Serbian statements, Ange's unfinished business & Cape Verde: the World Cup Blackpool

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I'm sorry, you can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like.

Is Gas going on out of crack?

He is, you know.

Oh, I think

brilliant!

But jeez!

He's round the goal, Keeper!

He's done it!

Absolutely incredible!

He launched himself six feet into the crowd and kung fu kicked a support who was

without a shadow of a doubt getting him lip.

Oh, I say,

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!

The tone-lowering advertising hoardings of England away.

Cape Verde have one foot on the planes of the World Cup.

Ange Poster Koglu's unfinished business rating.

Commentators' names in Suffolk Castle's family fun days.

Esther Vow ticks almost all of the boxes for the acclibutising to life in England interview.

Promising Saipan reviews, Donald Trump at the training ground, and the Scottish Eva Carnero writes in with some inside info.

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 Midweek Adjudication Panel to which I am delighted to welcome back from New York Charlie Eccleshare.

How you doing?

Very well, thank you.

Good to be home.

Yeah, speaking of tennis, are we at a stage of elite tennis where 128 men just knock the ball around for a bit and then Carlos Arkaraz and Yannick Sinna just play the final at the end of it?

On the men's side, yeah, pretty much.

I mean, there are 127 matches at a grand slam in each draw.

And on the men's side, yeah, the first 126 feel a bit like foreplay.

Fantastic.

Less flippantly, are you slightly worried about having sort of running out of things to write about them?

Are you genuinely running out of superlatives for these two?

I've run out of superlatives for these two.

I think we'll be all right for a little bit, but a third man would be welcome.

Speaking of third men, alongside you, fresh from watching Thomas Tuchel's England era take off.

It's David Walker.

It's taken off, right?

We've got liftoff.

Liftoff and takeoff.

Big time.

Yeah, yeah.

That was a statement performance, I think, from England.

Liftoff is better than takeoff, isn't it, Charlie?

Because liftoff is purely vertical.

Takeoff has an element of horizontal about it.

More gradual.

Yeah, the liftoff is more of a, as we've discussed, a mid-tournament thing.

I mean, I guess you can have both.

We're counting down.

25 days to go until Cliché's Live 2025 kicks off in earnest in Brighton on October the 6th.

A Monday night, Dave, is that a challenge for us?

Plenty of pubs around, though.

Yeah, we're spoiled for choice where we are.

So the venue is Comedia, which is in the North Lane area of Brighton.

And there are pubs pretty much everywhere you look around there.

I think there's two on the road that we're on.

So we'll have, if anything, there might be too many.

Yeah.

Brightonians, Brightonites, keen to get your post-show pub suggestions so we can watch the last 15 minutes of Harrogate versus Crew Alexandra in League Two on somebody's big screen.

What a bonus that will be.

Go to tickets.football clichés.com.

Join us in Brighton, Cardiff, Hackney Empire in London, Birmingham, Dublin, and Manchester.

Leeds and Glasgow are sold out.

I went down to the Hackney Empire on Tuesday and wow, what a venue that is.

Really hit home, did it?

Did it sink in?

It really did, yeah.

I mean, there is a real grandeur to that place.

I mean, we did the Union Chapel before, which was, you know, a unique venue.

It's still an operating church, but

is this is a level up for sure i'm so excited i'm not nervous about this tour at all for some reason charlie but um but let's not dwell on it we've got that business to take care of serbia nil england five charlie davis hinted at this already but was this a statement win was this a textbook statement win i think it's right on the cusp i think it's at the lower limit of i don't think serbia are quite good enough okay i think i think you need them to be a bit more of a recognizable sort of even even if the current team isn't that great just the name needs to be a bit bigger in footballing terms than Serbia for me for this to be a statement win.

I know what you mean.

I think the fact that it was away in Belgrade just helps it a bit, you know, rather than it being at Wembley.

It didn't feel that intimidating over the TV.

I have to say, is that on the way in the list?

Because we quietened them.

On paper.

And they also had a partial stadium ban as well, which didn't help them.

But if you compare it to another famous statement win, which was Capello's England beating Croatia 5-1, with Walcott getting a hat-trick in qualifying.

I think, Charlie, you're right.

Like, Croatia, they are just that one level established.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, fair enough.

Yeah, it did look very England-Croatia, actually.

Like, Pickford was in yellow.

The other team were in blue.

It was a real throwback.

Similarly, you may remember

when Paul Robinson got beat by the bobble from Gary Neville's back pass that night.

The advertising hoarding behind him was for Borat, the film.

Things haven't improved, Charlie.

Constantly distracting me from the action was Anisol, the UK's number one piles treatment, which was superimposed

onto the advertising hoardings.

I don't think I'll ever tire of geo-specific, tone-lowering, England-away advertising hoardings.

Like, for some reason, they really do sort of take away the sort of glamour of it all a little bit, but in a fun way.

Yeah, I mean, that would be a great long read for you, Adam.

Would consume that.

I'll write anything at the moment.

Right, no, I wouldn't.

Right.

Miguel Delaney was in attendance for The Independent, Dave.

And he said that Noni Medweke's goal feels like Tuchel's launch moment as much as the players himself.

It was a brilliant move, but I'm calling it a lift rather than a dink.

A dink surely has to drop falling leaf style into the net.

Now, this is a really interesting,

I'm always up for this debate about various forms of hitting a football, but it's an interesting angle to place the emphasis on where the ball ends up rather than the act of hitting it in the first place.

Yeah, I think they're all important.

Trajectory and technique need to be spot on in both cases.

Because I think, you know, for a dink, it's like

your foot is sort of the stabbing downwards movement to pop the ball up, and which then results in that sort of shorter trajectory where the ball comes up and down.

Whereas the lift, it's more of just, you know, you're just kind of, it's almost

like you're going to get through it.

