S15E70 - De Zerbi Lands

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0:47hello and welcome back to the fight god podcast the last time we spoke the zerby hadn't been confirmed that i felt like he was going to be confirmed and now he has been confirmed and um you know we have a new manager and it's got to the point john is that third manager in in in domestic season you kind of start to lose gumption you're like well if the problem isn't the managers then it's something else right it's the way the football clubs run all the people make the decisions however this is at least if nothing else a very interesting for a number of reasons appointment but where are you at is there excitement is there um are you sort of worried about how he's going to approach this job could he keep us up he hasn't got a break clause in his contract by looking so he can't escape if we get relegated how do you feel about it all yeah i guess i'm a bit like conflicted and i'm feeling a bit flat and i guess it's it's not just about uh it's not just about him as a like manager or as a person it's just the whole situation right it just feels a little bit chaotic and yeah a bit messy and yeah i kind of my main concern let's just look at it from a football perspective my main concern is there's not many games left he is a like system like tactics type manager who's got a very clear way of playing which is one of the the pros normally for him but in this scenario we just need to stay up I do have concerns over whether that he'll have enough time to implement that I don't even know whether or not he's going to try maybe he's just going to go right I'll do whatever just to stay up and then we can go again in the summer so I'm a bit concerned about that I'm a bit concerned that we we've spoken a few times over the last few weeks about you know Thomas Frank was a bit of a wet lettuce and was a bit sort of you know defensive and horrible football the players didn't like that Tudor was brought in as like right he's going to be the strong man you know we said he was immediately the hardest manager in the Premier League which I think was true um and they didn't like that either so it felt like okay well then if you've tried those two the natural thing now is like an arm around the shoulder fun vibes based type manager well that is not deserving right he's another like quite ferocious intense conte type character who's gonna kind of explode basically at players so i'm also a bit like wrongly or rightly i just don't know if that's a good mix with this group of players in this current mindset either so that's the cons the pros are like he plays the type of football that i like right and when we've seen when his sides play well they look exciting and they can also get results right it's not just a stylistic thing and it's much more in line with you know like a continuation of the type of football that andrew was trying to play and the sort of um culture that he footballing culture he was trying to create i think like the the sort of weird bit for us is that it's not gone and and deserve it because you'd go okay there's like a clear coherent this is the type of manager we want we've just sort of all over the place and so it's it's hard isn't it to feel like reassured like yeah they really know what they're doing with disappointment and then you just factor in above all this stuff is the controversy around him and some of his sort of thoughts actions and comments he's made that don't necessarily align with my personal beliefs so it's a bit messy mate is my overall feeling yeah it is is apparently i mean according to um a article in the guardian langa said deserve he was their number one target in the summer while he was at Marseille.

4:21And obviously he wasn't available there. It has since transpired through the season at Marseille that everything went tits up, basically. But this isn't a new sort of thing. It's just something we've been courting for a while. I mean, I have many feelings about Johan Langer, both positive and negative. I don't think he would just outrightly lie. So it must have been that De Zerbe was going to be approached. But then you might argue about what squad building was done in order to serve his style of play. Because the biggest issue here is, and I don't anticipate seeing in the short term, Spurs playing the Zerbi ball, right?

5:03That isn't going to happen. He doesn't have enough. He has 10 days or so till the Sunderland game. It isn't going to happen that we're suddenly going to be like this free-flowing, tightly knit, build-up monster where Vicario puts his studs on the ball and waits for the attacker to come to him. That ain't going to happen in the short term. Something else must happen in the next seven days. And De Zerbi, according to Sammy Botbell of the Mail, I think it was, he said that there is no break clause. Even if Spurs go down, De Zerbi is going to be our manager. Which would be interesting, wouldn't it?

