Liverpool 0-3 Man City - what does it mean?

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2:23Today, awkward. Man City win at Anfield, plunging the table into existential dilemma as team in the dock, put in the doku to devastating effect. We'll talk about that, the news elsewhere, Jordan's alive, Hendo's brace, and Jordan's not so much, Pickford's late pickle, and all the weekend's action from the Seagulls and the Eagles to the Tigers and the Cheaters in this Totally Football show. It's Sunday the 11th of October. Tom Williams is here in the studio with us. Hello, James. Welcome back from Paris, Tom. Thank you very much. Welcome to Adrian Clarke, who's just returned from doing the comms on the Man City game.

2:59I did, yeah. The result that no one outside of Manchester City wanted, really. Well, lots of Man City fans, players, etc. were pretty happy at the end of that. Colin Miller's with us as well. Hello, James. Hello to you as well. Yeah, we've just seen the events at Anfield. lots of you joining us live commenting on it by the way let's see ever 2000 says to be honest not sure that 3-0 win was in city or the league's long-term interests i guess because it draws attention to things andrew turner says this premier league season has no credibility until city are sanctioned andy sutton says this defiance from city is unbelievable You haven't been wronged.

3:47You've been cheating. Was this something that struck everybody else? How effusive City were in their celebrations, almost goading, almost gloating? I felt that. I did. And it left a little bit of a sour taste in the mouth, if I'm honest. I thought there was a lot of smirking. Mariska's beaming smile was a bit galling to watch. There was just no contrition, no sort of humbleness at all about City, was there? It was just basically it felt as if they were laughing at the rest of the Premier League. And that, I think, will only strengthen the resolve of the other clubs and the supporters of the other clubs to get on their backs in the way that Liverpool fans tried to early on in this game.

4:29You know, they are public enemy number one. I understand that they've won at Anfield. They're proud of their performance. But it was, I thought, yeah, just a little bit unpleasant to watch. and I think it could backfire on them. But you can also understand it. The players and the coaching staff are in such an invidious position. What is an appropriate way for them to behave when it comes to celebrating goals, celebrating wins, particularly when the club hierarchy are still fighting this and refusing to accept their guilt and refusing to accept responsibility. So if the players modify their behaviour at all, they're kind of going against what the club is telling them to do.

5:16I share Adrian's reservations. It was very galling to see them kind of like rubbing in in that way. But you try and put yourself in that changing room in the minds of those City players. What are they supposed to think? How are they supposed to, you know, how are they supposed to carry themselves while we exist in this hinterland between the announcement of the guilty verdict and the conclusion of the appeal? and then, you know, the eventual sanctions. I think that's a fair point. Colin? Yeah, I mean, I kind of agree with both Adrian and Tom on this in the sense that this has never happened before.

5:50Obviously, it's unprecedented, not just in terms of the scale of the judgment, but also in terms of if you're a footballer and you're in this situation, you just don't really know what to compare it to. Obviously, there have been punishments in the past, but those have sort of been definitive at an end of the season or a conclusive result of that. not during the middle of the season, not whilst players are kind of just going game to game. And we kind of thought, how would those players react to that? Would it be something that would negatively impact them? Of course, they're thinking about their futures, or could it be something that brings them together?

6:20On the basis of today, probably the latter. But having said that, I mean, this game was very much changed by the red card decision. Up until then, it was very much a bit of an even contest. And by the player who provoked that red card, Jeremy Duker, his entrance to the game, quite the turning point. We'll get on to a proper analysis of what took place between City and Liverpool in a second. A quick run through the results of match day six. It began, well, on Sunday, first of all, Crystal Palace beat Forest and their old manager, Oli Gleisland, 2-1. Forest missing no less than eight big chances, though, in that game.

6:57That's the most that anyone has had and still lost the match since 2012. well. Hull Everton finished 2-2 and yes, 3-0 for Man City at Anfield. Saturday, Arsenal came from a goal down to beat Leeds 2-1. Villa and Brentford showed a 2-2 draw. Chelsea did a 5-1 on Bournemouth. Ipswich came from behind to win 2-1 against Fulham. While in a big feline avian clash in the North East, Brighton went a goal up away at Sunderland, went down to 10 men and scored another anyway for a 2-0 victory. That's three wins in a row now without conceding for the Seagulls and three straight defeats for the Black Cats.

7:35In the evening game, Man United took on Spurs. Spurs dominated, then went a goal down, then went a man down. But here's the twist. Ten-man Tottenham found an equaliser to move off the bottom of the table. It is now Fulham in last place. They are below everybody, right? Nice. Spurs still in the bottom three, though, with the Cottagers and Coventry, who play on Monday night against Newcastle. Crikey. All right, then. Let's get on, then, to events at Anfield. So, Man City, 3-0 winners. That's now six wins out of six. As Duncan Alexander points out, excitingly, if they go on to win all their games this season, how many points will they have, Tom?

8:19114. Wow. Anyway, six wins out of six. And this one, not just a win, but a statement performance. Yeah, I think so. I think we mentioned it at the top, but the red card was definitive in this match. Liverpool were missing quite a lot of players through injury. Obviously, Cody Gapro, Alexander Izak, Hugo Agatike, Dominic Shotherslai was out as well. And City were fine. They didn't create very much up until they took the lead. I think their XG was 0.17. It just kind of reflects the fact that there wasn't any chances. And Liverpool's was quite low as well. So it was a bit of an even-stevens, wasn't it?

8:53and I think they did well to control the crowd which was always going to be the main thing. Liverpool were always going to try to make this a chaotic game. Mareska's all about control. So sort of those two clashes of style going head to head and I think when you go down to 10 men and Jamie Carragher who's in the commentary for this match in the sky I think he made this point. When you go down to 10 you think they'll struggle to score because you're going to maybe take off an attacking player and try to shore things up but you shouldn't fall apart defensively. I think Liverpool kind of did albeit the goals were very high quality.

9:25They were, yeah. All that money bought Man City quite a team, I think we can say. The turning point, Tom, Jeremy Doku, one of their many successful acquisitions, what did he do in the space of six or seven second half minutes? We did what he always does. He runs at people and absolutely terrifies them. He came on 11 minutes into the second half and within five minutes he'd drawn a foul from Ryan Gravenberg that saw Gravenberg shown a second yellow card. Liverpool down to 10 men. A few minutes later, it's Doku's characteristic driving run into the left and a shot that Alexis McAllister blocked that leads to Haaland putting them ahead.