Yeah.

Yeah, the dink, you want that sort of parabola thing, which I don't think this has.

You want the up and then the down.

This.

But if the goal hadn't got in the way, it would have had a parabola.

So what difference does it make?

It's pretty arbitrary, surely.

No, it doesn't.

This just sort of goes up.

Like, yes, eventually, but you don't see it.

All you see...

It's actually, it looks like quite a conventional finish in many ways.

He just sort of gets good height on it.

So

I don't think it is a dink.

It could have been subtler, Dave.

If he'd connected with it more subtly and it had...

genuinely dinked over the goalkeeper, there's room for dinkage.

So there is wriggle room here in terms of technique.

Yeah, he was set up for a dink if he wanted to go down that route, but he didn't.

But I tell you what, the finish was.

You know, we were talking on the listeners' MHD recently about hitting a ball into an empty net when you're practicing before a game of 11 aside or five aside, and you end up doing that sort of really disappointing, half-hearted shot down the middle of the goal.

Yeah, that's what it was.

But in a real match, like it was slightly unorthodox, very strange to see.

Yeah, it's because he's running, he gets so close to the goal and the goalkeeper.

It is quite power league-y.

Yeah, he's really, really, he's really close in, and then it's just like, oh, I've you know, I've got I realize I've got a lot to aim at here.

It's a really good finish, yeah.

I guess because you just don't really ever see sort of players just running really quickly at the center of the goal very often.

They're usually running an angle, he just ran straight at the heart of the goal.

So, just

an unfamiliar situation for everyone watching.

Definition passed 2627, Dave on Reddit, said he was confronted with the phrase on the coverage, Do you know who he reminds me of?

And he says, Whenever a pundit asks this question, the answer is almost always Gazza.

um roy keen just did it for morgan rogers on the post match gazza is always this isn't it you know who he reminds me of poor gascoign yeah any player and i suppose they have to be you know a midfielder really but any sort of player who plays for england and dribbles just does a dribble at any point will at some point be compared to gazza but then there's also the off field characteristics which can get you compared to Gazza as well.

Okay.

So there's a lot of opportunity to be compared to Paul Gascoyne.

That's weird though, because the paradox here, Charlie, is I imagine there's probably quite a lot of desire to compare players to Gascoigne because he was such a romantic figure at the start of his career, full of promise.

But

he was a really unique sort of figure in terms of the way he moved.

He's not really easy comparable to any other player.

And sort of played in a position...

I mean, I guess now it would be the equivalent of one of the eights in a midfield three would be sort of Gaza's best position, wouldn't it?

I mean, that would be like the closest comparison to a modern day.

But yeah,

he was really hard hard to pin down.

I'm trying to think if there are any other players you'd get.

It reminds me of.

Would you do it with Rooney or is he, again, a bit too unique to be compared with?

He may have done.

It'd be an interesting exercise to go back through the last

20, 30 years of cooking

and see who has

gazetted.

It's like the new messy sort of thing.

There'll be a lot of players in the world.

Greenish must, because he ticked both

boxes you're talking about, Dave.

He must have.

Yeah.

I think Ross Barkley had it.

Yeah, I'm sure.

Yeah, you've got to have an element of silk about you, but you've also got to be quite bulky.

Like, you've got to be a bit of a battering ram at the same time.

Like, Gascoigne was a dribbler, but he was also quite destructive as well.

So, yeah, you've got to, yeah, so there's a lot of going on.

Chris Judge writes in Charlie and he says, Spurs recently announced on their website that Jed Spence became the 80th Spur to play for England when he appeared against Serbia.

Referring to him as a Spur instead of a Spurs player feels about as jarring as calling a Wolves player a wolf.

Spurs is a singular noun representing representing the club as a whole, whereas the San Antonio Spurs of the NBA are the Spurs and often refer to their players as a Spur.

I'm not sure if there's some American influence at N17, but I believe this is a subtle distinction worth preserving.

How do you feel about this?

Yeah, I mean, I wonder if, because some clubs do do this, they will talk about themselves and players in quite a weird way, and sometimes it's like a historical thing that's just been evolved out of everyday use, but they're sticking with.

So I don't know if this is that and whether, you know, back in the day, players were called a Spur, or as Chris Judge suggests, it's the other extreme, and it's kind of a very modern Americanization of the language.

It is definitely a big American thing.

You hear it all the time in NFL, you know, a jet, a ram, a giant, whatever.

Yeah.

But also, so you can see why it sort of crept in, but it's also just a bit unfortunate that Spurs don't have a nickname that's kind of it because if you know, you could say, you know, Ashley Young was the first Hornet to play for England or whatever.

Well, there's Lily White, they could do that.

Which also doesn't sound great, but it's also weird.

I mean, you wouldn't have like the first Red Devil playing for England.

Well, they might shoot it, some don't

reasons alone, I think.

But yeah, I mean, do wolves actually say talk about a wolf?

I don't think they're awesome.

Because again,

I wouldn't put it past a club to do that.

Weirdly, yes, Spur to me is just about more acceptable than wolf.

But, I mean, technically, there's no reason why you can't singularise any of these things, really.

But let's move on.

I want to get a bit sweeper podcast now because it it's come to my attention rather belatedly that Cape Verd are definitely going to qualify for the World Cup, Dave.

They are well in command of their African World Cup qualifying group, four points ahead of Cameroon with two games to play.

And, you know, I know it's an expanded World Cup in North America next year, so that takes some of the shine off this.

But love a new country coming to the World Cup.

I think them and the Uzbeks are very Panama 2018 in this situation.

And it makes me think, are they the World Cup equivalent of Blackpool, Barnsley, Huddersfield in the Premier League?

