Totally Gold 03/04: Abramovich arrives but Arsenal go Invincible

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0:57The Athletic FC Podcast Network.

1:26Today's episode is the one where Michael Cox, Daniel Story, Matt Davis-Adams and I look back on a piece of Premier League history. The only time a team went through the entire season unbeaten.

1:49It's summer 2003. In the Middle East, the Iraq invasion was winding up, ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity. In Britain, Concord had made its last flight, and so had Brookside. You know, I can remember Harold Wilson standing in my mother's hall. She was the bloody prime minister, and he was still out on the knocker. And Roman Abramovich had bought Chelsea. In the culture that summer, while the White Stripes dropped this criminally underused riff, Harry Potter had a new adventure with the Order of the Phoenix and at the movies, the Lord of the Rings trilogy finally had its ending, and then another, five minutes later, and then another.

2:28Meanwhile, after decades of records, tapes and CDs, an invention arrived that was destined to change forever the way we enjoy our music. All together now, the mini-disc. Mmm. But what about the football? Well, the 0-3-0-4 season was marked by three massive stories. The arrival of Roman Abramovich and the unprecedented summer spending spree. the departure of Leeds also after unprecedented spending and above all the Arsenal and their unbeaten season Michael for anyone who's used to Arsenal in the later Wenger years how different a beast was this? Yeah I mean it sounds an obvious thing to say but they were a really incredible team they went unbeaten as we all know but I think it's worth reiterating that back in those days for a side to have a long unbeaten run it was often seen as a side who had a really good defence and they're very solid at the back.

3:21And Arsenal were. They kept 21 clean sheets, which was the most in the league. But this was a very attack-minded side. I think they'd evolved a little bit from 98 in 2002, became a little bit more comfortable in possession. They weren't quite so reliant upon the counter-attack, although, of course, they had Omri and Perez, who were wonderfully quick players. And, yeah, you go back and you look at this season and there's certain games where it felt like Arsenal were in quite a unique status as being the runaway champions and also the neutral's favourites. I mean, there was a game at Portsmouth in the FA Cup, most famously, I think, where Portsmouth were kind of singing Thierry Henry's name and he did a lap of the pitch at the end in a Portsmouth shirt.

3:59And it was like, this doesn't really happen in football. This isn't the kind of thing we're accustomed to. But they were, you know, an incredibly entertaining side who scored some wonderful goals. And, you know, even though there wasn't much of a title race, there was a genuine tension to see whether they'd finish the season without losing. And of course, they did in the end. They did. The previous year, they had been eight points clear with nine games to go, but rather threw it away, winning just two of the next seven. Man United taking the title. That didn't happen this time around. They had made improvements.

4:27Cesc Fabriac's coming in from Barcelona's youth set up. Jens Lehmann replacing David Seaman. And mid-season as well, Jose Antonio Reyes joining the club. But the big names, and I guess the focus of attention, was that extraordinary array of firepower that they had up front. Yeah, not just firepower, but also firepower that changed places with each other, was almost as fluid as some of the great teams of the total football area. You know, Joanne Cois, Barcelona, even the Dutch team itself. We know Henri liked to drift left to pick up the ball and then move in field, but so many players in that team were comfortable doing it.

5:07And it's no exaggeration to say that Premier League's defences just could not cope with it. They couldn't cope with Henri. He was almost a cheap player when he was informed because he was worth a goal a game. And the example he set for that attack was like nothing we'd really ever seen before, I think. All through to Perez by Edu. Used to Henry. He's got plenty to aim at. Like that! An astounding goal from Thierry Henry. 30 goals he scored in the league that season. 39 in total. Joe Patch asks, Is Henry's season that year the best of an individual in Premier League history? And should he have won the Ballon d 'Or that season?

5:47I think he probably should have done, but maybe he suffered from the fact that he, although he was the standout player in the Premier League, it wasn't like he was by a wide margin the standout player in that Arsenal team because they had a spine of Sol Campbell and Patrick Vieira and obviously Bergkamp a lot along with Henry up front. It wasn't like all the focus was on Henry. Maybe if they had been a bit more of a one-man team, he would have had a better chance of winning the Ballon d 'Or. But as you mentioned, James, 30 Premier League goals. Only four other players managed to get 30 or more in a 38-game Premier League season.