10:08And then a few minutes after that, Doku picks the ball up on the left, cuts in, kills a lovely shot top right. And basically in the space of 12 minutes, he'd come off the bench, got one of Liverpool's most impressive performers sent off and then, you know, had a decisive role in the two goals that ultimately decided the game. And what did Iriola have on the bench? Not a lot, really. Obviously, he had Rewin Gamora, but there wasn't a lot for it. I think there was a stark difference in the quality of the benches. That was for sure. I felt the red was fair. Did you think? Yeah, I thought it was a yellow.

10:39Yeah, I thought it was a yellow. The second was a yellow. What did you think about the first? Remind me of the first. I stood on Elliot Anderson's toe. I didn't think it was scandalous. Yeah, it's not a scandalous red card. It's a little bit soft and you could say, did he really deserve that? But I think in isolation, you could easily give two yellow cards for that. I felt for him, because I thought he was actually pretty brilliant in the game, Ryan Gravenberg. He embarrassed Elliot Anderson on two or three occasions when he dropped a shoulder, went past him, drove down the middle of the pitch.

11:10I thought it was a class performance from Gravenberg until then. But ultimately, he has cost his team the game, hasn't he? because I think Liverpool were on course to get something. Not definitely, of course, but yeah, they did fall apart quite quickly. That said, all three goals were magnificent in their own right, weren't they? I mean, the strike from Haaland, the Cherokee brilliance and Dokus Köln. It felt particularly on the nose, the third goal above all, that City should score such an exquisite goal at the end of a 41-pass move involving all 10 outfield players and your reaction as a neutral observer is to kind of shrug and think, well, what do we make of this?

11:55Does that goal even exist if City have these points taken off them that we're expecting them to have taken off them? Does that victory even exist? I mean, like, it's not to make, you know, not to sort of render this conversation redundant, but it's just from now on, until the sanctions are announced, until we know what's going to happen, it's impossible to kind of talk about City, I think like a normal football team anymore. And so for them to play so well and score such exquisite goals, you just kind of just added to that sense of the surreal around this football club now and everything that they do.

12:29Cognitive dissonance. At its finest slash word. That's what we call it. Is it simpler just to say the Premier League is a 19-team division and there's one rogue element that's going to go around playing one team per week, but the rest are going to get on and have a division between themselves? Colin? I think this result and the manner of the performance and the victory does just amplify this even more, right? I kind of didn't think before this game, obviously we've spoken about this quite a lot. Premier League on Monday morning will be going in, lads, we've got to sort this out. I didn't think that this would be such a big problem for the Premier League.

13:06And the initial, whenever the judgment comes out, you think, well, actually it reflects well on them that this investigation took place, that they persisted with it, they persevered and all the rest of it. Globally, that looks like a good image. But now, whenever the footballs now come back, it's kind of just brought that right back into the spotlight. Every single week, every single match from now until the end of the season is going to be caveated, if not more than caveated, by the fact that this team, that this club might not be... I mean, this could be the last time Man City play at Anfield for a number of years.

13:37That is a very realistic proposition. That might not happen for another three or four years. We just don't know. And I just think that the nature of this is now, it's now, the league itself has now been compromised by it. And I didn't think of that straight away when the judgment came out, but now that the football has resumed, I think that's quite evident. Why didn't you think that straight away? Because you sort of assume that, right, this is kind of like a victory for the league, right? Because the league has kind of been fought. It felt so definitive when the announcement was made or when the news came out.

14:04But it's the fact that the sanctions don't come with the judgment. I think that is the problem. Yeah, look, I think for City and the Premier League, the sooner this gets sorted, the better, so that everyone can move on. But the problem is, for the Premier League, if the sanction is you're still guilty, 100 points or whatever, enough points to knock you out of the division, where is the motivation then for City to turn up? Well, Tom raised this point before. One theory is that you don't give them all 100 in one go. You give them maybe 25 points deduction per season going forward or 50 to knock them down.

14:41Yeah, but that's not, yeah. In a way, it might as well just wait to the end. You know, wait to the end of this. Suspend the sanctions at the end of the season. But you can't, Adrian, because it's out there. It's out there, and this is the problem that Colin's articulated, that we all know that there's likely to be some major, major, major decision made about City and their status in the Premier League, irrefutable body of evidence notwithstanding. I know. It's a crazy situation. Because, I mean, this has been one game. We're already struggling to know how to make it. But maybe, you know, in a week or two's time, with the pace of modern life, we'll all just be going back to watching football with City in it.

15:18But like we were before, when everyone kind of knew that there was some shady stuff going on, we didn't have 114 guilty rulings, but we did have, I think, a strong sense. A lot of supporters did have a strong sense. But you just kind of got on with it. Maybe that's what we'll end up doing. But it's, I mean, it's a mess. There's no easy answer. We know that, you know, this, I mean, you know, If things progress according to the Premier League rulebook, we should get an appeal before Christmas. We should then get some kind of verdict in the weeks that follow. So I suspect that football will probably not do its best to kind of forget about this.

15:59It's a very difficult thing. I mean, we're experiencing this now ourselves. It's a very difficult thing to make sense of and talk about. it may be the case that it kind of retreats into the background a little bit but I think everyone knows that it's going to return to the forefront of the news cycle very quickly I think it'll be harder for it to fade away completely. Colin correct me if I'm wrong the Premier League will be running the decision making over the sanctions concurrent with Man City's appeal in order to expedite the verdict as soon as possible. Yeah I believe so I believe that's the way it works and I think And so when do you think?

16:34Give us a date. I mean, I think that the expected timescale would be, well, before the end of the season, sort of March, April time. I mean, that's that four to five month period whenever you have the sanctions when they come out. The appeal has been lodged, right? They have a deadline for the appeal and then that can only last so long. This isn't a retrial, by the way. They're not re-examining all the evidence. It's just a case of what is it that you're appealing on. Which is what's so funny about Man City saying we have this irrefutable evidence, which they say presumably hasn't been involved in the previous thing, because that can't be admitted to the appeals process.

17:06But I mean, it all goes back to Manchester City's ownership and where they come from. I mean, this is linked to a government who don't have accountability, right? And who can just take this approach with anything within their sort of day-to-day regime's existence. So why not apply that to you? Is that theirs or ours? Well, yeah, well, exactly. I think it does go some way to explaining though the fact that if they could just deny, deny, deny, deny even with all the evidence now out there the judgement's out there and the position hasn't changed it's unflinching and I just find it slightly uncomfortable not so much the players and fans celebrating but whenever this is framed as defiance by the broadcasters doing this I mean it's not like you've just had one or two players sent off and you've battled to this great victory I mean you've been found to have cheated it's not about defiance, right?