It's that same frissant of unfamiliarity and welcome to the party.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You want them to get there and have something about them impressed, but you also don't want them to hang about too long.

The reggae boys from 98.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, exactly.

You make that point.

I was looking actually at some of the qualifiers earlier, and Steve McLaren's Jamaica are in pole position to qualify for this World Cup.

And you just, it's just going to happen, isn't it?

We're going to get drawn against Jamaica, managed by Steve McCarran in the group stages.

It's meant to have too many long reads going into that.

Charlie, if England plays Steve McLaren's Jamaica at World Cup 2026, do you think that is the most philosophical a manager will ever be?

Like, that's basically Steve Bruce times Mick McCarthy, and you'll get Steve McLaren facing England at a major tournament.

Yeah, and it will be 20 years since he started, since he got the job, won't it?

I mean, it's just perfect on so many levels.

I mean, you almost don't want it because that might eat into the reggae boys' retrospectives.

You know, like you kind of want that to be saved for another time.

I was having a little skim through Cape Verde's squad, as you inevitably have to do in these situations, Dave.

And what I want from my World Cup nations is either one, them all to play in their own domestic league, ideally even for all the same club, like a Dinamo Kiev for the USSR in the mid-80s.

Or the complete other end of the spectrum, I want them to play for as random bunch of clubs as possible.

And Cape Verde could conceivably field a back four that play for Shamrock Rovers, Trabzon Spore, Columbus Crew, and Sporting Lisbon Under 23.

Wow.

That's amazing.

I didn't know there was such a diaspora of players out there.

It's utterly incredible.

They're everywhere.

Turkey, Israel, Cyprus, Russia, Bulgaria.

Holland.

Some very named players as well, like Kelvin Perez, Deroy Duache.

Yeah.

Who's going to get this athletic long read?

Yeah, I mean...

What checker should have a list?

I feel like it could be one for Nick Miller.

Yeah.

Jack Lang might have a little something to say about that.

The Turkish element will help, Nick.

Yeah, that's true.

But yeah, really excited about brand new countries at the World Cup, which is definitely going to happen next year.

Stockley Park canteen update.

The saga is over, Dave.

Wow, okay.

They've released a statement internally at Stockley Park.

Thank you for your patience during the canteens closure.

Over the past four weeks, the facility has undergone thorough and successful eradication, prevention, and sanitation procedures.

Those are the three words you want to hear, right?

Yes.

Yeah, very thorough.

Both our control experts and canteen health and safety specialists have given us the go-ahead to reopen from Monday, the 8th of September.

Charlie, it's going to be fine for when the Premier League resumes after the international break, PGMOL are going to be well fed again.

Fed and watered.

Yeah, God for that.

Yeah, and they're tempting people back, Dave, with a free coffee during the breakfast service this week, which is a classy touch.

Yeah, good luck to it.

Will that make up for it?

Isn't that a bit like PGMOL apologising when they make a refereeing error?

Yeah.

Well, it doesn't change the fact that we've had weeks without this.

Yeah, yeah.

You shouldn't have had rats in the first place, Howard.

They should have pest controllers mic'd up talking about the individual rats, as you can see here.

Yet, that is...

That is a mistake.

That is an infestation.

Stick a camera on the rat.

It scurries about pure mistakes.

Just seeing things from a different perspective, it's amazing actually.

Right,

this arrived a little earlier than scheduled, but let me take you back to our pre-season predictions.

Charlie, who won't have the bottle to sack their manager until someone else does in the November international break, and then they quickly follow suit, hoping they'll get less heat for it as a result.

I think also Forrest.

I think

with this imagined slow start that I've got, you know, because it'll be tough to get rid of Nuno.

He did, he did such a good job, but at the same time, results speak for themselves, and we are 15th and with regret.

Sorry, Nuno.

And then Andrew's just been on Monday night football and there he is.

Oh, Anste Forrest is so good.

And he's a bit Greek as well.

For another tilt of the Europa League.

Oh, that is historic club as well.

Like, he loved Brian Clough and

watching that.

Oh my God.

That feels...

Rinning the stars.

That's too right.

I'd never even considered this before.

That is perfect.

Now, Charlie, I don't want to bathe in self-congratulation here.

We didn't get some of these details right.

And I have to say, I do regret the he's a bit Greek statement.

But fundamentally, I'm delighted that this has happened.

AnsteForest is so just so perfect.

Yeah, I was so tempted to do a mock.

Um, you know, when journalists don't get as purred, and then they send a really aggressive sort of quote to you being like, Yeah, this was first reported three weeks ago.

Doesn't surprise me the way you operate, but yeah, it would have been nice.

A bit of recognition would have been nice.

Yeah, absolutely, no as purring from you.

No, absolutely not.

It's disgusting, really.

Um, but yeah, I just I'm looking forward to his first press conference.

I'm looking forward to him just to easy.

There'll be a press conference, surely.

Like, they'll, you know, a really deferential sort of reference to Clough and all that.

There's also going to be.

I fear that this will be forevermore be Angie's version of the special one nonsense.

There's going to be questions about him winning a trophy in the second season, isn't there?

Well, on that note, your fellow England podsman, George Ellick, tweeted, Poster Cogley needs to immediately outline whether this counts as his first season and therefore Forrest wins something in 26-27 or if he only deals in full season.

both stances are acceptable, but he can't be afforded two bites at this cherry.

I mean, are you saying that next season is his second season?

That's fair, isn't it?

Like, not maybe not strictly speaking.

Well, I was looking the other day, funnily enough, at the rules around what would happen if Donald Trump died.

And if JD Vance became the president, is he allowed two more?

Is he allowed to

count as the first term or not?

Or does he just exactly the same thing?

Same thing.

And the rules for the, in the American Constitution is if the vice president takes over in the first two years of the term, that counts as your first term.

