Dyche goes dating, Dean Ashton's defensive doughnut & textbook piledrivers

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The Stockley Park canteen saga rumbles on. Inexplicable TV cameos from Sean Deish, the closest we've come to locating the end of Graham Potter's tether.

Bogeys and Donuts, the inside story of Spurs' statement win at the Etahad.

Kelly Cates with football's number number one spoonerism, footballing events that are too big to be sliding doors moments, an off-the-scale act of grabbing the ball out of the net after a goal, and Keesy christens Everton's new home.

Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts. This is Football Clichés.

Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry.
This is the Adjudication Panel. Joining me from New York City, Charlie Ecclesia.
How you doing? Very well, thank you. Good to have you.

Alongside you, David Walker. Dave, you met the great Excalibur, Professional Wrestling's number one clichés listener on Sunday night, I understand.
I did.

And very happy to report that Excalibur and indeed Mrs. Excalibur are both lovely people.

It's great, great to chat to them. He sorted me and some mates out for their show at the O2 on Sunday night, and we had a nice time.

Did ask him about the moment where he, I think it's fair to say, jumped the shark and mentioned Ribblesdale Rovers live on American television and he did say that immediately he received a message from one of his superiors basically saying what the hell are you on about mate oh

proof fine definitive proof that he pushed the pushed it too far Charlie I think how did he explain it I'm not quite sure really I think he he did try and explain the pod or whatever but I imagine look we have a hard enough time explaining the pod that we've done for five years.

I think he raised a lot more questions than answer them. Basically, all I was doing was

well, it raises his chances of making a surprise appearance at one of the Football Clichés live events in 2025.

You can join us in Brighton, Cardiff, Hackney Empire in London, Birmingham, Dublin, or Manchester, leading Glasgow sold out if you go to tickets.football clichés.com to see us live in the flesh in October and everything that comes with it.

It's going to be brilliant. Right, adjudication panel.
Some matters to take care of from last week.

A source of mine has got in touch to explain what happened with the Sky Sports League table, Dave, last week. The operator simply set it up the wrong way around.

It wasn't an editorial, let's sit back and watch the world burn moment. This is like demanding an explanation from PGMOL about something, isn't it? Yeah, it is.

And much like PGMOL, it seems that it was just a case of human error. And that's fine.
Yeah, that's fine. And if we can get over it, so should everybody else.

The surprising number of people who couldn't get over it at the time. Charlie, elsewhere, speaking of PGMOL, their HQ, Stockley Park.

The canteen saga continues. They laid on a food truck in lieu of the canteen, but not enough people took them up on it.
So

they've now withdrawn the food truck. What do you want?

Oh my God. I'm curious about this food truck.
Was it kind of like lots of different, you know, cuisines from around the world, sort of festively vibe? I'm going for

a sort of outside broadcast kind of truck with sort of various hot dishes. But God knows.

But yeah, so now they've just said, look, there's some microwaves uh, on in both buildings, just get on with it. So, wow, tense times at Stockley Park.

So, if that affects VAR's performance or VAR starts to slip again, we're gonna know why because they're not adequately nourished. Now, uh, I don't know what to make of this next item, Dave.

Uh, this is Celebs Go Dating on E4 last week.

I'm literally gonna say this. Everything else.

Hello, how are you? Hold on, who's this bloke?

How are you going?

Surely not. That's ex-Everton, Watford, and Burnley football manager, Sean Dice.

Is Sean one of her ex-husbands? You good? You're dating these Normaners now, are you? Yeah.

He's a Roman.

Got it to meet you. You're a kid to meet you, yeah, yeah.

I'm Louvi too. I just wanted to say hello.

And he is thinking you're going to sit out on a date then.

Paolo is still sat there, Kerry. I'm doing well.
He's lovely. I'm sick of Rumi Gonzalez.
I'm going to stay. Good, love to see you.

Oh my gosh. Thank you.
Bye-bye.

Thank you.

Dave, why is Sean Deysh making a 40-second cameo on Celebs Gotation?

Why does he need to? Wow. I mean, this really is an unexpected stop on the publicity tour and the efforts to get himself a new job.

It's not the obvious place you'd think you'd go after the no-tippy-tappy football podcast, is it? Fair play.

Charlie, it's annoying that they didn't shoehorn in a sort of short segment where sort of Kerry Katona asked him about his methods of playing football and whether they're still relevant in today's game.

Or for some really tortured love football dating analogies. Or that'd be the next step.
Yeah. I fear for where this is going, Dave, I don't want Sean Dice to go into the jungle.

Yeah.

You do think he would be quite

suited to it. Yeah, I think he'd be quite good in the jungle, actually.
He ticks a lot of the boxes. He'd get stuck into the challenges, wouldn't he? You can see, I can see the next fight fire.
Yeah.

He's very jungly, Charlie. Yeah.

You know, if he really did actually give up on his football management career, he's so jungly because, like, not only is he sort of relatively well known amongst a certain demographic, but he's

he's he's got that sort of caricature that suits going into the jungles, like this hardy man who's quite resourceful.

