The last corner flag, acres of experience & Christianity's classy touches

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Speaker 11 I'm sorry, you can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like.

Speaker 13 Is Gas going to have a crack?

Speaker 5 He is, you know. Oh, he failed.

Speaker 5 Brilliant.

Speaker 5 But jeez!

Speaker 5 He's round the goalkeeper. He's done it!

Speaker 5 Absolutely incredible! He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicked a supporter who was

Speaker 5 without a shadow of a doubt giving him lip. Oh, I say,

Speaker 5 it's amazing. He does it tame and tame and tame again.
Break up the music. Charge a glass.

Speaker 5 This nation is going to dance all night.

Speaker 15 Fletch holds his hands up about Brazilian beaches. Graham Potter spares Nuno a stilted appearance on Monday night football.

Speaker 15 The last sacked Premier League manager to get a corner flag in the club statement. The official new unit of measurement for experience.
Mick McCarthy breaks America.

Speaker 8 Classy touches from rival Christian denominations.

Speaker 15 Football speak in A-level history coursework. Antiques Roadshow loses its football credibility.
And Andy Gray versus Football Metrics. Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts.

Speaker 8 This is Football Clichés.

Speaker 8 Hello, everyone, and welcome to Football Clichés. I'm Adam Hurry.
This is the adjudication panel. Joining me first of all is Charlie Eccleshare.

Speaker 21 How are you doing?

Speaker 22 Very well, thank you.

Speaker 15 Great news for you.

Speaker 20 News reaches me that the match of the day 2 Saturday wrap-up was all from the main camera by the time the goal goes in, I'm told.

Speaker 26 So that's good news for you.

Speaker 8 Your feedback has been heard at the highest echelons of the BBC.

Speaker 30 Yeah, I watched it, enjoyed it. I mean, yeah, it's still, as you say, camera one by the time the goal goes in.
So they're still a bit of, you know, jazzy camera angles before.

Speaker 30 But yeah, I feel a bit like a pundit or a manager when a decision that's wrong gets corrected by VAR.

Speaker 30 You know, I'm happy that we've got there, but it shouldn't need a niche football podcast to call it out for this sort of thing. Like, just get it right in the first place.

Speaker 30 You know, it's just, this is where we are now.

Speaker 31 If you can't decide within two production meetings, just don't change it.

Speaker 33 Don't change it.

Speaker 5 That's it.

Speaker 30 I guess we've just got to be relieved we got there in the end. We reached the right decision.

Speaker 32 Alongside you on the adjudication panel, he too is finally back home from Newcastle.

Speaker 35 What a quiz that was, by the way, David Walker.

Speaker 7 Yes, great night up in Newcastle. A very enjoyable quiz.
A great crowd, great drinks after the show. It all went very well.

Speaker 7 Apart from some very, very slight, mild controversy over who came second, which may well have been our fault. But the winner, the winning team won at such a distance.

Speaker 7 And also, they themselves came in for some criticism from the crowd. But I have faith that they won that quiz honourably.

Speaker 18 Yeah, I shouldn't be reading a Twitter thread at 2 a.m.

Speaker 17 about potential googling by opposition teams and then them firing back with, it's really dark in there. You would have seen if we had our phones out.

Speaker 39 Just incredible.

Speaker 34 Arguing still going on in in the wee hours after the quiz.

Speaker 42 But other than that, a superb quiz.

Speaker 29 Really enjoyed it.

Speaker 21 Plenty of prizes given out, including the Nord VPN trophy and a few copies of Extra Time Beckons Penalties Loom.

Speaker 25 Speaking of which, I got an email this weekend from what looked like an expert book marketer, Charlie,

Speaker 17 claiming to help me get the book out there. And it was an email from an individual allegedly called David Peter.
And the headline was, Amplifying Your Book's Reach with Expert Marketing.

Speaker 25 And it took me about three seconds of reading this email to realize it was AI slop.

Speaker 34 Here it goes.

Speaker 23 Dear Adam, your upcoming book, Extra Time Beckon's Penalties Loom, is already shaping up to be a standout contribution to football literature.

Speaker 41 Okay.

Speaker 33 By focusing on the crucible of extra time and penalties, the most unforgiving stage in football, you captured a theme that resonates with every fan who has lived through those nail-biting moments.

Speaker 50 Whether it's the heartbreak of Miss Penalties or the exhilaration of sudden death glory, your book speaks directly to the drama, psychology, and storytelling power that makes football more than just a game.

Speaker 51 What if I had written a book about just that?

Speaker 30 That's brilliant. Your your um look at the beautiful game is really a is really a real AI buster because they would have that that is a you know that that would kind of make sense uh if you saw that.

Speaker 30 So yeah, good on you. Keeping us in jobs.

Speaker 34 There are more literally Daves out there, Dave, just taking my book title too literally and then try to help me market it in a completely incorrect way.

Speaker 7 And but yet another reason for me to be worried about AI.

Speaker 34 Yeah, it's gonna get us all in the end.

Speaker 32 Yeah, speaking of cliché's clichés, live events, it is, well, less than a week now until clichés live kicks off in earnest, in anger, at Comedia in Brighton on Monday the 6th of October.

Speaker 53 There may be a slightly irregular clichés pod schedule as October unravels, I think it's fair to say, Dave, but we will deliver, won't we?

Speaker 27 Big time.

Speaker 22 Go to tickets.football clichés.com and join us on tour.

Speaker 18 Right, adjudication panel time, only one place to start.

Speaker 54 Brentford vs.

Speaker 18 Manchester United on TNT Sports.