6:21So, yeah, very impressive he was back in 03-04. There are arguments for other players to win that Ballon d 'Or, but he got eight more votes than Theo Zagorakis, which in hindsight seems maybe we just became a little bit spoiled by how good he was, almost as we have been in this Messi and Ronaldo era. go back to that year when Messi didn't even finish in the top five. Maybe it feels a little bit like that. It was almost such a cheap player that we just took him for granted, I wonder. Michael, meanwhile, Arsene Wenger also has the charge laid against him that he inherited a good defence and couldn't build one on his own.

6:54This season was kind of evidence to the contrary of that. Yeah, there wasn't anyone in this defence that really survived from that old back four. I mean, Martin Keown was still knocking around. You see him really in two ways. One, for jumping on Ruud van Isteroy, as I'm sure we'll speak about in a second. And two, this was back in the days where you needed to play 10 Premier League games to get a medal. So Arsene Wenger brought him on for the final two minutes of, I think, the last four league games, which was just quite amusing because Wenger didn't actually want to put Keowne in defence. So he came on at right midfield and just ran up and down the line quite hopelessly.

7:28But yeah, I mean, it was, as I say, they kept the most clean sheets in the league. And the big, I guess, talking point for the defence for Arsenal was Coletour, who'd come to the club as a bit of a box-to-box midfielder, had filled in sometimes at fullback and often looked a little bit ropey in that position, to be honest. And no one suspected that he would become a very good centre-back. But his partnership with Campbell was fantastic. And it was also a period where Lauren, the right-back, was out injured for, I think, seven or eight games and Torrio went to right-back. And that meant that Arsenal played Pascal Seagon in the centre of their defence alongside Sol Campbell.

8:03and Sigon is kind of remembered as a bit of a joke figure, but he very much contributed to not just the title, but the unbeaten run. Kodatori is so versatile. He could play midfield, right-back, centre-back, car salesman, you name it, he had it all covered. I think that defence gets slightly unfairly treated by just how good Henri was. They conceded 26 league goals that season, which I had a look and that's Arsenal's third best defence in a league season in their history. So I think they were probably attacking from the front. They were dominating teams so much that teams almost didn't have the energy to counter-attack on them.

8:41But 26 league goals conceded is a remarkable effort, really. They scored fewer goals than the season before and the season after. And yet they didn't win the league in either of those two seasons. So you could argue that it was that defence that was a kind of difference maker for them. Also, Arsene Wenger back in those days was still enjoying an incredible spell of picking up players for almost nothing, uncovering players that nobody else seemed to be able to pick up on which used to be his kind of USB completely disappeared from his palette later on but Coletori who they got from Ivory Coast for I think£150 ,000 even Freddie Lundberg who only cost£3 million from Halmstad in Sweden Alright well then the unbeaten run only one club had ever been able to do this for a whole season Preston North End back in 88-89 1888-89 that is but they only played 22 matches.

9:32Arsenal got to 49, of course, but this run almost ended before it got going. Marco? Yeah, I think the two times they came closest to losing it were relatively early in the season. One was a home game against Portsmouth where they relied on a Robbo Perez dive, to be frank, to get the equaliser. And then was that, you know, one of the many famous games between Arsenal and Manchester United during this period. But maybe this is, looking back, the most memorable, ball which is funny because it was a nil-nil but yeah the van Nistelrooy penalty miss at the end and obviously the celebrations if you can call it that from the Arsenal players at full time the responsibility rests with Rube van Nistelrooy oh he's missed it he has hit the bar it's the final whistle and Arsenal do get their draw but it's not finished yet they're all around It's kind of gone down in history now as, you know, almost like a comedy event.