Yeah, old school values and like, you know, fearless about eating all the horrible things, that kind of thing.

It could actually, like, if he decides that he's sort of credibility isn't an issue football-wise, it could actually be quite. I can imagine him actually being getting quite big from it.

I think people would love him. Like, he could really sort of explode and win a whole new audience.
Yeah, I just, I don't think he's quite at that stage of his career.

I can't believe that he's given up yet. And there's no

necessarily any signs that he's done that, but one to watch in the next five years or so. What was the context for that clip, though? I mean, why would he know why he was on it?

Is he mate of Gary Katona? Obviously, he is. Yeah, obviously, way back from the Atomic Kitten days because he was big into them.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Lovely at times.
Saw them at Nebworth as well.

Right, over to this weekend's Premier League action, all the way back to Friday night. Here's a stat for you.

Lucas Pakatar becomes only the third player to score West Ham's first Premier League goal in consecutive seasons. Dave.

I mean, I really do. I'm genuinely concerned about the stat.
pacification of Premier League football. Like, why does there have to be an angle like this?

In a way, though, the way the stats worded becomes only the third player to score West Ham's first Premier League on a consecutive seasons. It's like...
I'm surprised that there's been that many.

Yeah, exactly. I don't want to be facetious about it, but I really, yeah, I don't think third is a particularly impressive, low number.
It's incredible what the algorithms are spitting out these days.

Anyway, what I thought was the big story from West Ham's thrashing by Chelsea on Friday Night Charlie was the sort of accelerating despair of Graham Potter.

We've seen this version of Graham Potter before, having to field questions about his team's malaise.

But poor old Graham Potter, I honestly can't remember a manager so visibly sick of being asked why his team are shit and how he and they are going to fix it.

And then, after all of that, he was faced with this. We're all responsible.
We all have to do better. There's nobody throwing anybody under the bus here.

It's a collective effort. We have to do better.
Is it something that's sorted out in terms of team meetings or is it sorted out on the training ground? A bit of both, to be honest.

Charlie, the problem with that bit of both is like clearly very unwelcome bit of both thing for Graham Potter to field, but those weren't polar opposite enough options.

Those were two things that quite clearly coexist. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
That is a really weird one. I'm sort of surprised he entertains it, but I guess he's sort of snookered at that point.

We are very close to Graham Potter, not entertaining these type of questions. He really is close to the end of his tether.

However, Dave, Jamie Rednapp was on Sky appraising Graham Potter's ability to read the riot act to his West Ham squad.

Yeah, I'm not sure I see him as that sort of guy. I don't see him as a sandwich thrower or throwing the teacups or doing anything like that.

He's just going to be like, okay, we've got to find a way. We've got to pick ourselves up.
We're going to have to work hard in training.

Interesting to see that sandwiches have overtaken teacups as the number one missile of choice in the dressing room. I mean, go throw the sandwiches.
That won't hurt.

Maybe that's what the sort of person he actually is. He'll throw a sandwich at you, it'll hurt a little bit.
It will surprise you.

I mean, it is so tough on him because clearly, so much of this whole, like, am I tough enough sort of act like it all feels that like that Ed Miliband interview and then he's still despite doing all this still got people like rednapped saying oh I don't think he's that kind of guy you must be like but I keep saying I keep trying to be tough and saying I don't care what you think and it's really not moving the dial you think you think of the sandwiches that they're being thrown as like the small little triangle ones are being cut up that would you'd you'd find at a spread at an event and flying through the air like a ninja star they'd all just come apart in the air wouldn't they

depends on the filling.

They can be quite tightly less lying around. Yeah, if it's Mayo-based, you might be alright, but like BLT is, as you say, going to disintegrate mid-air.

The big result of the weekend, perhaps, was Manchester City 0 Tottenham 2 Charlie, a game prefaced by Pep being asked this at a press conference, which irritated me in at least three ways.

Can you put your finger on it? Are the Aborgi side? Sorry? Are the Aborgi side? Boogie?

A difficult side.

Bad luck. No,

bad luck.

I'll tell you what annoyed me. The question itself being posed in a way that he didn't understand it.

Pep's confusion in having to say the word bogey, and then the inability of the questioner to tell him what it actually means.

Because clearly, when put on the spot, I don't think anybody could quite sort of summarise what bogey team actually means. It's not about bad luck.
It's about

essentially a curse, isn't it? But in a function

backed up by actual football ability. Yeah, I think cursed would have been the best way to get him to understand it quickly.

But I guess it does show what we talked about before that we say so many of these things and it's just like, well, I don't need to define it. That's what it is.
Like, that's what it's been forever.

I've never thought to actually break it down. I don't want to hear Pep Guardiola say bogey again, Dave.
Yeah. And it also didn't help that the question was from a guy with a Scottish accent either.