Speaker 55 And Darren Fletcher uses an overhit Brian and Burmo cross as an opportunity to reflect on something from last week.

Speaker 55 Just going back to that Cunha

Speaker 57 Robona, there was a Brazilian Twair that did something when I was commentating the other night and I made the statement he probably learned that on the Copacabana and then somebody pointed out that he was born, the player that I was talking about, was born a few hours away from the Copacabana by plane.

Speaker 57 So certainly didn't learn it on the Copacabana. Hence why I didn't mention that because I'm not quite sure which part of Brazil Lattez Cunha is from.

Speaker 57 So if you were the person that pointed that out, he's definitely in my head today.

Speaker 26 Cheers for that. Yeah.

Speaker 27 Ah, the tentacles of this podcast, Charlie, grow even longer.

Speaker 17 Listener, Dave Cotton from last week, what have you done?

Speaker 30 Yeah, I mean, he takes it. He takes it well, to be fair, in the right spirit.
But it is funny that he can't, he's not been put off enough to point out that he would, he wishes he could have used it.

Speaker 30 Like he still, that was still the instinct. You know, see a Brazilian player do something a little flashy, your mind does, or his mind does, just go to the Copacabana.

Speaker 18 It's the only spirit to take it in, Dave, isn't it?

Speaker 55 This is what we want to encourage.

Speaker 46 A friendly back and forth between us and the mouthpieces of football.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I mean, what was interesting as well with Fletch there, whilst, yeah, he did take it a bit better, as you say, Charlie, than I thought he might do when I first heard about it.

Speaker 7 Why wasn't he sort of mentioning specifically who he'd mentioned?

Speaker 56 It was weird though. Yeah.

Speaker 59 Look who was doing much more.

Speaker 31 He could say the feedback.

Speaker 56 Or he didn't have the rights to it.

Speaker 33 He didn't even mention the Champions League, which is unlikely.

Speaker 30 It really sounded like it was for another channel or something. And then I would have understood it.
In that way, there's this old murder where you can't talk about football on another broadcaster.

Speaker 30 But yeah,

Speaker 49 that was really strange.

Speaker 30 I don't have the rights to mention Rafinha on a Premier League game.

Speaker 14 He's worried someone's going to go and watch it back on catch-up to see it

Speaker 16 in real time. But no, it's okay.

Speaker 7 Incidentally, Mattheas Cunha was born in João Pessoa, a port city in northeastern Brazil.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 27 So that's a good old trek as well, isn't it?

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 27 I mean, the roller coaster of this story, because someone got in touch to say that there is a Copacabana beach where Rafinha was born.

Speaker 17 I looked it up, it's now permanently closed.

Speaker 27 It was a little sort of urban, sort of artificial beach resort, but it doesn't exist.

Speaker 42 So there's no avenues left for Fletch on that one.

Speaker 48 Right, the big Premier League news of the weekend day was Graham Potter sacked by West Ham within 24 hours of facing those inevitable ludicrous questions about face swapping.

Speaker 28 Can we just revisit that moment?

Speaker 49 Again, took it in better humour than I expected.

Speaker 19 Yeah, well, it made my 15-year-old son laugh a lot. So

Speaker 19 as I said, you have to accept what comes with it, which is part of criticism.

Speaker 43 It's at times ridicule.

Speaker 19 But

Speaker 19 that's just the environment we're in, and it is what it is.

Speaker 27 I'm so glad this got the it is what it is treatment, Dave. I mean, it's very much an is what it is candidate, isn't it?

Speaker 7 Yeah, although does that reaction somehow sort of hint at one of the issues with Graham Potter? Is that a better manager would give that short shrift. Why are you being nice here?

Speaker 7 It's good that you're nice, but also just Christ. Like, I think the people think they can get away with this stuff with you.

Speaker 49 Give them an inch, they'll take a mile, John.

Speaker 58 I mean, I mean, probably being quite sort of, you know, respectful to the to the journalist who felt compelled to ask the question, presumably from directives from higher-ups.

Speaker 17 But the overall vibe I got from this line of questioning, especially in the context of him being sacked within 24 hours of it happening, there's just nothing unspoken in football anymore.

Speaker 31 Does this need to be asked?

Speaker 32 Does it really feed into his narrative arc in any way?

Speaker 43 I think it probably does.

Speaker 30 I mean, it was a talking point. People probably do want to hear, like, what else, especially for a manager who famously, his press conferences are really boring, especially the pre-match ones.

Speaker 30 I'm sure if you were covering West Ham, you would be like, oh my God, finally something I can actually ask him about that he has, because he has to engage.

Speaker 30 Either way, you get a, you know, Graham Potter responds angrily to questions about face swap, or he does engage and it's like, oh, well, that's quite nice. And like, it just was a talking point.

Speaker 30 So I think it's fair to ask him.

Speaker 54 Okay, I accept that.

Speaker 32 Potter out, Nuno Espirito Santo in, Dave.

Speaker 48 Fair play to West Ham here because this must have been an irresistible option because it's about as good a template for this situation as possible for them.

Speaker 18 A manager who briefly but notably overperformed at a similarly sized club was perceived to have been treated a bit shabbily, left for ostensibly non-footballing reasons and is now available immediately to pick up where he left off.

Speaker 14 West Ham have basically been handed this on a plate.

Speaker 34 Like all the consensus is a great appointment, but it's like it's the only appointment.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I'm quite annoyed by it actually.

Speaker 7 They've been able to appoint Nuno here. through no real

Speaker 56 foresight or skill.

