Live show legends, Liverpool's 18ft 10in strike force & a new Neville noise

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from the Netflix series, DeUpjaws.

Get ready for Mike Apps.

You got to keep on reminding your girl how sexy she is, because if you don't, her work husband's gonna tell her.

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Yeah, uh-huh.

Where's she at?

You're looking for that work husband.

That's the first dude that you say to say, You looking for Cheryl?

He's like, No, I'm looking for you.

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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 to have a crack?

He is, you know.

Oh, I think

brilliant!

But jeez!

He's round the goalkeeper!

He's done it!

Absolutely incredible!

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

without a shadow of a doubt giving him lip.

Oh, save!

It's amazing!

He does it tame, and tame, and tame again.

Break up the music!

Charge at last!

This nation is going to dance all night long!

Clichés live show legends.

Is Evangelos Maranakis just one step too serie ah for the Premier League?

Soccer Saturday somehow invents a new scoreline format after 33 years.

Liverpool's 18-foot 10-inch strike force.

Could a Saturday 3pm kickoff ever be the Premier League game of the season?

The earliest you could not want the first half to end.

And Richard Keyes' £400 million stars from the 60s.

Brought to your ears by Goal Hanger Podcasts.

This is Football Clichés.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Football Cliches.

I'm Adam Hurry.

I'm in my Manchester hotel room ahead of tonight's show.

Alongside me, Charlie Eccleshare, how you doing?

Very well, thank you.

And alongside you is David Walker.

How are things?

Things are good.

Yeah, I say tonight's show.

This will be...

This will already have happened by the time this podcast goes out, but I want to reflect on the Dublin-Birmingham leg of our tour.

Charlie,

a couple from Philadelphia at the Birmingham Show, a Farouse listener at the Dublin Drinks, which were crowned by a six-foot eleven-inch man getting double figures on HHG Live.

I mean, what scenes we have witnessed.

Yeah, they really were.

No, it was a great doubleheader.

Birmingham and Dublin both very much delivered and a couple of great shows back to back.

So we head on to the business end now, Dave.

Cliche's Live in Manchester, Leeds, and Glasgow, all sold out.

For all the shows, doors 6.30, show 7.30.

We'll finish around about 9.45 and straight to the pub.

Dave, the pub scenes have been just consistently superb on this tour.

Yeah, they really have.

Birmingham was really good last Thursday.

Dublin on a Friday night lived up to all expectations, if not surpassing them.

So, if this is the business end, I think Dublin on a Friday night was

a triumphant Carabao Cup final for us, I think.

That's exactly the way I yeah, I completely agree with this.

It set us up perfectly, but but but we kick on from here.

No laurels will be rested on.

Let's kick off the adjudication panel with this, Charlie.

Nottingham Forest's latest pantomime appears to be reaching some sort of conclusion with the impending arrival of Shaw Deich as their new manager.

But

the way that English football sort of chews up and spits out its managers, does that mean we're done with Ange Postakoglu now?

Has it been decided that he can no longer hack English football on the basis of those opening seven or eight games with Nottingham Forest and that compounded whatever happened at Spurs and that's it?

I don't know.

I think he's still got a...

you know, this could be written off as being so crazy and, well, it's the impossible job.

You know, it's a madhouse to go in and work there.

I think, you know, a club that appoints him could sell it as that.

You know, you can't judge a manager on what they did at Nottingham Forest.

So I don't think he's fully done.

I think he's still,

I think he's got one more crack at it where, you know, it wouldn't be totally strange for an English or Premier League club to give him a shot.

What sort of club do you think would appoint him then in the Premier League if that was to happen?

I mean, could a club like, you know, a club like Everton if there was a vacancy there?

Leeds, of course, have been mentioned in dispatches.

Yeah, kind of Heritage-y club feels quite on brand for him.

So I wouldn't rule that out.

I mean, Forest was a club in the Europa League, so

his stock was still pretty high off the back of Spurs.

I mean, he's such a confusing manager because he's just won the Europa League, but he also came 17th.

So it's a very hard one to make sense of.

And it's absolutely, if he does well, then we'll frame that Spurs thing as, well, yeah, he went for the Europa League, he binned off the league.

If he doesn't, as at Forest, it's you look at his Premier League record, it's awful over a prolonged period of time and he fluked to the Europa League.

That's

kind of just how it is.