It just made it that little bit harder for Pep to understand. There's no point skirting around this.
Accents will make this whole scenario harder.

So you're going to have to work harder to make yourself clear. That's just a fact.
So there were so many obstacles there, and none of them were overcome with any work in any style.

Because Pep did repeat him, and he was like, looked at his interpreter at the side and sort of said, boogie.

That's Jan Colby taking on a scouse accent.

Right. Next up, this is Thomas Frank being interviewed on match of the day after Spurs' win.
Is it a win, just a win, or is it a statement win? It's probably one of the better ones.

And coming here to JT against Pep City is a very tough task. So a win here is, of course,

a top one. Andy Bradley asks, Charlie, do we have a definition of when a win becomes a statement win? Was this a statement win for Spurs? Do you think it ticks most of the boxes? Yes and no.

Like, I think it depends, like, a statement of what. I mean, because I think it's also a win where we don't fully know yet really what it means.
It's so early in the season.

It's so early in Thomas Frank's reign, and most likely it's not like Spurs are going to be going for the title.

So, I think, like, a statement win is more team beats title rival away from home, and it's a massive show of credentials.

And a dial mover, and like, a fuck, they might actually be genuine this season. Like, are they favorites now? Like, I think it needs to move the dial more.

This was a great win, but I don't think people are now saying, God, Spurs could go on and win the league now.

I think, I think, what the, to go back to the bogey team thing as well, I think the fact that Spurs' record against Man City in recent seasons is so notably good undermines the fact that it could be a, you know, its potential to be a statement win as well.

Yeah, when Christian Stellini has beaten Peps Guardiola for Spurs, it becomes a bit less statementy.

So a statement win, Charlie, can't be a statement about the manager themselves and what they're all about.

It has to be about the team's sort of expectations and aims for the season and their pushing themselves into the picture for being challengers. Yeah, I think so.

I think that's kind of the pure form of a statement.

I think if they beat Arsenal or Liverpool, but obviously Arsenal being the rivals, like in a few months' time, I don't know when the first North London derby is this season, but if they were to like really comfortably beat them, and like you say, Charlie, confirm the fact that they're actually the real deal, it is still too early.

Yes, I agree with that. Yeah, still definitely potential for Tottenham to produce a statement win this season, though.

Next up, here's Dean Ashton on Talk Sport talking about Manchester City's increasingly infamous high line. Look,

Dave, I love how gently this analogy just falls apart. At the start, you're like, okay, all right, let's see where this is going.
And then eventually,

there's no comparison made whatsoever. Did fall apart much like a doughnut would, I suppose.
Why do you need to be a patient with a doughnut, Charlie? Just get stuck in. Well, straight to the filling.

Well, I guess because he's saying if you are impatient, it's going to go everywhere. It's messy.

I mean, maybe it's a subtle nod to the famous marshmallow test that they used to do at Stanford University, which is all about delayed gratification. And that's kind of what he's getting at.

He's like, just take your time. It wouldn't surprise me.
It's patient. Dean Ashton is exactly knowing Dean Ashton.

What a shout that would be. Right, over to the Emirates now, where Arsenal thrashed Leeds 5-0 on Saturday.
Charlie, was this the ultimate these games won't define their season situation for Leeds?

Yeah, yeah. Puppets couldn't wait to say that after the game, but it ticked all those boxes as well.
Absolutely. I mean, didn't Farka say something to that effect as well himself?

I mean, I remember this took on another layer one year when with one of the newly promoted clubs, and it was a, it was like a blackpool, I don't think it was blackpool, but it was one of those teams, like a really unfancy team.

And it was said, it was like, you know, they'll almost have a list. Free hits games.
I think they can take points. And, you know, that's what they'll be.

And I always wonder, like, would a team do that? Because that also seems like really defeatist to be like, look, we're going to lose today, boys. Just focus on West Ham next week.

That's a really interesting question, Dave.

You know, how mainstream should this theory get that these games are free hits and you know you could essentially go into them and not worry about the result?

And how formalized do you think it is behind the scenes? Do you think they sort of highlight them on a fixture list and go, don't worry about those, mate? It's fine.

Yeah, but then but then it just increases the pressure on those so-called winnable games as well. If you lose one or you don't get the points, then you really are fucked.
But

I mean, you know, as good as Arsenal are. There's been teams that have gone to the Emirates in the last few seasons and have got unexpected points or whatever.

So I don't imagine if that feels something a little bit more Barclay's era, for want of a better term.

Well, it was really hopeless to be in away team. We've come, yeah, we've come on a little bit since then.
I don't think teams are going to be that defeatist internally, at least.

I mean, you could spin it around, Charlie, and say these, you know, that those precious points that you win at your Arsenals and your Chelsea's, they can be the ones that keep you up.

That's the difference maker.

I mean, there are occasionally times, aren't there, where teams will like rest players for like city away or something because they're like, we're not going to get anything out of of this, whatever we do.

We may as well, like, we may as well keep it. It's a formal recognition of it, then, in that case, exactly, yeah.