5:41because actually it will be about this time in 18 months where this cycle of improvement, buy-in, and then fallout with hierarchy happens. And then inevitably in 18 months, he'll be gone. That was always my fear, actually, John, when we were ever linked with him. I don't think anyone can deny the football he played with Brighton was magnificent at times. He had our number. and he had a reputation and a long-winded crafted career despite only being 46 of managing clubs in Italy although we've measured success but but you know the first part of a managerial career can be lid with all kind of problems and challenges of managing smaller clubs then he went to Shakhtar and had a worldie of a time until the breakout of the ukraine and russia conflict and then he went to brighton uh he only had like 30 odd 40 odd games for shaktar before moving to brighton as well so um his ability to settle in and get players playing in the short term it's never been in doubt it's just the kind of long term and that that it just my feeling as always with these things is it will be a short term managerial process and we will probably be looking for a new manager in 18 months and or two years and that really isn't on the Zerbi that's every single manager we ever have typically so um there is that uh John what the culture is something that I've been interested in recently and figuring out what it is that Spurs are and Conte mentioned about you know players play here there's no pressure they they come here there's no there's nothing asked of them you remember what you said and 20 years no trophies and same owners, that sort of stuff.

7:33He suggested back then that there was no culture at the club. It was just, I don't know, turn up, comfortable, play. We win, you win, you lose, you lose, but you're taking your wages home. Whereas the Zerbi would demand something else completely. Yeah, but so did Conte, right? And this is part of the problem. This is what you and I spoke about it ages ago around the different levels of the club. And we even mentioned it earlier this week. there's one thing is the play inside and the players and you can build a sort of smaller culture around that for the short term like pochettino did it and did it to a certain extent of like you know achieving certain goals based on what's there but in order to really be like a successful football club and have a successful football team over a consistent period of time it's got to come from the very top and the standards and cultural guidelines of the club have to be set by the leadership and the ownership of the club.

8:29And I just think that's what's completely missing. And people have used the Levy example of buying them all gold Rolexes before the final. It's like, well done for just getting there. It's like that kind of stuff is what we've seen over the last few years and why those managers like Conte and like Ange who wanted to win, that just gets undermined immediately. And I think it will be the same for De Serbi. I'm sure he does have a very clear vision of what he needs to succeed. The issue's been for a long time is, will the club match the ambition? And that, I think, has been constantly undermined.

9:05I think this all goes back to with Poch, where Poch basically demonstrated that given a decent squad of players, he could lead the club and move us forward into a successful era. As soon as it became challenging, rather than going, no, this guy matches the culture and ambitions of the club. He plays the football in the right way, blah, blah, blah. We as the club are now failing him because we didn't sign anyone for a couple of windows and we've got this issue. We need to tell the players, sorry, we are going to go through this transition. If you're with us, great. We'd like you to stay. If you're not, we're going to be looking to move you on.

9:42But Maurizio will be in charge. We're not firing him. So you can kick your own goals in against Brighton all you like. He's not going. You lot are going. because this is what we believe in right and create some stability around that and build and that is what i think we've just lost is that we keep thinking you can just keep dropping in these managers who have that mentality and that that will be enough when actually the club need to match that level of ambition and that type of mentality and stick with someone the problem that we've got now and the problem that we've had recently is like ang was one of those people who could and he's by his own admission right in like a three-year period deliver something and he did deliver it and as soon as he delivered that trophy rather than go right the league finish wasn't acceptable but we want you to now you know correct that and move forward and use this winning mentality fired start again so you've just completely undermined this idea that winning is important it's like no no league finish is important don't doesn't matter about winning trophies that's irrelevant to us well shouldn't it be both right shouldn't you create that thing and you give someone a chance to improve the league form.

10:45Then you go to Frank, who's like, we're going to lose games. Oh, we finished 17th last season, so who cares? What is that expectation you're setting? What is that mentality that you're creating? And now we're in a situation where we potentially get relegated. And yeah, okay, you're bringing in this manager. But again, he's someone who is sort of known for extreme highs and lows. So where's that going to come from? And not to mention all the sort of divisive views of the fan base that he's now created another culture war that we as a fan base are going to be split down the middle on. So it just doesn't seem very coherent what we've been doing for the last, let's say, six years from sort of decisions around managers.

11:22I think longer than that, John. Yeah, maybe, yeah. I think when you were saying that in terms of like, you're a pot, he's saying, right, this is the way we played. We've seen him build a team before. We're going to build a new team, buy in or get out kind of thing. And I don't think Daniel Levy was capable of doing that because that would have come from him. He was making all the decisions back then. And so the constant flip-flopping from styling manager to the next big thing to Conte, he wasn't willing necessarily to do what he needed to do in order to give those managers every possible opportunity.