Would there be any chance that he could follow Nuno again and get into West Ham at some point in the next 18 years?

Yeah,

not out of the question.

Yeah, just follow Nuno everywhere.

That would actually be quite

clean up Nuno's kind of non-mess every time he leaves a club.

I think that's actually quite good.

But on Forest, Dave, I feel like it's too obvious and potentially too terrifying to criticise Evangelos Marinakis for the way he does his business.

But more specifically, and I think this might be my most current this league of hours opinion that I hold.

I really don't like sort of Serie Arstyle chaos ownership in the Premier League.

I feel like it has no place here.

And, you know, some might say that Watford essentially began this, they opened this can of worms, but Watford's chaos is a little bit it comes with a bit of a sigh says, you know, this is just how we do things.

But Marinakis is deliberately chaotic.

It just feels like this shouldn't happen in our Premier League.

I know what you mean, and I'm glad that you are distinguishing Watford perhaps from some of the other clubs.

Because, you know, we still have this tag, and obviously, to a certain extent, rightfully so.

But there are loads of other clubs that have also hired and fired in quick succession.

It's not just the Watford thing anymore.

I do think there is...

a fair element of

chaos with us.

It's actually not that well thought out ever.

It's not some sort of ruthless, cold, steely-eyed strategy.

It is.

It's something more of a shrug of the shoulders isn't it a little bit yeah but i know what you mean it is more pronounced when because we didn't do it too much in the premier league only that season that we went down well the two seasons that we went down we did have three managers in each but before we was just changing the manager every summer which feels neater whereas yeah for forest hiring and getting rid of him so quickly and and even like even getting him in the first place felt a bit chaotic yes there's also the element and you know far be it from me to tell a group of supporters how they should feel about a manager, especially one where most of my colleagues support Nottingham Forest.

But I don't know, it's just like,

what's the limit now?

Like, it felt like they just weren't having him, basically, from the start.

And it was five Premier League games, three of which, or certainly two, you know, two of which were Newcastle away and Arsenal away, which they'd been massive second favourites for, and you'd sort of expect them to lose those games.

So you're talking about three Premier League games where, you know, there were real points up for grabs.

And the results were bad in those three games.

But it's like, I don't know, we're at such a point now.

And fan power, I guess it's a good thing in some ways.

You know, if, you know, maybe Marianakis doesn't care, I don't know, but it does often chairmen do take note of this sort of thing.

And I don't know, I just don't know where it ends now.

Like, I feel if fans don't like a manager, maybe that's maybe people will say that's a good thing, but it just feels like you're, you're basically doomed.

And maybe that's on an owner to get a sense of, well, are the fans going to sort of warm to this guy?

And if not, don't go for him.

But it's like,

it just feels like such a short pit.

You know, we make these judgments so quickly nowadays.

And I don't know.

I just don't really know where that ends.

Maybe, you know, is it...

Because, you know, you hear things as well.

And I tweeted about this.

I got a lot of feedback from Forest fans basically being like, he was crap.

We had to get rid of him.

But then it's like, well, after one game, are we going to reach a point where after one game, we're kind of like, you know what?

It's just, this guy isn't working.

It's clear that this guy just isn't going to work.

So there's no point carrying on.

We may as well just get rid of him.

Well, do you say that, Charlie?

After Javi Gracia's first game in charge of his second spell on Saturday, we lost one nil away at Sheffield United.

I mean, some of this is probably knowing, but there were people on Watford Twitter saying, get and gum.

Well, there you go.

Watford sensing that Forrest were coming for their title and just go for it.

But, Charlie, like many things in football, this process will accelerate.

So, yeah, as you say, if this is going to happen after five, six, seven games, then it will happen after one, two, three games.

There's no reason for it not to.

And also, I'm speculating here, and it doesn't really matter what club it is.

Do you suspect that some people just enjoy the spectacle of having a tangible effect on the turnover of their managers?

Quite possibly.

Yeah.

All right.

Nice, sincere chat to kick things off.

State State of football.

This is great, isn't it?

Osto Lizzo writes in next, Dave.

And it's Peter Crouch in the build-up to Nottingham Forest versus Chelsea on Saturday on TNT.

This was great stuff.

He said, Cole Palmer was so on absolute fire last season, and Chris Wood was on such fire.

I love on such fire.

This should definitely catch on.

Oh, he was on such fire.

He was on such fire.