10:31But I remember at the time this was depicted as Arsenal completely losing the plot and their players losing it so badly that they were going to end up with such strict bans that they were going to struggle to really to challenge Manchester United. There was talk of six or seven players being handed a three or more game ban at the time. So this was really a kind of, you know, a thing Arsenal really had to get over. In the end, the bans were not particularly severe. I think there were three or four players banned, a couple of them only for one game. Vier and Ray Parler get a game each. Ray Parler, who kind of taps Van Listeroy quite heartily in the chest.

11:08Lauren gets a four-game banter. Martin Keehan, who gets very much in Roode's face, picked up a three-game suspension. and a young Cristiano Ronaldo getting stuck in in the melee after the penalty had rocketed off the crossbar. There's been a few Arsenal Man United scraps over the years, but that one was particularly feisty. And, you know, looking back, obviously, it was a dreadful sportsmanship, really, from Keown in particular and some of the others. But there was a real hatred towards Van Nistelro against those Arsenal players because, I mean, Van Nistelro was a funny player. He obviously was a centre-forward, but he was incredibly scrappy, quite a dirty player, I think.

11:45And he constantly wound up Arsenal over the years with just kind of quite subtle little kicks here and there. And I think obviously it all overspilled that day. You know, looking back, it's pretty bad. But I think there was an accumulation of hatred that had built up over quite a few matches between the sides. He wasn't desperately popular among his own team either, was he? No, well, certainly not with Ronaldo. I mean, his squabbles with Ronaldo basically ended Van Nistelro's Manchester United career. And, you know, the ironic thing was they both ended up very briefly at Real Madrid together. But no, he was, I mean, Van Nistelro was a brilliant, brilliant goal scorer, but a pure individualist, I would say.

12:23And for someone like Ronaldo, who was not a David Beckham type winger, even though he was replacing David Beckham, Van Nistelro couldn't really get on with him and was constantly complaining Ronaldo wasn't crossing. So no, he wasn't particularly popular with his own teammates, like you say. Where does this Arsenal team stand in the Premier League pantheon? And is it the best ever? Or as Mangesh at the Indian Reds suggests, the most overrated great team of all time? I mean, that idea of, I'm not going to have a go at listeners, but the idea of teams being grossly overrated, that's a nonsense, really.

12:54They're obviously a brilliant team. They've done something that no other team has managed since, despite an increased financial dominance of the bigger clubs over the smaller clubs, I think makes it easier and easier with every passing season. It should be said that part of the reason that their reputation suffers is because they flunk the cup competitions to an extent. Home defeats to Chelsea, to Manchester United and Middlesbrough in a League Cup semi-final impacted upon what could have been an absolute dynastical season in a team. And that will inevitably affect their reputation as we look back.

13:28But purely on that league season alone, there's absolutely, by definition, there's no reason to doubt them. It was also something that was kind of propagated a bit by Alex Ferguson, wasn't it? because every opportunity that he got in the kind of immediate aftermath of that, he'd point out a lot of draws, you know, 12 draws. That's a lot of draws for an unbeaten team and seemed quite keen to kind of downplay the achievement whenever he got the chance. Yeah, and I think it's worth pointing out as well that, you know, as Daniel alludes to, the financial inequality wasn't so stark. And it wasn't like the situation where we have now where City or Liverpool, you know, whoever wins the title, they lose like one or two games a season.

14:05The previous two times Manchester United won the title, So they lost five and six games respectively. And the turning point really came with this season because one of the other big stories of 0304 was the arrival at Chelsea of Roman Abramovic.

14:24Matt, what a watershed moment at the bridge. Press in a frenzy that summer. Just an unprecedented amount of spending by one club. This is before financial fair play. and an extraordinary cavalcade of top brand talent arriving. How do you remember this? It's interesting looking back on it now, actually. You mentioned the spending, net spend of£153.4 million that season. Chelsea have only got close to that once since, and that was before the 20, well, including the 2018-19 season. And part of that was on Christian Pulisic, who obviously didn't come till this year. So it really was blowing teams out of the water.