Speaker 33 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 30 Whereas there were some reports that they had spoken to slavin billich yeah which i really wanted that to happen yeah that would have been amazing i mean it does show as well and this is getting a bit actual football analysis but like when new was appointed forest manager everyone forest fans were largely up in arms because his previous he'd been bad in his previous role he was defensive boring you have one good stint and then you're you're so what are you so for potter you've just got if you're him you've just got hope you know i'm just one good period away and then i'm in the new no role of being the like the savior of basically any I mean any bottom half club and maybe even a bit higher Nuno would have been the first guy they'd have wanted really for the reasons you've just said and especially the fact that he it was perfect because he he got sacked in a really harsh way yes you know so it's not like his stock had fallen it was just he was a victim of politics yeah the trajectory of their respective stocks Dave is quite interesting to me because Potter did the Monday night football appearance

Speaker 7 was a little bit reticent but came across as someone quite clearly in demand and he he you you know he had some options open to him and he was quite coy about where he was going to go next so and he was quite enjoying that side of things Nuno hasn't even had to do the Monday Night Football thing which I imagine it's a massive relief to him because I don't think he'd be a massive talker on my MNF no I don't think he I don't think he would the Potter thing is interesting because you know I I sort of feel like there was there was a feeling that even though West Ham generally chaotic sort of backdrop was there you thought Potter would do better at West Ham I think people thought that this would be the club where he puts the Chelsea debacle behind him.

Speaker 7 And he just didn't.

Speaker 42 Emphatically didn't.

Speaker 7 Now you're thinking,

Speaker 5 where does he pop up next?

Speaker 7 Can you do a second Monday night football thing?

Speaker 5 Unprecedented.

Speaker 38 I need to go straight back again.

Speaker 65 On this Monday, it was pointed out to me, Gary O'Neill was apparently on Saturday night football.

Speaker 30 I mean, that's where, I mean, that's not...

Speaker 64 That's a step back, isn't it?

Speaker 20 That's a commitment to being a pundit.

Speaker 56 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Exactly. That's not a special guest, is it?

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 30 That felt quite significant.

Speaker 18 Andy Reid's here as well, Gary.

Speaker 17 Is that okay?

Speaker 9 What, you're going to ask him about what his next job is?

Speaker 38 No.

Speaker 60 I thought it was just going to be me, because I went to...

Speaker 54 More importantly, Elliot Stockdale asks Dave after West Ham released their statement about Graham Potter, is the corner flag trope just finished now?

Speaker 17 I can't remember the last time a club used it.

Speaker 23 Maybe one to discuss on the pod.

Speaker 12 Well, I've done my research here, Dave.

Speaker 17 I didn't actually have to go that far, surprisingly.

Speaker 23 I can confirm we're currently on a run of seven Premier League managerial departures.

Speaker 17 That's sackings, mutual consent, resignations, and this also includes relegated clubs as well, since a corner flag was used to announce a manager's departure.

Speaker 29 That was Sean Deish at Everton in January 2025, which I think is quite fitting.

Speaker 48 You can imagine Deish insisting on getting the corner flag.

Speaker 17 I don't want the facade of the stadium.

Speaker 17 I don't want a picture of my face.

Speaker 6 I want corner flag.

Speaker 7 I think you're going to have to listen to his new podcast to try and hone that impression of it, aren't you?

Speaker 33 Have I gone to East Midlands?

Speaker 9 Yeah, a little bit.

Speaker 66 Yeah, it was quite, yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I was having a look at Watford's

Speaker 7 relatively recent sacking, seeing whether we went for a corner flag. Because when we were losing at half-time on Saturday, I noticed a few people saying it's time for the corner flag, guys.

Speaker 7 But we haven't gone for a corner flag for a little while now. So maybe it has been phased out.
Maybe it became too much of

Speaker 7 a meme.

Speaker 31 That's very possibly the case, Charlie.

Speaker 7 It must be a case that comms teams, when they're putting this stuff together, just think, should we just go for the front of the stadium now now or a view wide angle view of the pitch because the corner flags it's a bit loaded now like it is a bit knowing like it might seem like they're taking the piss out of themselves yeah i think it's it's definitely possible should combat that by like using the corner flags for like more mundane things so an update about the community program or you know something

Speaker 30 with the corner flag

Speaker 17 some fans hearts must skip a beat when they see a corner flag even still and speaking of the nuances of uh football communication during the astonville fulham game Matty Cash was deeped not to have handled a goal-bound shot because his arm was sort of dangled behind him, so he could possibly have known it was there.

Speaker 44 The Premier League match centre Charlie tweeted out their official adjudication on this.

Speaker 46 The referee's call of no penalty was checked and confirmed by VAR, with the action from Cash deemed not to be a handball offence, with the arm in a justifiable position.

Speaker 48 Is this a new word in handball?

Speaker 65 Yeah, that does sound like a new thing.

Speaker 48 I feel like it works better than unnatural position, because

Speaker 33 justifiable opens up a a whole new can of words.

Speaker 64 Yeah, I mean, it does a bit.

Speaker 56 It does. Like, can you justify? I'm not sure you can justify it.

Speaker 59 I think you can justify that.

Speaker 5 It was just, I mean, it feels quite subjective.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Getting the plausible deniability to handball situations, it doesn't feel like that's the way to go, does it, really?

Speaker 18 Well, unnatural didn't really do the job that people thought it did, Dave, because, I mean, it's a very big picture thing to apply to that sort of situation.

Speaker 42 What is a natural position?

Speaker 48 But a justifiable position for a hand that I think covers a few bases that were left unchecked before.

Speaker 23 So in this situation, Matty Cash was attempting to block a shot side on and one of his arms extended backwards in the motion of doing it.

