Weekend Edition: Premier League Q&A - MOTD, Battle of the Bridge & time for hooters? - The Sports Agents

0:03This is a Global Player original podcast. Well, the Premier League is back and to celebrate, we are answering some of your questions. What's the best Premier League game we've ever seen live? Who's the best match of the day pundit to watch a game with? And some other takes and predictions for the new season. We're going to look back on a fantastic week on the show. Alan Shearer cried with me about Isak. We got the inside scoop on the biggest transfer stories with David Ornstein as well. Welcome to the Sports Agents.

0:37The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. Hello, Mark. Hi, Gabby. How are you? I'm good, thank you. You can't see it, but I did actually get a tan in Greece. Yeah, I got a little bit of colour. Had a lovely holiday. Thanks for asking. I haven't had a chance to get a word yet. I literally said hi, Gabby. and I haven't been able to say anything else since. A very strange thing happened in Greece. This has never happened to me in my entire life. The night before we left, we were in a restaurant and we hadn't seen many English or British people and there was a little boy who came over for an autograph from Kenny, a big Scottish rugby fan, and then turned to Reuben and got all kind of embarrassed, wanted him.

1:15And it was a very sweet moment and a lovely family and we were just kind of commenting on how we hadn't seen many British people and football fans and that kind of thing. Next day, going to the airport, the driver comes out to take our bags and shakes my hand and he said, such an honour to meet you, Mrs. Logan, Mrs. Gabby Logan. And I was like, why? I didn't ask him why, but I was thinking this is weird. On the way to the airport, he said something about the name of the airport and he said, it's the Anna Palatu Airport. And I said, oh, he said, you must know, Anna Palatu. She was the great rhythmic gymnast from Kefalonia who got a bronze medal at the 2000 Olympic Games.

1:51So I'm like, oh, yes, I said, with absolutely no idea who Anna Palatou was. I'd long since retired at this point. And he said, that is why I was so honoured to meet you. So he obviously was honoured to meet me as a rhythmic gymnast. Nobody's ever, ever said that to me before. My own sporting life was being regarded. I hope you gave Kenny and Ruben a knowing nod. Well, you can imagine the expressions the rest of the family were pulling at this point, honestly. So then I had to have a 15-minute discussion about Anna Palatou all the way to the rest of the way to the airport. But we did pass. It's a small island and we passed a big sports centre and there was a huge mural.

2:29Like you get round Anfield of like, you know, Mo Salah on a big wall of her there. So, you know, it just shows you, doesn't it? The power of rhythmic gymnastics. Exactly. Reaching across the world. And anyway, she did get a bronze, but it was in the ensemble, which is a team event, just in case you're interested, which is why individually I hadn't known her name. Oh, I see. Yeah, so. I feel like I ought to message Lee Mack now and say Gabby's just been recognised after I've written it, gymnastics, because he was so disparaging. He was. You can listen to that on a previous episode of The Sports Agents.

2:56This week on The Sports Agents, obviously I did listen back to your episode with David Ordenstein, who is a font of all knowledge when it comes to transfers. What I loved, not just the transfer chat, was also you digging into how he gets his stories and the crediting of stories. The crediting. And also the fascinating point, because from a journalistic point of view, you kind of think if somebody's ringing you up and saying, oh yeah, we're interested in this player or we're not going to sell this player. You think, what a great way to get a story. People are just ringing you up rather than you having to go searching for it.

3:31But then it is so fraught with difficulties and that's what I was really fascinated about with this, you know, how much you might feel used within what he was doing. You know, take the Belieber situation at the moment. If somebody phones up and says, oh, United are interested in him and you run that, then how much are bright and going to accuse you the journalist of unsettling the player it is a really difficult landscape for him to navigate and the others that do that given the number of people that are involved in all of these and you've you've mentioned those given social media given in the no accounts fan accounts all that kind of stuff easier or harder than five years ago different right because it's harder in the sense that there There is an absolute ocean of information and speculation, fact and everything else in between.