15:02As you say, lack of FFP. But some of the names as well, you know, obviously at the very start of this, that was part of what attracted Abramovich. I think he had Hernan Crespo and Juan Sebastian Varon, Varon who'd not gone on particularly well at Manchester United. Kind of mix of players who didn't really settle like Varon and Crespo and then others who became key players in Chelsea's history, like Makaleli and even Joe Cole and Damien Duff to slightly lesser extents. But it was an amazing thing to happen in English football. I remember it being the lead item on News at 10 the day that it was announced because it was such an extraordinary thing, albeit that he only actually paid Ken Bates£60 million to buy Chelsea.

15:43So he spent almost three times that much during the summer. And yeah, what a massive impact he had, not just on Chelsea, but on the Premier League in general. As I think has been fairly widely reported, it wasn't that Abramovich had his heart set on Chelsea. He wanted to buy an English football team and he kind of did the rounds speaking to people, including the day before he met Ken Bates at the Dorchester Hotel. He went to see Daniel Levy at Spurs, who said, well, we could do you 29.9 % of Tottenham. And Abramovich wasn't interested in that. He wanted control of a club. And so, you know, the power of football in London in particular shifted one way when it could quite easily have gone another.

16:27It was something of a leap of faith from Ken Bates, who was selling up, because Abramovich was not a well-known figure in the UK at this point, to the point that when Bates and Abramovich met along with Abramovich's representative, Eugene Tenenbaum, they brought with them a copy of Forbes magazine, which had Abramovich listed as the 15th richest person in the world, which was kind of, you know, the brief of, yeah, OK, this guy actually does have the money because they'd been looking for investment for a couple of years. with Bates knowing that he was getting close to the end of his tenure, but all they'd had were a lot of time wasters who were basically interested in buying the club to knock down the stadium to build lucrative London property on it instead.

17:09And lo and behold, Abramovich comes back into the country with Eugene Tenenbaum. They're flying to Stamford Bridge from Farnborough where they'd landed. They fly over a football stadium with the pitch all dug up because it's summer. Abramovich turns to Tenenbaum and says, that's not what you've made me buy, is it? It turns out it was Craven Cottage rather than Stamford Bridge. And Craven Cottage was in the process of being, as I say, dug up and changed around a bit in the summer. But yeah, massive moment in the history of the Premier League and in English football. You know, they went on to win the Premier League in each of the two seasons after this one and have won 18 major trophies since he took control.

17:43Claudio Ranieri, the manager that year, they finished a distance second, but he, of course, was dismissed, A, because Jose Mourinho was coming, and B, because of that business game, of getting beaten by Monaco in the semifinals of the Champions League. Lots of listeners writing in with treasured memories from the 0-3-0-4 campaign. Daniel Hendry asks, was this the season when the highlights were on ITV, accompanied by U2 at like 7.30pm? What a dystopian time it was, says Daniel Hendry. Yeah, and I have to say, it might be an unpopular opinion, but I actually like the fact that it was on early evening.

18:18I've always thought that that makes sense for the main exclusive football highlights programme. I know it's a bit different now that Sky can show the goals as they go, or shortly after they go in. But yeah, I liked it. I thought Match of the Day's production value was better and it got it back and it was a bit of a golden tradition of British television anyway. But I've always liked the idea of it being on an early evening so kids could watch it rather than this sort of faux stereotype of men coming home from the pub and watching it at 10.30. That show was vilified, you know, with the tactics truck and all that.

18:48Was it that bad though, Michael, Matt? They had Des Lynam presenting, didn't they? I remember that was kind of the link to Match of the Day. But I think the most jarring thing for people was the ad breaks, to be perfectly honest. I'm not sure there's that much difference in how they packaged it up compared to Match of the Day, aside from the tactics truck. But people having to get used to whatever it was, three, four commercial breaks of three minutes each, which was something that you obviously never had on Match of the Day, was kind of jarring for people, I think. just while we're on the subject of uh tv coverage i was chatting to producer charlie before this and one of the slight quirks about arsenal's campaign is that there's quite a few key moments that weren't live on television this was a time where there was maybe three live games a weekend so it wasn't every arsenal game i think the two in particular would be the 2-1 home win over chelsea with an omri goal from carlo cudacini's mistake that was a saturday 3 p.m game so no one actually saw it and maybe more surprisingly that very famous 4-2 victory over Liverpool in the run in where Thierry Henry seems to run past Jamie Carragher about three times that was on a good Friday I think at a 3 p.m.