Speaker 48 So then you could argue that previously that was unnatural because it was away from his body, which was a ludicrous definition. And now it becomes justifiable.

Speaker 48 So justifiable is basically natural plus could happen.

Speaker 60 It's perfectly plausible that it could happen.

Speaker 49 And those two things come together. I think we might see an improvement in things.

Speaker 7 I guess so, maybe, Yeah, I don't think the natural and unnatural thing really worked either. Um, endlessly picked apart, which is the that's the problem.

Speaker 7 I think Jonathan Wilson wrote a piece about this today. It's just the endless scrutiny that the law just cannot bear.

Speaker 5 Yeah, and yeah, that's it.

Speaker 64 Yeah, yeah, that's what I've said before.

Speaker 30 Like, hand balls basically functioned for like 100 years. On you kind of know one when you see one.
Like, it was always this really hard thing to define, and we just about got by with it.

Speaker 30 Like, it just, there's there are so many grey areas and inconsistencies.

Speaker 55 Because, like, 99.9% of handballs, Charlie, are undeliberate anyway.

Speaker 63 Like, that's the only thing that's not.

Speaker 39 That's the thing.

Speaker 5 Exactly.

Speaker 65 Yeah, that's it, which is always such a fallacy as well.

Speaker 30 Yeah, about like the intent and stuff.

Speaker 27 Oh, well, good to get stuck into the laws of the game. Yeah.

Speaker 24 Next up, this came from Jack Copper of listenfairplay.com.

Speaker 31 Fame.

Speaker 63 Here's John Champion leaving a very entry-level gag by Graham Lasseau hanging in the St.

Speaker 62 James's Park Air on Sunday.

Speaker 16 If you Newcastle supporters, if you get to get their tongues fully around his surname, they keep calling him Baldemore's.

Speaker 47 So far, he's more of a hero than a villain.

Speaker 38 Dave, it felt like a lifetime.

Speaker 60 John Champion's really good at this now.

Speaker 25 I think he's the number one of the art form.

Speaker 7 I'm just going to let you think about what you've done here, Graham.

Speaker 36 There's a rare twist on this one, Charlie.

Speaker 17 Normally, the commentator completely ignores it and then goes for the silence.

Speaker 48 This one, this one got a sound that I can

Speaker 17 vaguely remember from the office.

Speaker 31 And when I think it's it's Gareth makes a joke too far and Brent goes, oh

Speaker 30 yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's that, yeah.

Speaker 60 I need to know what scene that's from.

Speaker 18 I consulted the office expert Darren Richmond.

Speaker 17 He couldn't find the correct scene.

Speaker 26 So it's up to someone out there to find the sound I'm thinking of.

Speaker 25 But it was kind of like, oh, so no, I can't do that.

Speaker 30 Is that not in the get out?

Speaker 6 I mean it get out. Yes.

Speaker 39 Yes.

Speaker 9 Oh, maybe.

Speaker 59 But no, because he doesn't send Gareth out.

Speaker 30 But I think it is that I think it might be that scene because they're all making sort of bawdy jokes and it's like I'd like to escape up her tunnel. Get out.

Speaker 68 I mean it get out.

Speaker 30 And I think earlier.

Speaker 56 I think earlier Gareth has made one and there's all right.

Speaker 22 God.

Speaker 52 Anyway,

Speaker 60 great analysis there. Right, this next one comes from Murray Burts.

Speaker 17 He says, I was catching up on BBC Norfolk's The Scrimmage, which is Norwich City's dedicated fanzine radio show.

Speaker 17 And part of the preview ahead of the Stoke game involved a Stoke City fan joining the show to provide some insight into the opposition.

Speaker 70 In my personal opinion, the last few years the main problem for Stoke has been the defensive side of things and this season there isn't that.

Speaker 70 You look at our back line, you've got Aaron Cresswell, acres of Premier League experience. You've got Ashley Phillips, Boeson Law, Ben Wilmot.

Speaker 24 Dave, I love acres of experience.

Speaker 63 It's weirdly brilliant.

Speaker 29 I think it should be now the official unit of measurement for experience.

Speaker 53 Acres of experience, like because it implies that it implies that the experience is kind of sprawling out, spreading itself out to be admired, basking in the sunlight you've worked your whole career you've got a massive property with loads of land it does work nicely what is the incumbent unit of measurement for experience charlie is it bags bags of experience bags of experience yeah i think so that doesn't feel grandiose enough doesn't feel like it has enough gravitas to it no bags bags of experience because yeah acres of experience charlie implies a legacy doesn't it like as dave says kind of here is what i have built you yeah you might go more route one if it was a manager and you're talking, you just go with a unit of time and be like, he's got decades' worth of experience at the top level or something like that, or even years' worth.

Speaker 36 Acres of experience.

Speaker 36 Incredible use of acres there.

Speaker 44 Next up, a footballer's name's in things.

Speaker 62 It comes from a content aardvark on Reddit.

Speaker 43 This is Craig Charles with Karis Matthews.

Speaker 71 Craig Charles, this is brilliant. Thanks for bringing it in.

Speaker 72 Yeah, thank you. It's June, isn't it?

Speaker 71 It's absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 71 Next week, though, it also looks brilliant. You've got Richard Hawley coming in on Tuesday.

Speaker 72 No, we haven't. Haven't you?

Speaker 72 Tuesday the first. Tuesday, we've got Brad Friedel and John Hegley.

Speaker 39 What's Brad Friedel doing on six music?

Speaker 49 What are you in here to talk about, Brad?

