Talispersons, textbook Turkish Super Lig & time limits for the commentator's curse

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Should clubs be calling their new strikers free scoring?

The misgendering of talisman continues.

What's the statute of limitations for a commentator's curse?

An Irish commentator bites off more than he can chew in the Conference League qualifiers.

Besiktas do the most besiktas thing possible after being snubbed by Kyle Walker-Peters.

Two-cap England internationals in Austro-Bavarian Christmas horror films.

How many times can one player blossom?

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This is Football Clichés.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Football Clichés.

I'm Adam Hurry.

This is the Adjudication Panel.

Joining me, Charlie Eccleshare.

How are you doing?

Very well, thank you.

Alongside you is David Walker.

How are things?

Things are good.

Things are good.

Watford continuing to go about their business quietly.

Not so quietly with this one, though.

Their announcement of the signing of Luca Kierumgaard.

The first par of their press release says Watford FC are thrilled to announce the signing of free scoring Danish striker Luca Kieramgaard.

This ongoing editorialising of signings, how do you feel about this player being described as free scoring?

Well, free scoring in the Danish second division.

Yes.

We should say.

And there was a video that was sort of doing the rounds amongst Watford fans of his free scoring exploits, which admittedly, he does look good.

He's like quite big and got a great left foot and just hammering them in from all angles.

But it was somewhat undermined by the fact that halfway through this compilation, he got the ball out wide and the camera sort of panned to follow him when he was out wide.

Looming into shot just behind the goal was a bouncy castle,

which I don't think is ever a good sign, really.

Left that out in the press release, did they, Charlie?

Nothing says tenport like a bouncy castle hoving into view.

I don't don't know how strongly I feel about this, Charlie, because free scoring, to describe your new signing, feels a little bit of a risk.

But then they go on to say that he's going to add firepower to Paolo Petolano's squad.

So, I mean, there's not a huge amount of difference between those two sentiments, is there?

Going straight, I don't know.

You're sort of branding him, though, with something, with the free scoring.

It's just not their job to do it.

And I do think Tibby is like a free scoring midfielder.

Can he be classed as that?

Not sure.

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Time for the adjudication panel then.

Let's start with a Euro 2025, Dave, that is officially bursting into life.

Could it have burst into life any more over the last four or five nights?

Oh, yeah, it's been great.

I mean, there was that epic England-Sweden game from last week, which just

had everything and was the most absurd penalty shootout that I think anyone's ever seen.

But then there was also another

ding-dong encounter between Germany and France over the weekend, which also went to penalties.

Better penalties this time, and also included a goalkeeper taking a penalty and scoring a penalty rather than putting it over the bar this time.

So, yeah, it has been really good.

But let's get into the finer details of it, though.

This came from John Thatcher.

Here is Steph Horton on the BBC talking about Wales's showing at Euro 2025.

I think as a player, when you experience them tournaments, you want to do it again and again.

And Jess Fishlock was obviously that talis person for Wales in this tournament.

She scored their first.

This is where Talisman's been going, Charlie.

Yeah,

I know this is a favourite hobby horse of yours, big talisman, man.

Yeah, it has been coming.

Making, I mean, we've heard talisman before, Dave, which feels like a perfectly natural evolution for it, but a talisman really

takes the substance out of being a talisman, I think.

It really takes any of the mystique.

It just feels like a job, like Ombudsman.

Have you got a talis person on duty today?

Because I really need this sort of.

With a high-viz waistcoat on.

Yeah, yeah.

I find this quite interesting, actually.

The points where the sort of gendered terms overlap and bash up against each other in women's football in particular.

Because with the language of football, we're all so used to the male being the dominant expression.

and there are various points where

it feels to me like it's kind of left up to the commentators or the pundits to decide for themselves whether they go person, whether they go talisman, talism,

or possibly could even still say talisman and sort of get away with it.

Elsewhere in women's football, a tremendous tournament acronym, by the way, this Charlie, WAFCON.

I can't get enough of saying it or thinking about it.