11:56And if they're not, then that manager is always going to set up the foul, which is Conte's frustration and probably why he didn't even want the job. But we offered him an eye-watering amount of money to take it because we were in desperate situations. We're in desperate situations now offering Deserby eye-watering money and all of the control that he could possibly want, but if reports are to be believed, you know, he's going to be on what,£10 million a year. Only Arteta and Guardiola are going to be owning more. That's fine. That's fine. If he is the guy,£10 million isn't a problem, right? We can pay that because of the money we generate.

12:30um the giving him decision making powers over who the sporting director might be also look it's arse about face it's not you don't have a you typically don't have the manager having a say or in any sort of traditional business a underling deciding who their boss is going to be otherwise they kick up a kick up a fast however such is the lack of structure at tottenham seemingly that there is always going to be this power play by people coming in. He wants his life to be as easy as possible, to be given every possible opportunity to make every decision he wants to. And that may lead to a successful side.

13:12It may lead to him being able to achieve the things that he hasn't been able to previously because of the restrictions that he's worked within, Brighton being a key one, that he wanted more control over the players coming in. Obviously, Brighton are not going to give him that because Brighton don't see him as integral. They see him as part of a process. That is their setup, and it's completely plausible within their rights. It's served them so well so far. He goes to Marseille. Similarly, he was given – sorry, rather differently, and I know this because I had Julian Leroy on the lab this morning, which was fascinating.

13:48What a lovely man, actually, by the way. He was saying – actually, he did get a lot of what he wanted coming in. And he wanted Angel Gomez and he wanted another player. I can't remember. And within a couple of months, he decided that they weren't good enough and he didn't need them anymore. And he wanted new players in January. And the Marseille board bought him new players in January. So there's one thing wanting new players and another thing being able to get the quality through the door that enables you to play a system. He has potentially now, despite working in those two different environments, an opportunity to identify players that can genuinely play in his system and Spurs have the financial clout to go and get them.

14:32I don't know if that means competing with players that our peers or the other big six would do or just allowing him to bring in those players. But if they wanted De Zerbi from the summer, they will know about his demands and what he wants. So surely they're prepared for it. You know you need fiber for a healthy gut, but do you actually know how to get it? Quaker's been serving up fiber since 1877, with over 100 great-tasting, good-source-of-fiber options to choose from. Whether you like old-fashioned oats, instant oatmeal, granola, or oatmeal squares, Quaker makes it delicious. Mmm, so good. Get your fiber with Quaker.

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15:56Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I don't know. Well, in theory, yeah. But this is the thing, isn't it? It's like, I wonder how much sort of short-term thinking versus long-term thinking.

16:32And this is, you know, we had it in the chat, in the Fighting Cock chat yesterday or the day before that Rick was basically like, I don't care about next season and whether it blows up in eight, six months, whatever. I just want him to keep us up. Now, I totally get the sentiment. my issue is that like it's not a guarantee it's not like oh now we've got him he'll keep us up and we risk him blowing up in the future like he might not keep us up and it blow up in which case you've got this like double whammy of just like situation yeah so i'm like i just i just feel like there's not been much strategy and just to go back to your point about langer i'm pretty sure he said that thomas frank was the very top of a very long list and now all of a sudden oh no actually it's deserved it's like when robbie keen supported liverpool spurs and every other club he's played for inter milan wolves yeah support them all as a boy definitely and it's like we we know what you said you you told just just to be clear just to be clear uh by going so i'm going to read this is a direct quote um god i didn't just make it up by going to spurs now deserve he has essentially headed him off although talking about pochettino not being able to The club's sporting director, Jero Lange, said that De Zerbe was our number one target for the summer.

17:47We were very pleased to be able to bring him in now. So there you go. Okay, fine. For this coming summer. Okay, that makes total sense. And yeah, he wasn't, obviously he wasn't available before, so he wouldn't have been on the list. Maybe he was. I suggested it was the summer before. That's my fault, John. Sorry. That's all right. But even still though, right, it doesn't really make sense because Thomas Frank was in the job when we poached him away. So why wasn't De Zerbe on the list then? and has he done that much better since then to now? Anyway, the point is basically that I don't trust Lange as far as I can throw him with football decisions outside of can you find us some quite good youth players, please?