If it's after that, if it's in the second two years, you get two more.

Yeah, because Linda Johnson,

he didn't go for it, but

he could have had a second full term on top of finishing off Kennedy's term.

But he was further into it.

He was

nearly three years.

I'm my own president.

So Ange needs a threshold, doesn't he?

So, I mean,

I think it's early enough that this should count as the first full season.

Right.

I mean, given Marianakis' record, he would do very, very well to be getting for him to get a second full season.

That would mean he'd have had to end up doing about three years, which would be great going.

Like, he might want to cash in more quickly than that.

He's got to win Henry Winter over, that's for sure.

Scathing

sort of response from Winter for this move, anyway.

But simple question for you, Charlie.

Does Ange Postakoglu have unfinished business?

Seems pretty clear-cut to me.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean,

certainly in premier league terms because yeah he kind of well and he certainly he you know you could argue he does in the champions league because he earned the right to manage there and then got it sort of taken away from him you know he qualified spurs for the champions league oh that's i think that would be the most perfect but he did also sort of just quite obviously finish his business and spurs and quite neatly done wasn't it

i don't think he would see it that way i i think there's the the the narrative arc that's coming is has he learned from his mistakes you know about being so intransigent with his tactics and things like that so that's the first question he's going to be but he wasn't ultimately i mean he that's the thing he really compromised pretty hard to win them the europa league which will sort of be brushed over and he's going to go to old and forest straight away right yeah you would have thought so and we get the whole series of the same questions being asked every week yeah yeah it was nice to see uh milenkovich foreboding what could very well be a common occurrence with ange's high line when he would scythe down harry kane last night and got sent off.

Proper old school tackle that was as well.

It's a harsh red card to a certain extent, but I really enjoyed the agricultural nature of it.

Right then, this episode is brought to you in association with Nord VPN.

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A VPN can also make your phone or laptop appear as if it's in another country, which is great for accessing content while travelling.

Speaking of travelling to foreign lands, Chelsea's star signing of the summer, Esteval, has given an interview, Charlie, to Globo back in Brazil while on international duty.

And they've asked him the classic questions about how he settled into London life, right?

And he says, Yeah, I've been to the tourist attractions, tick.

You know, I've been able to walk around calmly without being bothered.

Yes, just brilliant.

So glad that he's got that one out.

But he's had a moan about English food.

He says, he's tried breakfast, dinner, lunch, I've tried everything, but what I miss most is the the beans.

There are no beans here.

The beans they eat in the morning are different beans.

Why is that line so funny?

It's absolutely different beans.

Different beans.

I mean, it reads like that classic sort of, I've tried everything, breakfast, dinner, lunch.

But what I miss most there is the beans on that kind of trans world sport vibes.

Football Monday Ale in 1960.

Yeah, Football Monday Ale.

Yeah.

Different beans.

There are no beans there.

He hasn't bemoaned the weather though, Dave.

That's good to hear.

But I think, no, he said, because it's been warm so he's been all right but when it gets colder he's going to struggle yeah yeah yeah once you get past that first international break mate it turns yeah summer's over esteval imagine the thing about not being recognized it'd be like yeah i mean of course like who's going to recognize esteval but like like i i i'd back like charlie or someone like him if you're with someone go you know who i think that is i think i think that's esteval I mean, I will tell you something.

Even if you didn't recognise him as Chelsea footballer Esteval, there's something about him that's weirdly immaculate.

Like, he looks like he's been designed for a video game about a footballer, like a fictional one.

There's something weirdly immaculate about his face.

Um, but yeah, anyway, that's my love letter to Esteval.

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We'll be back very shortly.

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Welcome back to Football Clichés.

A reminder that we are recording episode 7 of Dreamland very soon after this, in fact.

We are cutting through the very modern nonsense of this summer's transfer window, including some remarkable Charlie Eccles air set pieces and an exquisite Turkish Super League Signings 11, plus much more.

If you're excited by that and all the other six episodes of Dreamland so far, go to dreamland.football clichés.com for $5.99 a month.

You get ad-free listening of all of our episodes, two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive new show, and other things as well.

I mean, I'll say it again, Charlie, I'm excited about this episode.

I think this is right up our street.

Yeah, I think it's going to be really, really good.

Yeah, there's a lot to catch up on, to draw together about this transfer window, and belatedly, we're going to do it.

Charlie, you missed an astonishing revelation on Tuesday's podcast, which is that the intro to Maps of the Day features some commentary snipped out of Wayne Rooney's goal for Everton against Arsenal that was featured on ITV's The Premiership back in 2002.

No word, official statement, or otherwise from the BBC or ITV for that matter, on this matter so far.

I mean, how do you feel about it?

Are you as disgusted as I am?

James Moore and Dave were rather non-plussed.

But is that right?

Was that definitely because you sent it to me, but I couldn't quite make it out because wasn't it Clive Tildsley on the original Premiership?

Wasn't that a remember the name Wayne Rooney?

Yeah, yeah correct and is that what that is yeah because I couldn't quite make out because it's a bit later on right yeah that that is a bit weird I mean it's it's it's odd in a way like you'd think you've got so much Premier League nostalgia you've basically got everything bar those three years just pick some other moments so you don't have to deal with that would be my solution do you know what I noticed as well listening back to it when I was editing so after the Tildsley clip, the next clip is another Rooney goal from another commentary.

It's an overload of Rooney.

Yeah.

Adding more credence to our thought that this was part of the negotiations from Rooney's team.

Well, I found a loophole in it.

Well, no, I didn't.

Our correspondent did.

Extension beginning 76 days says the MOTD intro having a bit of ITV audio is a bit like when a club's kit is a reference to one of their old ones, but made by a different kit manufacturer.

CB.