17:54I think that's the wrong way of framing it and that's what I find quite uncomfortable about the whole thing. Right. Turns out cheats do prosper, says Thomas Callen, 17-18. Tabasco says that felt weird indeed. Matt Weller says it's all a fugazi, isn't it? We're not watching competitive sport the longer this situation and City's belligerent continues. The Premier League isn't worth watching. Loads more people. Good result for Arsenal, to be fair, taking points off a potential rival before they get it, before they get hit with a big whopping penalty. It's a great result. Florian Wurtz couldn't trap a spider, says Mr.

18:31Dirt, which is worrying news indeed. Florian Wurtz withdrawn early in the second half. Spiders are notoriously quite tricky to trap. Right. I don't think that's the key point here. Yeah, no, true, true. I mean, we were saying this pre-pod. Florian Wurtz is clearly a monumentally talented footballer, but he's been playing in the Premier League now for over a season. And you don't get the sense with him that things are falling into place. And from a neutral perspective, you would quite like things to fall into place for him because he is such a wonderful talent, but it is just not happening. And there were a couple of occasions today, you know, Liverpool started both halves on the front foot, very aggressive with their pressing at the beginning of the second half in particular.

19:17and the most they had to show from that was a bunch of shots from distance and there was one opportunity in particular where Virts got into a great position, opted to shoot when he had two men overlapping him on the left and it seemed quite telling that he was withdrawn pretty early. Before Lewis Gwynn. Before Lewis Gwynn, a 21-year-old kid making his full debut up front. I mean, you know, Liverpool, as we saw today from the team selection, the lack of options on the bench, they don't have a multitude of options in that. of the pitch. There's not enormous competition for Virts to have to worry about, but it is getting harder to make the case for him.

19:53I've got to say, they were severely weakened today, Liverpool, there's no doubt about that, but they still had two players in their front four that cost over£100 million. And neither stepped up when the team needed. They didn't look top quality today. I thought Barker looked dreadful on the ball. They didn't know what he was going to do. And you would expect more, I think, of him. And Vietz, how many games has he won for Liverpool? How many games has he taken by the scruff of the neck in this year and a bit, year and a quarter? I can't remember very many. Can you? So, you know, I know it's early to call Barcola a flop, but the signs suggest that they've grossly overpaid for him.

20:33And this should have been his moment. Without Gakpo, without Isaac, without Eckert TK, without Schalberstein. He's a guy, he takes control. You've got a couple of guys who've come in who kind of do a bit more of the sort of grifting work and do a bit more of your running for you. they make the runs in behind, you should be picking them out. But it just doesn't work for him. All these different combinations haven't worked and he should be the talisman and he's not. A couple more comments. Mr. Peter Betula says, this is the Premier League's fault. Why do it after the season starts? Unprofessional, to say the least.

21:03As a City fan, they have ruined the season for everyone. Interesting perspective there. Of course, it wasn't the Premier League themselves who were in any way in charge of the timing of the decision. That was an independent panel. And they came to their conclusion when they came to their conclusion. I'm sure the Premier League would love to have done this, had this sorted before the season started. Yes. Well, there you go. A 3-0 victory in many ways magnificent, certainly once they were playing against 10 men, which does kind of make it easier. But what does it all mean? We're no clearer. Let's get on some other games between teams who are not facing 114 guilty charges.

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24:00Two other matches happened earlier on Sunday. Hey Colin, you watched the very exciting match up in Hull between Hull City and Everton. Tell us. Yeah, James, this was a game that I must say I thought I maybe had drawn the short straw on this one. I didn't think Hull and Everton, the two best defences in the league going into this match. But it turned out to be quite an entertaining affair. Not in the first half, it was a bit cagey. Everton thought they'd taken the lead through Brennan Johnson, who was deemed to be offside, which is a bit contentious because it was a goal line clearance from Mendy but I think the rule is that he has to intentionally clear it so you couldn't tell that because it was a reflex it was straight at him so that's why that goal was disallowed by the book and then the second half was completely different it was in the end, Hall took the lead threw a really, really good goal so it was actually an Ainsley Midland-Niles error initially but there was a phenomenally well-weighted pass by Sorba Thomas the Wales international who was a deadline day signing from Stoke for Joe Gellhart to score his first Premier League goal in, I think it was four and a half years when he was back at Leeds United in 2022.

25:12So that's good for him. He clocked up his goal celebration, went for a knee slide and the pitch was drier than he was expecting but styled it out by turning it into a roly-poly. Brilliantly done. It's just neat knee slides and sort of pitches for somebody who's got a little bit of pee in there. Spoiler alert, there was another goal scorer later in the game who celebrated a goal with a knee slide and he absolutely nailed it. So are Hull only watering certain corners of the pitch? Questions to answer. Excellent stuff. Important point raised. Some more comments. One, because we've been called idiots.

25:42Fardock says, I don't get why the media idiots, that's you guys, can't understand that the current crop of players have nothing to do with what happened 10 years ago. Yeah. So if you buy a lot of players with money that you shouldn't have by the league's rules, and then you win a lot of things and you earn a lot of money and you get into the champions league and you generate money from that then you have money to buy players that you wouldn't have done if you hadn't injected artificially a whole blunt is that a fair summary of the situation i think so okay cool uh fair play to city says sean 8x8 fair play to city that win could keep them up um yeah anyway let's move on let's move on there was another game on sunday afternoon Crystal Palace taking on Nottingham Forest.

26:34Very, very peculiar game. I have no idea how Nottingham Forest didn't win this game. Palace were so bad in the first half. Forest go ahead in the third minute. Mistake by Anand Kalayli, the new Daniel Munoz, if you like. Right wing back who's been brought in by Palace. Undercooked his back header. Dan Andoy strolls in and scores. And then Forest battered them. Morgan Gibbs-White had a shot that hit the crossbar came out to Liam De Lappe he put his shot straight at the goalkeeper and almost every time Forrest put the ball into the box both in open play and at set pieces they had a spare man at the back post and Palace just didn't get to grips with it Palace were trying to play out from the back kept conceding possession in dangerous areas and you just thought at some point Forrest was going to get a second goal here and yet Palace go in 2-1 up at half time One of the goals off an elbow?

27:29Yeah, so the equaliser was quite a nicely worked goal and Daishi Kamada poked it in but then in first off stoppage time Adam Wharton puts a corner in Jefferson Lerma climbs at the back post gets a header in, runs off celebrating is initially credited with the goal and then at half time the goal was given to Kalayli and the replays show that when Lerma heads the ball it quite clearly flicks off Kalayli's arm and therefore should have been ruled out. And then just to add to the intrigue, moments later, the goal is reclassified as a Jefferson Lerma goal, as if there's nothing to see here, that elbow that you thought, you know, you saw the ball flick off.