18:23That I'm pretty confident he's quite good at. The rest of it, I don't trust him. I certainly don't trust Vinay either, given what he did with Frank and how long that took to make the decision. So it might well be that this is a great appointment and that he keeps us up and we fly into next season and maybe it blows up in eight months time, but it's okay because he's done what he needed to do and just kind of got us back to where we needed to be and we can hopefully learn the lessons and hire a really good manager whose football is similar to Dezerbi but with none of the intensity, emotional and problematic issues.

18:56In which case, wow, what a great appointment. At this moment in time, we don't know what's going to happen. So I can only base it on what I think might happen. And I'm unfortunately on this occasion, not particularly optimistic about how this is going to play out. But I obviously hope I'm wrong. So I am going to pretend to be optimistic completely, right? And if I just pretend, then I might as well be optimistic. So I am optimistic, right? About the fact that I'm imagining in him walking to that dressing room. They know him, right? He is of their generation, of their ilk. and so the alternative to say bringing in Harry Redknapp or Tim Sherwood or Ryan Mason saying that these are people that know the club they might know the club but certainly in Harry Redknapp's situation the players don't know him and so if I'm looking at the most optimistic parts of this you look at some of the videos that are coming out and how emotional he is especially when he's slightly happy um that he could motivate this dressing room to get the 10 % more out of them we need to say win in stadium light or get a draw up there and then beat leads at home he just needs to get a tune out of the players that exist not go in there and go right now what we're going to do is vicario is going to sit he's going to wait the defenders are going to sit we're going to create a block and then when they press us we're going to pass through them like it's easy.

20:27It's like well-trained, well-drilled stuff that is going to take a while, a summer to get sorted. He also was quite pragmatic in Marseille as well. He had a style of play that he was almost dogmatic to, but not to the same degree that say Pochettino, Postacoglu was rather. But he did sometimes fall into a kind of needs must attitude with Marseille. so i'm not sure that he uh i i kind of feel more confident now than i would have done if tudor was still in place or yeah if we'd have stuck with frank maybe but maybe i'm just clutching straws i don't know the last two or three times we've produced podcasts going yeah this is a good idea frank feels great tudor firefighter brilliant get him in now it's just like we just don't know anymore you know I mean it just it's hard to tell and this is this is the thing right like again if I if I look for the positive points he's a really good manager right he's a like provably plays good football and it does make me feel more confident like he's a I think it's safe to say like he has a better reputation than Tudor as a as a manager just forget the scenario just if you were going to pick one of those two as your manager from a footballing perspective you'd go to Zerbi I think every time and you're right you know I've been saying whether the players deserve it or not you've got to find a way to motivate them whether that's stroking their ego or bigging them up or whatever it takes shouting at them whatever we've tried that side so maybe just having like a permanent manager who to your point is like more of a you know contemporary of these players in terms of like the managers that they would have been aware of yeah maybe that's enough maybe that's enough just to get what you need out of them and maybe he creates a simplified version of his plan and just gives them a bit of confidence to be like look we're going to do this to stay up and then in the summer we're going to go through everything and we're going to really give it a good go next season and you know maybe he does fluff their ego a little bit right maybe says to them like i expect us to finish the champions league next season because i think you lot are brilliant and we're going to do amazing things we just need to do what it takes to survive this season and then don't worry like i'll get you back to where you want to be next season and that makes them it does what it you know it builds what we need them to feel in order to stay up maybe that can happen and i hope it does so this will be the interesting thing no one really knows right so like that is to me would be a great scenario if it plays out that way do you think the squad has the mentality to handle him like he's intense he's obsessive he's demanding he wants total buy-in he's emotionally volatile you know which leads to an environment which can raise standards and create I guess clarity and purpose of where we're going but also has a big risk of alienated weaker personalities and I just feel like we may have some of those in the dressing room like do you reckon the squad has the mentality to handle his style of play his efforts and mannerisms and all the things that come with him well we know that they struggled with like Tudor's kind of uh certain aspects of his personality and style that were like that but the thing is people are complicated aren't they right and sort of you can on the surface be a super aggressive dominant um imposing person and it rub people up the wrong way and then you can also have those traits but combine it with a certain style of football and some other traits and people like wow what a cool like what an intense guy like this is amazing and like we know people that have very similar traits and they have other traits that are very different and so on the surface you'd be like well they're both intense they're both emotional they both lose their head but people like this person they don't like the other person and i you know my hope is if i again if i take the optimistic route is that for whatever reason they buy into what he's trying to do and that they they can deal with that because they see it's a means to an end and they see that there's something bigger at play and maybe that's what the issue with Tudor was is that they were always just like you're just a caretaker mate like I don't I don't care about you because I don't have to whereas with the Zerbi maybe there is more of a view of I just think that they didn't feel like that Frank had bought Frank had bought in on them I don't think they bought in on Frank I think that Tudor they knew that he was an interim boss and like how much respect is he going to command they're going to professional but i think the one thing regardless of what you think of the zerbi is that he the ones that fight for him and do as he asks he would die for and protein is now at starbucks and it's never tasted so good you can add protein cold foam to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or matcha try it today at starbucks