Their official account tweeted out some highlights of Morocco beating Mali the other day, and it said that hostesses Morocco march onto the semis hostesses not heard that before I mean host if host feels like one of those things though that can just be

I would think host is intensely gender neutral to me it's the same as saying actor for a man or a woman it is but

there's been a movement towards that yeah exactly you know really pushing for that yeah but to bring it to more into our universe here Dave what I would say is that this this you know potential confusion could be avoided by accepting the fact that the hosts are not the players it's it's the country as a whole surely yeah the concept of morocco have marched into the semi-finals not the individual players or the squad that it's they're simply it's not their job to host is what i'm saying they're the home nation yeah you're right they're not the they aren't the hosts really and countries generally are use the feminine for countries that's true so we've been doing it wrong all this time yeah i think it is a classy touch that we still use the feminine for countries and boats and that sort of stuff just um yeah good right this next one came from Lena Cox, who was listening to England's quarterfinal versus Sweden on Five Live,

and um, Karen Bardsley on Co-Comps.

Everything, all those little fine margins seem to go your way.

Yeah, I know things are just falling nicely for England now, aren't they?

But I think those substitutions were key.

Would I have liked to have seen them sooner?

Yes, definitely.

I think

Esme Morgan's definitely added an element of stability to that back line.

They've given the ball away.

They will care if this goes in it.

Shinogi, really good save Hampton.

Beats it away at a near post, but she never should have been called into action there.

England has to stay focused.

And again, it must be the commentator's curse.

This is the moment I compliment Esme Morgan.

It's a slightly loose pass, and

Hannah Hampton comes to the rescue.

She defends that near post really, really well.

Now, Charlie, that feels like a textbook commentator's curse.

Pretty slam-dunk situation.

But Lena says the co-commentator complimented Esme Morgan and then two minutes later blamed the commentator's curse for Esme Morgan making a minor slip up at the back.

This feels wrong to me.

So we got into a brief debate about what the kind of statute of limitations should be on a commentator's curse.

It's exactly two minutes.

Two minutes and two seconds.

I can understand though, as a commentator, you would feel that even with that sort of time elapsing, that there was still an element of cursing.

Or you might partly just for the purposes of like acknowledging it.

And and so you wouldn't want it to seem to others that you've just like forgotten it or written that bit out of history i mean it's only two minutes you know so i think you you might just want to front up and own that a little bit yeah i suppose two minutes seems like an acceptable window day for a callback situation but um but lena says surely any possible curse would have expired by then what is the maximum time you could have how long would you go even two minutes i think is pushing it i think it does depend a bit on whether maybe you've been bigging up a player or you know various points through the game or there's some sort of narrative around that player player, and you're talking up performance, and then it goes the other way.

So maybe that's then something to remark upon.

But I think if it's just a casual bit of co-commentary, and then a few minutes later, something bad happens, I don't think that counts as the curse.

I don't think one thing hasn't led directly to another in the way that the commentator's curse is normally talked about.

In this game, in fact, on the TV coverage on BBC, Robin Cowan suffered a classic case of the commentator's curse when she was going through the England and Serena Wiegman's record against Sweden and how good it was.

And then as she got to the end of her sentence with those stats, Sweden won the ball the edge of England's box and scored about 90 seconds in.

And it's such fertile ground for a commentator's curse in the early stages when you're sort of setting the scene.

Something can happen when you're not expecting it to.

Can you commentator's curse a whole team, Charlie?

That seems excessive.

That seems heavy-handed to me, but the principle should surely still apply.

Yeah, I think you can.

I mean, that was the Steve McLaren thing, wasn't it?

That was a whole team

situation, you know, that England weren't under any threat whatsoever.

But just, yeah, I guess that there are other ways besides commentators' curse.

You know, you could, if it is two minutes or more, you could do a sort of like, well, I was, you know, I was just saying how, you know, that this was going to strengthen them, and it's gone the other way.

So, yeah, you don't necessarily, I guess, have to use that term.

But it's such an established phenomenon.

I feel like we need guidelines for this sort of thing.