Speaker 30 I can't imagine Brad Friedel being a sort of like lapsed DJ or something, you know, one of those like veteran DJs who sort of in in his younger years was was quite big in Ibiza.

Speaker 7 Or maybe someone that's like turned to DJing, like like um like Steven Davis has. Yeah, Jamie Lescott as well.
Yeah, you know, just the sort of cute, oh, he actually likes DJing sort of thing.

Speaker 69 Loves his DJing?

Speaker 7 Proper like house DJ.

Speaker 36 Got into it when he was at Galatassarai and it just picked it back up again.

Speaker 17 But I think I can see what's happened here, Dave, because it's presumably to promote the Terminator Live, a screening of the 1984 sci-fi classic with a live orchestra playing the soundtrack as composed by Brad Fiedel.

Speaker 40 Oh.

Speaker 36 Yeah, he did the soundtrack to both Terminator, the first two Terminator films.

Speaker 49 It's spelt almost exactly the same. But yeah,

Speaker 33 there's Steve Sidwell as well.

Speaker 23 He's a sort of TV film music composer out there, Charlie.

Speaker 17 We could make a whole Barclay Zero team out of this lot.

Speaker 30 Clearly a lot of overlap, yeah.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 48 Brad Friedel.

Speaker 42 Yeah, Craig Giles is a Liverpool fan.

Speaker 53 So you can see how doubly how that may have happened.

Speaker 40 So but you never know.

Speaker 14 Maybe it is Brad Friedel with his weird little accent coming on BBC Radio 6 music.

Speaker 17 Next up, this came from Steve Bryant.

Speaker 45 Here is Kevin Clark on the Mina Kimes Show, an NFL podcast.

Speaker 67 Have you seen the It Can't Get Worse in This TikTok meme from soccer? Okay, I need to explain this. This is one of the funniest things in my life.

Speaker 67 And it's huge in Europe, and it bleeds over to American TikTok, sports TikTok. There's this manager named Mick McCarthy, and he's been around the block, and he's like a John Fox type.

Speaker 67 He's like kind of a classic retread.

Speaker 56 Okay.

Speaker 67 And there's a question in a press conference where this guy goes, Mick, three points in 15 games. It can't go on like this.
And Mick McCarthy just goes, it can.

Speaker 5 It can.

Speaker 66 It can.

Speaker 67 And like, I think it is so deeply embedded in my cranium now. Whenever I think things can't get worse or things can't go on like this, it can.

Speaker 17 Charlie, I think there are now too many things out in popular culture for Mick McCarthy to be presented with and have to sigh about it.

Speaker 43 because we listen to Saipan.

Speaker 50 He's got a lot on his plate.

Speaker 30 Yeah, he's just the go-to guy.

Speaker 50 The world we live in, isn't it?

Speaker 51 Drinko Starr again. Why?

Speaker 5 The world we live in.

Speaker 7 Maybe that's what we sound like when we're sort of trying to explain things about other sports other than football that we don't know. We always really quite understand.

Speaker 32 Yeah, I mean, we get the gist, but we're not quite bang on.

Speaker 27 I mean, when we mentioned bunting in baseball the other day, I expected the flood of emails I would get.

Speaker 5 It's like, well, you didn't get it quite right.

Speaker 39 It's like, okay, I'm not going to get into any more detail than that.

Speaker 18 But I get the sense that this is exactly what the Chinese invented TikTok for, to make Nick McCarthy become a global reference point, whether he likes it or not.

Speaker 45 Indeed, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Quite democratic, the meme process, isn't it?

Speaker 49 Anyway, this episode is brought to you in association with NordVPN.

Speaker 17 For those who don't know, VPN stands for virtual private network. It secures your connection, protecting your personal information and online activity, especially on public Wi-Fi.

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 48 Indeed, over to the southern hemisphere we go next.

Speaker 17 This is from Alby McIntosh.

Speaker 12 He said, he thought you'd enjoy this clip from a New Zealand provincial rugby game between Bay of Plenty and Waikato.

Speaker 55 Some great singing commentary

Speaker 60 as this winger scores a try.

Speaker 60 Oh my goodness, what a finish.

Speaker 50 Incredible flourish at the end.

Speaker 31 The melody sets it up, Charlie, and then the lovely flourish at the end.

Speaker 17 But God knows what tune it matches.

Speaker 30 Yeah, there was a bit earlier on, and I thought that was it. Which made more sense in a way as you're kind of getting more excited, as you realise.

Speaker 30 And then, but then he's, yeah, he's obviously, I'm just going to fully commit to it now.

Speaker 34 That's rugby, of course, Dave.

Speaker 49 But can you imagine, oh my goodness, what a finish ever happening in football.

Speaker 60 What kind of goal could that possibly be? Maybe Martinelli's against Manchester City.

Speaker 25 The lob might work.

Speaker 49 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 65 I mean,

Speaker 7 when you said there was going to be some singing commentary, I didn't quite expect that, to be honest. I think that is the most ridiculous example we've had yet.

Speaker 7 The bit at the end there, it's like it's almost, it's like someone saying, one minute, PVD in a minute.

Speaker 33 That is the intonation, is that I'll be with you in a minute.

Speaker 55 Anyway, if you want to try NordVPN for yourself, go to NordVPN.com slash cliches, and our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan.

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Speaker 31 Welcome back to Football Clichés.

Speaker 55 Dreamland episode 8 is out this week and we are going deep, Charlie, on the Champions League.

Speaker 17 So many avenues into this for us.

Speaker 26 We're not going to have trouble filling an hour, I suspect.