Yeah, yeah, that is true, actually.

Yeah.

Looking forward to seeing how this row rumbles on.

It's only rumbling on for me for some reason.

No one else seems to give a shit.

Why?

It's a debate that's captured the nation's imagination.

You'll be tuning in

on question time.

Why isn't nobody else in there?

It's still in there.

It's still in.

They've not removed it.

Literally, the only one cares.

I don't know why.

On GB News next week, don't you?

Yeah, I hope so.

Someone needs to pick this up.

I don't care who.

Right, footballers' names in things.

This came from Andy Warren.

He says, I was a...

He says, I was at a medieval knight's reenactment day at Framlingham Castle recently.

Bad play.

Yeah.

A brilliant day out for the family.

One of the knights, clad in green and representing the West, was Sir Guy of Mowbray.

He says there's a good few hundred people there, Charlie.

I think I may have been the only person to notice.

Wow.

That surprises me because I'll have a...

Big enough name to use as a reference?

I would have thought there's a decent crossover of medieval knights' reenactment days and football clichés listeners.

There would have been more than just one.

Exactly.

So yeah, I'm surprised there wasn't more of a frisson of recognition.

But she's the only commentator with a surname that is actually a sort of a place?

i guess so i guy mowbray's a yorkshireman i understand dave york city fan uh this was this framlingham castle's in you know deepest suffolk so there's there's no local sort of connection here but and he's not an actual knight this guy i mean this isn't a real

what

go on well just check that we have a guy mowbray one of the knights of the round table

that there isn't some famous figure from a you know some minor historical figure it does sort of fit doesn't it if he you didn't know, evidently as most of the people didn't, that Guy Mowbray was a football commentator.

He's not going to bat an eyelid at that, are you?

Yeah.

It does sound quite convincing.

Yeah.

Andy Warren has handily sent me the bios of all the knights involved in some of this jousting.

Green Knight of the West, Sir Guy de Mowbray.

Noble to a fault, Sir Guy is no stranger to the tournament field, known for honour during battle and upholding the code of chivalry at all times.

A keen hunter means that he's skilled with a sword and a bow, making him a well-rounded, versatile warrior.

There's no indication that this is to do with a commentator whatsoever.

What's going on?

Wow, that sort of does describe Guy Mowbray, though, actually.

Jousting with Laura.

Jousting with Laura.

Yeah, no stranger to the tournament female.

Maybe.

Yeah, that could be a nod.

But yeah, English Heritage, if you could just confirm that this is based on Guy Mowbray for some reason, that would be great.

And if there's a Sir Peter of Drury next week, then we know

what's going on.

Yeah, Sir Simon of Brotherton.

Right, anyway.

This came from George Love.

He says, here's another unnecessary absoluting from one of the usual suspects.

Yes, it's Ben Foster's Fozzcast.

But I'm thinking, really?

Like, you could put a 43-year-old Stephen Gerard in there.

Yeah.

Right?

And he'd do a job.

Exactly.

He would do an absolute job as well.

The thing is, I mean, whilst Ben Foster is no stranger to an absoluting, Charlie, the thing is, there's no need to absolute the job.

The whole point is that it's a six out of 10 situation.

It doesn't need to be given any superlative.

Oh, you do an absolute job out there.

Absolute job.

I don't know what they're talking about there, but no, he wouldn't.

For context, Dave, this is England versus Andorra and Elliot Anderson's supposedly impressive debut, and they were saying, well, anybody could play in midfield against Andorra.

No, 43-year-old Stephen Gerard would have not have done well against

or otherwise.

Would have made it a lot worse.

I don't know.

He would have done a job.

An absolute job.

Dave, next up, from the event company who brought you a night of Cristiano Ronaldo's allegedly favourite songs as played by a string quartet, it's going to be Candlelight, tribute to football anthems, from the pitch to your heart, iconic football songs by Candlelight.

Wow.

So this is a church in central London, same one as before, I believe.

Some sort of chapel.

And yeah, so it's going to be a string quartet.

Unconfirmed lineup, they say.

They haven't confirmed the string quartet yet.

They will be playing songs such as Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes.

The Champions League anthem.

Slammed up, really, that one, isn't it?

La Coppa della Vida by Ricky Martin.

Whack-a-whacker by Shakira.

Fucking hell by String Quartet.

You'll never walk alone.

Live is Life by Opus.

Freed from Desire.

That could be, that's 50-50.

That could be a banger.

It could not be.

Three Little Birds by Bob Marley and the Wailers.

And We Are the Champions by Queen and many more.

I mean, surely they've got to get Celeste in on the act, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

This needs Celeste, doesn't it?

As Davo Davo Davo says on Reddit, Charlie.

If you don't have Celeste here, then it's all over for her, surely.

Yeah, grim reading for Celeste.

They'd better not have Casabian's goat in there.

I know.

The reworked version.

Life of Riley could work with a string cortech.

That would be great, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, that would be good.

Do the old Ode to Joy, the Euro 96.

I think Dess and Dormer.

Yeah, just basically taking all the orchestral ones there, aren't you, Dave?

Which is cheating, really, to a certain extent.

Lean into it.

Yeah, fair enough.

Are they expecting

football fans to just

sort of chant along with these?

Or is it just, yeah, yeah, what's the vibe?

I've got no idea.

It's mad that this series is continuing, but I didn't realise you'd be ridiculous.

We should go.

It's in December, I believe.

Right, there's a brand new football podcast out there filling the void that was supposed to be filled by Tim Lovejoy's new soccer amen, which still hasn't surfaced.

It's called The Managers with Nick McCarthy and Tony Pulis.

Charlie,

the three sets of our eyes lit up almost simultaneously when we heard about this, didn't they?

Yeah, I listened to a bit.