Robin Cohen might be the person to do that for us.

But

her mind appears to be elsewhere because on commentary on BBC One, we went into extra time against Sweden.

Tense moments, but the clichés pod still very much in her mind.

The Bronze family.

Sure, she's got that on the iPlayer

for the VPN.

You can't talk about VPNs live on the BBC.

At least she refrained for her sake from actually saying Nord VPN.

She's then, of course, she would then have had to have followed that up with other VPNs are available.

If she'd mentioned a brand of VPN, I think that would have been an online express article, definitely bemoaning

in hot water.

Yeah, that would have been a big issue.

Yeah.

Okay, let's move on.

This came from Eddie Curley.

This is Aidan Keener scoring a penalty for St.

Patrick's Athletic in their UEFA Conference League first qualifying round, first leg against Lithuanian outfit Hegelman.

Eddie says, I see what the commentator was trying to do here, but I think he took on too much.

David Macmillan, Adam Murphy, Joe O'Brien, Carol O'Planner, Ricky O'Flardy, Steve LaFlynn, Jing Joe Roark, Joe Redman, John Russell, and Eddie Ryan as a player who has scored once in Europe for St.

Patrick.

Now,

Dave, I'm a big fan of the in-good company concept, but that, according to my

tossing up ability, was 27 names.

Just pick a couple and say the likes of.

Don't go for it.

Among others.

But once you've started, I suppose he had to go through.

But the way that he had, he obviously, it wasn't like a cul-de-sac.

He obviously knew he was going to do it because he was doing it really quickly from the first name.

So it was obviously a planned thing.

But yeah, I'm not sure it quite worked.

What's the upper limit for being in fine company, Charlie, in terms of listing the players that they're joining?

To actually list them all.

I mean, once you're getting to double figures, I think you're already and you've gone on for too long.

Yeah, this was.

You want it to be three or something, ideally.

Yeah, this was really the likes of situation.

You're right, Dave.

And I don't know.

It just seemed to go on and on and on.

Right, transfer silly season starting to ramp up, but fantastic news for certain potential suitors coming out of La Liga.

William Carvalho, Dave, has left Real Bettis at the end of his contract.

He is a free agent.

33.

Is it his time?

Can he finally do it?

Can we have William Carvalho in the Premier League?

Oh, West Ham still, still in for him.

As you were talking there, my brain was going, but

has he played in the Premier League?

Have we seen him?

Yeah, I couldn't rule it out definitively until you said that.

He's had a lot fewer clubs than you'd expect, Charlie.

Go to his Wikipedia page, expecting to see arrows everywhere, at least five different leagues.

He's only had a few clubs.

Mad.

Well, yeah, I guess that's sort of in keeping, though, with him being the sort of nearly transfer guy.

You know, it was so close for so long.

I mean, sporting as well.

I mean, as Victor Gyokarez is finding out now, it's not an easy club to leave, is it?

It's like Hotel California of

European football clubs.

So, you know, he was there for seven years, 2011 to 2018.

I'm sure from what, about 2014, he was probably linked pretty strongly, maybe even earlier.

I mean, Dave, it's well established that I know ball, but I imagine for the rest of William Cavalier's life, he's going to end up in conversations with random people who seem to think he's a journeyman.

He's like, no, I play for like three clubs.

Leave me alone.

You're a bit of a journey person, weren't you?

Moving on.

Is there a more sort of gently beleaguered transfer development than this, Charlie?

Kyle Walker-Peters being on the verge of an agreement with Besiktas, then turning them down and joining West Ham instead.

Yeah, I know.

It's like deciding between two high street chain restaurants for your lunch.

You don't want either of them, really.

I know, I did, I saw this.

It was described as he'd snubbed a medical.

And I was thinking that, yeah, that must be the first, you know, you can't really snub a medical.

You get to that point.

You're biting too deep.

You know what?

Yeah.

What do you mean?

Stop doing all these tearing off these things.

I didn't agree to this.

What's that?

Oh, I'm cough.

Stop begging my knee with that hammer.

I think you would like hammers, if anything.

