Curtain-raising issues, Wycombe's new goal verb & things you cannot be "amid”

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The UPS store.

Be unstoppable.

Come into your local store today.

I'm sorry.

You can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like.

Is Gascoigne going to have a crack?

He is, you know.

Oh, I think.

Brilliant.

He's round the goalkeeper.

He's done it.

Absolutely incredible.

He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was

without a shadow of a a doubt getting him lip.

Oh, Sane!

It's amazing!

He does it tame and tame and tame again.

Break up the music!

Charge a glass!

This nation is going to dance all night!

A cultural mini review of the traditional curtain raiser.

Three-sided stadiums produce the best crowd noises, apparently.

Some absolute bottom-tier uses of the word amid.

Dean Saunders re-releases the hits.

Kin and Dewsbury Hall's lowest key praise for his new club's club's heritage, big League One stadium ventilation news, a new Leonard Messi landmark, Wickham's brand new goal scoring verb, and Richard Keyes' little brick.

Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts.

This is Football Cliches.

Hello everyone and welcome to Football Clichés.

I'm Adam Hurry.

This is the adjudication panel.

Joining me on that panel is Charlie Accleshaire.

How you doing?

Yeah, good, thanks.

Recharged, refreshed.

Good to have you back.

Alongside you, David Walker.

What have you been up to?

I was in York this weekend and me and some mates, we went to York against Sutton, which is a National League fixture.

And you know,

when you're a neutral game, and

your experience is obviously a bit different than if you're a partisan, you know, you're not quite as invested, but we still had fun.

It was a good game.

But you can just sort of focus on slightly different aspects of the match than the sort of actual back and forth of the game.

So we were sat right on the touchline.

the first

front row of the...

I saw your video of this.

It looked like you'd been deployed as a ball boy for a stag do or something.

Yeah, I was right behind the ball boys at one point.

Did catch the ball at one point, actually.

Nice.

And actually, in that moment, when I, it kind of, it didn't, it didn't get hit into the crowd because we spent most of the game hoping that a goalkeeper would over hit a clipped pass to a fullback and it would come to us and we could head it because we were right at the perfect angle for that to happen.

But unfortunately, the keepers were too accurate for us.

But in the second half, the ball did sort of trickle over the touchline and it came to right where we are.

I just sort of leant over and picked the ball up, but then realized there was no ball boy nearby to throw it back.

And I was sort of wondering what to do with the ball for a while.

And then, out of nowhere, a ball boy came sprinting down a touchline like he was at Wimbledon or something and then took the ball off me.

Was it really pumped up?

Yes, I did think about what we were talking about on the recent episode.

Yeah, it felt really firm and solid and very grippy as well, actually.

But I was also sat next to a really great old woman who was a York fan, and she was giving the Lino both barrels the whole game, properly getting stuck into him, saying, Lino, you cheating bustard.

In match week two, yeah, right.

And she was obviously right next to him.

But then she was also like quite

forthright with her own players, but just made it a little bit kinder.

There were a few moments where they were taking a bit of time to build up, and she was saying, Oh, why are you messing about with it, you silly boy?

Slightly campard.

That's fine.

All right.

Well, anyway, speaking of heckling fifth-tier performers, it's 55 days to go until the clichés live tour begins in earnest.

I've started putting the show together and I think it's the best we've ever done.

I'm really excited about what we've got.

A reminder that Leeds and Glasgow are sold out, but you can still join us in Brighton, Cardiff, Hackney Empire in London, Birmingham, Dublin, and Manchester.

Charlie, that's eight shows in 17 days.

That is championship rhythm.

They will be coming thick and fast, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we can handle it.

Go to tickets.footballcliches.com and join us.

You won't regret it.

Right, adjudication panel time.

Where else to start than the annual traditional season curtain raiser that is the community shield on TNT Sports?

Some rustiness all round, I think, on this, Charlie.

This came from Callum McCloskey.

Here's Steve McManaman previewing the game, sort of expressing his excitement for the Community Shield in very sort of abstract terms and saying whatever was uppermost in his pundit brain, really.

Yes, really looking forward to it.

It's fantastic that we're here for the official curtain raiser, isn't it?

Of course, two teams in great form.

Really interested to see Liverpool start lineup.

Quite video game commentary, though.

Two teams in terrific form.

Charlie, when pundits are asked about how excited they are for a game, they love, they absolutely love to say two teams in great form.

And I just think you just couldn't resist saying it.

You think that's what I should say.

I'm going to say it.

Yeah, it sort of just means kind of just interchangeable with two teams I quite want to watch.

Yeah.

Which is sort of what palace are, aren't they?

Or one team won the FA Cup and one team won the league and I haven't looked at them since.

Well but I mean by sort of competitive definition that is correct isn't it?

You're always going to have been if you're only as good as your last competitive game in the community shield you're always going to be in good form.

Liverpool kind of stuttered didn't they towards the end of the season because they'd won it so comfortably.

I don't think they are in by their standards.

I mean they're in They're in actually pretty awful form.

They drew two and lost two of their last four competitive games.

I haven't looked at Crystal Palace's preseason fixtures, but yeah, Steve McManaman, I'm not having it.

Nor am I having this from the TNT Sports social account, Dave.

Some footage of Arnie Slott embracing Mark Gahy in the tunnel at Wembley.