Speaker 30 No, a sequel to the Champions League 11 that we did, what, 2021 or something like that, quite a while ago, yeah.

Speaker 53 And that was that was great. So, yes, we will go deep.

Speaker 44 Yeah, looking at the Champions League, not just from a football league perspective, but a cultural one as well.

Speaker 40 And it's a cultural behemoth the Champions League yes go to dreamland.football clichés.com and for $5.99 a month you'll get ad-free listing of all of our episodes plus two episodes a month of Dreamland our exclusive news show and other things as well right first item for the second half.

Speaker 28 The news broke this week that Russell M.

Speaker 17 Nelson, the oldest serving president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka the Mormons, died at the weekend at the age of 101.

Speaker 17 Now on their Reddit page Charlie, Latter-day Saints posted a message saying President Nelson just passed away.

Speaker 23 One of the comments underneath, coming on here as a Lutheran, I offer my sincere condolences.

Speaker 14 He was truly a great man of God who elevated and inspired worldwide.

Speaker 49 I mean, this just device.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 41 Lutheran fan here, but.

Speaker 30 Not a so-and-so, but this is

Speaker 30 scarce.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 64 I mean, I guess there is quite an option.

Speaker 30 You do see this when, you know, there's someone who like, he brought people, they brought people together.

Speaker 30 And even though I didn't always agree with their beliefs necessarily, and it is quite comparable to you know this opposition manager or whatever.

Speaker 30 I, you know, there were times I despise them, but you couldn't disagree with their kind of principles or whatever.

Speaker 53 Yeah, never, never nice to see the head of another church lose his life, but you know, this is very much, this is more of a slight variation on the theme, though, isn't it?

Speaker 17 This is a Lutheran fan here coming in peace.

Speaker 32 Anyway, next, a teacher writes in, Charlie, they said, marking a piece of A-level history work this week, I found this gem about Queen Elizabeth I.

Speaker 18 For context, the question was about the extent to which her gender limited her ability to rule effectively.

Speaker 17 And the answer, part of the answer goes, it negatively impacted her ability to rule as she had to silence the doubters in her first few years.

Speaker 30 Very much so.

Speaker 62 Yeah.

Speaker 56 The boo-boo.

Speaker 30 I mean, that would have been, you could have done a good, like, her intray would have, you know, would have had a lot of similarities to managers, you know, bringing a divided country together and

Speaker 30 a lot of uniting that needed to happen. Put the smiles back on their faces.

Speaker 22 Wheeling away from that.

Speaker 69 Bloody Mary's reign.

Speaker 52 Hushed mouths

Speaker 5 gesture.

Speaker 17 But yeah, the teacher asks, Dave, should today's junior historians be taking this kind of cue from football coverage?

Speaker 20 Don't mind it.

Speaker 17 I think silencing the doubters isn't too flippant a phrase to use here.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think it works perfectly. I suppose the only other question, Charlie, is: would Queen Elizabeth I have been a bringing back catch-up monarch or a banning catch-up monarch?

Speaker 30 That's a good question. I think, well, I mean, because Mary I was defined by how sort of violent and brutal she was in going after non-believers.
Absolutely. So I think it would have been a

Speaker 30 bringing back catch-up.

Speaker 7 So Elizabeth I was more of an arm around the shoulder ruler.

Speaker 56 Compared to Mary, yeah.

Speaker 14 How have we not saved this for the live show?

Speaker 33 This could be a whole Charlie Equichaire segment.

Speaker 51 Bringing the rest is history for a bit of a collab.

Speaker 49 Right, this was sent to me by Cliché's royalty, Doc Brown.

Speaker 17 Here's Connor Cody on Five Live, ideally placed to comment on the latest spin of the managerial merry-go-round.

Speaker 76 Obviously, Connor, with you having played under Nuno, straight away coming to you for a take on that appointment.

Speaker 77 Brilliant appointment. Really, really good.

Speaker 77 I think I actually said it to me, Mrs.

Speaker 77 a few weeks ago on the couch, if I'm being honest, that when he left Forest, I just thought it was an absolute tap-in, really, for West Ham with where West Ham were obviously struggling.

Speaker 77 We know what football is.

Speaker 43 Charlie, it's great that Connor Cody's sort of earnest, punditry thoughts are just being uttered at home while they're relaxing around the house.

Speaker 30 I believe it. I totally believe it.
That he would have raised that.

Speaker 31 Weird thing to specify to me.

Speaker 34 I don't know why.

Speaker 64 Yeah, it's a bit odd.

Speaker 34 But yeah, don't take your work home with you, Connor Cody.

Speaker 36 You're still playing, son.

Speaker 42 Don't worry about it. Right, next question comes from Hen Cowan.

Speaker 17 Gary Doherty was widely acknowledged to be a centre-forward and a centre-half.

Speaker 43 Dion Dublin, too.

Speaker 17 Mark Hughes and Dwight York both centre forwards who became holding midfielders. Dan Byrne would be listed as a centre half and a left back.

Speaker 17 How many games does someone have to play for their second position to become officially one they can play?

Speaker 8 Harry Maguire has has come on a fair bit up top, but it feels too emergency option for it to be said that Harry Maguire can also play up top.

Speaker 18 And you'd be very surprised to see him start there.

Speaker 55 So maybe it's about starting games.

Speaker 63 But then Mikel Marino, would it be said he's a centre mid who can also play up top?

Speaker 18 Would he be listed on Wikipedia as a centre midfielder and centre forward? If not, when does one progress to being accepted as someone who can play in two positions?

Speaker 31 Charlie. Starting a game, does that feel like a good criterion?