But Basiktas, to their credit, Dave, have moved quickly to deal with the situation because they are now linked with a loan deal with a buy option for Emerson Royale from AC Milan.

How perfect is this?

I had to go and check whether he played in Turkey.

He hasn't yet.

Can't believe it.

He was on one of our lists, surely.

Emerson Royale.

What list would it have been?

I think it.

He wasn't in the future Turkish 11, was he?

No.

I'm going to find out.

He must have been mentioned in dispatches.

We went through so many of those types of

the players who at Spurs at the time.

ListenfairPlay.com only says that he's...

We've only mentioned him once before, which

feels like an error.

to me.

We've must have mentioned his name at least once before.

More than once.

Oh, here we go.

Here we go, actually.

No,

I've added an E to Emerson Royale.

I've added an E to listenfairplay.com, and it's picked up a lot of mentions in the Premier League Unfinished Business 11.

Okay, so he'll be back.

He'll be back.

Probably at West Ham, actually.

Yeah, I was going to say, competing with Walker Peters.

The circle of life.

Right, footballers' names in Things Time.

A lovely pair of examples for you.

This first one came from Josh Barton.

This is 2000 Excursion by Travis Scott.

Feet Shek Wes.

I score goals like Pele, Zizo, Genola, and Galatasaray.

Now, let's take the first two examples there, Dave, because

that's free from the constraints of having to rhyme.

He's picked two players that he's really proud of there.

Pele, no problem, a famous goal scorer.

Then you're on to Zinedine Ziddan and David Jinalar.

And according to my maths, that's a goal, that's less than a goal every five games if you take them in aggregate.

Which, admittedly, from midfield, but hardly prolific.

Still, yeah, exactly.

Probably not your go-to men in this situation if you want to boast about your goal scoring prowess.

And then just up pops Galatasarai in totality, Charlie.

Free scoring last season, well over 100 goals.

When was this?

Is this a recent new album?

Yeah.

Okay, new album.

Yeah, yeah, those are some.

I mean,

a lot of people would fall for the same trap, though, about Zidane.

You know, like, oh, what

score a lot of God got so many assists, didn't he?

Numbers often weren't that great.

And never offside.

Could have put that in.

One in four at international level.

Maybe that's what he was going on.

Or maybe he's just completely preoccupied with his two goals in the 1998 World Cup final.

Yeah, that's what it'll be.

The thing with Galatasarai is you think, well, maybe has he chosen Galatasarai because it's got a few syllables and it maybe it fits neatly into the rhyme and into the flow of it all.

100%.

I would suspect so.

But he actually doesn't, he actually sort of has to shove it all in.

He says Galtasserite.

He doesn't say Galatasarite because he needs to get it into the rhyme.

So, yeah, I don't even think that really works in that respect either.

I'm all for Turkish Super Elite clubs being shoehorned in at all possible opportunities.

Next up, this came from El Luchador.

He says, here's a little girl girl in the 2015 horror Christmas movie Krampus, and she wishes for a reliable Fulham, Bolton, and two-cap England centre-back.

And for the first time,

I didn't wish for a miracle.

I wished for them to go away.

I wish I would come to regret.

And that night.

I think that's right at the core of the appeal of a blood legend thing.

A lovely assist from the German accent there as well.

I was going to say, it sounds like a really bad arse and Venga impression.

Zat Knight, just popping up out of nowhere.

Finally, for part one,

this is a tweet about Wolves' preseason exploits.

Details from Wolves' 1-1 draw against Burnley in a preseason training game with Jürgen Strand Larsen among the goals.

Willett asks, Dave, can you be among the goals in a 1-1 draw?

I mean, there are two goals, I suppose.

I think we've had this before in the 1-0, haven't we?

I think, which

definitely doesn't work, but this is still pushing it.

I mean, it raises the age-old debate, Charlie, about whether it means the goals in the game or whether it just means goals generally about a player being among the goals.

Now, which is it?

In this case, it's talking about the game, right?

Just the broader concept of the goals worldwide

that were scored in various different places on Saturday.

