that you know we're having our own kind of culture sold back sold back to us and it's a crap version of our culture it's not representative of what going to the football or watching football at the pub or kind of you know caring about football is really like it's i don't know i mean i'm not very well articulated but no i i do know what you mean though it's like it's it's commodifying again it's like most things in society isn't it so it's that commodification of rage of clickbait all this type of stuff because you you know you know exactly all the beats that there are going to be on on like an episode of the overlap and whatever you know and a lot you know flav's always on the overlap and i think he does a very good job on there so yeah he's he's the only good person on it and i think like this is no shade on clav he is a he is a sports broadcaster par excellence no but i know what you mean because i know that like a producer would have created a script for this show which is okay we're going to talk about tottenham on this bit so we have to mention are they going to bottle it are they missing harry kane it are all these kind of things these are the points we have to hit because those are the points that are going to hit youtube's seo and then we're going to just create this cycle where we're having the same conversations around the same clubs constantly that's why i think that's why bill bow was so refreshing because you know funnily enough one of one of the biggest moments of the overlap last year was just the the utter derision they gave to the idea that Tottenham could beat Manchester United in the cup final despite the fact we've beaten Manchester United three or four times already by that I actually lost count by that point last year um and it's it's just these these kind of opinions and these things are just treated as fact and it's not it's not a real conversation and I think like of course I'm going to say this because I do a podcast, but I think like what podcasts still have to a degree, at least the sort of the fan made ones is that we will at least be sort of facilitating conversation that feels authentic.

48:30It feels genuine. It's allowing people to just kind of chat as they would down the pub and all those sort of old cliches and stuff. But so much of this kind of the produced media around football, it's just all false. It's all totally false. It's all people just giving opinions like you will have, of course, you will have the Chelsea lad, Rory, that will say the most anti-Tottenham thing that he can, even if he does or doesn't believe it, to generate that conversation. We know he said this about Tottenham, he's the pantomime villain today. We can all send him abuse on social media and all this type of thing.

49:03But I just think, why are we watching that type of thing? Why are we watching so many of these programmes? Because nothing that anybody is talking about on these actually has any relevance to anything whatsoever. I don't know. I agree with you. I get what you're saying. The more you talk about it, the more I think I enjoy the overlap. I just hate Gary Neville. Can't stand him. He's the most dull, bland, shop steward of a man. Although the other thing on social media, everyone now is setting themselves up as tactical analysis analysts on YouTube nowadays. They seem to get pushed out on the algorithm.

49:42I don't know how anyone does that because I don't understand football at all. like i kind of can't i i just can't see any of the things that people are explaining in those videos i try to pretend to you know i try to pretend to but i you know it's just i think it's because i was rubbish at football um and yeah there's an element of the game i'll never understand also don't like all that kind of sort of cerebral stuff really because it's just primal it's like as far as i'm concerned football's just sort of like shout at bunch of men this player's shit this player's good what a good good time go home good time had by all shout at that player on the opposition team that he's a cunt because he's good at football he's good at football care more about their hair and whether they run funny than whether they're good at being a trek artista or whatever that word is he's so Arsenal that one why because just just look at him just look at him I think there is something in that though you generally can tell when a player is quite Arsenal you know you definitely Robert Perez was Arsenal like big time proper Arsenal Interpol has looked into them yeah they've run a check um I guess we've sort of spoken about this but Robert Palmer as well he says can you ask Dan what happened to the podcast where were you when we were shit but just take it as uh somebody enjoyed it Dan so well I should yeah I should actually we we should bring that back um because me and Tim only did a couple of them.