Like, I think that you do get that a little bit of that, and obviously, then everyone else, all the fan bases of a rival would, of their rivals, would go mad at a team for doing that.

Meanwhile, Charlie, news emerging that Arsenal exploring a deal to sign by a Labour coupon defender, Pierre Hinkapier.

And Lighthouse3141 says, on a recent pod, you named Tour de France cyclists as potential Premier League players and their positions.

This Premier League target is definitely a leadout man for Alpacin de Koenink.

He's he's got such a cycly name he's amazing yeah he does you couldn't you couldn't ai a more cycly footballer name than this yeah he doesn't really look like one unfortunately his vibe is quite footballery but um don't have beards do they don't have little beards do they cyclists they're very smooth they need to be aerodynamic yeah yeah

marginal gains um now craven cottage on sunday david i quite an interesting game um from start to finish but uh at the very end fulham won manchester united one peter drury hands back to the Sky Studio.

However, you read it, it's a point either way, Kelly. It's Fulham 1, Manchester United 1.
Peter and Gary, thank you very much.

As you say, it is share spoiled at the end of that game. And both of them.
This really is the number one spoonerism in football. I love it.
And I love it so much.

And I haven't quite got sort of a climatize to it, but I love it so much that I think it can now exist and you know what it means.

Like, even if you said it to somebody who had no idea of football, I think they can sort of vaguely get get the sentiment but yeah share spoiled i love it it's easily done it really is it's not the first time i've heard it um although is it is it is it uh you know kelly cage doing saturday night then doing sunday the match of the day gig taking its toll early doors i could see a daily mail article about this burnouts yeah for the man for the match of the day trio charlie she'd also done a us open preview show with me on five live earlier in the week so there we go you know that's they're coming thick and fast yeah it's like the athletics tennis writer just rocking up and doing a irreverent football clichés podcast on a on a Monday morning.

Anyway, next up, James Garner's goal versus Brighton, Dave, to make it 2-0 for Everton at their new stadium. Zach Howell says, I'd like to submit this as the clichés definition of a pile driver.

I'm 100% behind this. It's very, very specific.
It's the exact sort of long-range goal that is so pile drive-y. The ball coming across the player, their body right over the balls.

Everything's designed to keep the ball low, not just to get the shot on target. It's very specifically designed to rifle it in.
And it's that specific act of shooting that makes it pile drive-y.

I think it's, yeah, because there's no build-up to the shot. They're not striding onto it, you know, with the ball at their feet.

It's being laid on a plate for them, and then they sort of have to dig it out. And that's what makes it really pile drive-y for me.
I'm not sure that I agree with that.

I think in my head, a pile driver was

a bit higher.

If you'd asked me for a typical, like, classic pile driver goal, I would go for for stephen reed blackburn against wiggly so you're going high he just absolutely smashes it he's running onto the ball and it just i think at the time it was it was like the hardest shot or the fastest shot recorded in the premier league yeah so it sort of rises whereas you think a pile driver is a low and hard strike pile drivers by definition should be grounded efforts that's the whole point in it aren't there surely i i'm with adam i'm with adam on this one i have to say i do think that one was

yeah and adam was really fearing another come at the hour in that uh situation no i i think that yeah i do think that was tech because it's it's quite rare you see someone whose principal aim just seems to be getting loads of power on it which is what yeah which is what that shot was yesterday it was just like i want to smack this really hard yeah no i think that read one's just something slightly different that's kind of a its own kind of genre i think the fact that it went in at the near post kind of emphasizes its power as well

driviness rather than the expansiveness of going in at the other post. So yeah, it's just like everything is geared to getting the ball to the goal as quickly and directly as possible.

I'm just going to smack it with like a straight leg into the near post, shortest distance to travel. And it thumped into the net.
It didn't bounce back out, and

it wasn't welcomed into the net either. It was a bit of both.
It just sort of just, because it hit the camera, I think, which kind of killed the ball dead.

So that kind of business-like burying of the ball made it very power-driving. Fair enough.
Maybe Stephen Reed is

the dreaded thunderbastard territory. Oh, no.

Must resist. We must resist.
Thanks to Zach Howells. We'll take a short break.
We'll be back very shortly.

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Oh, look at that!

That is wonderful!

Welcome back to Football Clichés. We're recording episode six of Dreamland this week.
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Returning to Everton now, Charlie, the Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Actually, there is no the, it's Hill Dickinson Stadium, which I think we should all be very mindful of.

I read a tweet that said the crowd at Everton's new stadium registered a noise level of 126 decibels in the second half of the Premier League game against Brighton.

That puts it in the top five loudest recorded noises at a football stadium anywhere. Incredible for a first game.
What a ridiculous caveat at the end. If anything it makes it more likely.

They're only just getting started. What, they're going to find their feet to? I don't know.
No teething problems here. That's an absolutely mad little disclaimer at the end.

Adam Gray writes in, Dave, and says, Everton's new ground is Hill Dickinson Stadium.