I think, given this is very much about the game, it's safe to assume it's meant to be about the game.

It's just so funny because it's such another case of these expressions are so ingrained.

And I think people are just so wary of using really basic language that they feel, oh, I've got to.

zhuzh it up a little bit and kind of end up in these traps.

Pre-season is absolutely ripe for this stuff as well.

Yeah,

yeah.

Everyone's a bit rusty.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, ingrainedness and rustiness aside, Dave, I'm disappointed that someone would get to the end of that sentence and not question it.

Come on, we've got to do better collectively among the goals.

Right, that's the end for part one.

We'll be back very shortly.

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Oh look at that!

That is wonderful!

Welcome back to Football Cliches.

This is the adjudication panel.

A reminder that you can join in the extra fun of Dreamland by going to dreamland.football clichés.com and for $5.99 a month, you'll get ad-free listening of all of our episodes and two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive new show.

Other benefits too, join the fun.

Next up, Thomas Frank has finally faced the media as new Tottenham boss, Charlie.

And according to Matt Law of The Telegraph, was quite nervous on his first showing.

Luke Tighthurst says this might be the first public outing of I Didn't Think Manager X spoke well of all the managers to to to have his speaking well doubted is Thomas Frank

overthought it yeah um not the first though I have pointed this out before but um David Moyes um in November 2017 I did a piece with Andy Lane sports psychologist breaking down why it was such an underwhelming first press conference it felt really flat and all the fans were really annoyed it was a really like in quite a moisy way quite like defeatist and realistic That was his first spell at West Ham.

Must have been, yeah.

Right, yeah.

Yeah, replacing Billich, I think it would have been, but it was very he was already beleaguered.

I think he came in and wasn't popular, but and just did his sort of thing of being very realistic and like, you know, I'm not going to work miracles, that's not what this is sort of thing.

It was like, ah, okay, maybe talk stuff a little bit.

He's definitely got that in his locker, Moisey.

I always remember back when I used to edit the post-match interviews on a Saturday at Talk Sport, the season that he was in charge of Sunderland.

After the first game, they lost the first game of the season.

And in his post-match interview, he said, We're in a relegation battle.

It's going to be a long season.

Come on.

Realism.

Good.

Keeping the fans' expectations measured.

When asked whether Son Hyung Min would remain Captain Charlie, Frank said, I haven't decided anything on that.

I have a long list of bullet points I need to get through, and I take them in the right order.

He's talking about his own entree as well.

Unprecedented scenes.

He is subverting the whole lot.

He's not speaking well.

He's mentioning his actual entry.

What's going on?

It's piling up, yeah.

Got to get the fans on the side first.

Got to get this place rocking.

You'd be talking about the size of the task on his hands next, Dave.

Someone should have followed up on that question.

What is the top of your list of bullet points, please, Thomas?

Are you going to get Dominic Solanke firing?

Right, elsewhere in preseason, the bar has been raised for classy touches.

Farnborough's kit man, Mike, tweeted, thanks to Southampton for bringing an 11 down to Farnborough, and thank you for another spotless changing room.

Pretty standard stuff.

But also on the whiteboard they left a message all the best for the season SFC.

Dave, that is class personified.

Yeah, really, really nice.

Just hope nobody hope there's like a not like a cleaner or a member of staff who rubs it off before the next game.

Well they gave them more work to do if anything.

Handwriting a complete mess as you'd imagine, Charlie.

Yeah, yeah, I imagine being like, yeah, we did say leave it as you found it and you haven't done that.

Turns out they'd use a permanent marker.

Classic situation.

It was unrubbable.

That would be fantastic.

But yeah, as always, the standard industry photo of a clean-changing room.

Next up, Freddie Clayton writes in.

This is from a Manchester Evening News article about Manchester United's squad options, Dave.

And it says, Ahmad, who regularly blossomed for United last term, is also equally capable as a right-sided number 10 or right-wing back.

Freddie says, can you regularly blossom?

I feel like you only blossom once.

Well,

go on.