And the caption on Twitter said, all handshakes pre-match.

You can't just all everything, right?

All smiles is fine.

You can't just have all handshakes.

All handshakes.

You can't just open it up to anything else, Charlie, can you?

I've never heard that before.

It was all handshakes ahead of the game.

That's rubbish.

Probably Ligiers wouldn't say it.

You can't use it.

Later on, Crystal Crystal Palace were denied what many people, Dave, thought was a cast iron penalty.

And TNT Sports tweeted that VAR waved away their penalty appeals.

VAR can't wave away stuff.

You can't just deploy waved away.

Like, it's just a thing where a penalty's not given.

There's actual waving away that takes place.

Well, unless you saw the footage of the VAR room at Stockley Park.

I mean, I suppose they could just go.

Yeah, some might do it.

We're not looking at that.

They wouldn't do the crossed hands of nothing doing in the VAR room, would they?

I don't know.

I reckon that muscle memory is pretty deeply embedded.

I reckon some are making the gestures they would be making.

Okay, fine, all right.

I reckon, because that the dynamic between the VAR officials, I think it could be times where they do wave things away because you've got like the technical guy who's on all the replays and the cameras and sort of probably has to go, do you want to look at that?

And then the senior referee who's actually making the calls in the VAR room might wave him away.

Okay.

It's a secondary waving, a middleman waving away.

These poor technicians, I feel sorry for them every time they get mentioned.

The Guardian headline straight after the game, Charlie, said, Crystal Palace sink Liverpool on penalties, declaimed community shield.

Can you sink a team on penalties?

We've discussed sinking before.

I don't know if penalties count.

I think you can, generally.

I don't know if this necessarily is one.

I think you can be sunk on penalties.

Why not?

I mean, what's stopping you?

It feels like a scoreline, a regular time scoreline thing.

Extra time maybe, but

you can't sink a team on penalties.

There's not enough kind of outclassing going on.

You haven't been, I mean, I suppose technically you are better at scoring best of five penalties, but I don't know.

There's not enough direct outclassing for me in a penalty shootout to qualify as a sinking.

What is the correct or the most appropriate term then for a penalty victory?

Crystal Palace.

I mean defeat, but that's too boring.

Yeah.

Overcome?

Best.

Best.

I don't like best.

I really don't like it.

Penalty Liverpool.

Best should have died in the 16th century and never been seen again.

No, I don't know.

I haven't thought about it.

Right, it's the time of year to embrace new broadcasting innovations.

Dave, Craig MacDonald writes in, watching the Scottish league on Sky Sports.

He says, so pleased that Sky have addressed one of my biggest Mezzert Harlan Dick's irritations.

They now have smaller graphics for subs and yellow cards.

If the player's underway and they can't cut to a close-up of the players concerned, rather than the massive one that comes up at the bottom centre of the screen, it used to piss me off more than it should.

So now, if the game's going on and there's been a substitution that they need to recap or a yellow card, it now appears next to the scoreline at the top in a smaller, kind of briefer summary, which is a class way of doing things.

I feel like TNT do this already, or Hadari done it.

I might be wrong.

It feels like one of those things.

Is it really an innovation?

I do think it's a good thing.

It does look quite innovative.

It does look, just looking at it, it looks like I haven't...

Yeah, I haven't really seen it before.

It looks quite neat, yeah.

Anywhere.

I mean...

Charlie, I mean, it does beg the question, all this time, do we ever really need a close-up of the player who's just been booked for confirmation?

Surely the caption alone does the job.

No, I don't think you need it.

I think it's just a kind of nice flourish.

And you know, if they can do it, great.

But yeah, if there's something more important going on, prioritise that.

Naive from me, Dave, because of course international broadcasters have different captions, so the close-up may well be useful.

And I think if you're watching a game and you're not familiar with both teams,

you want visual confirmation of which player's been put in detail.

The game's going on, I want to see it.

Okay, this is an elegant solution.

Yeah, but the game's going on, but you usually straight after the booking, the close-up is when they're just kind of getting themselves back into position before the referee's blown, isn't it?

That is fair.

We'll give it a few weeks to bed in.

Hopefully, they'll use it for their Premier League coverage.

Now, this came from Jack Gillam.

Let's get one of these under our belt already in the season.

Some lovely championship crowd noise as Portsmouth scored the only goal of the game away to Oxford on Saturday.

For context, it's a foiled one-on-one.

The home fans express their relief, the rebound is immediately converted, the away fans take about 0.3 seconds before retrosing.

So much squeezed into those few seconds.

The way it bounces between emotions.

I think that's lovely.

That's one of the best ones we've had, Charlie.

That's really good.

Yeah.

Loads going on.

Yeah.

And quick reactions from the Portsmouth fans based on our recent evidence, Dave.

Yeah, I wonder where they're sitting.

Because this is at Oxford United, which has only got three sides.

So they can't possibly be behind the other goal.

So maybe they are a bit closer.

They sound quite away, though.

They sound close to the other goal.

Yeah, I don't know.

But

I've never seen such a dynamic, bouncy bit of audio.

This is not the first time this has happened recently to me.

I don't know whether it's just me or whether other people can hear it, but I'm now hearing the LS James goal noise on like every

goal that I hear without commentary.

I don't know whether there's something wrong with me or not, but I'll play it again.

I'm sure for the rebounded shot, not for the goal itself.