And

yeah, it's sort of like, you know, they're both likable characters with, you know, fewer chips on their shoulder than a lot of these sorts of people.

Yeah, crucially, you know, I was reassured after listening for a little bit, Dave, that this is this is a kind of a hair-down situation.

They're both just sort of settling into just a nice bit of podcasting.

Everyone's got to give it a go sometime, see what all the fuss is about, right?

Yeah, they are an interesting mix actually, because you'd assume that they're sort of and then to an extent they are both cut from the same cloth, but there is a there is a very different energy between Pulis and between McCarthy.

Yeah, yeah, McCarthy is even more low energy than I expected him to be, and Pulis is absolutely on it.

Here is a little flavour of the managers with Mick McCarthy and Tony Pulis.

I'm Mick McCarthy, and I'm Tony Pulis, and welcome to the managers.

The teams that just want to play like Manchester City, like Liverpool, I find it ridiculous.

Yeah, because they don't know the players to do it.

I think the teams that went down last year were all trying to play the premier league way if you want and it is it's about finding a way to win no matter how it is and you're dead right i've never been sacked for winning games strangely enough and i've been sacked a few times it was never for winning football matches

so already some boxes being ticked here um some sort of vaguely pertinent topical sort of opinions about what's going on and then the odd after-dinner speech nugget just thrown in out of nowhere charlie it's exactly what you would hope for from these two i don't know how much longevity it has, perhaps,

but always the problem.

Although, no chippy-tappy football, to be fair.

Yeah.

So, how long has that gone for?

A few years now.

Oh, really?

Well, they are going head to head.

It's definitely less kind of explosive than that.

It's less, as you say, Charlie, less chip on the shoulder situation.

But they cover a lot of obvious ground in the first couple of episodes, Dave.

But I'm yet to hear them talk about how you can't hammer players anymore in the way that you used to.

You've got to treat them a little bit more carefully now, haven't you?

Yeah, that's definitely in the pipeline, isn't it?

The clip there of McCarthy saying that, you know, teams who are trying to play like Liverpool, Manchester City, but they can't do it because they don't have enough players, like that has become such a well-worn cliche, hasn't it, in the last few years?

You hear it all the time from X-Pros.

Yeah, all the way down the divisions as well.

You do, you do, but I do also think, like, and like, you know, it's obviously just become an easy stick to beat teams with, but there is, I do think it's a shame without getting all kind of Pewlis and McCarthy and maybe, and I don't know the reasons for this, but like it was really interesting having teams like Stoke who really would sort of disrupt it.

You know, like if you're watching Man City and they go away and they're playing Burnley, and back in the day, Burnley was like, it's a cliche, but it was a tough place to go.

Now when they go and play that kind of team and they are just sort of trying to beat them at their own game.

And then they don't and they lose.

Like it was like that variety did make the league really interesting.

And I don't know if it's now like pitches are too good or there's too much like, you know, sophistication.

I don't know what it is, but that like, as much as it has become an easy thing to say, Stoke were a great disruptor and we haven't had one like that.

I think we could really do with someone like that.

I'm glad you're sticking up for Stoke and by extension Tony Pudis there, Charlie, because Dave, whisper it, but this podcast is actually fine.

Like it's actually, there are sections of it that are quite interesting.

And it isn't them just rolling themselves out for a betting company.

Pudis basically is the life president of proper football men now.

He's really listenable.

He's completely on it.

There's no baggage.

He's quite proud of what he has done, but still loves all forms of football, you know, whether they're to his tactical tastes or not.

Punis is great.

Like, Punis is really good to listen to about football.

Yeah, yeah, he's a good communicator.

Like, he's done a bit of co-comms or Five Lives and stuff.

You know,

he knows what he's doing.

And McCarthy is quite, you know, when you get McCarthy away from that sort of well-worn clichés talking about his career and stuff, he's quite dry.

Like, he does have a sense of humour, which is why he's actually been quite good when he's done the op-bit of co-comms as well.

So yeah, they're not a bad mix, but again, it's just, as you say, it's like, how long can it go on for?

And I assume they're going to get guests on or whatever.

Well, right, yes, this podcast is going to live or die by what guests it gets on early doors.

Episode two, their first guest Charlie, Stuart Pierce.

Who was, of course, legally obliged to tell at least five stories about Brian Clough, at least one of which had to include an impression of Brian Clough.

I've got Brian on the phone.

I was a Coventry player at the time, and he said, I've got Brian on the phone.

So this is Brian Clough coming on the phone.

So this is the fella that I watched on telly talking about Tomaszewski and all those things.

You hang on his every word.

He was brilliant.

And he comes on the phone, first conversation I've ever had with him.

He's,

Do you want to play for me, son?

I went, yeah, all right.

And he slammed the phone down.

Deathbed Brian clough there bloody art yeah

his last wish was to sign stuart pierce it's got to the point now charlie where i think we actually should do a whole dreamland episode ranking all the brian clough impressions that have ever taken place all of them will be garylineka stuart pierce yeah it's why is it impossible to tell a story about brian cliff without doing his voice yeah that's brilliant he used i mean everyone can have a go though you can kind of get there can't you it's not the hardest impression to do in the world but it ends up being an impression of somebody else's impression because you've never really heard it.

So yeah,

it's

just triggers broom of impressions.

It really is very funny.

But yeah, stick with this podcast.

I don't think it's earned its own corner on our podcast yet, but I'm happy for the both of them.

Right, sticking with Mick McCarthy theme, Saipan has finally had its international premiere over in Toronto.

The Guardian are giving it four out of five stars, which is a strong start.

But Callum Pinder writes in and says, you may or may not be interested to know that I was at the world premiere of Saipan in Toronto.

Here are some general thoughts.

Overall, a really good film, really strong script, cast, and storytelling.