How long do they have to play there before everyone drops the word stadium when describing it, as we have with the Emirates, Etihad, and Vitality?

Vitality is probably a latecomer to this equation, but it is definitely in it. But would you can you anticipate Hill Dickinson getting there?

The difference with this one is it's the fact that it's got two names,

slightly more unwieldy. I think over time,

might one of the two, either Hill or Dickinson, emerge as the

one we go for? Dan at the Dickinson. We're away at the Dickinson today.

You can't give it surname treatment, Charlie.

But it's interesting because for a while, certainly before the naming rights were announced, I thought Bramley Moore might sort of prevail as the kind of universally accepted way of describing Everton's new ground.

But it's also a bit Ashburton Grove, isn't it, Bradley Moore? Now they've got a sponsor or, you know, a naming rights partner for it. That's completely out the window.

And we should also bear in mind that it kind of doesn't matter that it's a sponsor. It's the name of the stadium.
It will catch on and just sort of immerse itself in our footballing consciousness.

Yeah. Do you feel a bit like out of practice with new stadiums? Like, I feel there was a time where

there were loads of them popping up. Whereas it feels like ages since we've really had one, especially for like a really prominent Premier League club.

Just like it's having a new name and a a new visuals to get your head around has been quite odd. Certainly for Everton because obviously, you know, they were so

associated with where they played more than any other club, I think. Yeah, there is a chance that if not Bramley Moore, it might still be referred to in relation to the docks.

The location of it is so prominent. It's not like an out-of-town.

It's an amazing site. It really is.

It's like Fulham. You're never ever going to see a shot of it without it being from above and you can see the river and the whole thing, aren't you?

No one's dared to comment on this, but it is pure NFL. There's something very NFL about its whole setting and its design.
It does look a bit like that.

But you know, that doesn't mean it's a bad stadium by any stretch.

Now, Donnie and Mui want to remind us of this item on the clichés podcast 13 months ago. Right.
Next up, Chris Smith alerts us to this quote from Iliman Njai, who has signed for Everton.

And I've never heard a footballer acknowledge even the prospect of this.

On playing a part in Everton's last ever season at Goodison Park Njai added it's funny because someone said to me imagine you scoring the first goal at the new stadium.

It would be a quiz question for so long. Who scored the first goal for Everton at the new stadium? At that moment my daughter who can't really talk yet said dada great answer.
That's my target.

Aiming to be a quiz question answer. This is incredible scenes.

I love it. I'm in love with this player already.
It makes sense. I think you would be really motivated to score that first goal at the new stadium.
Son scored the first goal at Tottenham Stadium.

Yeah. Yeah, and it's a lovely thing to have.
And he only went and did it, Dave. He's only gone and done it.
He is the quiz question. He's completed it.

And to make it even more of a quiz question, he scored the last goal at Goodison as well. Oh, incredible.
Oh, yeah. So that happened in between.

Astonishing. I'm not claiming any sort of crystal ball, you know, credit on our behalf here, Charlie, but this is really tidy.

I'm glad to see someone's sort of achieved that life mission, niche as it was. Yeah, we will have to include it as a quiz question at some point as well to kind of

close this off. How long can it be before it becomes a quiz question that you would get wrong?

I don't know. I mean, I think nowadays things move so quickly.
It wouldn't have to take that long. I think in a few years, people would sort of have forgotten about this.

Hope so, just for the purposes of quiz building. I could see it actually being a quiz question like a football sports question in a general knowledge pub quiz, like pretty soon.

so I don't think you know you're not gonna

you know the career we go lads aren't gonna include it in their quiz you know at the volley but if you just go to a random pub quiz I could see this being a quite a good one like not not everyone's gonna know that but they would have to name Illiman and Jai so which makes it quite difficult for the for the average layman in football

this was interesting from Kieran Tavam He says whenever a team plays at a new stadium Everton in this case I always look at what other ground it looks like when viewing on TV I'm interested to know what the Hill Dickinson reminds you of.

It had MX vibes on first viewing. He's spot on here, Charlie.
As soon as this game started, I was trying to work out what the camera angle made this stadium look like.

Bit king power-y for me on the halfway line, but when it got to either end, it didn't look like anything. Like it's really unique-looking stadium.
So maybe a bit spursy, which kind of makes sense.

Very Spursy for me. I think it looks a lot like the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Especially, like, once you lose the blue, like, the blue bit could be a bit misleading, but where there were pockets where there weren't tons of home shirts, it's really Tottenham Hot Spurs Stadium for me.

This, Dave, this may sound barrel-scrapingly niche topic to talk about, but I think this is the essence of football consciousness, certainly from a TV watching perspective.

You know, twinning stadiums together. This is the sort of knowledge that people should have.
Yeah, it's going to be. Stadium cousins.

It will just take a little bit of time to sort of seep into our footballing subconscious, as it were. It looks quite steep, doesn't it?