It's just great.

Why doesn't it work grammatically?

I mean, there must be an expert out there who can explain why such fire doesn't work, but I can't think of an obvious reason.

It's an abstract now, it should be fine.

Oh, he was on such fire.

Yeah, it sounds there's the wistfulness when you see it written down.

Those heady days, we were young.

We were on such fire at that time.

Speaking of things that I can't find a grammatical reason against but sound utterly odd, this came from James, who was watching Soccer Saturday.

Now, Charlie, Simon Thomas has been doing Soccer Saturday for quite a few years now.

He's completely well versed in it, but I suspect he's got to the point now where he's run out of new ways of expressing score lines.

But this is no slight against him because I've just simply never heard this before.

Finally, Scottish League 2 and an athletic in serting by a goal to nil.

Dumbarton are trailing by goal to two at home.

So the leaders.

There's nothing actually wrong with that, Charlin.

I literally have never heard anyone say that before.

That's a classic, but also because he's just done it in the way we're familiar with.

It's just a classic, we've never heard it, so it sounds so alien and weird.

Dave, how do you feel about trailing by a goal to two?

Trailing by a goal to two.

What was the score?

It was 2-1 to the other team, so they're trailing by a goal to two.

Yeah,

it's weird.

Yeah, I mean, there's double words through there.

To be fair, you wouldn't even say, though, they're trailing 1-2.

Like, you'd always go with the leading team first.

So, if you're going to do it, you could do it that way.

It would still sound really odd, but at least that would be a bit more consistent with what we're used to as a construction.

Maybe he's just invented a whole new way of doing things and bring that on.

Time for footballers' names in things.

This came from Josh Blanco.

This is FBI agent Scott Payne, known as the Hillbilly Donnie Brasco, who risks his life to expose violent neo-Nazi cells threatening national security, including the KKK and biker gangs.

So we start watching, and it's just spewing hate, and that's not illegal.

You know, First Amendment protection in the United States.

And we knew that pretty much the leader was a guy named Ronaldo Nazaro.

It's great that you specified the actual Ronaldo.

El Phenomeno.

Yeah.

I mean, we've expressed before, Charlie, on this podcast about how uncomfortable it is that the old Ronaldo has to have an you know we have to fumble around for ways of

referring to him but um someone else also um referred to you know remember Adriano of course the uh Brazilian he he is now referred to as shot 99 exactly he is now referred to as Adriano Imperador which I think is

we can't we can't embrace this stuff like there's no there's no there shouldn't be any confusion about which Adriano you're talking about and please don't just incorporate just nicknames grand sounding nicknames into people's names where does it where does it stop No, Nigel, no.

Well, there isn't another.

I mean, there obviously have been other players called Adriano, but not of an equivalent standing as the two famous Ronaldos.

So there's no need for it.

There they go, yeah.

But it turns out Ronaldo has a whole new sideline anyway.

This came from Adam Schaefer, Dave.

It's an absurd story from the mid-1960s.

He mailed himself across the world, trying to save money on airfare, and what was already a bad idea on paper was a disaster in reality.

19-year-old Brian Robson was living in Australia and wanted to get back home to Great Britain, but couldn't afford a plane ticket.

Brian Robson?

Spelt exactly the same as well.

Brian Robson should be said in an American accent.

This is just, you know, a similar problem we've had with many other names that pop up in American things, Charlie.

Brian Robson's just not an American-sounding name.

Very odd.

He tried to mail himself back home from Australia.

Wouldn't put it past Captain Marvel.

Right, this came from Hinch.

Here is Arnie Slot falling into a class.

classic trap in an interview and just about climbing out of it.

Do you think he's one of those players that

you need to play into form or do you want, do you feel like you almost have to remove him from the firing line almost?

It's a bit of both, maybe.

Not a bit of both.

It's just he, of course, he has to play and he played a lot.

Good to see Charlie people showing discipline about this, isn't it?

And Arnie Slott, he's not lost it yet.

Yeah, no, I've rarely had more respect for him.

I think this is brilliant from him.