Actually, I mean, I think I would have agreed with you previously, but I'm not much of a gardener, but we do have a plant in our garden.

It's called a passion flower.

And

it opens and closes.

So one day you'll go out and there'll be like loads of flowers.

And the next day they'll all shut.

And then in a few days later, they'll come back out again.

So they are blossoming regularly.

They're also unblossoming as well.

That's the same flower just opening up and closing.

Surely blossoming is new flowers blooming.

Blooming and blossoming is the same thing, right?

Yeah, I guess so.

Yeah.

Can't have the same flower just blossoming continuously.

I'm not having that.

It's not the same cycle.

Yeah.

I mean, I suppose it is an annual thing at most, Charlie.

So it could have irregularly.

I wonder if this is another one, though, of like maybe they've already used Sean or Impressed or something earlier.

And it's kind of...

Because I think that's kind of what he's saying, is it?

Irregularly Sean for United last term or irregularly impressed or something.

Yeah.

So, again, I wonder if it's just a sort of like, ah, can't use that.

Go with this.

No one will notice.

That's deeply concerning to me that the fact that just blossomed might be, you know, the go-to fourth or fifth choice for impressed or Sean.

You can't just have blossomed.

Who blossomed?

Player ratings.

Who blossomed and who blew it?

I think he is the sort of player that

we're not sure whether he has actually fully blossomed yet, though.

That's a good point.

Is he properly established?

he's obviously had a few big moments and some impressive performances but there's still question marks over whether he's going to be proper part of the setup going forward i guess so i think he blossomed last season yeah yeah but could you blossom i don't know you could blossom under a new manager maybe that's when it resets um so maybe if men united sack amarim and he has to impress somebody else he might get to re-blossom he could be repotted yeah taken from a pot putting into a bed fair play all right titchmarsh i think it wouldn't work for him this season because he already yeah i think he's too far along Next up, a potential game's gone, a shattering game's gone situation.

Ifab, Charlie, are reportedly considering scrapping rebounds from all penalties, including during the game.

This is being universally panned by all outlets as a step too far.

Ifab haven't declared this publicly anywhere as something they're considering.

This is obviously an off-the-record briefing.

But this is shambolic.

This is awful.

I mean, if you take it from a pure cliché's perspective, you're going to be denying people one of the great joys, both visual and audial, of football which is a rebounded penalty being scored do we and we don't know why they want to do this is it because penalties are too big an opportunity to score and they want to make that ever so slightly less apparently that's part of the reason you know a lot of penalties are essentially an excessive punishment so if you miss and you get another chance to score that's kind of that's too but that feels like an indirect thing to worry about there's other things like encroachment dave that they sort of think well you know encroachment won't be an issue if we say that if a penalty is saved that's it then encroachment doesn't have to be sort of judged but it's not that difficult to figure out encroachment.

So this is just nonsense.

Why do this?

Rubbish.

Why do this to our game?

It's absolutely fine.

It's not a problem.

No one's ever complained about this anywhere ever, have they?

I have to say, Charlie, it's never dawned on me when I see a penalty scored by a rebound to think, I don't think I should have got a second chance there, to be honest.

I mean, it's definitely annoying if you're the goalkeeper or

player's getting away with it.

And I do think penalties are often a disproportionate punishment.

Like, I think if you were inventing the game now, there's no way, you know, with all the data we have, that you get an 80% chance for like a little bare, you know, barely any contact on the corner of the box.

But I'm not sure this is the way to solve that.

That's an interesting point, actually, Dave.

If you were inventing football now and you came up with penalties as a concept for punishing sort of breaking of the laws inside the penalty area, I suspect if you invented it now, you probably would make it a discrete situation where if the penalty's taken and it's unsuccessful, play would stop and then restart.

I don't think you would just let it go out into open play now, would you?

I don't think you would accept rebounds if you invented football now.

So there is an element to it.

I don't know.

It feels like a penalty should be a self-contained situation.

And I think the mentality might be: they've missed, that's it.

The other team get the ball and you move on.

Like in a shootout, it's just that's all.