So the first noise that you hear, I'm sure I can hear it.

Yeah.

It's not far off.

Maybe that's what football fans do.

There's always one that goes, ah!

Probably.

Does make sense.

Proof now, Charlie,

if it were needed that the word amid is well out of control.

This came from Mira Football.

Mark Gay, his preference preference would be to join Liverpool, but he remains happy at Crystal Palace amid their £40 million asking price.

That is one of the worst amids I've ever seen.

Such a strange amid.

You can't just use a mid when you want to change slight direction in a sentence.

Don't do it.

I mean, a mid is just such a fascinating device.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's a very strange one.

Thanks to Jim McNulty for sending that one in.

Next up, Dave, this is from a report of Tottenham's preseason friendly against Bayern Munich.

Bayern's Bayern's two newly announced Ballon d'Or nominees, Harry Kane and Michael Elise, combined for the first half's only goal, as Kane opened the scoring just 11 minutes in, taking down a ball over the top from Elise and firing home inside the left-hand post amid suggestions that the England captain was a yard offside.

Slightly more acceptable amid, but still ludicrous at the same time.

He was a yard offside.

He was amid suggestions when he hit it.

Did he know?

I mean, did the goalkeeper know?

Definitely a mid.

Definitely amid suggestions.

Ref, ref.

I was a mid.

What's going on?

I have no idea.

Right, this came from Greg Wilson.

Charlie, you're like this.

Here is Hearts in-house media getting the first interview with new Icelandic midfielder, Thomas Bent Magnusson.

Thomas, welcome to Heart of Moldovian Football Club.

How does that sound?

You can't.

How does that sound bad?

There's nothing to be impressed by.

That's the humblest one.

What does he say in response?

I thought it was Hartz.

Here's the full name of our club.

How does that sound?

Oh, yeah, fair enough.

Yeah,

it's always interesting when you hear it for the first time.

Good name.

All right, so you pluralize it when you shorten it, but it's okay, interesting, fantastic.

Right.

Well, I mean, I didn't see this coming, but I was blown over when it did.

Dean Bloody Saunders, so delighted.

with going viral with his original talk bought rant in 2023 that he's recycled it.

So here they both are interwoven just to demonstrate his gleeful regurgitation of something he clearly only half believes.

I'm sorry to say this.

You know there's a lot of imposters in football.

You know you see the dugout and you think how many people they got on the bench?

People got swallowed a laptop.

Imposters who've crept into football with a laptop, sneaked into a club and come out with long words.

I say what gets me.

And baffled the public with stats.

and new words, long words,

trying to baffle the public.

This is how people have tried to baffle the fans.

They're trying to baffle the public, right?

With long words that used to mean something simple.

High press.

Oh, I know.

I know.

That used to be closing down.

High press.

High press.

That was closing down.

The one we played.

Low block.

That used to be sit deep.

Yes, it was.

Low block.

Low block, yeah.

Was sit deep.

Yeah.

Transition.

was giving the ball away and getting counter-attacked.

Don't give it away, lads.

Transition, it's called now.

Keep the ball.

Transition.

Yeah, transitions were both.

We all use it.

Counter-attack.

So the overall impression I get here, Dave, is that he has now had this essentially one-way conversation about 15 times since that first iteration of the rant.

After dinner events, random sort of pub trips with fans.

He has reeled off this rant so many times.

I don't know if it's an after-dinner thing, but you'd be a bit disappointed if you saw Dean Saunders do that after dinner.

I think it is.

I think it's exactly the sort of thing you'd be wielding.

They're They're baffling the public.

Yeah, it could be a bit of a tangent that you could go on, I suppose,

amid stories from the dressing room.

But it's amazing to see it side by side.

It's quite stunning, actually, to see just how similar the two things are side by side.

So the clips of where you can hear Alan Brazil's voice, that's 2023.

And then the updated version is Jason Cundy, but playing exactly the same role.

I mean, it's like the sort of physical manifestation of something that you see quite a lot on social media accounts these days, like aggregated accounts or brand accounts, which is just let's just do the same post that we did two years ago that went viral, but let's do it again, yeah, because people will have forgotten and it will still get engagement.

But it's exactly the same thing, and there's a part of me I don't think this is anyone genuinely would have thought about this, but it's funny that this comes in the week where Talk Sport have debuted their new studios, which means now I've now got an updated version of Dean Saunders doing it in crystal clear HD in front of their new video wall.

And not

their own, you've got HD now.

Could you just do the rant again?

That'd be great.

We can get some really good footage of it.

Charlie, to give him some credit, he did try to update it.

He has now included park the bus in his list of modern, sort of newfangled technical terms.

He just said, We used to call that getting behind the ball.

Park the bus is just a really kind of colloquial, kind of chat, conversational thing.

That's not technical.

That's ludicrous.

From 20 years ago.

That's just something somebody has said recently.

Yeah,

I mean, I love the long words, and the first one is high press.

and just great to hear one of the best bits is when he's talking about transitions and Brazil's noah goes yeah keep the ball just

utterly meaningless just like feels like you've got to say something.

I mean Kundi to give him his due does sort of push him on it a little bit doesn't it?

Yeah.

Brazil just goes along with it whereas Cundy does say like oh yeah but we're all guilty of it.

Yeah.

And then Sordis refuses to accept that he's ever said anything like that.