19:53kickoff and that wasn't live on TV either so there's quite a few key moments that we only discovered about on ITV's premiership rather than watching it live on TV. Wow the same goes for Man United Liverpool which that season was a 3 p.m. Saturday kickoff the last season that that was that fixture was untelefied so yeah anyway now oh speaking of man united and indeed taking breaks uh real ferdinand this was the season that he forgot to turn up for his drugs test and received an eight-month ban yikes akbar chowdhury says this was ronaldo's debut premier league season and though plagued with inconsistency his opening day cameo at home to bolton was arguably the most exciting at old trafford for some time akhlaf Hanif also writes in, how did the panel expect his career to progress after that first season from him in English football?

20:43Certainly not to the extent that he did. Going back to the premiership on ITV, that was kind of when Ron Atkinson coined his lollipop phrase for Ronaldo's stepovers, which he was doing excessively during his first few games at Old Trafford. But yeah, four goals and four assists in 29 Premier League games didn't really give much of a hint of what was to come, albeit he was only a teenager. I mean, I think to call his first season inconsistent, I think he's actually even slightly charitable. There was a real kind of sense that Ronaldo was just this very wiry, very slim kid who, you know, was just obsessed with doing stepovers, as Matt says, and was just going to get kicked out of English football.

21:21I really was struggling to believe at that time that he was definitely going to become a first team regular for Manchester United, let alone someone who won the Ballon d 'Or five times. You know, as mentioned, that debut against Bolton was fantastic, but that really was the exception to the rule throughout that first season. It was probably another two years, I would say, before people really got to, you know, get the sense that this was a player who was going to be a real superstar. To me, Manchester United's season wasn't defined by Ronaldo, although his signing proved to be understandably excellent.

21:52It was the waste of money. It was Ferguson's really bad missteps in the transfer market. That summer they spent£35 million on David Bellion, Eric Jemba Jemba, Klebison, Dong Fanzuo, Louis Sahar, who was in his defence reasonably consistent for United. Now that was exactly the same amount of money that Arsenal had spent on the six players that got into the PFA team of the year that season, which is Patrick Vieira, Ashley Cole, Sol Campbell, Thierry Henry, Robert Perez and Lauren. While Wenger at that point seemed to be kind of perfecting the transfer market, But Manchester United's signings were almost all dismal, other than Ronaldo, who, as Michael says, that season was actually a disappointment.

22:33Elsewhere in the 2003-04 season, Borough won the League Cup under Steve McLaren. Charlton had their best ever Premier League finish all the way up in seventh. A side built around Scott Parker, Matt Holland, Jason Yule and Paolo Di Canio. This is a great season, actually, looking back for players in clubs that you had no idea that they actually turned out for. Wolves having Paul Lince and Teddy Sheringham leading the line at Portsmouth might surprise me. But for me, that completely blew my mind. Paulo Di Canio at the Valley. Any other players you're surprised about there? McManaman and Fowler at Man City.

23:09I knew that happened, but just looking back on it, it feels a bit of an oddity that they were both there at the same time when Man City were quite rubbish. Do you remember much about this incredible run by Charton? It faded a bit at the end, but extraordinary. And Alan Kerbyshire, of course, Michael. Yeah, as I said about Sunderland a couple of weeks ago, Charlton are a great Premier League year side. They just seem to constantly pop up and beat the big boys. I think at this point, Charlton won a run of beating Chelsea five times in a row or something. Their problem was they always seem to fade after Christmas.

23:37This was an interesting season because, OK, they finished seventh, which is still very good for Charlton. But they were in the Champions League places at the midway point. They were fourth. So, yeah, they had this funny habit of fading once survival was sealed. But they're always quite an entertaining side to watch. Brilliant. What about Bolton, though, back in the day, with an extraordinary collection of players they'd assembled there at the Rebar? Yeah, I think this was almost peak Bolton. They signed Kevin Davies from Southampton in the close season, and that seemed to perfect the Big Sam football.