I mean, it's the other way would be to one side, like it was a shootout, yeah.

Or you tiered the penalty so that, you know, if it's a denial of a goal scoring opportunity or whatever, you get a penalty and you get rebounds, but you don't if it's a kind of piddling offence on the corner of the box.

Obviously, that would be incredibly difficult to enforce.

I'd go the other way, actually, and I would, rather than denying players the opportunity to score from rebounds, I would expand it so that you can score if it hits the post or bar.

Tell the old Sheringham.

What's the difference?

That's the only example.

I remember that being mind-blowing, like genuinely mind-blowing.

The only thing I remember about that, apart from it being, you know, narratively superb because he was coming back to Spurs with Manchester United, was that when it happened, there were two players who immediately ran to reference and go, Can't do that, even though he'd missed because he didn't score the rebound.

No, no, no, no, so you can't do that, you can't do that as if they cracked football.

It was sensational to us.

Well, I'm impressive that they knew that in a way.

I can imagine a lot of players wouldn't know that.

I quite like that whole thing.

It could be on my MHD list, actually.

So, examples of players who know very technical, obscure rules, and make that known during a game.

I've seen it before where players have like kneaded the ball back to the goalkeeper in a game, and the goalkeeper's picked it up.

And then you've got all these pass going, it's a back pass, Ref, it's a back pass.

And someone goes, No, actually, it's only the foot.

Any other part of the body, it's fine to pass the

issue to the goalkeeper.

What about a shin?

Well, I've never seen it done with a shin, but I've seen it done with a knee.

It's not allowed, yeah.

Otherwise, where does the knee end and the knee finish?

So, could be could be tricky.

Someone's gonna have to, it'll be a problem at some point.

Now, next up, the huge issue rears its ugly head again, Charlie, of the remuneration packages for fat cats in the city.

A story about Debbie Crosby, who's the chief executive of Nationwide, having a £7 million pay package.

And it was justified by a colleague from the industry as she's the Leonor Messi of British Building Societies, and she could play for any of the banks.

So this is how they keep her in a nationwide shirt.

What?

The Leonor Messi of British Building Societies.

I'd put that straight on my LinkedIn if I was Debbie Crosby.

Maybe she has.

Yeah.

The nationwide shirt as well.

I like that.

Debbie Crosby could be a former lioness who played in like the eighties for England when it was like Trailblazer, yeah, proper trailblazer who never got her credit and has been since been recognised by the FA for everything that she did.

Did manage a lioness's briefly in 1991.

But yeah, Debbie Crosby.

Very footballery name, actually.

Speaking of footballery names, let's continue our theme of summer, summer sports being shoehorned into a football context.

Kieran Grierson has challenged us to take the top golfers at the Open and turn them into footballers.

He says Harris English definitely played for Eddie Howells Bournemouth.

John Parry played under both of Chris Wilder's Premier League spells at Sheffield United.

And both Hoygard brothers were signed by Thomas Frank in a double swoop for Brentford.

Yes.

God's sake.

We can't just Brentford all the Scandinavians every single time, can we?

Well, I mean, you can.

Yeah, we can, and we will.

We will.

I was thinking this while I was watching the golf over the weekend.

Because there's so many Americans that they don't all work.

It is a bit tricky, but there are.

Cycling was surprisingly good for this.

Yeah, yeah.

I thought it was a big deal.

I think it was a big, a lot of European crossover.

Yeah.

Golf could be trickier, though.

Let's start with the winner, Scotty Scheffler, Charlie.

I mean, that's not a football-y name.

It's not going to work.

Scotty Scheffler.

Yeah, I'm not sure he'd ever leave MLS.

I don't think he'd become a sort of big enough name to do that.

Well, do you not think he'd just make it Scott Scheffler?

That's a bit 90s Premier League.

Yeah.

Scott Scheffler.

I mean, the Scott Sellers is what I'm thinking.

Yeah, I was going to say,

I mean, where's Scott Scheffler coming from?

That seems like a bit of a.

Scott Scheffler could have played for the USA at World Cup 94.