Exactly.

Sorters I think misses the point slightly of what Jason's trying to say.

But you're so right Charlie like and Adam park the the bus.

Imagine, like, I don't think there's an FA coaching module on parking the bus, is there?

It's not a complicated concept.

It's just other words.

The idea that some data boffin would be coming in and preaching the gospel of park the bus, having swallowed a laptop.

Park the bus.

You could easily switch those around.

Get behind the ball.

We used to call that park the bus.

Park the bus, yeah.

It's just

more than 20 years ago.

You're more than 20 years old anyway.

Yes, that's the best bit.

Oh, my goodness.

Anyway, this weekend sees sees the return of the Premier League, of course, and the new look Match of the Day, which will be rotated between three presenters.

Dave craftily,

they've taken the two out of the title of Match of the Day two just to appease them.

It's keep the squad happy, isn't it?

It kind of makes sense in that, yeah, you can just have though, have Chappers, Kelly Cates, and Gabby Logan, just any of them can host either show across the weekend, and it's Match of the Day.

But that's kind of a low-key passing of an era.

No Match of the Day 2 anymore.

Are they not going to have two good, too bad?

Because that won't work with the title anymore.

One good, one bad.

Just good, bad.

A good and a bad.

Right.

Yeah, Gary Lineker, you're better off out of it.

It's all gone to shit.

But anyway, his career is moving on.

Lineker Charlie is hosting a new game show on ITV called The Box.

And when I heard about this, I knew instantly what was going to happen.

And National Journalist 51 on Reddit confirmed the news.

Lineke says, I've always felt right at home in the box on a football pitch.

And whilst this is a different proposition, the fundamentals are similar.

similar.

I knew he was going to reference it.

Is that why I've chosen him for it, just for that?

Probably some good brand synergy, yeah.

Dave, I just feel uncomfortable with Lineker on ITV, just generally.

Don't do it.

You don't need to do it.

It is a bit weird, yeah.

Wrighty has flipped between the two, hasn't he, quite a lot over the years.

But yeah, Lineker, I don't remember the sitting on a fortune game show.

that he did before.

Why can't I already picture exactly what the studio will look like?

Because there's

something very identic about all ITV game shows.

It's going to be incredibly sparkly.

I know that.

It's going to be a lot of bright lights, but fundamentally also quite dark at the same time.

A lot of plastic.

No, I was going to say, yeah, sitting on a fortune, 2021 to 2023.

How did that not...

A lot of things happened during those two years that we've forgotten about already.

Yeah.

Were they behind closed doors in the studio in 2021?

No,

it was November 2021, so they would have been out of the behind closed doors era in Premier League terms anyway.

Can't picture him doing game shows.

Very odd.

Right, here's another Guardian headline for you, Charlie.

Nicholas Jackson tells Chelsea he wants to leave leave as Newcastle circle.

Can one thing circle?

I mean, strictly speaking, if you were sat on the floor and I walked around you, I would technically be circling you.

But in the traditional sense,

you need more than one thing to circle.

I don't know.

I'm into it.

Yeah, you know, I don't know.

Part of a live show.

You don't tend to say, like, yeah, a vulture is circling.

I mean, there does tend to be a kind of...

It's implied or expected that there's going to be more than one.

Yeah, I think more than one thing needs to circle a player in this situation, Dave.

You can't just have Newcastle circling, can you?

No.

Amid Newcastle circle.

I mean, I guess you probably do get the odd solitary vulture

just out on its own circling.

But

I.

There we go.

Right.

Warren Winrow writes in next.

This is great.

Kean and Dewsbury Hall talking about signing for Everton, Charlie.

And he says, me and Everton have gone back a couple of years.

So I've always taken an interest in the club.

I grew up watching Everton every week on Match of the Day.

You can't say that.

You watch all the fucking teams on Match of the Day.

That's no preferential treatment for Everton.

What does he mean by gone back a couple of years?

I don't know.

So I've always taken an interest in the club.

So he's not saying he supported them.

He's just saying...

He's implying, I think, that they're interested in him.

They're interested in us.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they're interested in him.

And as a result, he's always taking an interest in the club.

But then he says separately, and I grew up watching them.

Yeah, and you're right.

That's...

Yeah, like we all did.

Exactly.

There's never been a season where you haven't been able to watch them on Match of the Day every week.

The only way that this would be flattering to Everton Davis is if he'd waited for Everton to come on and then switched off and said, I'm not watching anymore.

They better be first on because I'm watching any of that shit.

I always kept an eye on their placing on Match of the Day.

They're only going to be first on if they won at Old Trafford or something like that.

So I suppose, yeah, he could have ended up with a good impression of them.

But I don't think he would have seen that much of the other Premier League teams.

Just a hilarious thing to say.

Never heard anyone talk about that before.

I've watched them every week on Skysport's Match Choice, actually.

I go straight for them on the red button.

But that would be something.

Right, Fraser Johnston writes in next.

He says, I'm watching the Southampton versus Wrexham game, and the co-commentator, I think it's Hinchcliffe, but it could easily be Goodman, has just said that Adam Armstrong has put his shot straight down the goalkeeper's throat.

The shot was along the ground.

I'm not having that.

Dave,

can a shot along the ground be down a goalkeeper's throat?

I don't like that at all.

It doesn't seem right, does it?

Could be on all fours taking it down the throat.