Because you can see in the clip, he's really sort of annoyed at himself for falling into the trap and then does really well to be like, no, I'm not going to to just do that actually no i'm i'm better than that i'm going to think about it in real good to see it happening in real time he's the muscle memory has kicked in there but then he's

yeah he's he's got enough about him to say actually no sorry no i'm better than this it's not it's not a bit of both you say muscle memory but um charlie maybe it took someone with a strong grasp of english as their second language to question it to have that critical distance and just say do you know what english shouldn't work this way you can't just you can't just say this stuff so maybe he's just sort of constantly sort of checking himself because I've seen him in press conferences say, you know, sort of question his English, his real subtle sort of use of English to make sure he's saying exactly what he means.

So he's obviously always on guard about this sort of stuff.

So maybe it took someone like this to say, do you know what?

It's not a bit of both.

You can't just say that.

Well, yeah, it follows on what was the thing he was asked in the frame or in the...

Oh, in the fray.

Yeah, yeah, in the fray, that was it.

Yeah, in the fray, yeah, thrown.

And he sort of interrogated it.

And yeah, I think he's probably seen people saying a bit of both because he's probably watched, you you know, as part of his prep, how managers speak to the media, seen it a lot, and then

dismantled it before our very eyes.

I really hope there's a module in the Liverpool media training about this.

That would be fantastic.

Well,

I do know that managers, you know, it's quite common when clubs are appointing managers, they'll look at their, you know, how they are with the media and that sort of thing.

And I wonder if then...

By extension, managers do that with other managers to kind of, yeah, see what the opposition are doing.

Yeah, good.

Speaking of Liverpool, Dave, they ended the game against Manchester United.

Obviously, naturally, searching for a goal, so they were pouring forward and they had a very top-heavy team towards the end.

But what I don't like about Liverpool at that stage is they had three rangy/slash leggy forwards on, all at the same time.

And has history ever proven this to work?

I mean, there's no real.

Someone else pointed out that all three of those leggy forwards, that's Alexander Isak, Hugo Ikotike,

and Cody Gakpo, could all be about five foot nine and it wouldn't change their game in any way whatsoever, which I also thought was quite a stupid observation.

But

I mean, you need to have some variety.

I'd rather have three small players than three leggy forwards.

And I'm not saying they cancel each other out.

In fact, I don't know what I'm saying, but I don't like it.

Well, it's the old classic big man, big man, slightly less big man front three, isn't it?

They are literally six foot two, six foot three, six foot four, which I think is absolutely wonderful.

Is it just to ease, you know, so we can say as a collective, like, what are they?

I mean, six, two, six, three, six, four?

And you kind of nail it just by saying, yeah,

that's completely accurate.

Yeah, I think, yeah, two of them six foot three, one of them six foot four, Dave, which makes them a total of 18 foot 10.

Wow.

You can't have an 18 foot 10 front line.

You can't.

No, it's absurd.

It's absurd.

If a double-decker bus can

drive under your front line, then that should be the threshold.

Now, Harry Maguire's winner at Anfield, Charlie, resurrected the now presumably about, what, 15-year phenomenon that is the Gary Neville noise.

And we've heard all sorts of variations on the Gary Neville noise this wasn't necessarily a brand new breakthrough moment for it but just listen to his reaction to Maguire's winner

is he making those those additional noises the like yelps I'm sure that's yeah I'm sure it is him but um but that particular tone from Neville just out the back quite scratchy quite high-pitched and it instantly made me think of this and that's when the begging starts.

And then they come to me and they go, well, David, we've got rid of him.

You're right.

You come back.

You're the man for this job.

You're the best man for this job.

You come back.

I go, yeah, sure.

How much money have you got?

Because this is going to cost you.

This is going to cost you.

I don't know if it's banged on or not.

It's interesting that so your brain, your brain went.

I mean, the two moments, Gary Neville celebrating a last-minute Harry Maguire winner at Anvil, and David Brent pissed on his hotel room bed, lamenting his place in life.

They're not exactly the same energy.

I mean is it a sense of can you I mean I can sort of imagine Gary Neville thinking about that with Valencia and still being bitter about how that ended and having this fancy of them coming crawling back to him and him saying to them this is going to cost you.

I will do it because I've not managed since but I'm not happy about it.

Oh yeah, maybe.

But yeah, yeah, as you say, Dave, funny where the brain goes.

Finally for part one, this came from James.

It's Wigan manager Ryan Lowe on Sky, leaving no stone unturned in his analysis of the average squad age in League One.

I think the average age of that squad will be doing so much stuff on our recruitment today and I think there's a 28, 29, so it's so told.