4:24And it's incredibly hazardous to navigate those waters and separate right from wrong. And then on top of that, the agendas and the egos and the various factors that we've discussed. So your head is frazzled with a lot of this stuff. And of course, Alan Shearer was on the podcast as well this week. I was keen to get his take on what's going on with Alexander Isak. Obviously, you know, you discussed it with David Ornstein, actually. But the emotional connection, how much fans have invested in him. You know, there were even kind of Eritrean flags at St James' Park last season. And to just suddenly, you know, we all felt as Newcastle fans, all we had to do was qualify for the Champions League and he was ours for at least another season.

5:09That was kind of the deal, wasn't it? You know, it was the unwritten deal. Yeah, 100%. And to find out that there was other stuff going on, but also the lack of leadership at the very top, which he talked about. I don't like it. I really don't. Because Newcastle are the one that's going to be punished, the football club. And the football club is always bigger than any individual. The football club is always there. Individuals move and shift on. I've been in the game long enough, and you know the game as well as I do, Gabby, that loyalty is a difficult word in football. When a club wants to get rid of you as a player, they get rid of you.

5:40But on the other way around, when a player wants to leave, it can become very difficult and there's ways to do it at the minute i don't think and many many thousands of newcastle fans don't think that he's doing it the right way there are ways to to go about trying to get out of a football club refusing to play uh and not going on trips is not the right way to uh to do that and it's not it's not a good look no uh no sporting director no chief exec and And March, when you, they won the Carabao Cup, feels like such a long time ago now. The joy of Dan Byrne's gone. Yeah, yeah. And it is difficult for everybody connected with Newcastle at the moment.

6:25We went to the other end of the Premier League as well to look at promoted sides and whether after the last two seasons when the three that came up went back down, whether this will be the year that maybe Leeds or Sunderland or Burnley will stay up. So the former Sheffield United manager, Chris Wilder, joined us for that and plenty more besides. It was really interesting, wasn't it? The start of the Premier League when we were first in, we thought that we would get smashed all over the place technically and we'd have to go to a different level. Tactically, sorry Gabby. I'm not so sure that it was a massive, massive difference.

6:56The difference was the players. The difference now is the physicality because you can't bully Premier League players as championship players. they can't out Premier League the Premier League in terms of just taking them on at playing football so you've got to find a different way 2019-20 when we were in the Premier League especially at Brammer Lane we ran over the top of Arsenal and got a result and then when I went back last year one of the first games was Arsenal at home and we said we have to set a tone Brammer Lane on a I think it was a Monday night it was a cold night on whatever so you want to use all the advantages that you've got and you have to try to be physical because you can't outplay this team so we'll set a tone the ball will get rolled back to Jack Robinson he'll put his foot free he'll put it right over Gabriel and Oli McBurnie's going to come off a side and crash an header while Oli McBurnie was in a was absolutely dumped on his backside after 10 seconds Gabriel headed the ball forward I think it went into the centre forward he popped it back to Martinelli he switched it to Odegaard it's gone to Saka overload and rolled across the face of the goal and somebody's missed an absolute tap and I'm going, well, that ain't working.

8:06And that's the first few minutes of the game. That's the first 30 seconds of the game. Yeah, Chris Wilder there. So interesting on what it takes to stay in the Premier League and whether you gamble and whether or not you look kind of pragmatically beyond that season. I couldn't work out in the end. I think he was favouring Leeds potentially out of the three because he was giving arguments as to why. Yeah, I think, yeah, Leeds. but he liked the transfer business that Sunderland had done but also Burnley's defensive record in the Championship and now they've had to change their goalkeeper. You know, that was a positive for them.

8:40You can make a case for all three of them and it would be quite sad and demoralising, I think, to get to the end of the season having been able to make a case for all three of them if all three of them went back down. So catch up with every episode of The Sports Agents on YouTube, Global Player or wherever you get your podcasts. Just remember to hit subscribe or follow and don't forget to rate and review too. Up next, time to answer your questions. The Sports Agents.