Yeah, I mean, that is kind of the technique, I suppose, if it's straight at you and it's on the ground.

But yeah.

And also, I suppose

it feels like a shot on the floor is going to be slower, which just doesn't sort of seem to suit the down the keeper's throat thing.

But you get what he means.

He's hit it straight at the keeper.

Yeah.

I mean, what is the textbook scenario for a shot going straight down a goalkeeper's throat, Charlie?

I mean, I'm thinking Jamie Redknapp's sort of errant cross-cumbed shot against Columbia in 1995, which Higita ended up scorpion kicking instead.

It should float.

It should float towards the keeper, I think.

I don't know.

That feels a little bit too floaty.

Right.

And easy.

Like, I still think it needs to be a shot, you know, and more, but it's just, it's kind of, it's a bit underpowered.

And I think the key point is the centrality of it.

Right.

That it's just like, he doesn't have to move for it, basically.

It can't be a palm stinger.

Because then

that takes precedence over the direction of the shot, right?

Yeah.

But I think the prerequisite is

its centrality.

And then, yes,

it doesn't require a parry.

Well, but I think, I don't know what you mean, but I do think there needs to be...

an element of speed to it because I think the reason you're saying it's straight down the keeper's throat is that you're sort of remarking inside

exactly it's not a bad shot he's hit it well but it's straight down the keeper's throat so doesn't go in okay interesting okay didn't think of that aspect right finally for part one Josh B alerted me to this this is from Boston United who are playing Middlesbrough's under-21s in what's known as the National League Cup which is a trophy I'd never heard about before anyway they tweeted goal borough lead inside 50 minutes with Max Howell slamming home at the back post Charlie are you having inside 50 minutes no that's really weird what's the function of saying inside 50 here Unless it was like 49 minutes and 38 seconds.

I don't know what would the point be.

Yeah, or if they're not entirely sure of the minute.

I mean, is it a kind of fudging, you know, around the 50-minute mark type goal?

Otherwise, I mean, I guess you could argue like first five minutes of the half, but that's not, it's just not really a thing.

Josh B says that this is obviously a bit past the cut-off point.

I'm sure we've discussed this before, but what's the maximum number of minutes for inside?

10?

Inside 10 minutes.

I think I might have gone higher and you guys talked me down.

Inside 15 minutes.

You can't have inside 15 minutes.

Yeah, I think it has to be.

12 is the last minute.

I can imagine a commentary.

And they leaded old Trafford inside 12 minutes.

I can sort of imagine that.

That feels too specific, though, at the same time.

I don't know.

I'm going down.

I'm revising mine down to five minutes.

Although maybe single figures, maybe single figures is fine.

10's fine.

Shortly 10 minutes.

Because that's still nine on the clock as well.

Yeah.

I like inside 10.

Anyway, we'll take a short break.

I'll go and check listenfairblade.com to make sure.

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Welcome back to Football Clichés.

This is the adjudication panel.

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Right, Craig Rostance writes in Dave.

The ongoing saga about chips allegedly not being available at professional football matches.

Northampton Town have issued this very important update ahead of their new season.

Supporters who use the LCS stand will be able to enjoy chips from the LCS stand concourse refreshment kiosks for the first time at Sixfields.

Other kiosks at Sixfields have never been able to offer chips due to the original stadium design and the extraction system.

But following feedback from the fan advisory board, the kiosk and the LCS stand have been constructed with the required ventilation to allow chips to be served.

Your theory, your story, has now been backed up.

Yeah, there you go.

Great news for Northampton fans.

I don't think they're particularly good this season.

I think they're expected to have a tough season, but they've got chips at least to see them through the hard times.

I got sent one the other weekend, actually.

I think someone sent to me on Twitter a screenshot of the menu from Queen's Park.

Okay.

I suppose that's one of the benefits of them playing at Hamden, is it?

You get better facilities, you get chips.

I really hope this sparks a sort of domino effect of ventilation system refurbishment across the Football League, Charlie.

Lots of copycat cases.

Yeah.

They can claim credit.

Yeah.

You know, I'm backing it.

Chips are great.

Right.

You may have observed Sunderland's transfer activity this summer, Dave.

They've made some very shrewd-looking, astute-looking signings.

Habib Diaras from Strasbourg.

Enzo Lefe, of course turning his move permanent from Roma Noah Siddiqui from Union Saint-Gilois for £17.5 million Kemsdeen Talby from Bruges £19.5 million Simon Adingra Premier League proven from Brighton and Hove Albany.

I actually didn't know this one for 21 million.

That completely passed me by.

Granite Xhaka of course coming in to add a little bit of experience and steal to their midfield from Baye Levikusen 17.3 million.

Goalkeeper Robin Roofs from NEC for 11.5 million.

Could well be a great signing.

But Dave, it's almost like they've gone, ah, we're not we haven't signed someone completely sort of we've just been promoted to the Premier League enough and they've gone and got Arthur Masuaku from Pasiktas who's 32 in November that's very nice yeah a real mixed bag there I hadn't been paying attention to Sunderland's transfer window before this

I'm sorry to say but um it's funny these days they're expected to struggle still and there's the whole sort of people will be keeping a close eye I think on how well the three promoted teams do this season because of we've had two in a row where they've both gone straight back down.