There's a lot of clubs that are 24, 25, 23 and you know, maybe 26, 27, of course, it'll go right up, but their average age I think is 28 and a half.

So

has he said all the numbers in the 20s there?

I think he has.

That is amazing.

That's sort of like peak of that genre.

Dave, I'm pretty sure no one has ever said the numbers between 20 and 30 in that order before, ever.

It's like hearing the lottery numbers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You really had to concentrate there.

And he said, he said 24, 25, 23 at one stage as well.

No one has ever done that.

And he, you know, he's a forward-thinking manager, so maybe this is a new way of doing things.

But yeah, 24, 25, 23 is unprecedented.

I love it.

Absolutely love it.

Yeah, there we go.

Right, that's it for part one.

We'll be back very shortly.

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Welcome back to Football Clichés.

A reminder that you can sign up for Dreamland for $5.99 a month.

For that, you'll get ad-free listening of all of our episodes, two episodes a month of Dreamland, our exclusive news show, and other bits as well.

We're recording episode nine on Tuesday.

It's going to go at ASEP after that.

It's going to be a good one, Dave.

It's all about a cultural cornerstone, or is it?

Yes, we are tackling Monday night football.

And it's something we've touched upon here and there in the past, but we're really going to get stuck into it this time.

And already, just by doing even the most cursory bit of research, there's so much stuff to go at.

It will be good.

Yeah, this is going to be clip heavy.

Just go to dreamland.football cliches.com to sign up and join the fun.

Right, let's kick off part two, Charlie, with this from Sam King.

He says, Crystal Palace 3 Bournemouth 3 on Saturday was a cracker and an early contender for Premier League game of the season.

If it ends up taking that title, then by my reckoning, it will be the first game played at 3pm on a Saturday and not broadcast by one of the major broadcasters to do so in at least a decade.

Here are what I consider to be the Premier League games of the season from the 15-16 season onwards and on which channel and in which slot they were shown.

15-16, Norwich 4, Liverpool 5, the 12-30 on BT Sport.

16-17, Bournemouth 4, Liverpool 3, that was the 2pm Sunday game on Sky.

17-18, Liverpool 4, Manchester City 3 Sky Super Sunday 2018-19 Arsenal 4 Tottenham 2 that was the Sunday game on Sky 2pm 1920 Sheffield United 3 Manchester United 3 Super Sunday 2020 21 Manchester United 1 Tottenham 6 2 p.m.

Sunday game 21 22 Liverpool 2 Manchester City 2 Super Sunday 22 23 Liverpool 4 Tottenham 3 Super Sunday 23 24 Chelsea 4 Man City 4 also Super Sunday and last season Man City 2 Arsenal 2 on Super Sunday.

He says these things are subjective and Charlie's big big brain of Premier League facts may well pull other contenders out of his out of the ether, but some of them may well be on 3 p.m.

on a Saturday and therefore not live on TV.

But what an incredible run it's been for televised games being Premier League game of the season, Charlie.

It's almost as if it's some sort of bias.

Yeah, well, I mean,

this is interesting because it brings up a lot of issues, is maybe not the right word, but yeah, I mean, there are a number of things.

One, obviously, games involving the big teams are likely to be talked about more and be bigged up more and made into things.

They also are more likely to live longer in the memory because they've been watched by a number of people.

So there's probably a limit as to how much a 3PM game can enter the kind of wider consciousness if no one's seen it live because you're not experiencing the emotions in real time.

I mean, the only one that jumps out at me, I was actually at that Liverpool 4, Tottenham 3 game in 2022, 23.

And that was an amazing game.

It was slightly weird.

for a 4-3 because it was a 3-0 3-0 4-3, a bit like the Liverpool Newcastle sequel in 96, 97, which is, as 4-3s go, not the best, I think.

It was a kind of mad game, but that season there was also the Arsenal 3 Bournemouth 2.

That was a Saturday 3 p.m.

That's the only Saturday 3pm game that jumps out.

But again, that's quite a good example because I think that that was a kind of madcap game, but it's probably a bit more self-contained because it wasn't televised.

Rhys Nelson last minute.

Yeah, the Rhys Nelson last minute from 2-0 down to 3-2 in a title race.

You know, if that had been televised, it would have been massive.

You know, all the reaction and everything.

Interesting.

It's interesting what Sam has done here, Charlie, because, and you are, you're definitely the man for this job, as you've already done.