Coogan got pretty close to McCarthy from a sound and looks perspective.

The film Roy Keen was bang on, especially highlighted when they showed the actual clips at the end of the

comparison.

I particularly nailed the quiet, unwavering stare.

This is all really good news, getting the building blocks of this right, Charlie.

It does sound good, yeah.

Yeah, like all signs are positive.

Dave Callum says, thankfully, they did did not recreate any of the football nor did they try to insert any extra football being played.

The times that Einar Hardwick was kicking a ball looked like he'd actually played at some point in his life.

So yeah, good.

So this is a damned United situation where there's barely any football in it and that's good.

Yeah, and because'cause the story

is not about the football.

The whole point is that he wasn't there for when they actually played the matches in the World Cup.

Yeah, we don't need to see Matty Holland scoring in the aesthetics.

Exactly, yeah.

Ian Hart taking a penalty.

But we um I guess you do want to see a bit of training like because that's where some of it all kicked off i guess like you want to see something i do want to see if it's a football film i want to see someone kick a ball at some point well famously um one of the early points of the saga where roy coon was at the end of his tether charlie was when they were having a training session on a terrible pitch yeah with full-size goals on a tiny pitch but with no goalkeepers because they were too tired from the session that they'd done earlier in the day and you just couldn't understand how this had come about so i mean that's a filmmaker's dream isn't it a tiny tiny pitch, massive goals, no goalkeepers.

Like, you could basically fuck it up as much as you like.

Yeah,

anyone can do that.

Yep.

He continues.

The key player interactions were with Jason McAteer, Stephen Reed, Niall Quinn, and Steve Staunton.

Quinn's casting in particular was absolutely spot-on.

Lee Carsley can probably feel a bit hard-done by with his casting.

The guy who played him looked like an out-of-shape mid-40s dad who once had trials at Liverpool.

Swift in town, actually.

So,

exactly, yeah.

Maybe I wasn't there after all.

Uh, yeah, poor old Lee Carsley, he was always going to get a slightly older, bald bloke to play him, wasn't he?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's the pitfall, I'm afraid.

Um, but for our purposes, this is interesting.

Charlie says, The only thing that slightly drew me out for a split second was when Keen's wife said she didn't want to go with him to Saipan because she didn't want to be a wag.

I thought that was more of a 2006 and beyond thing, but I was a pre-teen in 2002, so although I remember the incident and the World Cup itself, I don't remember the media coverage before and after it.

Do you think WAGs was a thing in 2002?

No, I don't really.

I mean, and if it was, it would have been very niche and under the radar, and I don't think would be the sort of thing that the wife of Roy Keene would be referring to.

It was very 2006.

So close, Dave, but you can see how they fall into this trap.

It's a classic, you know, retro film trap to fall into.

Yeah, and it kind of, I guess, you can have a bit of creative license, can't you?

Just to get the point across.

I don't know, maybe, maybe they've done their research.

Maybe they've gone back and looked at the archives and they found the instances of WAG being used in 2002.

It must have had some sort of runway to 2006.

It can't have just suddenly appeared out there.

I don't know.

I feel like it was all of a sudden.

I just, I don't think of it as a.

But yeah, I guess, I mean, maybe, you know, Victoria Beckham had been around since, you know, 97 or something.

So maybe it had been used.

Tell you what, I would watch a six-part sort of comedy drama about England at Barden-Barden in 2006.

Yeah, exactly.

That would be great.

With wax,

am I right in thinking that it was originated, like they called themselves the wax?

They weren't given the title by the tabloids.

Not sure.

I don't know.

They might have lent into it, but I always thought it was a tabloid creation.

But you might be right.

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Dave, you mentioned J.D.

Vance and Donald Trump earlier.

This came from Not Zlatan.

Here is the truly evil-eyed U.S.

Vice President J.D.

Vance giving giving Donald Trump the ultimate seal of professional approval.

That's it.

That's the only measure by any professional should be judged by.

That's it.

When he does literally live at the training ground.

Exactly.

That's the thing.

He lives at at the training ground.

So he has to.

He circumvents that by being very specific.

He's not saying first one in, last one out.

He's saying last one making calls.

First one making calls.

That is a very important point you've made there, Dave.

Fair play.

Undermining Donald Trump at every turn.

Right,

Tom Prenderville writes in next, Charlie says, when watching Deadline Day on Sky Sports recently, they were discussing Manuel Akanji leaving Man City.

The reporter ended the segment by claiming Akanji had been a great servant to the club.

This didn't sound right, and having looked at his stats, Akanji had three seasons at City, playing 136 games.

I appreciate he was a success during his time at the club and did win the treble, but ultimately his years of service is far too low.

I mean, you can see how this has happened because I think sort of defensive players are more likely to get labelled like this lazily, aren't they?

Yeah,

this is a really good point because what's happened here is that, yeah, you talk a great servant is someone who was kind of good but fairly unspectacular.

But I so I can see why they've done that because that is him all over, isn't it?

You know, Akanji's been pretty good for them, like, you know, kind of forgettable in lots of ways, but you know, never let them down.

Yeah, he's just like a seven out of ten guy.

Yeah.

But yeah, I guess, strictly speaking, servant,

you would properly associate with someone who's been there a bit longer.

Yeah.

He embodies all the qualities of a good servant.

Yeah, just

maybe that's part of the modern game.

Maybe the threshold for being a good servant should be lowered.

Hey, that's a valid argument.

Tom Prenderville continues, Dave, and says, players with a similar number of games for a club include Harry Keel at Liverpool, Kai Havertz at Chelsea, Fabian Bartez at Manchester United.

I wouldn't describe any of these players as great servants to their club.

The title feels more appropriate for your Tony Hibberts, your Lewis Dunks, your Yussi Yaska-Linens.