But it seems we've sort of slipped into an era now where it's quite routine for newly promoted clubs to spend well over £100 million on a collection of

and yet it still doesn't really

register in the wider sort of conversation around the new season and they're still expected to struggle.

Because you remember as recently as 2018 when Fulham spent over 100 million, it was like quite a big, notable thing.

But now it just sort of, no one bats an eyelid at it.

Forrest did it, didn't they?

Famously brought in a ton of players.

20 players, yeah, whatever it was.

but yeah masawaku when i saw that i was kind of amazed that he was in a position to be coming back to the premier league i just assumed he'd i mean so he was at basic ass yeah i would have assumed if you like because he was your classic like oh he's a baller kind of player wasn't he was often kind of described that way but yeah because he was like a

baller

yeah he was because he was one of those players who was a left back but couldn't really defend but could do like mad things going forward and i think divided their fan base and like uh oh he can do these crazy things but can you actually just do like more conventional left-backy things?

And it seems really strange bookend

their sort of niche transfer activity.

They've just gone, can we sign someone who looked like they should have got relegated with us in 2016-17?

They've gone for Arthur Masawaku, who really fits the bill.

Where's he from?

What nation does he represent?

Because D.R.

Congo.

D.R.

Congo.

Right, we've got the graphic here, and I can see all the flags.

So I noticed that Noah Siddiqui is also from DR Congo.

So is that a...

Keeping him company.

Is that one of those?

Yeah, Noah Siddiqui.

I've only come from from Belgium.

I'm alright.

You got your chips?

Right, William Humphreys continues.

The

packing your suitcase is like picking a squad in football allegory.

He says, just finished listening to your holiday packing chat, and I wholeheartedly agree about bringing bench warming pants, though my own packing harks back to the days of fewer subs.

I have an additional comparison.

If I return with unused garments who were very much primed for an appearance on the trip, I feel compelled to ensure they do get a run out as soon as possible afterwards.

Perhaps like unused subs getting a a thorough cooldown on the pitch post-game or possibly having a run out in the under-21s mid-week.

I hope this gets the curly finger on the next pod.

This is bang on, Dave.

If you come back with some fresh clothes on holiday, they immediately get bumped to the front of the queue to wear straight away when you get back.

It is sort of slightest or something.

New signing, territory, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a bonus.

I actually literally had that this weekend.

I took one extra pair of socks that I needed.

Now they're just straight in the drawer, ready.

Ready to be unleashed this week.

I'm glad this has come back up, though, actually, because I was thinking after we spoke about it on the last episode.

What I often do is when packing is I'll go through in my head of like, right, I'm going to need this many t-shirts, this many pants, blah, blah, blah.

And I'll kind of get them all, get what I think I need and lay it out on the bed before putting it in the suitcase.

But when it comes down to putting it in the suitcase or the bag, sometimes I'll get to a stage where I'll think, hmm, bit tight on space now.

Actually, I think I've got enough.

And then one t-shirt that was slated to get on the plane doesn't make the cut.

And he has to stay on the bottom.

He's got a departure lounge.

Yeah.

Trashes your room and you leave it.

Yeah, sorry, Jermaine the foe.

We don't need you.

Charlie, some listeners are ghast at me coming back from my week-long holiday with seven clean pairs of pants that I didn't use.

I admit that that is excessive, but

it was an excessive preoccupation with the idea of me shitting myself, but it wasn't about that.

It was about refreshing myself midway through each day.

Don't worry about that aspect of it.

I haven't shit myself on holiday since at least 2001, definitely.

So I don't really know what the obsession was, but I don't want to be worried about it anymore.

I do think, though, as well, that as much as, yes, they are then top of the queue, but there is some, they're not, it's not like they're totally unused by going away and being unused subs.

You know, they get ruffled and crumpled and you know, they're not completely fresh.

They're still top, but it's not, it's not the same as them being left at home and having like complete time off.

Then they're fully recharged.

They don't have any sort of, I've been in a bag for a week sort of hangover vibe to them.

Still good around the suitcase, though.

Yeah, you want them around the place.

Right.

This is from an athletic piece on the PGMOL's ref training camp in Alicante.

And Andy Madley was speaking to the athletics Adam Leventhal.

And he says, referees have been experimenting with different techniques to help fans watching from a distance at big stadiums.

We're even looking at the technical aspects of is it worth giving a little wave of the hand each time we count down the seconds when the goalkeeper's got a ball in their hands.

I love this level of detail going into their thinking, Charlie.

So they're already wrestling with this whole kind of counting down the last five seconds of the eight.

that the goalkeeper has when they have their hands.

But now they're thinking about fans at the other end of the same who don't know what's going on.

They can't see the individual fingers this is class so that will be the pgo mol that will be easier to spot yeah than the seconds because if you're 50 yards away you won't be able to see the last three digits or whatever if they start waving their hand a bit but then the goalkeeper goalkeeper might not be able to see the individual digits when they're waving their hand it's fraught with danger yeah i don't know

tricky tricky this will they be doing it in the var booth as well what happened to the the idea of going down the clock face with the arm i know that was that was brilliant i i genuinely think I genuinely do think they've rejected it because it was too ridiculous because we laughed at it on the pod, the idea of them doing it.

And I think, but I mean, visually, it's great.

But

do you remember when Robin Van Percy got sent off at the new camp, second yellow, for shooting after the referee had blown his whistle?