Like, thinking, I don't know, is Sam King a man who studiously goes through each season noting down which game is currently the best game of the season, or has he just gone back through the seasons and looked for the highest scoring games between big teams on TV?

I mean, something of the latter, but not necessarily the highest scoring games.

Just give Sam King's methodology some credit.

They're not highest scoring, but you know what I mean?

Like close, lots of goals, drama.

I'm not saying any of these are necessarily bad games, but there could well be games in those seasons that might perhaps be more for the purist and be lower scoring, but could have been really good games or really important games.

I think this was on TV TV anyway, but the game in 1819 between 960 and Liverpool at the Etihad, John Stone's cleared it off the line.

Yeah, incredible game.

Yeah, you know, so there are examples that you can go for.

But it's a, I mean, what was Charlie?

Was Arsenal, this is, this predates the decade, the last decade, but was Arsenal Newcastle 4, Arsenal 4?

Was that a 3 p.m.

with Toyota Equalizer?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was.

Wow.

I mean, it's a great shout, Dave.

I mean, there's an intersection of variables here.

Of course, you know, big teams play each other on Super Sunday, and therefore, if they produce a great, you know, seven-goal encounter, that's going to be right up there as the consideration.

But for this essentially non-existent award of Premier League game of the season,

could it ever be two lesser lights against each other at 3 p.m.

on a Saturday?

It's a bit like giving the Pushkis award to

something scored in League One.

Like it would never be allowed to happen because it's, well, that's not really high profile enough.

But all things have to be equal in this respect, surely.

But I don't, yeah, well, I think the interesting example is a last season City Arsenal being in Sam's definition game of the season.

And that's a classic one because, you know, the second half of that game was pretty tedious in lots of ways.

It was basically attack v defence because Arsenal were down to 10 men.

But it was so action-packed, I can see why you would characterise it as game of the season.

But that's a good example of a game where are you talking about kind of incident and stakes, or are you just talking about game of the season?

It's kind of like how if you meet a famous person, but yeah, these games are like, if you meet a famous person, the bar for how nice they have to be for you to be like, what a legend, nicest guy in the world.

And all they said was, yeah, hi, how are you?

Yeah, I'm good.

Yeah, they basically need to be polite.

And that's kind of the equivalent of, you know, whereas if you meet a normal person, a Bournemouth Palace, relatively speaking, they've got to do way more to impress you.

You know, like if Bournemouth Palace played a sort of like, oh, that was an interesting two-all draw, that's not being talked about as a game of the season.

For Palace Bournemouth to meet that threshold, it needs to be three-all.

It needs to be crazy comeback.

It needs to be Matetta nearly scoring a fourth in stoppage time.

Like, there are just different bars.

Can't be a pulsating 1-1, can it, Dave, on a 3pm

in Bournemouth Palace?

That would be fair.

Imagine if that got game of the season in the non-existent game of the season.

It's really good.

It's a game.

Yeah.

Just really high quality throughout.

Game is seriously high quality.

Anyway, yeah, thanks to Sam King for this.

Right, next up, this came from Conrad Rogan.

How about this for a comparison?

Franco is the Jürgen Klopp of

the military.

You know, he's a lucky manager.

To be good in football, you've got to be lucky.

Franco is the Jürgen Klopp of the military.

I mean, apart from being an absolutely astonishing comparison,

it's almost like

you can't have the bigger, more significant name first, Charlie.

Yeah, exactly.

And Klopp, I mean, Klopp's politics, I think he would really, really bristle at that.

I mean, most people would, to be fair, but

especially, you know, someone who's kind of been quite forthright like Jürgen Klopp.

Also, is Klopp, I mean, is he known as being a lucky manager, particularly?

I know, I thought that was really odd as well.

Yeah.

There's a lot going on.

Yeah, lucky general.

That said, is anyone?

Are there any managers?

I mean, I get it.

It's funny as well.

If you're talking about a Liverpool manager, Arna Slot, the aforementioned, is kind of talked about sometimes as being like, well, you know, things did sort of fall his way last season, you know, but you make your own luck in that kind of lucky general way.

But I don't remember, like, Klopp, he twice got Liverpool to 90-plus points and they didn't win the league.

I'd say he was an objectively pretty unlucky manager to be up against like that pep super team for pretty much his whole time at Liverpool.

Franco can only suppress what's in front of him, can't he, though?