25:23in a classroom of sodas most stay quiet then there's mr pib sweet cherry bold outburst the kind of flavor that gets attention bold kick of cherry hey yo mr pib they say you should learn something new every day like how you should only drink jagermeister at zero degrees fahrenheit ice cold like those frozen cavemen they find which makes you wonder what would a caveman think of jägermeister well if you served it warm he'd probably throw it in your face say and storm off and nobody wants that so drink it cold or not at all jägermeister damn that's cold drink responsibly jägermeister liqueur 35 alcohol by volume imported by masked jägermeister us white plains new york to it's almost to a fault a fault because i guess we have to talk about it john um the part of the reason why the fan base is so split isn't necessarily footballing reasons.

26:18I think if he'd just come on his own without the sort of Mason Greenwood scenario surrounding him, the situation with that, it probably wouldn't be anywhere near 50-50. People would be quite optimistic by it, but it does come of it and you can't ignore it. And everybody has to kind of make the decision about how they're going to go about thinking about this. and if you make podcasts and if you have a big Twitter account or any Twitter account and you choose to comment on it, you have to think carefully about what you say. Have you given it much for over the past couple of days? I have, mate. I actually recorded my solo pod.

26:57What's that called? It's called The Big John Bass Show, actually, mate. Very good. I listen to every episode. Thank you. And I went at pains to basically cover this topic in a very careful way. And I basically went like, does Zerbi the football manager first, and then does Zerbi the man, and then how this would impact on Spurs. And in my section on does Zerbi the man, obviously I got to this point about the Mason Greenwood stuff and why this is causing conflict in the fan base. And I guess the easiest way I think about it is like, there is no binary, you're either right or wrong, depending on what you feel.

27:35Because there's basically varying degrees of how you can feel about this. So in other words, you can be like, I really don't like that he defended this person. But I also, he didn't actually commit those acts. He just maybe has got a questionable view on those acts. And I personally don't like that, but I'm just focusing on him as a manager because I support this football club and I just want this football club to succeed. And it doesn't meet my personal threshold enough to stop that, right? It could be that it does meet your personal threshold and you're like, actually, this is enough for me to just check out of the club and not go to games and not be involved.

28:12It could be that you have all sorts of different feelings, and I completely understand that. For me, the reason why I personally have a problem with him as the person, and I think I've explained my views as a manager and why I think that might not work for Spurs, is because this particular case is slightly different to other cases of accusations when people go to court. Sorry, they don't go to court, but they've been accused of something quite bad. The issue with that is I am a sort of firm believer in like the justice system and that you're innocent until proven guilty. And so people shouldn't really speculate on it because you're tarnishing a person's reputation with no evidence.

28:51And there are many, many examples of false accusations of all kinds of crimes, right? So I'm always very cautious of like basically cancelling people, let's use the modern parlance, for stuff that hasn't been like approved. Now, this case is particularly different because we've actually all, if you've ever seen and heard the footage, we know what happened. It just basically was dropped because his partner decided that she didn't want to press charges and they felt that the matter was resolved as a result of that. But we, the public, know what happened. So now you are presented basically with the facts and you know what's happened and now you can make a decision whether or not you're okay with someone saying that essentially they are okay with that person on an individual basis.