9:08The Sports Agents. With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman. So before we get into the questions, thanks to all of you who sent in your Premier League predictions. I mean, there were some bizarre ones, such as Pep Guardiola being the first manager to be sacked, which I found slightly bizarre. But going back to our relegation chat before, lots of people predicted that both Leeds and Sunderland stay up with Brentford, West Ham and Wolves all in danger of going down. You can see those three teams having tricky seasons. Yeah. And for various reasons, which we've discussed, actually, at least in terms of Brentford, we haven't discussed Wolves too much apart from the loss of a key player, obviously, in Kuna.

9:52But West Ham haven't really been away from trouble for a while, have they? No, no. And they've had, I would also say, a slightly difficult transfer window. You know, Mohamed Koudis going to Tottenham. Graham Potter has a very set way of doing things. They've brought in a couple of exciting young players from across Europe. At the end of last season, he gave a couple of young players from the West Ham system a chance as well. so it's how much I suppose they are in I hate the phrase in many ways but it's how much they are in transition really and how much this is a season to sort of get used to everything that Potter wants to do as he starts to change that squad and the Manchester United third favourites to win the title well that's according to our listener predictions and one of them saying one of our listeners saying to win the treble as well I mean you've got to be pretty loyal haven't you or drunk I mean I wouldn't say my I mean maybe I'm not known for my optimism Gabby I don't know but I wouldn't say I'm looking at joint third favourites for the title or winning the treble I think if they get if they get European football they've probably done well and I know people go well they spent too much conference conference league as opposed to dropping into the conference I'm not sure they'll drop that far I think you know people say well they've spent 200 million on three players and stuff so but they're trying to start from starting position at 16th and there are still plenty of areas that you look at and think you're going to have to strengthen there and I will be fascinated to see how flexible he is this season I've been just as well about his style of football obviously is predicated on a high level of fitness and obviously there was a question mark about the players that he'd taken over whether they were fit enough to play in that system.

11:51What pre-season has done, actually, to the players that he's decided can fit into his system? Well, yeah. And also, I know they've brought Cesko in, but he's not prolific. He's not the finished article. He's not the finished article. It's not the same as City bringing Haaland in, for example. So there is still work to be done there. Even Jokorish, you know, obviously has got the most incredible tally, comes in and won't get that in the Premier League, you would think, in his first season. But you know he knows how to score a goal. Yeah, he's got more of a back catalogue over the last two seasons when it comes to numbers than Sesko has.

12:30But then some people would say, well, Sesko's been playing in the Bundesliga, which is a high standard to the Portuguese league. OK, shall we get on to the questions? Yes, go on. Yulia has asked on Instagram, the best Premier League game you've ever watched live. I was thinking about this for ages, partly because I can barely remember last week, let alone going all the way back. And then I thought, I'll take being a fan out of it and going to those games, because there are lots of sort of romantic things of going to watch your team and how that plays into it. But from a neutral perspective and going to a game, the Monday night of Chelsea against Tottenham, the year that Leicester won the league, and that was the game that gave Leicester the league title.

13:13Tottenham was still in the running and Chelsea and Tottenham played at the bridge and Mark Clattenburg decided to referee that game as if it was 1975 and it was and it was all in my opinion it was all the better for it the Chelsea Tottenham rivalry the fact that the league title was on the line for Leicester the fact that they were allowed to kick lumps out of each other it had everything did that game and also the commentary position at stanford bridge there are two commentary positions and we were up on the gantry for this one so you get an amazing tactical view of it but you could still feel the intensity of it i would go for that one see i've gone for one involving my team but only because as a fan i mean i go i'm going back right back right to the 96 97 season right yeah yeah because the 95 six seasons when we threw it away that's when Manchester United went to St James's and Peter Schmeichel had one of the all-time great performances as a goalkeeper and Cantona got the winner at St James's Park and that helped to reel Newcastle.