28:09That didn't happen. Anyway, Forrest get a third through Jeremy Pino and somehow, you know, run out winners. And in much the same way as they beat Fulham a few weeks ago, which is their only other victory so far, they emerge victorious from a game that they should have lost quite comfortably. But a big win for PSA. A big win for PSA in the sense that he's getting points on the board but they were so bad in the first half. It felt like you could run the simulation of this game a hundred times and Palace would probably win it two or three times. But I guess Forrest only have themselves to blame didn't take the chances that they took.

28:50Eight big chances. Eight big chances. Eight? Yeah. I mean, not many teams have eight big chances in a game, especially away from home. First team to have eight big chances and lose since 2012. Blackburn against Newcastle, I believe. Jen has all his stats. Did you not? Everybody knows that. During the concurrent Hall Everton game, the commentator pointed out that Everton's sixth big chance missed in that match was the highest of the season for any team, and then a minute later had to correct it to say that simultaneously four of us have actually missed more in the other match. So, yeah, it is quite a high number.

29:24It feels to me like big chances, the sort of range of what's classed as a big chance is coming down. It's just too easy. It's a pretty woolly term, isn't it? Big chance. The bar has got too low. What is a big chance? I don't know. I think what it is is up to the get all their analysts watching the game. And if a chance is created and missed and they all go, ooh, loud enough. Right, okay. And it hits a certain level of decibels, then it's a big chance. The boring answer is that I think it's a certain XG, 0.4 or 0.5 XG or whatever, and that's a big chance. All right. Big game four, Crystal Palace coming up on Thursday in the Europa League.

30:06After they faced their former manager today, their manager is going to be facing his former club on Thursday because they're at Lyon. I look at Palace and I think, this isn't a good team. I look at them and think there's a really good chance that Palace could go down. I know that they've won this game, but I don't think they're showing great signs, personally. I think one of the issues today was they were building up through the wide centre-backs quite a lot. And one of those was J.D. Camvo, a very young, right-footed centre-back who's playing as a left-sided centre-back. Cannot use his left foot at all.

30:44And then on the other side, it was Jefferson Lerma. and on the Sky commentary, Alan Smith at one point said that Lerma looked like a fish up a tree or something. Like a fish up a tree. A fish up a tree. So I guess it's not helping that you've got round pegs in square holes. But yeah, I mean, if you were to judge Palace purely in terms of their performance today, I think you'd still be pretty worried about them. The Totally Football Show European Edition is back first thing on Tuesday after that show's international break. Tom, you'll be with us for that. Paul Bullis will be making an appearance.

31:17The Horncastle as well. We're looking forward to Champions League match day two. And, of course, back on the weekend's action. Incredible series of early goals there. The fastest goal in the history of the Bundesliga. Augsburg scoring after eight seconds. Who were they facing? Only Bayern Munich. Woof. Meanwhile, in Spain, we had the fastest goal in La Liga this season. That came after 78 seconds and was scored by Anthony Gordon. Woof. Also, Vinny Jr. had a goal disallowed for pulling an opponent's hair on the way in.

31:54Is it Vinny Jr., though? They say he's been climbed, don't they? We simply don't know. We simply don't know. We asked Paul this question because actually we had to... Paul's heading off to Istanbul to see Galatasaray Barcelona. So we spoke to him a short time ago. He did reference the fact that Vinny has grown a beard. but underneath that has had his jaw reconstructed. Or has he? Et cetera and so on.

32:24Anyway, more of that kind of thing in Tuesday's European Football Show. Speaking of Turkey, who are Ahmed Spor? Colin, you have 60 seconds. Yes, so I wrote an article about this for The Athletic. It was published on Saturday. Ahmed Spor were the team that went into this weekend top of the Turkish Super League. They are the first club who are really representative of the Kurds in Turkey, of Kurdish culture, of Kurdish symbolism. And this comes at a time when sort of Turkish-Kurdish relations are sort of becoming reconciliatory. They're working towards peace after sort of decades of conflict. So this symbolism is very powerful.

33:02They made a flying start to the campaign as well. The first ever time they've been in the Super League, they went into the weekend top. They drew this weekend, so Galatasaray are back above them. But yeah, it's a really good story. and it sort of dovetails nicely with this sort of wider geopolitical situation there. And yeah, it's just another great story. It took a Super League, of course, full of a lot of old names that we're quite familiar with. Yes. Have you also written about the extraordinary match in Sweden's top division, which took place on Saturday? Oh, I don't know who it's between.

33:32AIK were one of the teams. Do you know about this? It was, who were the two teams, producer Charlie? Colin, you know. I'll try to pronounce this properly. Broma Podge Corner. Okay. I'm sure any Swedish listeners will correct. Okay. Now, when I read about this, I thought, think of the person doing the match report. So at halftime, it's nil-nil. And you're like, okay, this could go either way. 70 minutes in, though, one team has taken a 5-1 lead. So you're typing away, I'm thinking. You've got your three-paragraph structure all sorted out. But wait, in the 98th minute, AIK get a 98th minute, Sorry, equally.

34:08And 98th minute, 5-5 equaliser. So that's that then. And just while the celebrations have got going and all the pride is spilling out, Bromwell, Pudge Corner, break up the other end of the pitch and score again in the 99th minute. 6-5. But for 6-5 win, 11 goals. I don't think I've ever been at a match with 11 goals in it. Never mind all in one half is extraordinary. I can't think of any other match. No, in a half. That's mad, isn't it? Wasn't Arsenal ready? 7-4. I commentated on that one. Yeah, 7-4. Yeah, that was a crazy game. Yeah. What? 6-5. Good story. Two goals at Old Trafford on Saturday.

34:51That was an exciting game. They had big chances, didn't they? Classic Spurs. Loads of big chances in the first half. And here we go again. They go a goal down. This time, Betancourt gets sent off. And now they're down to 10 men. and it really looks like being another bad afternoon for Roberto Di Zerbi. But the twist, they get a point back, battling Spurs with 10 men. It's better. Look, I was asked before this game, who's the least bad out of Man United and Spurs? I thought it was a valid question. And I said, well, we'll find out. Because I don't know. What was the answer? United have been sluggish.

35:24Spurs have not been great. You know, blah, blah, blah. I think we found out that Spurs are less bad than Man United. Man United are a worse team than Tottenham Hotspur at the moment, for sure. They're really not good. Very ponderous. No tempo to their game, really, Manchester United. That first half was pretty dreadful. The midfield with Tielemans in there with Mainer didn't look good. They sort of sliced through them quite easily, didn't they? It was poor. And again, I looked at the running stats, and you shouldn't judge everything on running. okay it's not a be all and end all but the one valid criticism of Manchester United at the moment is that they don't look fit they don't look sharp they don't look full of running and Spurs ran 4.7km more than Manchester United which is a pretty big margin huge in a match that two teams are participating in you can get you know a different match you can see a team run 8km more than a team that was in a different match but this is the same game so almost 5km is massive difference.