So, you know, era-specific considerations aside, Dave, what's the threshold that we should be looking at?

Six seasons?

Looking at that, though, it can't just purely be games, can it?

There does have to be a bit more to it than just number of appearances and time spans.

300 games minimum, though, right?

Without getting all literally Dave about it, I mean,

if you had a servant, ultimately,

and

they'd done a year for you, and they'd been incredibly diligent, done their job, turn up every day, never let you down, they'd still be a great servant, even if they hadn't been there for that long.

It should be a real-time label.

If you've done a day of good service, you are a good servant.

You've still been a great servant for that.

You've got to prove that.

You go, that's not what defines it see it's not fun being literally dave is it you've got to have that consistency yeah anyone could be a good servant for a day yeah when you do it for 60 games a season

but just to ram home the vibe of great servant tom brenderville signs off charlie saying maybe there's a theme of unsung heroes being great servants saying messi was a great servant to barcelona feels terribly patronizing and downplays the impact he had at the club it just proves you can't have it for a luxury player can you yeah that would that would be amazing incredible what servant he's been when in many ways like you know players who could have left and gone to any club they wanted have been better servants in some way.

Like, they really have been quite servile.

Whereas, you know, someone like Tony Hibbert, Phil Everton was sort of about as good as he could have got, wasn't it?

I mean, it was kind of, it was kind of symbiotic.

What do you mean?

He was subservient to the club.

But was Matt Letitia a good servant to Southampton?

Yes.

I suppose he was.

I think he was more of a great servant, given that he...

sort of you know he could have gone to a bigger club bad news for francis bernali but fine yeah okay interesting Thanks, Tom Brendeville.

Right.

Now, we had an item on Tuesday's podcast talking about how I always enjoy it when we have a football expert brought into a legal case to give some vital football context to a very important subject.

Simon writes in and says that when Wrexham tried to sign two Trinidad internationals, Carlos Edwards and Hector Sam, back in 2000, they had to apply to the Home Office for work permits.

In order to do this, a panel of football experts had to determine whether they were good enough to warrant being granted entry or whether a local footballer could do the same job.

I mean, this is great already.

Imagine having that job.

Initially, they had their application turned down by a panel that included Dennis Smith, but eventually got accepted on appeal.

Fast forward two years, and Dennis Smith was appointed manager of Wrexham and promptly dropped the pair from the starting 11.

They made their way back in eventually, and Carlos, in particular, was a mainstay of the 2002 three promotion team.

This is superb.

That's brilliant.

Imagine having to make a qualitative assessment of a footballer to get them a work permit.

The pressure.

They'll be on that.

Yeah, that, yeah.

I mean, it does always seem like quite a difficult thing.

What would Dennis Smith have to work with, Charlie, back in 2000 for two Trinidad Internationals?

What's he watching?

Yeah,

how is he making that call?

Yeah.

A lot of football Monday out.

Just looking at them and going, yeah, he looks like a specimen.

He'll do it.

He looks like he could be a great servant for this club.

The line about having to decide whether a local footballer could do the same job, surely you could set that up pretty easily, get a few local footballers and just, I don't know, add some free kicks or penalties penalties or

keep one on one game.

Keepy up is in the in the tribunal hearing.

Just let them play for the, yeah, the kind of best local team.

Just have a trial,

see if they stand out.

Simon signs off with this, Dave.

Incredibly, my search found an article from 2003 in which Dennis Smith was amongst the Wrexham representatives going in front of the panel he used to sit on to ask for an extension to Carlos Hector's work permits.

Wow.

Get a film about this, if anything.

Tremendous.

Right, returning again to a previous item, David Smith writes in in response to last week's item from someone who was watching Kilmarnock vs.

Dundee about how complicit physios feel they need to be when players go down with fake time-wasting injuries.

He says, I am in fact the physio that was on the pitch for the aforementioned goalkeeper injury.

I can confirm that whilst I was well aware that there was a strong possibility that the goalkeeper would go down to waste time, a well-known circumvention of the rules as they don't have to leave the pitch after treatment, I was caught a bit off guard with it.

Credit to John McCracken, he pulled off a great acting job, so much so I genuinely genuinely thought he was hurt when I was running on.

He did make it quite clear early on that he wasn't really hurt, so I was aware of it, but you just kind of have to go with it and carry on as if it was a normal injury.

Physios don't act under the Hippocratic Oath.

What a clarification.

Thank God for this podcast.

So no worries about that, but there is definitely a bit of a grey area about whether we should be getting involved in wasting time, but there's enough plausible deniability that nothing could ever really come of it.

Charlie, this is tremendous correspondence.

Wow, this is really, he is really this person.

yeah he said

just to prove he was who he was and this is incredible evidence to prove it he sent me a screenshot of the staff list of Dundee's Wikipedia page

you're late Smith you could be anybody yeah he doesn't get his own page

I mean great um honesty yeah from him here wow physios don't act under the hippocratic oath fair play look at gary luwin in a whole new way yeah not real medical professionals are they um he signs off Dave with disappointed the person writing in made no mention of my expertly curved slow jog off the pitch to eat out a few extra seconds of wasted time rather than running straight off.

There we go.

A practitioner of the dark arts.

Yeah.

And just to crown those dark arts off, Dave, David Smith actually secured himself a move to Aberdeen in the transfer window.

Did he?

Yeah.

He had to serve a 30-day notice.

He's the Alexander Isak of Physios.

Oh,

I want more people from the professional game writing in to respond to stories about them, please.

That would make this podcast at least 5% even better.

Thanks to you, Charlie Eccleshare.

Thank you.

Thanks to you, David Walker.

Thank you.

Thanks to everyone for listening.

We'll be back on Tuesday.

Oh, and Keesy, stay safe, mate.

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