14:16And so then the following season, early on in the season, probably like maybe October time, and we hadn't had the best start and I woke up on a Sunday morning and decided I was going to fly up to the game. It was Man United at home. I know what's coming. I remember this one. And we won 5-1. and it was the most brilliant game and fantastic atmosphere. And you know when you go as a fan, you've made a big effort to get somewhere and you go home thinking, I'll always have that day. That's the Philippe Albert chip game, isn't it? Philippe Albert, everyone knows his name. There you go, which is from Rupert the Bear, that chant.

14:56Just in case you missed it. Just in case you didn't recognise the tune. I mean, there have been a couple of others at St. James' Park because there was a series of games where the season before and that season, maybe even the season after, we kept having four three-score lines with Liverpool, which was sometimes reversed at Anfield. And one of the ones at St. James' Park I was also at, which was amazing. But yeah, just because of that kind of effort you put in, sometimes it reaps the reward, you know? Loads of people asking about match of the day. So Hannah89 on our Google form, which I introduced whilst you were away and set that up for the pod.

15:30Before you do a match of the day, who's the best pundit to watch a game with? who's calm and analysing, who's jumping up and down, who opens your eyes to the most stuff. God, there's loads there. There's a lot there, isn't there? Yeah, and different people have different qualities. Back in the day when Ian Wright used to do Match of the Day, he was always very energetic if Arsenal were playing. He was the one that sprung to mind for who's jumping up and down. And we once did a Match of the Day with Wrighty that had Arsenal-Manchester United on, and there were some people who had come in to watch the show who'd bid in a charity auction, and the two teenage lads that came in were both United fans, and I think Arsenal may have gone 3-0 up inside 20 minutes, and Wrighty was swearing at them, like as a joke and dancing in front of them, and I got a note the following day from the dad going, that was the best day.

16:26Even as United fans, that was the best day of their life to be given stick by Ian Wright over Arsenal by the United. Roasted by rights. So he was always the most energetic. Yeah. They all have incredible insight, obviously. And, you know, they're often given specific games to watch, obviously. So they might not be across all the games to the same kind of intensity as one game in particular. Danny Murphy is one who will always spot something quite quickly. And once you kind of tune into what he's looking at, it's so fascinating to get that insight. Yeah, I would say he opens my eyes to the most stuff.

16:57I think when I've done ones with Troy Deeney as well he is really analytical and spots stuff within a game as well so I like watching games with Troy because you would assume from how Troy played that Troy wouldn't be looking at everything from the tactical point of view he might be looking at who kicks people up in the air or whatever but I always enjoy watching those kind of games with Troy and his tactical analysis it's always fun being able to watch games with pundits when their teams are playing because from my point of view as a fan you're kind of able to take the mic out of them and give them stick as if it was back to when they're playing and you're you're in the stands watching so i quite like the mickey taking when they're when their actual teams are playing and obviously alan when Newcastle are playing is definitely an emotional investment.

17:54It can be unbearable or hilarious. It's an emotional investment going on there, that's for sure. The Sports Agents The Sports Agents With Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman Right, what is the story of the season going to be, says Tim on X? What is it that we're not going to stop talking about? For example, has VAR now reached a stage where it is what it is and we've got used to it we know technology is in the game or is VAR going to still carry on being something that takes up perhaps too much of our time I think yeah I know what you mean about VAR I think it's going to be and I'm looking at my phone here just to try and remember exactly what this rule is going to be but I think this rule about the goalkeeper holding the ball for longer than eight seconds more than eight seconds and then a corner being awarded i would imagine in the first couple of months of the season we are going to bore ourselves silly one with two three four i mean is there going to be a clock on it well exactly exactly so in this multi-billion pound league with all the entertainment and all the superstars and all the narratives and all the stories and all the excitement we're going to be talking most about putting a stopwatch on a goalkeeper holding the ball i do i do think the first couple of months of the season it might be that it's going to be a bit nonsense isn't it there's always something like that isn't there it's always you know referees at the start of a season being really tight on holding at corners and then they give a few penalties and then sort a pundit will go well if they're going to give one there you know there's going to be five a game and then eventually it settles down the other thing is interesting from the Euros because often you get when you've had an international tournament in the summer you spot trends in officiating that kind of sometimes so there was hardly any time added on in the halves of the women's Euros which there were matches where there was a lot of injury or there was something happening in the first and you go a minute?