36:29Other things that Spurs did more than Man United, complete passes in the final third. In the opening 20 minutes, Spurs had completed 35, United just won. Bruno Fernandes didn't complete a single pass until 23 minutes into the game, which is not great. Colin, you were also tweeting about United's performance in general, just the trajectory of their performances. Yeah, I think if this game had been in isolation, you can kind of maybe contextualise it a bit but this is pretty much the trend that's been going on all season. Just before the international break we spoke about the Fulham match and again I said about the conditioning of the players how easy it was for teams to play through them and Tottenham were almost walking through Man United at times there was so much space and I don't know I kind of think with the way that they're dropping points so many late goals going against them and these don't seem to be being addressed at all and Manchester United fans never really boo their team I don't think that's really happened very often in the past 13 or 14 years, but it's been quite consistent in the past couple of weeks.

37:30I just think that they've seen this so many times before. I think it's kind of an extension of the summer transfer window when there was a lot of positivity at the end of the season. The club doesn't really build upon it. And then the club doesn't really build upon the backroom staff either. I mean, Michael Carrick's backroom staff was assembled very hastily in mid-January. And of course, that worked in the short term. But you kind of think summer would have been the time to maybe sort of rejig things, put in more of a structure that was planned. And none of that has happened. And I think you can see all the freelties within that.

38:01And yeah, I'd be very, very concerned. Well, they had the easiest set of fixtures for the start of the season. They then had the international break, which was an opportunity for Carrick to have a bit of impact on the team. But it so far doesn't seem to have had much effect. Tom, I was one bright spot from United, and there weren't many, but Carlos Balaba came on to make his debut and had a real impact. And, you know, as Adrian was saying, Tielemans and Mainu have not convinced so far, but Balaba playing in place of Tielemans really gave them something, both with and without the ball. So that might help address some of the problems.

38:36But, yeah, they look pretty far off at the moment. Was it curious for anybody else that Ben Tanker got red and Luke Shaw, who raced 20 yards upfield and then slammed him to the ground, didn't? I get why Shaw reacted, because Bentancur did lunge in on him quite nastily. I think he tried to do it. So I get why he saw the red mist. You know, broke his leg in a challenge like that in 2015, about a year after he dropped. And so when you see players react like that, quite often it's the case it's because they've been on the end of a challenge and they know what it can do. And it wasn't just Bentancur.

39:14It was Jan-Paul Van Hecker as well, launched himself at Shaw. Slightly curious as to why they both decided to go in on him. I mean, he shouldn't have reacted like that, but you kind of saw why. The headbutt was a definite red. Shaw, this grade on me, I got sent off for exactly the same thing when I was playing for Stevenage. Shoved someone over, had a red miss moment. Had a red miss moment, shoved him over, and I got straight red, and I got to find two weeks wages. Club didn't support me. Like, he just got yellow. Like, that's just not fair. So, yeah, I was secretly raging. You were writing to the Football Association tomorrow morning to demand a review.

39:57Dear sirs. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, no justice for Clark. You know, it's not too late. Does Zerbe's taking his first place off on a team bonding trip to Marbella? How about that? Their next fixture is at home to Coventry on Monday week. As for United, they on Tuesday will be taking on Atletico Madrid, who are currently second in La Liga, have won four straight games. I win. And they're looking pretty... You know, I'll play devil's advocate. I do think Atletico Madrid are favourites, but I do think Champions League matches will favour this Manchester United team a lot more. with that. I think they'll play teams who play a higher defensive line, who'll try to take the initiative in games.

40:42I think that game state will probably sit them a little bit more. But I mean, if they play like they did on Saturday and it doesn't really matter what the game state is, you need to play better than that. Just a quick one on Spurs. They did some good stuff and I thought Solanke did all right. Obviously scored the goal, missed a sitter, but he was a handful, wasn't he? And I thought that Lissandra Martinez, who is normally someone that United can rely on, couldn't handle him. Like you remember that one he missed that it was quite an open goal, Solanke. It was truly terrible defending from Martinez, who's basically trying to get in a fight with Solanke, takes his eye off the ball, his body position is all wrong.

41:16Solanke misses it, gets away with it. And then for the goal, if you look back at the goal, Martinez is all over the gaff in terms of trying to do exactly the same thing, trying to wrestle him because he's smaller. He's worried that Solanke is going to outjump him. So he tries to sort of do a little bit of dark arts, gets himself in a pickle. And he's not even looking at the ball. No. When Solanke gets the touch on the ball, Martinez is basically just looking towards his own goal. You know, has no idea where the ball is. I mean, yeah. It was a very curious goal, but full credit to Spurs for the fact that despite going down to 10 men, it was they who looked the more aggressive, the more attacking of the two teams.

41:55Yeah, I mean, it was funny because, like, Spurs should have won, really. They were that much better than United. They didn't take their chances. And yet they end up, you know, feeling like they've come away with a decent result because they went behind, lost a man to a red card. But I found myself thinking, United have got lots of problems. Spurs have got their fair share of problems too. But you look at both of those teams and you think, who is going to score the goals in this team? United don't have a number nine at the moment because Benjamin Szczesko is injured and has been injured for quite a while.

42:30He comes back and he plays a little bit and then he's out again. He's got this shin injury that just keeps flaring up. Joshua Zirksi, I thought, actually made an impact when he came on, but he's not a solution. And Spurs, I mean, Solanke took his goal well, but the further we get away from that one golden season he had with Bournemouth, the more it's starting to look like a bit of a career anomaly. I don't think he, sadly, will ever become a 20-goal-a-season striker in the Premier League. So I think goal-scoring remains a problem for Spurs as well. OK. Tell you who goal-scoring is not a problem for.

43:02A little team called Chelsea. if you're going along to see a Chelsea game make sure you get there on time because they don't hang around for anyone do they? Six games so far this season in the Premier League, they've scored inside the opening seven minutes in five of those six, incredible, they scored two goals inside the opening three minutes in this game sorry, in fact even quicker than that I think, is that right? Two in the first 149 seconds 149 seconds, how many minutes is that? Two and a bit minutes. So yeah, inside the first three minutes. That is not the earliest a team has ever gone 2-0 up in a Premier League game.