24:11They finished eighth, the place behind Charlton, but it was when they had everyone you can remember. You know, Acoccia was nominated for the PFA Player of the Year Award, although he didn't score a goal. He had 137 shots without scoring. No one's ever had more shots than that without actually managing a goal. Yeah, they had Kevin Nolan in his youngest days of Premier League football, as I say, Jorka Fcampo, Stelios, Ricardo Gardner, Henrik Pedersen. It was peak Bolton of all those players you can remember from that time. I really like Portsmouth in this season. This is their first ever season in the Premier League.

24:47And just looking through their squad, kind of loads of likeable footballers, ballers, Patrick Berger, Lamanu Luar Luari, who they had on loan, the police forces, Zarian Dezeu and Yakubu, who was on fire, particularly at the end of the season. So Portsmouth were in the relegation zone mid-March. They then lost only one of their last 10, won six of those. Yakubu got 11 goals in those 10 games, including four against Borough on the last day of the season. But they were just a really fun team to watch Portsmouth in that season, I seem to recall. Yeah, there's a fun bit about Luar Luar. I mean, obviously, one of my researching for this pod was watching the Premier League years.

25:25One of the themes throughout that programme is, do players celebrate when they score against their former clubs? So Robbie Keane scored a hat-trick against Wolves, refused to celebrate. Robbie Fowler scored a last-minute equaliser for Man City against Liverpool. Surprisingly, to me, did celebrate. And then you've got Lomane Luolua, who isn't just against his former side. He's against the side who own him in the days before the Premier League banned loan players playing against their parent clubs. Scores an equaliser and he gives an interview and he says later he celebrated because some of the Newcastle fans were booing him.

25:58You know, I apologise. You know, I didn't really want to. I wasn't thinking of celebrating, but, you know, I was getting booed by some of Newcastle supporters. And I was thinking to myself, you know, I didn't do nothing wrong. I will send that on loan. You know, I didn't want to leave in a way. You know, here I have a manager that believes in me and knows that. And he wasn't going to celebrate and thought, if they're booing me, I'm going to celebrate. And doesn't just celebrate, does 10 backflips in a row in front of them. I think it's got to go down as one of the most enjoyable Premier League celebrations ever.

26:25There's a really nice line from Bobby Robson as well, who I interviewed after the game, kind of just sort of exacerbated, just shouts, he's hurt us today, he's hurt us. And he knows that. And it's really good. By the way, Matt, refresh my memory as to why Ian Dezeel was called what you describe as the police forces. he when he retired from football he became a uh detective back in back in holland brilliant that's interesting there's a feature footballers and what they did after retirement yeah because that's he didn't just become a policeman but a detective which requires a certain amount of career progression clever fella

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30:03This is the Totally Football Show, part of the Athletic FC podcast network. The Athletic is the only place you can read articles by Daniel Taylor, Amy Lawrence, Phil Hay, James Pearce, Olly Kaye, and the very best football writers around. Elsewhere in the 0304 season and across town from the Invincibles were the team that became known as the Vincibles at Tottenham. They turned down Roman's money. They were having their usual mare. They'd spent all their cash on Helda Postiga, who didn't score until December and I think finished with one league goal for the entire campaign. Glenn Hoddle got fired after six games.

30:39David Pleat came in and they finished 14th under him. And this also featured perhaps the ultimate Spurs-y game among a packed field of contenders. their fourth round FA Cup tie replay with Man City. Daniel, do you remember this? I do remember it. If only, I think the only player I do remember, and it's one we all remember from it, is Jonathan Macken. Oh, it's a bit of tugging on Macken. He's scored! John Macken!

31:10Tottenham Hotspur, three. Manchester City, four. But yeah, they were 3-0 up and conspired to lose 4-3. and of course it was against 10 men for a large portion of the game as well so yeah if you look up Spurs in the dictionary there is a picture of John Macken and the good thing about that and this was one of the games that was live on TV was Barton wasn't just sent off he was sent off at half time I think he said something to the referee as they were going off at half time and I remember watching this game and I'd never heard of a player getting sent off at half time before it seemed a very classically Jerry Barton thing to do.