And then he ran over to the referee pointing at his ear saying, I didn't hear it.

We're going to have goalkeepers running over to referees when they've been penalised for holding onto the ball too long because they couldn't see the waggling digits.

Couldn't see it.

You're just waving.

The fans don't need to really be considered here, do they?

The most important thing is the goalkeeper sees.

Yes.

And then the fans will work it out.

Yeah, I know.

They'll be able to see what's happened if the goalkeeper gets penalised with the ball on his hands.

Goalkeeper's running scared.

PGMO are running scared from angry fans who don't know what's going on in stadiums.

By the way, Charlie, can you imagine a greater concentration of smart-ish polo shirts than around 8pm or after a day at a referee training camp in Alicanta?

Yeah, I'm trying to picture the shorts as well.

I think it would be shorts, wouldn't it?

Yeah.

Beige.

Something.

Smart.

Those Chino shorts.

Chino shorts.

Yeah, absolutely.

No socks.

Sort of espadrilles, maybe?

Yeah, a few sandals, maybe.

Yeah, would it be sandals?

Smart white trainers, dress trainers, perhaps.

I think.

Just out for one or two beers, nothing more.

Howard said that they could be able to get some of the stuff.

He could go out as well.

I think.

Yeah.

Or some might have them out in that kind of...

It's tricky to imagine that level of detail, but you're bang on.

Right, a new Leonor Messi statistic has dropped.

This is from Reddit.

Leonore Messi has paid 37 group stages for club and country and reached the next round in each of the 37.

I don't know whether to be impressed by that or not.

It's not even really his doing, is it?

How does that sound?

I mean, it basically says he has played for very good teams in his career, which isn't a massive revelation, I have to say.

No, I mean,

which club in which season would have been the hardest task to get out of a group stage?

I can't even think.

Did Barcelona have a...

when they were

towards the end when they were struggling a little bit more when he had to leave i more would have thought the latter part of his career like now like now well i suppose the club world cup just gone yeah they got they got through didn't they yeah they got through and then went out well they must have otherwise this statistic would be uh invalid yeah i mean the reason it's relevant charlie is because um uh into miami have progressed to the knockout stages of the 2025 leagues cup um that is the uh cup competition between mls clubs and uh the top flight clubs from mexico and uh the the league phase is utterly absurd it's swiss style there's 18 teams in two divisions, and they play three games to get four teams through.

Oh, my God.

So basically, everyone's going through on goal difference.

It's fucking ridiculous.

Absolutely ridiculous.

Oh, so all the Mexican teams are in one league and then all the American teams are in another league?

Yeah.

And the top four from both 18 team groups go through after three games.

Look at it.

What is the point?

There has to be a better way of doing things than that.

Imagine the draw as well.

It does take a while.

The permutations must be mad.

It'd be minute by minute.

Good luck doing it.

Anyone doing the permutations for that?

A live blogging.

Anyway, fair play to Messi.

Yeah, that reminds me actually of something that happened

to me the other day.

So I was out for dinner last week and I was chatting to a boyfriend of one of the people we were out with.

Never met before.

So we're having some really nice, good old get-to-know-each other small talk.

And he was telling me that he's a big F1 fan these days.

Used to like football.

Used to go to West Ham in like the 80s, but just genuinely, completely disengaged from football at some point.

And he seemed like he really really used to know really well knew everything about like the 80s and early 90s but just like nothing nothing about today which is quite a rare thing really you'd think you'd sort of retain some peripheral knowledge but he didn't have anything got on to talking about this and that and then at one stage he was telling me about some people that he that he knows who are like really rich and all lived in monaco and at one stage they played a football game like they obviously paid for access or whatever to some top players and they played this game and he was going yeah you know they played in the stadium in monaco it was it was amazing it was like you know and they they had the that guy there one one of the players,

you know,

I think he's Argentinian.

And I was trying to fill in the blanks and I was going, oh, who could it be?

I don't know, has it, I don't know, Dimaria or is it?

And he was like, no, you know, the guy, he's really good.

I was like, oh, Messi.

You know,

I didn't join the dots.

I was like, oh, what, the best player of all time, you mean?

Maybe if you got that wrong, he was like, obviously not Leonard Messi, you prick.

I think I'd know if it was Leonardo Messi.

I couldn't believe that he didn't know who Messi was.

How can you just sort of generally know that there's a really good Argentinian but not know it's Messi?

Being Argentinian is secondary to being Leonard Messi.

That's mad, the Argentine.

The little guy.

Yeah, the notable Argentine.

Wow.

Fair play.

Right, here's a combined stat for you, Charlie.

Bridget Phillipson, MP, says, as a result of our attendance push, children were in school for five million more days last year, the biggest improvement in a decade.

What are we supposed to do with that?

Yeah, that is mad, but at least that's something you do see quite often, because they like to do these sort of totals in politics where they'll give these like big headline figures.

It's like those reports that say doing X would save Y billion pounds from the UK economy, a total of.

I couldn't back any of it up, Dave, but some of the replies said, maybe there's just more children.

So how can you possibly save?

Anyway, I just love how they frame this sort of stuff.

Let's finish with this.

You may have seen this.

This was a recent gem from Nozza, who's taking a break from Keys and Grey archiving to demonstrate Cricket's vast array of striking verbs.