43:39Extraordinarily enough. Two other teams have done it quicker. Surely you remember Leicester doing it against Derby in 1998 and Luton against Brighton in 2024. That's recent. We should be able to remember that. That is amazing. In the first 15 minutes of games this season, Chelsea, 7-0. Woof. 7-0. The next best team in the Premier League inside the first 15 minutes is 3-1 Newcastle. So why? Is it good coaching? Is it that they're really set up well by Alonso? I do think you have to put it down to coaching. You have to put it down to sort of the way he revs up the players to really not feel their way into the game.

44:20Just tear out of the blocks and get players forward nice and early. The worry for him is if you take out that opening 15 minutes, Chelsea's goal difference is minus five. But apart from that, Mr Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? You kind of have to include the opening 15 minutes. You do. No, it was good. There were some good goals, weren't there? I mean, Cole Palmer was great. Henderson was like a nine and a half out of ten performance, wasn't it? It was phenomenal. So who saw this coming? Literally no one. Not for Henderson. Yeah. Not even Jordan Henderson himself. although apparently he has been practicing free kicks.

44:55Well, Liam Turm you're right, not only putting in free kicks like Zola, but arriving on the box and slamming in balls like Frank Lampard. What a Chelsea performance. Yeah, I mean, Chelsea have looked weak in central midfield in the early weeks of the season. There have been times when they've had Rhys James and Malo Gusto there and you find yourself thinking, how is a club that has spent so much money ending up with a midfield composed of two right backs filling in, but picked Henderson against Bournemouth. He was obviously a centre midfielder by trade but also Caicedo was back and that just changes everything.

45:29He's involved in the build-up to the first goal. He's involved in the build-up to the fourth goal and just having that platform just enables everything to come together and I think actually that the greatest satisfaction for Xabi Alonso will not necessarily have been scoring a load of goals again but it would have been basically succeeding in shutting the game down. Bournemouth did get a goal back, but it was a bit of a fluke. Evan Nielsen basically blocking an attempted clearance inside the six-yard box. And that created a period in the game where you kind of worried, or you thought that Chelsea might waver.

46:04But they ended up actually seeing the game quite comfortably, getting more goals to make it more comfortable. And I think for the first time this season, they came off the pitch having beaten a team convincingly and not found themselves hanging on at the end because they can't defend. Although it was Bournemouth where Marco Reza's doing a great job of following in Antonio Ayola's footsteps on course to not win any of his 10 first games either. What do you... Is it true that Chelsea have certainly scored more than anyone in the Premier League? Have they also conceded more? Haven't got the league table to hang.

46:37I think when you include their 6-3 league cup win against Leeds as well, that elevates the figures even further, right? And I mean, yeah, so in seven games, of the season, 21 goals scored, 16 goals against. I mean, those two numbers are mad, right? I mean, they are mad. And this is a team who obviously just haven't found that balance. But as Tom spoke about, it's all about the midfield. And like I said, it was back. That is really significant. But yeah, Joel Pedro again came back in the team. His finish. His finish is great. It's fantastic. He is such a good striker. I knew his all-round play was excellent, but I think his finishing has really come on.

47:16whilst he's been at Chelsea following that move from Brighton. I think having him as that pinnacle when you've got Morgan Rodgers and Cole Palmer, I think that's why teams find it so difficult in the starting phases of games as well when you've just got those players running at you and you're just starting a match and you haven't settled into the game and they can take advantage of that really well. So a lot of positive signs for Chelsea. I mean, obviously you caveat it by the fact that had they not got those early goals, the game may have panned out differently. But that's what they do. Yeah, that is what they do, yeah.

47:45And yeah, I think the Premier League is so hard to read this season because I think a lot of teams are very, very evenly matched. I think Chelsea are a better team than Bournemouth, right? But you could easily have seen this being quite a tight match in most weeks. And I think this goes through all these games that we're speaking about that, you know, so many matches are just defined by which teams take their chances. And Chelsea have been excellent at that. So that's, you know, it's a build plus. I guess Arsenal would be another example of that because they were up against Leeds, a team who, across the two matches last season, they beat 9-0.

48:17This time around, Adrian, it was a very nervous match indeed. It was, and Leeds were good. Leeds were really good. I think for an hour, Leeds were probably the better team. Brilliant without the ball. Their shape is so well organised. They were like, no one dropped the ball. Arsenal found it really hard to create anything of note. Calafuri was the chaos maker, as he often is, and he made a bit of a difference ultimately. No, he is. I love this guy. I love Calafuri because he never plays a left back, even though he's a left back. He just goes where he wants. And it's carnage. But he was involved indirectly in both the goals with his positioning in the game.

48:58Arsenal only were really good for 15 minutes, and that was ultimately enough to get the win. I did think that the winning goal was a beaut in terms of the football. You know, we saw Saka. I love chaos in terms of inside the opposition half. Like Saka pops up on the left wing. I want more of that. Erdogan clips it into him. He gives it back to Erdogan. He doesn't stand and think, oh, yeah, if it wasn't my pass, nice. He goes and runs, tries to hurt the opposition, gets it back, feeds into Rice, who shouldn't be where he is on the edge of the box because he's not the attacking midfielder, but he is.

49:31and then that lovely little back heel for Grimmaris and he never looked like missing, did he? Bruno Grimmaris. And I credit him because he was really bad against Brighton. Really bad. He had his first start and credit Arteta actually for leaving him out because he's paid, what did he pay? 75 million? Gave him his first start against Brighton. It went horribly and he didn't start him in this game. He picked Myles Lewis-Gelly over him. And I would also credit Arteta actually for then recognising, all right, we need a bit more oomph inside the final third. And that change did make a real difference.

50:07So, yeah, that's two winning goals from Gümrisch already this season. Yeah, and both from Rice assists and both from outside the box. So he's paid back a little chunk, hasn't he, of the fee? Very nice. So, Adrian, can I just ask you a question? Obviously, Arsenal have come from behind in this game to win. They did the same against Chelsea. Sunderland, similar-ish. Now, obviously, from a tactical point of view, a technical point of view, Arteta won't be happy with that, with what led up to it. From a fan point of view, after last season, is there a bit more emotion to that? Is it also almost like an enjoyable element to seeing the team kind of not playing well, but showing that spirit of coming from behind to win?

50:47It's a bit different. It's a bit more emotional, right? It's not what you want. You'd rather sort of cruise to victories and then take your star men off, wouldn't you, and rest them and rotate them. I think Arsenal haven't really got going yet, is the truth. But what we're seeing is the power of the bench. And the bench at Arsenal this season has to be one of the best benches in the history of the division. It has to be. Like, you look at the list of players that were there yesterday on the bench. Yeah, go through. I mean, Eza didn't even get on. the bench in this game contained Hinkia Pia an excellent player Eza Durian Timber Kepa Victor Jokerez Mikel Marino Martin Zubimendi Bruno Grimeraich and Max Downman that is a sensational bench and that's the reason Arsenal I think even if they are trailing in games will back themselves to get it done ok certainly to win the 19 teams that are not Man City division which, yeah.