31:47This was also the season that Leeds left the top flight. Just three years before, they were Champions League semi-finalists. What went wrong? They gambled on remaining Champions League semi-finalists or that being a regular occurrence. Peter Ridsdale had effectively taken out loans that could only be repaid if Leeds got Champions League broadcasting revenue and they were kind of unlucky. They missed out on the Champions League twice in a row, just missed out on it twice in a row. But the reality was that they were spending far, far beyond their means. And the full fire sale had actually come a little bit before 03-04.

32:27It had become the season before and it was all played out or managed through some dreadful coaching. They first appointed Terry Venables to replace David O 'Leary when he was probably at least 10 years past his prime. and then they replaced Venables with Peter Reid, who was probably three or four years past his prime, and then they replaced Peter Reid with Eddie Gray, who had never really had his time as a frontline manager. So, yeah, they were relegated with 33 points by six points. They'd only sold Harry Kiel and Olivier Decor of the big names before the season, but they were wretched, they really were.

33:02The young side that featured James Milner. I've got a couple of quirky stats if I can provide since Duncan Alexander isn't here the first one is that despite Chelsea splashing the cash on so many centre forwards their top scoring player this season was actually someone out on loan was Mikael Forsell who scored 17 goals for Birmingham that campaign the other one and I can't really get my head around this is that the player with the most assists in the league was Muzzy Izzet who was playing for relegated Leicester Now, I haven't checked, but that must be the only time that the top assister in the league has played for a relegated team.

33:39I then went through and completely forgot that Muzi Isit was a Turkish international and played against Brazil in the 2002 World Cup semi-finals, which I just find very strange considering he was, I think, a Londoner who came through Chelsea's youth system. But yeah, two slightly random things in the season that I couldn't mention anywhere earlier. Worth also maybe just on Middlesbrough, you know, that's the only trophy that they've ever won in their history, the League Cup. One for footballers with ironic names, scorer of the first goal that day when he's out of contract, Joseph Desiree Job. Nice.

34:16The other thing, the only thing I wanted to mention is extra is although to me 2003-04 feels like, in inverted commas, modern football, I find it astonishing that there were only three non-British managers of Premier League clubs that season. And two of those, Ranieri and Julier, lost their jobs at the end of that season, albeit to be replaced by very successful other foreigners. But that seems incredible that 17 of the 20 managers were managed by Brits at a time where, as I say, that feels we already had the foreign invasion of players, but we hadn't had the knock-on effect of managers at that point.

34:52Actually, there was a question about whether Arsene Wenger's success with Arsenal ushered in a wave of foreign managers? Because at this point, as you mentioned, I think pretty much half of the Premier League's technical staff had come from the same kind of five-mile square radius in Glasgow. Yeah, I think it was probably more to do with what we opened the show with, which was Roman Abramovich's takeover. I think it was that Abramovich signified a period of rapid foreign investment in the Premier League. And I think it was probably that foreign investment that meant that the capability was there to buy expensive foreign players.

35:25And if you're going to do that, you might as well have expensive foreign managers as well. Yeah, and, you know, maybe the season after this was when that really took hold because you had two foreign managers, one win in the Premier League and one win in the Champions League in Mourinho and Benitez. So that kind of reinforced the point that Wenger had made in this season. Many thanks to Matt, Daniel, Michael, producer Charlie and you, listener. We've got more Totally Gold for you next week, slightly later than usual. And we'll also be back, as mentioned on Tuesday, looking at a big weekend in the Women's Euros and the Club World Cup.

35:57For now, from all of us here, it's goodbye. You've been listening to The Totally Football Show, part of the Athletic FC podcast network. For more great football podcasts like this one, including The Athletic FC, and our six dedicated club podcasts, search for The Athletic on Apple, Spotify and all the usual places. The Totally Football Show is an Athletic Media Company production.

36:25The Athletic FC Podcast Network.

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