Speaker 59 Yeah, I do think that is a difference.

Speaker 30 I mean, there's a big difference between to actually start a game is you've kind of got to know what you're doing a little bit or at least try and work out what you need to do in that position.

Speaker 30 If you're just getting chucked, if you're just going up there, you know, late doors to try and salvage a goal.

Speaker 30 I mean, I guess this does raise the thing that football doesn't have a kind of definitive lister of positions. I mean, people use different sources for this, don't they?

Speaker 30 There's not, it's not like, you know, you earn a qualification to become, yeah, he's got his doctorate in centre-forward play.

Speaker 30 He can play there now. You know, some people might go on Wikipedia.

Speaker 69 Some might go on

Speaker 68 map. It has that.

Speaker 30 Exactly.

Speaker 65 Yeah. I mean, Mikel Marino

Speaker 30 is an interesting example, I suppose, because he was fully an emergency centre-forward, but things were so stretched. He actually had to play there.

Speaker 30 I think he still kind of is in that bracket.

Speaker 30 I don't think many people would be thinking of him as like a viable option to be starting games there.

Speaker 18 How many games has he started up front?

Speaker 30 Must be close to double figures because there was a really long period where he was basically the only option

Speaker 9 last season.

Speaker 30 But someone like Dirk Cowd, you remember, he came as a striker and then was a winger, you know, was a right-winger, basically. That was all he did.

Speaker 30 So I don't know at what point that would have officially changed.

Speaker 7 The sort of right-winger that just does not exist anymore in football. Functional, hard-working,

Speaker 7 sort of wide man.

Speaker 30 I'd say someone like Jacob Murphy is in that kind of category. Like he, he plays as much for his sort of scrapping and helping out defensively, like incredible attitude and engine.

Speaker 30 He's not someone you're playing necessarily. I know he does get and has improved his output, but I think he's primarily just like an incredibly good, reliable pro in the way that Dirk Kout was.

Speaker 29 So to have your emergency second position welcomed into your official CV, Dave, we're looking at at least half a dozen starts in that position and not during a sort of makeshifty kind of injury crisis either.

Speaker 17 When it comes to the point where you're trusted in that role.

Speaker 53 So obviously Harry McGuire will never be starting up front for Manchester United, no matter how many times he excels there in extremists.

Speaker 7 It's not like he's being brought on with half an hour left either to play up front.

Speaker 7 It's like he literally gets put up front for the last five minutes or moved up the pitch for the last five minutes to try and help.

Speaker 7 A deluxe example of somebody like this would be like David Aliba, who if hard pressed, I'm not sure I'd necessarily know exactly what his best position is.

Speaker 6 But he's a shitless man basically now.

Speaker 30 I mean Philip Lahm became a midfielder didn't he and like a legit one even though it was then moving him back that sort of won Germany the World Cup.

Speaker 30 But isn't this as well and I'm far from an expert on it but isn't FPL partly about getting those players who are kind of on the borderline and are graded as a midfielder even though they you know they're sort of on that borderline.

Speaker 7 There is a bit of discussion sometimes. Like for example Jared Bowen is a striker in FPL this season.
Right. Right.
Whereas Salah is a midfielder.

Speaker 33 That is mad.

Speaker 46 They're essentially the same player.

Speaker 42 That's that's strange.

Speaker 5 Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 32 Okay. Interesting question from Hen Cowan there.

Speaker 52 Writes.

Speaker 14 Finally, this came from Tapiocahead.

Speaker 31 They say, I don't think I can trust anything anyone on Antiques Roadshow says anymore.

Speaker 17 As someone brings in a painting that depicts a historic moment for English football.

Speaker 72 Must be 1966, the World Cup final. Here we can see Jeff Hearst about to score the winner.

Speaker 64 I'll stop you you there, son.

Speaker 33 Supposed to be an expert on this stuff.

Speaker 41 That's Jeff Hurst ramming home the four.

Speaker 27 The game's settler.

Speaker 40 What perturbs you more, Dave?

Speaker 27 The fact that he might think it's the winning goal, or he thinks that the fourth goal in a 4-2 is the winner.

Speaker 7 The latter, I think.

Speaker 52 Right. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Either way, don't take that valuation. Get a second opinion is what I'm saying.

Speaker 44 Because it's going to be deeply inaccurate.

Speaker 18 Anyway, as Dan Weaver says on Reddit, speaking of antiques spreading misinformation, it's time for Keys and Grey Corner.

Speaker 60 Great to outsource this for once.

Speaker 49 Right, first item is Richard Keys, great on Twitter.

Speaker 32 This weekend, by the way, here he is talking about the West Ham situation.

Speaker 18 Karen Brady should follow Potter out of the door. Remember, we've appointed the right man to continue our success.

Speaker 17 Everything is in place.

Speaker 23 Clearly not.

Speaker 52 What a shambles.

Speaker 46 See you at 2pm, Mecca.

Speaker 38 Oh, I love a Mecca.

Speaker 30 I love it when he tucks in a mecca.

Speaker 61 Absolutely class.

Speaker 38 Right, let's get into the real stuff.

Speaker 40 Here is Keesy on Graham Potter.

Speaker 23 Basically, just what a seal of approval this is from the big man.

Speaker 47 I agree with you.

Speaker 11 I think the big unrest with West Ham fans is the stadium. He's a myth.
I'm afraid he gained a reputation for playing

Speaker 11 nice football in a number when football was played the right way and he's delivered nothing.

Speaker 13 And he's a nice guy and I wish him well and he'll get a championship job I suppose.

Speaker 5 He's a myth.

Speaker 7 He is a myth.