51:53Yeah. Peter McShane says, Leeds were excellent throughout. Lover of Liberties offers that James Trafford is two inches in height away. Thanks for specifying the height, actually. Away from being a world-class keeper. He's good. He is good. I don't think he's brilliant with his distribution. I don't think he's brilliant in this game because I think the one from Calafiri he wouldn't be happy with. No, Leeds are a really good team. I thought they all played well. The fullbacks, the wingbacks were brilliant. Actually, I criticise Arsenal here for anyone who hasn't seen the game. Leeds, the big chances they had all were crosses that went to the far post that weren't tracked by Saka, Madueke.

52:34And on one occasion, it was Myles Lewis-Gelly. So Arsenal have to sort that out if they're going to have that strong defensive record that they had before. The other very quick point about Leeds is these two games last year. There was only eight Premier League matches in the whole of last season. had a winning margin of four plus goals. Two of them were in this fixture, so they've come on a lot. Certainly have. Tom, briefly? Come on to Wikipedia. James Trufford is six foot six. It needs to be six foot eight, we're thinking. Not small. Come back when you're six foot eight, mate. Yeah. Then we'll talk.

53:02Then we'll talk. I don't think he's world class, but I think he's decent. All right, then. Yeah. Okay. Are Arsenal going to win the everybody but title, or could it be the refreshing young bunch of folk from down on the south goes bright. Let's get on to the seagulls next.

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56:11Brighton, who went up to Sunderland on Saturday, had gone a goal up, then went a man down, but still managed to find another goal, admittedly against a weakened Sunderland. So were the absences, Robbie and Ballard for the Blackhats the key here, or are Brighton just an unstoppable force at the moment? I think the impressive thing from Brighton was that this was a different way to win. And we've seen that Brighton are capable of beating teams when they have the ball. We saw that against Aston Villa on the opening weekend. We saw that against Coventry. They showed against Arsenal that they don't necessarily need to completely dominate possession.

56:51And we saw that again against Sunderland. Sunderland had most of the ball, even more so after Brighton went down to 10 men. But as you say, by that point, they'd already gone ahead. and then, you know, sort of saw the game out reasonably comfortably and scored two very similar goals. You know, Pascal Gros creating the first, having a hand in the second and a pass in between the centre-back and the opposition right-back to a rampaging left-back, albeit Maxime de Kuiper, who scored the first, is now playing on the left wing. And then Zawan Hadjam, who I admit I had never heard of before. Never heard of him.

57:27And, you know, suddenly appears, you know, breaking into the box and drills. That's what Brighton do. It's fling players onto the pitch you've never even heard of the next minute they're scoring goals when he matches for you. I think Sunderland without Broby and Ballard is big. They're two huge characters. You saw what Broby did in the Arsenal game. He's such a handful. And Isidore is a decent player, but he's not the same. So, yeah, I think they caught Sunderland at a good time. But, yeah, great result from Brighton. I'd love to see it. What I don't love is the fact that there was no English starter in this match.

58:00The fifth time ever in Premier League football there was no English starter. Did Liverpool have an English starter in their game? No, no, no. In the whole game. Neither team had an English starter. It was only the fifth time. I tell you what, we need to find the club that started that. The club that was the first to not field any English players because they're clearly the ones responsible for creating this trend. Do you know who it was, Adrian? No. Arsenal. It was Arsenal.

58:31Sunderland are off for some international hijinks this Thursday. They take on Torrensie in the Europa League. I'm going to check that start in case it's wrong. Well, it feels... It was either Arsenal or Chelsea. Spoiler. I didn't think it was Chelsea, so... Yeah, I would have gone with Chelsea too. Brighton against Lithuanian side, while you're doing that. Brighton taking on Lithuanian side. Kauno Zalgiris, or pronunciations to that, affecting the Conference League. Huh. Meantime, Aston Villa have got Fennamachi at Villa Park in the Champions League on Wednesday. You were talking about the Premier League players, former Premier League players in the Super League, or possibly Tom was, a whole bunch of them.

59:15It was Chelsea. It was Chelsea. Arsenal were the... I knew there was an Arsenal one as well. Right. Arsenal were the first club to field an entirely non-English squad. But the first not entirely non-English team was Chelsea. OK. The squad being their entire roster of players. The matchday squad. They didn't have a single Englishman there. I know. Can you believe it? Can you believe it? I will accept some of the politics. Anyway, Aston Villa are taking on Galatasaray. OK. Oh, sorry. They're taking on Fenerbahce because Galatasaray is taking on Barcelona. but Fenerbahce they've got Lukaku Ederson Kante Gwendoza and loads of others crikey anyway Aston Villa warmed up for that with a 2-2 draw against Brentford curiously in this match both teams took the lead but then surrendered that lead within the space of two minutes yeah curious wasn't it it's Aston Villa's problem scoring goals seems to have been resolved like Nicholas Jackson Johan Manzambi who got an assist in this game those two additions I think they both look really, really good.

1:00:24They look really, really good. Obviously, the other side of that is the defensive side. And I think that takes a little bit more time, doesn't it? I think if you have a lot of changes in the personnel and your back line, that takes a bit more time to get those understandings and to be positionally and tactically aware of everything. But yeah, I mean, again, this is one of those matches, isn't it? Villa and Brentford probably have quite similar aspirations this year, I would say, both probably pushing for, maybe not Champions League, but certainly Europa League, places and yeah some really good goals in this game and Christopher Ayer who of course scored that magnificent goal for Norway gets back-to-back matches before those two games he'd scored one goal in his 97 matches for club and country so it's strange how that happens but I mean yeah some great goals in this some really good attack and play and it was a really fun match.

1:01:12Lots of deflections as well. Yeah it was a game of deflections. Michael Cox has written about the extraordinary rise of the deflected goal this season, yeah. I must admit, with everything, I haven't seen the results of his research. Enough deflecting going on elsewhere, James.

1:01:31Yeah. Alright then, let's move on to... Oh, the only other game we haven't mentioned there, is she? Indeed so. Ipswich, who beat Fulham, leaving the Cottage's bottom of the Premier League. A 2-1 victory. Two goals in four minutes after Fulham thought they were on their way to an away win there. But yeah, 88th and 92nd minute. Ipswich strike the Watara goal. Watara goal. It was another injury time winner for Ipswich. Yeah. Do you know how many they've had this year? They've had three. They've had three victories in all three of them. Against Palace, Sunderland and Fulham, who I think will be there or thereabouts.