Well,

yeah, exactly.

Um, I've heard Southgate described as a lucky general by his detractors at a few points in terms of like easy draws and stuff and then coming unstuck when it gets tough.

But yeah, I think you're right.

Yeah, I guess knockout is more easy.

You could say you got a lucky draw or something like that.

That's true.

That's true.

I didn't quite pinpoint what documentary this is actually from, Charlie, but the expert there themselves is presumably from the Liverpool area based on his accent.

I just feel like that's quite an inappropriate kind of

comparison to use.

Quite an unhelpful for the layman, really, isn't it?

Well, they'll be like, well, who's that then?

Very unhelpful on a number of levels.

Yeah, absolutely all over the shop.

Right, straightforward one, perhaps now, Dave.

Samuel Campbell writes in and says, Bill Leslie in the Tottenham Villa match said that when Wendia scored the winner after 77 minutes, or what turned out to be the winner, he said it was a goal worthy to win the game.

Surely this is too early to declare it as such.

I don't know, it's got to be right on the cusp, hasn't it?

That's normally said about a great goal

that has won a game and sort of described with certainty.

You know, that's a goal worthy of winning any game.

Yeah, it's worth winning any game.

So you don't, it doesn't have to come sort of loaded, Charlie, with the speculation that that is actually the winner.

It's just if the goal is good enough and it puts the team into the lead late-ish on, you're allowed to say it?

I'm not sure.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes they will qualify it by being like, and if that is the winner, that's well worthy of it or something like that.

But yeah, like Dave says, I think of it more as a worthy of winning any game

construction.

In this instance,

it's a weird phrase when you think about it.

Like, what game, what goal wouldn't be...

So So a goal

so good that

the game that that goal has been scored in is just a run-of-the-mill game, but it would be a good enough goal to win a World Cup final in theory.

That's what I'm getting at.

Or yeah, Classico or whatever you imagine to be like the highest standard of football.

It wouldn't look out of place as the winner in that.

I mean,

this isn't a job for today, Charlie, but this interests me because it's very much part of the furniture, the old, a goal worthy to win any game.

But no one's ever established the lower threshold for this, have they?

Ever, like, what do you think is the crappest possible, you know, standard-issue goal that would be worthy of this praise?

But the funny thing is, as well, with it, if you really dig into it, is that the biggest games you're the most likely to have for while you won't care how you scored it.

You know, if it's a World Cup final, you're not going to be the least bit bothered that you scored a crappy own goal after a minute.

If you win, if you win the game, you're just delighted you've won the game.

Brendan Johnson in the Europa League final.

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

Excellent, right?

It's a goal really only worthy winning of a

middling Saturday 3PM game.

Yeah, I want more qualified praise for this sort of thing.

There should be shades of grey in this situation, definitely.

Yeah, we're on to something.

Let's tackle this another time.

How about this one, Dave?

It came from Akbar Palawan, who was watching the world feed of Fulham vs.

Arsenal, and the commentator, after Leandro Trossard scored, said he scored against Wales on Tuesday, and he's scored again in front of him today.

Harry Wilson must be sick of the sight of him.

Are you having this?

How do you feel about that threshold of sick of the sight of?

Scored in front of him is a bit of a weird thing maybe if he's a goalkeeper it would work a bit better but was how how where was harry wilson in proximity to to truss when he scored that goal on the pitch this is this is a very important point charlie if it was the goalkeeper i think i would actually accept this i think i would be having it if i actually think about if i put myself in harry wilson's position and do you think he'll even know do you think he'll actually i mean footballers do tend to forget stuff yeah well yeah quite but i do like if i'm putting myself in his position there are undoubtedly players that are annoying when they score against your team.

When you're playing football, there are players for the opposition.

I'm sure, Dave, you have this at Sunday League, who are just objectively quite annoying characters within the league.

But that's so you'd be sick at them, at the sight of them scoring in particular, because you know they're going to like rub it in or like shout really loudly or something.

But if we're assuming that Wilson doesn't have any particular feelings towards the Andrew Trossard, I...

I don't imagine he's like harbouring loads of ill will to him because he scored in a couple of games.

Yeah.

I mean, I suppose.

So Trossard's goal was a 90th minute stoppage time goal for Belgium when Wales had got one back themselves to make it 3-2.

Oh, wow.

And then Trossard scored the fourth to make it 4-2 after Wales's own late goal.