Speaker 5 Wow.

Speaker 5 Doesn't exist, Andy. Nope.

Speaker 41 And for some reason, Charlie, being called a myth seemed more harmless than saying he'll get a championship job, maybe.

Speaker 30 Yeah, yeah, the implication would be that he'd be lucky to get that.

Speaker 6 he'll be going abroad. Good luck to Potter.

Speaker 7 And the thing that you wish you can't see if you're listening there is when Keese's talking about playing football the right way, he's doing the little thing with he's like doing that.

Speaker 7 How do you describe it? He's like, as if he's like holding a pen and just sort of flicking his hand.

Speaker 31 I was thinking it's like sowing seeds.

Speaker 9 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 29 Distributing the ball. I'm so glad that he decides that is the universal gesture for playing the right way, which, by the way, they think is on the way out, Charlie, playing football the right way.

Speaker 35 Yeah.

Speaker 69 that's been a that's been a big discourse this season, indeed.

Speaker 10 Speaking of going back to old school basics here, this is great from Andy Gray on Ruben Amarin.

Speaker 11 I know what Jason's saying about metrics, stats, I know what they'll do, I know he he will have it out there. There's the stats, there's the metrics.

Speaker 11 Simple fact of the matter is, you don't win a football match on metrics and stats. You win a football match in creating chances and scoring goals.

Speaker 11 If you don't do that, you can take all the metrics that you have, you can say, We've had 900 passes, you've only had two, we've upped our percentage of accurate passes, we've upped our XG

Speaker 11 all over the pitch. But sorry, there's one XG that you haven't quite got the better of, and that's, see that little thing with the three posts at one end of the pitch? Well, there's two of them.

Speaker 11 One you try and put the ball into, and the other you try and keep it out of. They're not very good at either at the moment, I don't think.

Speaker 14 I mean, what is the best bit from that, Charlie?

Speaker 51 For me, it's the hypothetical scenario of a team having 900 passes and the other team having two.

Speaker 69 The great things are that, like, XG is about about creating chances.

Speaker 30 And that is where they're doing quite well. Yeah, I mean, it's just all great, isn't it? And the

Speaker 30 sort of, again, you can't see it, but the pride in Keesy's face through a lot of this, and he's laughing. I think when he does the XG, I can't remember now.
Were there inverted commas?

Speaker 30 There may have been.

Speaker 5 The most aggressive inverted commas I've ever seen.

Speaker 30 So, you know, that's another myth.

Speaker 69 And the pride Keesy, as he's doing it, is like, you, well done, well done, lad.

Speaker 29 He signs off there, Dave, with one of those classic hyper-simplifications of football that is usually attributed to a great manager from back the day.

Speaker 17 He used to say, keep the ball out there, that goal at the other end and score him in that one.

Speaker 18 And there's a certain demographic of football people who love to just relay those stories because it's a simple game, football.

Speaker 72 It's a simple one.

Speaker 7 He did say, see that thing at the end with three posts.

Speaker 39 Which is an incredible way of phrasing it.

Speaker 34 How can I make this really, really simple?

Speaker 32 If anything, he's gone too complicated on the oversimplification. He's got himself in knots.

Speaker 40 Absolute knots.

Speaker 17 Right, finally, between 1.07pm on Saturday and 6.23pm on Sunday, there were just the 13 tweets from Keesy about Premier League officiating in some form.

Speaker 28 He really got on it this weekend, Charlie, but this little trio in the space of about 57 minutes on Saturday were great.

Speaker 44 Referees have got to stop players travelling so far down touchlines.

Speaker 62 They're all at it.

Speaker 42 It's wrong. Ref cam, stop it.

Speaker 6 What a waste of time.

Speaker 42 How is that not a red card?

Speaker 31 Because it starts off with...

Speaker 20 It's a great trio, Charlie, because it starts off with a new bugbear, a new campaign from Keesey.

Speaker 17 Second thing, like a completely innocuous thing to get stuck into.

Speaker 18 And then finally, just a sort of splurged-out thought from nowhere.

Speaker 64 What's his point?

Speaker 65 What is the thing he's talking about in the first one?

Speaker 30 The referees have got to stop players travelling

Speaker 56 on throw-ins, right?

Speaker 53 Yeah, it must be creeping yards. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's tweeted about that quite a lot lately.
It's definitely his new thing. He's moved on from Arteta and managers going out of the technical area to

Speaker 7 players are just constantly stealing yards.

Speaker 17 It feels like this season, more than any other, Charlie, he's turned into the real nemesis of PGM Orwell.

Speaker 45 He's really got stuck into the more.

Speaker 55 But we've had the ongoing vendettas, but now it feels like a real-time kind of checking procedure.

Speaker 17 I feel like he has become the new Premier League match centre.

Speaker 30 He's like the. There's Dale Johnson on one side and then Keesey on the other.

Speaker 5 One's. Dale Johnson's got precedent and logic.

Speaker 30 Yeah. There's one to sort of explain them and the other is just to completely bash sort of everything they do.

Speaker 53 Just get those two together.

Speaker 37 That'd be a good ref watch, wouldn't it?

Speaker 41 It could be a good podcast.

Speaker 22 Call it the Football Authorities or something about that.

Speaker 38 Right.

Speaker 32 Brilliant stuff today. Thanks to you, Charlie Equisher.

Speaker 30 Thank you.

Speaker 44 Thanks to you, Dave Walker. Thank you.

Speaker 60 Thanks to everyone for listening.

Speaker 9 We'll be back on Thursday.

Speaker 8 See you then.

Speaker 4 This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

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