1:02:16about in the bottom half of the table. Because Fulham are the ideal opponents if you want to score late goals. They concede a lot late. But if we were talking about Chelsea and how they do it to score early so often, how do we switch it? Is it conditioning? What is it? They've got... Gary O 'Neill's quite brave. He doesn't always... He rotates his team quite heavily. And he always keeps two or three really good attackers on the bench. I think Jack Clark was on the bench in this game, among others. And he's not afraid to just go bang and go three of them or four of them and just shake things up in the second half.

1:02:49I think that's what happened. Fulham were the better team, deservedly in front. It wasn't looking like a good day for Ipswich. But then Fulham probably started looking at the clock and thinking, oh, you know, we'll see this out. And Ipswich just went after them and dominated the second half. And I think a lot of it was to do with Gary O 'Neill's changes. I think Gary O 'Neill is a positive manager. He's just not afraid to do things that are a bit bold. and yeah I'd say he has a part in this sort of late success for them Lover of Liberties is here saying hot take Gary O 'Neill is better than Kieran McKenna Lover of Liberties also says we should have pointed out that Fennibashi as the Villa is the John Duran derby One of the many John Duran derbies available to the modern football fan Peter McShane is concerned that we didn't elaborate on Hull to Everton to.

1:03:47Oh, yes. Yes, I cut Colin off in his stride. Oh, did you? And we moved on. Okay, well, we can go back to that. So we can rewind to my... Joe Gellhart. Delightfully flicked finish for 1-0. Yeah, okay, because Everton do deserve credit, because I did talk later about their big chances that they missed in this match, but they did score two goals. Maitland-Niles slightly atoned for his defensive error by putting in the cross for... Defensive error for the... Yes, yes, exactly. and yeah and so about Thomas who provided that excellent assist for Hull's opener then made the mistake for Everton second goal by putting in a sort of diagonal ball back to his own defender which was then cut out and there was a lucky deflection for Tierno Barry to run through and score and I think this is a sort of recurring issue with David Moyes' sides they always look really good and positive but then when they take the lead there's always that regression isn't there and there's always that sort of giving up of the initiative that happened again here and Mohamed Baloumi scored again from an Elliott Streud assist.

1:04:47And again, Hull City, like Elliott Streud and Mohamed Balumi were two subs and whenever they brought on three or four substitutions in the second half it was so positive and the quality they have on their bench, like you're talking about Ipswich having quality on their bench but these newly promoted clubs they've invested to such a degree that they have a squad of 16, 17 players that can really compete in all these matches and I think that's a sign of things to come. Yep. Yeah. Remarkable. Balumi's background? So, yeah, Mohamed Baloumi, he got his first cap for Algeria during the international break.

1:05:20And I think this had been sort of an issue that he hadn't been capped by Algeria because his dad was, I think maybe Tom, you've maybe touched on this before. Tom told us about him. Yeah, and last time Baloumi, he's one of Algeria's greatest ever players, but never played outside Algeria. Right. And so, you know, is not all that well known outside of North African football. How good is his son going to be? we did kind of wonder this when he scored that brace against Chelsea but he's not stopped there no he's brilliant he's a good player talent just really really technically signed and I think when you've got a player like that in the position when you've got a structure like Hull with a lot of runners off the ball that you know you can sort of afford that type of player and he has that little bit more time and space that they can manoeuvre for him so it works really well and Nicole I think everyone at the start of the season talking about how they would struggle but I think the consistency and performance even in the narrow defeats that they've had recently has been really positive.

1:06:13And next weekend, away at Fulham. Which could be a tricky one. It could be a tricky one for Fulham. And Abloh was quite spiky in his press conference. He was, wasn't he? After the game, he was sort of asked whether he was feeling the pressure. And he was like, I played for the biggest club in the world. He said, perhaps you don't know me. Perhaps you don't know. If you don't. Is that what he said? He said, perhaps you don't know me, but I played for the biggest club in the world. Perhaps you don't know it, but I managed Real Madrid for five months. and I feel that that slightly takes the glow off the...

1:06:43I think Eland's under pressure to me. He looks like a man that's sort of... Perhaps you don't know him, but he played for the biggest club in the world. I know him, but I also know a man under pressure. I think he is under pressure. I think he needs results. But I think the caveat to this is they've played six games, right? They've lost four of those by a single goal. They've drawn the other two against Man United, against Liverpool, which were sort of fine. But I think the interesting thing about Alvaro Abeloua is everyone assumed that whenever he would leave Real Madrid, he would be like a really good fit like an Elche or a Rayo Vallecano but you can't really do that move having been at Madrid right you sort of have you sort of have to leave Spain and I kind of think he did have good signs when he was at Madrid he was the guy that obviously when they beat Manchester City over both legs in both of those matches whenever he lost those star players there's some tactically interesting things so I think it would be a bit of a shame if that wasn't to end well so quickly so soon but I mean obviously they need results and you were talking about Bournemouth earlier.

1:07:40I think the fact that they went through that with Areola maybe gives them a little bit more patience to be like, well, we can turn it around. But yeah, these clubs might hit the panic button if it gets to eight or nine game point and you still haven't won. I mean, that is dangerous territory. All right, well, bottom of the table for now. One game to go still, it's Coventry against Newcastle. Coventry can move out of the bottom three. Worthy to get a victory in that game. We'll have word on that. When we return later on in the week, there's a Tuesday European edition with Tom, James, a bit of Paul Ballouz and some Seb Stafford-Bloor running up events around Europe and looking forward to the Champions League.

1:08:19We've got extra shows this week, COS Champions League. So Wednesday morning we'll be here doing a totally football show on the Tuesday games and then similar on Thursday morning, re the Wednesday fixtures. Crikey, loads totally on the way. But I think that wraps it up. unless anybody else has got any requests for us to talk about things we'll leave it there Adrian you've probably got a train to catch well yeah a word for Southampton they beat Portsmouth today in the championship big derby 10 men for most of the game and they won 1-0 so but Tondareka I'm still I still think he's an incredibly lucky man to have sort of got away with it but his team did the biz for him today kind of brings things full circle.

1:09:06Disciplinary measures. Morally complicated victories. A go-go. That's what we'll call the pod. If only by bringing things full circle we'd close that circle off but I fear it's set to circle around everything that's going to circulate, if you will, in the weeks to come. Tom, thank you for being with us. Many thanks Colin as well for making it in. Thank you for joining us. If you were with us live on YouTube in our very much Arses Hanging Out Waltz and All performance, or if you've enjoyed the more polished packaging that's arrived with you on the Monday, then perhaps that was wise. Anyway, we'll be back soon enough and for now, from all of us here, it's goodbye.

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