29:40Now, again, I'm using my words carefully here. He didn't say what Mason Greenwood did was okay. He just said that he paid a high price for it and that he, on a personal level, thought he was a good person. Now, we don't know Mason Greenwood, and we certainly don't know Deserby and Greenwood's relationship, and maybe he does feel that way. The comments of he's paid a high price for it, that's the one that really has frustrated me because he's not lost his job in fact he's still a millionaire footballer he lives in the south of france he has a really nice life people have also commented i've seen on like various different posts saying well he's a football manager i don't it doesn't matter about all this stuff he just needs to get on with it agreed don't bring it up then you don't have to make those comments equally right i get asked all the time about various opinions on certain things I don't want to share them because I don't feel it's my place to speak on certain topics either because I don't have an opinion on them or because they're my personal views and they're not relevant to the situation he has gone out of his way to sign the player and then he's gone out of his way to make these comments in essentially in his defense of his character and I think the reason that this one is particularly unlikable is because we know we have seen the outcome of his character and his actions so then you get into the realms of can you and should you hold someone accountable for their past actions and can they rehabilitate and all that stuff again that comes down to your own personal viewpoint to me once you've done that i i can never forgive that like i would never get over that i'll never there will never be a point in time where i go oh he's all right actually like he's kind of yeah it's like a sentence handed down by a court doesn't necessarily fix a grieving family does it no exactly or take back the actions that he's caused.

31:26So again, I'm just trying to express, I guess, that this is just my personal view. I will still be watching Spurs and supporting the team on an individual basis. I'm not particularly enamoured with De Zerbi as a person. I don't particularly like him. I prefer it if we didn't have him as manager. But now he's here, I will support the team. That's how I see things because we've also had some players who've done some pretty problematic stuff who've played for us. We have people within the club who've done stuff. we have supporters who do mad stuff that i don't agree with does that mean we turn up i mean there were two lads who were prosecuted for doing nazi salutes in our fan base surely we're all against that so why aren't we you know you can pick out basically specific things that hit your personal moral threshold and take a stand and i think it's like i find it kind of unsettling that people these days and it happens a lot on social media are basically policing other people's line of where you don't no one can tell me what i should and shouldn't feel about anything like i don't like appreciate you you everybody can have their position and and you should adjust your behavior and your decision making and what you choose to absorb and attend accordingly and i respect you for that especially if you have a quite a low uh threshold for these sort of things and you're willing to sacrifice because that's what you'd have to do if you stop following spurs because of this incident you know there is something commendable about that for sure um i didn't understand why deserve he he went over and above what he needed to do in that situation that was my issue like he didn't need to say this stuff and maybe he was it was about getting the player on board do you know i mean it came greenwood to play for him and to do not do you know what i'm saying like he maybe he was a conscious effort to go out there and say not only am i going to defend the situation i'm defending as a person and decision making previously and say he's paid a heavy price what price has he really paid given the fact he's like you said still a professional footballer in in marseille of all places which is an incredibly beautiful place yeah it's not like he's suffering that much um so uh yeah it it's it does it does rankle somewhat but like you say this is um this isn't a long list of football clubs that and our football club that has employed people or defended people or or you know that you can't stop following i can't not follow spurs right so it's yeah I echo pretty much everything you said there John I'd rather we had a manager that didn't put himself in this situation and hadn't talked about it like this but we are where they are now what else we got here actually Sam Wilson says after Sam Wilson sorry says after a nasty few days new divides how do we bring it all back together for the big push I think a few wins would do.

34:35Yeah. Fundamentally, that is what will fix most things. And then the noise around him will dissipate if he starts delivering results on the pitch. Because, you know, the reason that we follow the football club isn't for the moral fibre of the people that represent it. right it's for because we love the sport and we want to see good outcomes it's like separating the art from the artist right it's like if you only listen to songs by people whose political views you agreed with for example right be quite a different playlist you'd be listening to we're we're interested in the football club and unfortunately or unfortunately that is dictated by results and so if he yeah if he gets a few wins people will want to get behind the football club because most people are good-minded people, right?