20:05have they only given a minute? and the same for full you know 19 minutes it would be like a minute two minutes very rarely did it get over four minutes And we've begun to see, obviously in the Premier League, especially post-Qatar, we started to see kind of eight minutes, nine minutes regularly. And I wonder if there's going to be any kind of look at that in terms of, you know, going back down to, you know, one, two minutes at all. It just seems like a trend in the summer. I still wonder whether eventually timekeeping will be taken out of the referee's hands and it'll be a bit like a league and done on a hooter or whatever or somebody takes that.

20:38A hooter? Yes. so technologically it's ours let's get a hooter can we get a hooter in please there's a lot of professional sport that could be enhanced by a hooter i'll tell you um rosie on email what's your most what's your most absurd or crazy prediction for the season what will happen that never has before i've thought about this radio i couldn't think of anything there will an old face reappear to save a team season that's interesting isn't it yeah maybe maybe izak will reappear to save Newcastle season at some point. The most absurd prediction for this season. Well, do you know what? If he doesn't go, if Liverpool don't bid for him or he doesn't go, then at some point he has to be reintegrated, doesn't he?

21:19For his own sporting kind of future, his football future, he's got to be playing, hasn't he? You can't just sit and fester. Listen, every single Newcastle fan would be thrilled if he showed up back in the starting line-up. I don't think that would take too long to forgive him. So maybe that's not so absurd. an old face reappearing to save a team's season. From talking to Chris Wilder this week on the pod, there are managers of promoted sides and Daniel Farker is the one. You know, there were rumours at the end of last season that he might be let go of once Leeds have got promoted and they start with someone else in the Premier League.

21:54I do think that there is this perception that he is under pressure before they've even kicked a ball, which is just bizarre. on the one hand i could see an old face going to leeds to try and save leads if they don't get off to a good start equally the way the group work and that 49ers group and so on and so forth they might go and then bring in someone we've never heard of but there is that there is that element of could you see an old face turning up at leeds to say an old face in the managerial yeah in a Mourinho, Postacoglu type. Okay, so not an old Leeds face, just an old face. Experience.

22:34Experience face. I think Mourinho looks great, by the way. I don't think he looks like he's got an old face. Yeah, Postacoglu. But they will be sort of, you know, hovering. Postacoglu in Leeds is quite an interesting fit, actually, isn't it? But then there was talk about Postacoglu in Brentford before they employed Keith Andrews. That doesn't work as much. Keith Andrews. There's something about Postacoglu in Leeds. Do you like that? Yeah, there's something about that that seems to... Although I don't want to be seen as an anti-farker because... Don't you? Don't think anybody wants to be seen as that, can't we?

23:13I'm definitely not against it. Oh, dear. Anything else? Any more questions? Well, we've got to end on this one. Gary on TikTok, because we are on TikTok as well. not just Mark's Google spreadsheet who will finish higher Newcastle United or Manchester United the way things are right now you've got to finish higher look at what you've spent look at what you you know see I would still say Newcastle United but then I think that's both of us doing the standard fan thing of being desperately pessimistic about our own team in the hope that actually we'll prove wrong and they'll do well I'd be happy to finish in the top half you wouldn't you wouldn't at all if we get another day out of Wembley that's it thanks for your questions you can always get in touch on socials or an email the sportsagents at global.com or on our google form in the episode description and if you're enjoying this episode on the news agents feed search for the sports agents to listen to this week's episodes in full youtube global player or wherever you get your podcasts for that new episodes every tuesday thursday and friday the sports agents with gabby logan and mark chapman

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