At the behind the goals, which is quite similar to the new Spurs Stadium.

But the behind the goal angle, so sorry, looking at the end from the side, looking at the goal, it looks a little bit like Brentford's as well,

the G-Tech,

I think. Quite concrete.
I mean, obviously, all stadiums are concrete, but really concrete. It looks noticeably concrete-y, doesn't it? It's a lick of paint.

One thing I don't like about it, certainly from the camera angle perspective, Dave, is that you can very visibly see the gates numbers above the tunnels.

Not for our benefit. Shouldn't be that large.
There's no need for them to be that large. Why are they so visible from our side? Useless.
They make it.

They're quite helpful for spotting yourself in the crowd, though. I suppose.
They make it look like a stadium from a fake sort of betting advert game, though. So that's the slight worry.

Johnny Wilde writes in next, Charlie, and says, in need of some adjudication here, Sunderland's playoff final win last season was a huge sliding doors moment for the future of the club.

My mate argues that playoff final wins are too big an event to be considered sliding doors. I still think it works, but what's your verdict? I get the logic here.

I mean, it's quite, I mean, it's almost designed to be a sliding doors moment now, so is it too obvious?

Well, that's a good point, because I think we've moved so far away from the original sliding doors, because obviously the point of it in the film, anyway, is that it's like this seemingly innocuous moment that completely transforms the path of someone's life.

Yeah. Now we just say any big moment, which isn't what it should mean.
So I think,

yeah, I think Johnny Wilde's mate is onto something.

It would be like saying, oh, God, Jose Mourinho going to chelsea no but like in life like you know you got married and imagine if you didn't imagine if you didn't marry her like

yeah i know it was a big the biggest moment of my life actually yeah

the birth of my first child a real sliding doors

yeah my love suddenly got really harder and arguably better yeah um yeah so what is a good sliding doors moment in football either sort of hypothetically or real charlie well i think in football wouldn't it be something like you know the moment where fergy where leeds inquired about dennis irwin and then that transformed the whole landscape of english football forevermore when seemingly giving a call a team about sorry giving a team a call about a left back would not seem to be a momentous moment in the history of football yeah there needs to be a an element of butterfly effect involved it can't just be a butterfly flapped its wings and a butterfly has flapped its wings like that's not enough exactly yeah good shout johnny wild uh your mate is correct now we haven't had one of these for ages but i think this might be the best of all forever cynical writes in Charlie and says Steve Cram has just said this on the BBC's coverage of the Lausanne Diamond League

Shimoni Hamar

Big new decatal on best this year, but this in the meantime he loves the long jump

and this crowd will be hoping he can produce something tonight in these conditions on the back street in front of a very knowledgeable crowd as well.

I think this might be the most ridiculous, knowledgeable crowd I've ever heard. It's a long jump, for fuck's sake.
What knowledge do you need?

Oh, no, I think he's just gone over the line there. Shades of Bob Beeman there from 1968.

You say that, but there's probably a bigger divergence in knowledge of long jump, you know, possible in some ways.

You know, a lot of people are going to know absolutely nothing, or most people, if you do know a bit. A little bit of a prevailing wind.
Oh, yeah.

Lausanne does strike me as a sort of quite athletics-y sort of place, though. Well, he was a home fat.
he was like a home athlete as well. So, you know, they were cheering him on.

But that their knowledgeability doesn't come into the equation there.

Did they know he was Swiss? Well done. Congratulations.
Absolute nonsense. It's just Jolly, we are now into a phase where you feel like you can just say it and you'll be accepted.

Well, no, you won't fucking be accepted. I won't have it, Steve Cram.
Absolutely cholly. That is essentially meaningless, yeah.
Yeah. On a similar note, this came from George Ware.

Here is Swansea's new signing Marco Stamenich, proving he's 100% committed to the cause. Competition is healthy and it's what will drive all of us to be the best possible versions of ourselves.

So I think that is really important and that's something that I strive to implement when I come into the team.

I'm always giving my 100% and you know I die for the sleeve and for the club and that's what I intend to do here.

Don't die for the sleeve. It's probably a crypto sponsor.
He's absolutely mad.

But at the same time, Charlie, I can see how it's sort of crept into his brain to say. Yeah, he might have just meant shirt and then sort of popped in somehow.
He caught sight of his sleeve.

Dying for the sleeve.

It reminds me, all the way back in 2014, my brother alerted me, Dave, to someone on Talk Sport, a drunk caller into Talk Sport, saying that Tim Sherwood, then at Spurs, wears his sleeve on his badge.

Which doesn't work either way.

Oh, isn't it funny? The football cliché's language being mangled.

This came from Colin McBride next. A lovely variation on For My Sins.

It's a story, Dave, about a Rangers fan who was caught drink driving following their defeat to Club Bruges in the Champions League qualifiers.

He was also arrested for driving with burst tyres and possessing a knife with intent to commit grievous bodily harm.