Flashed away, thumped away, slashed away, blicked away,

smeared away, cracked away, hammered away,

bludgeoned away,

squeezed away, punched away, squised away,

whipped away,

angled away,

slapped away,

smashed away, Crunched away.

Swatted away.

Oh, tickled away.

I love smeared away, Dave.

But what a rich sort of family of verbs that is.

And they're all really sort of subtle.

There's not an obvious difference between any of them.

It's really nice and sort of further evidence that cricket is the sort of best and closest companion to the sort of stuff that we like to talk about.

I think even if you don't really know your cricket that much, I think you can listen to that list of words and roughly imagine what each shot would look like.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I'm as not a big cricketman, Charlie.

I'm both jealous and threatened by how rich corners of the cricket lexicon are.

So this leads me to Wickham versus Stockport at the weekend.

Wickham pulled a goal back and they tweeted, goal.

Mullins draws one back after chiseling the ball past Adai,

having been teed up by Lowry.

Chiseled in.

Dave, we've watched the goal.

Does chiseling do it justice?

So to describe the goal, if you haven't seen it, it's kind of like a little reverse pass from Lowry.

I think it sort of sits up just a little bit.

And Mullins, the scorer, he kind of slips

a firm shot under the keeper from about 10 yards out.

And yeah,

he's kind of on the way down as he hits it.

He's sort of, as if you have, you know, when you see like a player slip for a penalty, it's that same sort of movement, but it's in open play.

And it's a scruffy goal, Charlie, but the slipping almost helps the finish.

Like, it almost characterises the finish the slip turns it into a kind of lacy style almost like a like a scissor kick almost on the ground it's weird so yeah I can see what they're trying to get at because it's like I was thinking before having seen that what I would describe and it's a sort of he prods it but you want to convey the fact that it does look like a lot of effort has sort of gone into the goal like he's falling he's sort of on the floor he's having to kind of lever his leg it looks a little bit so effort is central to this it's it's been forced home essentially exactly yeah he's really it's not like a sort of, he's just kind of caressed it.

He's really had to will this goal in and sort of battle for it.

So I can see what they're going for with chiseling

to convey that.

In the context of the goal being scored, Dave, it's quite good because Lowry, who set this goal up, missed a penalty just before that to get them back in the game.

And so they're chasing the game.

They are truly chasing this.

And that little reverse pass from the pocket into the box is essentially the epitome of carving out a chance.

He's carved out a chance, and then Mullins has chiseled it at home.

They've been chipping away at it, haven't they?

Yeah.

Yeah.

But does it not, does chiseling, does it not bring to mind that word chipping?

Like that, when I heard, when I saw this before I'd seen the goal, I thought it might be a sort of downward stabby movement that

would dink it over, would be some sort of chip rather than the low shot that we actually get here.

Just,

I'd love to know the thought process behind chiseling.

Wonderful stuff.

Enjoyed that.

Anyway, speaking of dangerous tools, it's time for keys and grey corner.

Right, they weren't on community.

They weren't on community shield duty for being sports this weekend, Charlie.

Another blow to the prestige of the traditional season curtain raiser, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, definitely.

Who was?

Classic Pikes Crosby and the other guy, whose name I can't remember.

Aaron Summers.

That's right.

So, yeah, very much the B-team, but still very capable indeed.

But I don't know.

I'm starting to think that Keysy has to be back in the UK for a certain number of days a year for tax reasons or something.

Like, I can't come back yet.

Not yet.

Moving on.

On Reddit, Charlie 0108, Dave, was at the Coventry Building Society Arena and spotted in the

Wall of Legends.

I don't know what it is.

Richard Keys has his own brick in the wall.

I don't think it's the Wall of Legends, is it?

Surely that's where you pay to get your name on the wall.

It's not a Hall of Fame.

No, it's got a name.

Hold on, hold on.

Yeah, so this is the Wall of Fame at

what used to be called the Rico Arena.

And they installed this in about 2003, I think, when the stadium was being built or close to being built.

And Keysy got in there.

It was £39.99 to have a brick in the wall, Dave.

You could pay £5 more for a gold engraving, engraving, and he didn't go for it.

Understated humility from Richard.

He just went for the standard option.

The three bricks above him do, and the one below him does, but he decided not to, and that's fine.

And hence, he actually stands out more than if he'd gone for gold.

Sticking outside the box, Charlie.

I suspect the people above me and below me will go for gold.

So I'll stay pure black.

No extra information.

Again, just staying quite low-key, Charlie.

Speaks for itself.

Yeah, yeah.

In a roundabout way, actually, more egotistic, would you say?

Well, also, everyone else seems to be with someone.

He's just got, he's flying solo.

It's like you can't pay for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, can you?

Or maybe you can, I don't know.

But it's not a Wall of Fame, is it?

They shouldn't call it the Wall of Fame.

You can't pay 40 quid to get on the Wall of Fame.

That's not famous.

It's like paying for a Twitter tick, isn't it?

Exactly.

You should be able to get more characters on a brick if you pay for it.

Oh, Keesy.

Yeah, a lovely low-key touch from Mr.

Richard Keys.

Hope to see you back on our be-in screens.

Very sure, if you've got no VPN, that is.

Thanks for listening, everybody.

Thanks to you, Charlie Eccleshare.

Thank you.

Thanks to you, David Walker.

Thank you.

We'll be back on Thursday.

See you then.

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