Scott Scheffler.

And then on the back of that, got a move to Coventry.

Coventry.

Yeah.

To just keep

Kobe Jones company.

Yeah.

Scott Scheffler, like, played, nope, didn't play a single game, but

helped Kobe Jones settle in.

Harris English, Dave.

I mean,

I think that, I think the Bournemouth example is good, or Southampton, maybe.

Yeah, oh, yeah, Southampton youngster didn't really get the grade.

Yeah, I quite like that.

Yeah, Southampton.

Very Southampton-y.

Chris Gotterup,

VAR official at the World Cup, one of the lesser regarded ones.

Wyndham Clark.

I think some of these, you've got to turn them into double-barreled surnames.

Right.

So Josh Wyndham Clark.

Josh Wyndham Clark.

Yeah.

Nathan windham clark could play for you take your pick matt fitzpatrick is an up-and-coming sporting director doing great things down in league one with his recruitment

and he's being eyed by uh by ipswitch matt fitzpatrick lee how tongue absolute late 90s premier league chinese sign yeah no question xander choffele dave now we're talking it's belgian again isn't it it's it

we had one before xander xander couldn't be can be a scottish thing can't it but this is spelled with an x rather than a z Well, it's just an Alexander.

I assume it's an Alexander.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It doesn't, it's hard to place, though.

Some of the, like I said, these golf ones, they don't fit quite neatly into the football world.

Golfers just have really golfy names.

Bryson de Chambeau, Charlie, again, is not a football name.

It's not a fool.

I mean, because you can try and say, is that a French or a Belgian?

I can't really see it.

Canadian, maybe.

I don't know.

Anyway, speaking of things that don't really belong in football, it's time for Keys and Grey Corner.

Just one screenshot I took of Richard Keyes' social media weekend.

Tweet one, Dave, a meme based on the cold play affair situation with him being cuddled by what seems to be Andy Gray.

Second tweet: Manchester United's transfer business being reduced to in Brian and Burbo 71 million, out Marcus Rashford 40 million, shrug emoji.

And then finally, if Arsenal don't get this Gyokarez deal done, they'll regret it forever.

He's top class.

He'd be the difference between finishing second again or winning it.

Isn't that worth an extra 10 million?

What are they doing?

Incredibly efficient.

Having a laugh at himself, Charlie, and then slating two of England's English football big guts.

A couple of things.

This might be, what's that Rashford 40 million thing a reference to?

Isn't it he's going out on loan to Barcelona?

Is that like his valid loyalty?

That's the buy option, apparently.

And it's something around that.

So is he, why is he including that?

And what's his, his point is that United are getting done here.

Exactly.

It's so vague.

It could be read anyway.

You can project whatever you want onto that.

Is it anti-united?

Is it actually saying that, you know, all things considered, pound for pound, I think this is actually a good deal for Man United.

Yeah, it's easy trying to say it's actually more like 30 million when you think that Rashford's going.

You know, that argument people make.

Yeah, yeah, net spend.

Maybe he's backing them for once, but history would suggest that he's slating the Jim Reaper for the Gyokaresh thing's more money.

I mean, it might just be he wants to have a dig Arsenal, but I'm so curious.

Like, normally with Keezy, there is a reason for this sort of take.

This vested.

Like,

that would be followed by a, we had former Sweden international ex with us in Doha, and he was raving about Gyokoresh.

Like, there must, what's his reason for having this strong view on Gyokoresh?

Because he used by the Coventry, of course.

He did, yes, that could be it.

Yeah, maybe it's the Kovlink.

I realise he hasn't gone straight from Coventry to Arsenal, Dave, but do you think Keese is above a sort of look after him arteta?

Great to see our boy.

On stage.

You'll love him.

You will love him.

Yeah, good to see Keesy getting back into the swing of things.

Look to see more of him over the summer.

Thanks to you, Charlie Eccleshare.

Thank you.

Thanks to you, Dave Walker.

Thank you.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

The Clichés Pod will be back on Thursday.

See you then.

This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

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