35:23And they actually want to focus on positive things. So that will definitely help. Just on a, I guess, more on a personal level, I just wish that we could, as a society and as a fan base particularly, just not basically decide to pick a side. You can just have your own view of like, I don't like this. You don't need everyone else to agree, right? In fact, it's sort of better that we all don't agree and we can have like discourse in a much more structured way. So like there's, in our chat, for example, there's loads of things we don't agree on. No one's trying to convince everyone to like do, to switch over.

35:57We just have our own opinions and views and everything. And if everyone dressed, looked, listened to the same music, ate the same food, the world would be very boring place. So just let people have their own opinion. You don't have to make people have the same opinion as you. It's just needless, basically. yep i mean yeah we don't wish you need to be on different ends of the political spectrum in order to move forward yeah it doesn't matter how many times i tell you that queen are better than the beatles you think beatles are better than the better than queen and that's and that's fine wrong though aren't you that's the thing it's not i i don't that isn't actually a conversation i'm willing to enter actually that's a bad example because queen are definitely there but john they're not they're not better i get you like them more in terms of it i'm not doing it i'm not doing this again i'm not i've done this so many times i'm not doing it again you're never going to change your mind that's fine you're entitled to your opinion and i'm entitled to mine even though mine's completely right and you're 100 % wrong but you're entitled to your your completely incorrect opinion okay this is your prime example of what i'm talking about mate you need you need to be more open-minded you see i won't be you can't be over-minded about something that is so wrong I can't see this is how people feel about I know this is how they feel this is how they feel and this is what I'm saying there's nuance isn't there there's nuance I suppose when you put it like that um what was another one there was a question here that says Dusty Coise says which players will flourish under him which will struggle but okay be okay eventually which will not be good fit at all and have to go um so we did get into this with for the latest episode of the lab and we went through some of the squad and thought players that kind of would fit his system.

37:46Typically, he likes very technical players, very comfortable with the ball at his feet. Arge Gray, perhaps Sarr will probably be okay. Xavi Simmons, if he can mentally hold up to the load, he will be okay. He says Kudus will probably be okay. So players that are comfortable, certainly in high-pressure areas. less players that definitely won't be okay will probably be Kinski and Vicario will almost certainly have to be replaced Pallianiel won't be brought back Gallagher wasn't mentioned what else was there I think Solanke could actually be revitalised Charleston will be gone yeah Charleston's got to go it's the technical players isn't it basically is the answer and this is one thing that I think it's better if I should flourish yeah and that makes sense and I think this is the thing like there are there are some technical players in in the squad now but one of the things that I've definitely been calling for and I know other people have as well is is we need more technically gifted players we need more ballers in the squad because that is the way that you can break through midfields right you can't do it with just banging it long and getting flick downs like it's just not really conducive to a nice style of football you need more technicians so I'm all for that longer term like we really do need to let up the technical floor of the squad so that that could be a real positive thing is like if we do stay up that because of the type of players he'll demand that we should hopefully see more of those players and after he's gone if we have more technical players in a squad that is just generally better anyway absolutely Gino Rappabatti he says who would win the fight between Deserbi and Romero now um I don't care who would win the fight between them to be honest but I do think actually having them too as the leaders of the dressing room will create a different type of culture like that they will either clash and hate each other or they will just feed from the same trough it's quite um it's quite peshy and de niro yeah fellas that's what the sort of vibe i'm getting like romero sort of jimmy the gent like you think he's like quite sort of strong silent type but he will just like stab you up if necessary and deserve he is basically just if anyone asked him to like get a shine box he's Just going to go mental.

40:00Get your fucking shine, Bucks. Hey, looks like someone we know. Anyway, yeah, I think that could be the basis of a really sort of horrible, dirty little changing room that doesn't respect anybody. Lack of respect for the opposition. Yeah. So, fingers crossed. Right then, John, I think we'll leave it there. What else have we got coming? I actually can't mention one thing. Like I said, you've got Julian Loren's interview that's out now and there's a couple of other bits planned as well so keep supporting the fighting cock go and listen to the lab go and listen to the big John Bass show and we'll be able to carry on doing this forever bye

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