Other charges included possessing a hammer, disorderly behaviour, assaulting a van driver by approaching him with a hammer, and obstructing a police officer. So quite a rap sheet there.

You know what this fucking podcast has done to my brain? Like, I really want to say listen listen, fair play, but obviously, we really shouldn't do for anything.

What basis would that be a listen fair play?

Just because it was such a long

fact sheet. It just, yeah.

Right, okay, interesting.

Anyway, applying for bail, his solicitor, Paddy McDermott, told Deputy District Judge John Connolly, for his sins, he is a fan of Glasgow Rangers, and he was so angry following their dismal performance on Tuesday that for no reason he got into his car and drove.

What a deployment of for my sins for somebody else in their defensive court. That actually might work, Charlie.
That is incredible.

Also, isn't it quite a loaded thing to say, like, about Rangers and Celtic, given all the religious background and that sort of thing? Like, you could be opening him up to even worse sectarian abuse.

That's certainly part of the equation, but

I'm just stunned that a solicitor would think, how can I soften this? How can I soften this one? Jaunty little phrase.

Things that are essentially beyond his control, despite the fact he chose which team he supported. He just went and did this.
So sorry, it's that football for you.

God, it makes you do silly things, doesn't it? Yeah, Russell Martin's having a real time of it at the moment. Yeah, she used to have got it.

Russell Martin's team are play out from the back, and it is quite infuriating to watch.

Mitigating circumstances there. My goodness.
Right, this is from the BBC live text from Tottenham's unfolding win at Manchester City, Charlie. And it says, remember the frantic spurs of last season?

This Tottenham team is already oozing stability. A sense of optimism not felt for a long time.
Funus El Memorioso says, can you ooze stability?

I'm not having that as an oozable substance. It's a funny thing for something like, given we're used to it being the more kind of

aspirational, like confidence or something like that, stability obviously a lot less sexy. I mean, why can't you ooze stability, though? Yeah,

I sort of...

I think you can. It just sounds very odd.
I think it's... I guess, Dave, it's not something you necessarily need an excess of.
Like, confidence oozing is fine. Class, you can ooze that too.

Yeah, but you can't have too much of either of those things. But can you have too much stability? I suppose you probably could.
Yeah, but I also don't know if it really

are they oozing stability. They've won a couple of games, but I mean, it was only 25 minutes into the game as well, they hadn't even scored.
So they do look very organized,

sort of which using organization.

Right, I think we're going to record the latest listeners that measure Haaland Dicks on Wednesday.

So, if you want to get involved and get your niche footballing fascination or irritation off your chest,

the one tiny thing about football that stimulates either way, the one tiny thing about football that stimulates you either way, and you wonder if anyone else has noticed it too, send a 30-second voice note to football cliches at gmail.com, or you can DM it to me on Twitter or Instagram, and we'll pick the best six.

Right, down to the championship now, Dave. QPR, who were trailing 7-0 at Coventry, mustered a consolation goal, the scantest of consolation goals from Richard Kone in injury time.

And he went and hurriedly grabbed the ball out of the net.

Is that performative? It must have been. I guess so.
He's a new signing. He probably felt like he had to do it, but I mean, yeah, come on.

Yeah, this is a scenario I don't think we've ever faced before, Charlie. And, you know, I think I'm basically answering my own question here, but obviously there's no practical reason to do it.

So does it, does it, like, does it appease the fans in any way to see a player do that? How gullible, how sort of malleable emotionally could you be?

I think it is partly just a reflex, though, isn't it? It's like you're getting battered

because you've got no other way of celebrating. Any other celebration would be ludicrous.
To actually look happy would be ludicrous.

So I think your mind just goes to that, you know, that's what I do when I'm not happy with a celebration. It would have been funnier if he'd wheeled away, actually.

Knee slide. Knee slide.
First goal for the club, maybe.

Dave, I famously produced a matrix of the acceptability of grabbing the ball out of the net.

And the matrix didn't even account for a a team needing six more goals to draw level it only went up to five goals needed with a minute left that was the most extreme scenario I could think of and that was 0% acceptable so this is basically sub-zero off the charts yeah quite literally off the charts right Conor McLaughlin writes in next Charlie and says I would love to be at the match of the day production meeting where the work experience boy is asked if he remembered to deal with the audio of the very sweary Bournemouth fan yes boss edit it in really loud almost over the top of the commentary like you presumably wanted.

Here's Smith.

There's Brooks White.

Trevor Nielsen in the middle. Oh, he's taken away from his teammates, Emmanuel Over.
That is the loudest swearing I've ever heard on Mattson

by an absolute mile. I mean, I don't know if it was a Bournemouth fan.
I don't know if it was a Wolf fan, presumably.

But I don't know if they could or edit it out or they just forgot to do it. Bit of both.
Not the same without the apologies for any

fruity language you might have heard there. I can say

that the highlights either. So I don't know.
Imagine. Yeah.
Just on that, though, you've in your intro to that, you said about the work experience boy.

Why is that such an oft-used thing? The work experience, the interns, they get a lot of... Yeah.
Always getting labelled as gaffman.

There's some very skilled video editors doing this job, by the way, Conor McLaughlin. It's not just some work experience boy making the tea and editing out swearing.

Love this next, Charlie.

Isaac writes in and and says, my brother Ned and I were at the Arsenal match on Saturday, and after Saka and Erdegar went off injured, he mistakenly said they should bring Yokarez off and wrap him in tin foil.

After we stopped laughing at it, I was wondering whether it also might actually make sense to keep him warm.

Yeah, like at the end of marathons, people do that sometimes.

That's an amazing shout out. I once got wrapped in tin foil after a judo competition that I entered.
I did not want that against the advice of the coach or whatever.

I think I was about nine or something okay and yeah i got absolutely thrown around and they wrapped they put that foil around me oh no what belt did you get to by the way i never went back oh okay right okay i was gonna say if we do a dreamland episode on dave's dave's judo career it was a real sliding doors moment for me actually yeah

what could have been it could have been an olympian who knows david walker i'm trying to think i'm trying to think of a proverbial football reason why a player might be wrapped in proverbial tin foil, Charlie.

It might be like, I don't know. You wrap something in twin foil to enjoy later.
So, so like, just don't, don't use him in this game. Use him in a game where you really need him and he could flourish.

So, like, taking a sandwich up a mountain or something like that, you wrap it in tin foil. So, that could be it.
Rolling subs really come into its own. Yeah, yeah.
Leftovers. Keep them warm.

Isaac, that is brilliant. Thanks to Ned for uttering those immortal words.
Right, speaking of saving things to the end to enjoy them even more, it's time for Keys and Grey Corner.

Not your best speaking of.

They all count. Right.
We were speaking the other day, Dave, about what we thought Richard Keys' lager of choice might be, specifically in the context of a hotel lobby bar. We went for

a sauce has got in touch. I'm full of sources today.
This is fantastic. He says there's a limited number of beers on tap in Qatar.
Every establishment has almost the exact same fare.

Your Heinekens, your Stellar's, your Budweisers, your Guinnesses, if you're lucky. Keesy? Birra Moretti.
Bira Moretti. Moretti class.
We should have seen it. Yeah, we should have seen it.

Pind of Bira Moretti, please.

Although, all of this is interesting news, Charlie, especially in the light of what he said on Monday Night Football all those years ago. This via Chief Keys and Gray archivist Nozza.

Now, this might be me. Jugger beer, plenty of nuts and crisps.
You can sit there all night and not have to go back to the bar. No, no, you would have a glass of chilled Chabley, not a jug of beer.

You know, you don't drink beer. So you could be, you like your nuts and you like your crisps, so you'd be all right with that.

My favourite bit of that, Charlie, is Andy Gray saying, you like your nuts. You like your crisps.

As if that's a little thing that he knows about Keesy.

They're designed to be liked.

His niche-like of crisps and nuts.

But it is a nice insight, because you do sometimes see that Gray does think Keesy is very worldly and very sophisticated with this nice glass of Chabley and that sort of thing. High class.

Finally, then... For today's episode, here's Keys and Gray getting ready for Everton versus Brighton.

A huge occasion for Everton, a huge occasion for Andy Gray, of course, and but a huge occasion for Richard Keyes as well for his own niche little tastes. This is a big day.
It is.

I'm really teaching.

And I would like to wish genuinely, and maybe somebody will hear us, everybody connected with Everton Football Club today, all the very best because this is a really special occasion.

Oh, by the way, that's where the Titanic was berthed before she set sail for it. Which day, was it? Right there.
I hope, I hope, I mean, I've just mentioned that as. Yeah.
Yeah, no, we're not sinking.

Take all that away, right? Don't start today.

We're upbeat. She's beautiful.
That's amazing, Stadium. It's taken a while.
Do you know they found 14, to be serious now, 14 unexploded Second World War bombs on that site?

No.

Wow, hope we got them all. Everton Brighton today.

That's so good.

She's beautiful. She's beautiful.

Calling Titanic she as well. It's just so perfect.
Number one is calling Hill Dickinson Stadium she. She's beautiful.
That's pure Keysy. Secondly,

the re-emergence of his fascination with the Titanic, Charlie, because as we know, he has a scale model of the Titanic and his Doha home. So just love that.
And then so good. Yeah.

And then that bit at the end, which was very reminiscent of, what's the top kit of all time?

And quite partridge as well. I know we say that a lot about him, but just, you know, a slightly off key and a, a bit sort of of a not the most positive subject, just really inappropriate.

Just so good. Andy Gray's just customary disbelief in anything, any fact that Keese has furnished him with.
No,

top-class adjudication paneling. Thanks to you, Charlie Ekushare, all the way from New York City.
Thank you. Thanks to you, Dave Walker.
Thank you. Thanks to everyone for listening.

We'll be back on Thursday with your Mezza Harlan dicks. See you then.

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