So I guess he would be.

He probably went into that game, even just seeing Trossard in the warm-up.

He was probably quite annoyed at his presence.

The mere sight of Trossard.

Yeah.

Even shaking his hand afterwards.

You've scored against

two successive games.

Can't have it.

We were talking about Forrest manager search concluding in the first half, but Rangers finally seem to be getting their one over the line, Danny Roll, maybe installed as the new chief.

Ibrox soon enough.

But that was preceded by Kevin Muscat dropping out of the running, Charlie.

And the Daily Records headline here is just an incredible kind of genuine word salad of football leagues.

It was Kevin Muscat to Rangers engulfed in late collapse fear as deal hits potential stumbling block.

Engulfed in late collapse fear is amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah, it just needs an amid, doesn't it?

You could just say anything.

Because you could.

Can't you?

If you really wanted for like SEO purposes, if you wanted to get in, or maybe it wasn't known at that point that Danny Roll was going to be the guy, but you could have like a mid.

Danny Rollin rumours or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess there's nothing to be a mid here, Dave.

It's just if you're already engulfed, you can't be a golfed and a mid, can you?

That would really bury you, wouldn't it?

I mean, it's just engulfed is just completely superfluous there.

You just don't know.

Why has football felt the need to use engulfed in any way?

It's just not for you, football.

You don't need it.

Right, I quite enjoyed this one.

Johnny Devereaux writes in next Dave and says, During the Palace versus Bournemouth game, Lee Hendry on Co-Coms announced that I don't want this half to end after a period of end-to-end football.

No problem with this.

In fact, it's been a while since I've heard it, but it was the 27th minute.

Surely the threshold for not wanting a half to end is 40 minutes and beyond.

I just wish this game could stay in the 27th minute forever.

I don't want the half hour mark to come, Charlie.

Yeah, but that's, yeah, I don't think this is, I think that's sort of okay already at that point.

It's like, you know, when you go on a holiday, that you're like, this is, I know, thank you.

I'm having such a great holiday.

I think you can, as early as like the second day or any point, you can be like, oh, not, you know, I just really don't want, this is so great.

I just don't want this to end.

So I think there's no issue with the 27th minute.

If you're enjoying it that much, you're like, this is just so fun.

I really don't want the 15 minutes of milling around I just want to keep watching this game Charlie you have presented the exact counter argument that I was going to present which is when I'm on holiday and I get to day two of 14 and I'm having a great time I start working it out as a percentage and then start worrying about how much is left

so whilst I accept completely that line of questioning that line of reasoning

I'm not accepting it beyond I'm not accepting it before the 35th minute Dave I don't think you should start looking towards the first half finishing I think you're still well you're very much amid the first half and the 27th minute, right?

Still engulfed in the first half.

If you're at a match and the time on the clock is the 27th minute, you're not thinking about going into half-time yet, are you?

You're not thinking about going down to beat the rush yet.

So

you're still right.

You should still be absorbed by the action.

Fair enough.

Anyway, speaking of people whose life is just one big holiday and they never ever seem to end, it's time for Keys and Grey Corner.

First one during the international break.

48 hours on, and I think it's sunk in now.

What a fantastic achievement for Qatar to qualify for the 2026 World Cup.

I'm proud of you, boys.

Julen Lopotegui and his staff should be chuffed to bits.

Proud of you, boys.

I'm proud of you, boys.

It's so good.

Oh, I just want footage of him sort of seeing them and trying to act as though he knows them and he's their friend.

Yeah, that's the congratulations they were all waiting for, for sure.

What percentage of the Qatar squad know who Richard Keys is, Dave?

It's a great question.

Do you think, well, we know that he's...

He doesn't cover them in any way.

What was the match where he was down on pitch side?

Was that a Qatar or was that some other game?

Oh, good question.

I don't know if it was Qatar.

It was at the Qatar World Cup, I think.

Oh, yeah, I think it was actually.

I don't know if it necessarily was.

It was the opening ceremony.

That's what it was.

It was.

Was it?

It was the first game.

Yeah, yeah.

And

yeah,

a couple of

head honchos come over and say hello in the most unenthusiastic way, but there's no way the squad know who you are, Richard.

There's no I mean, it does feel a little bit like visa renewal time, doesn't it?

I'm proud of you, boys.

You might be in the satin the stands at training.

You might go to all the under twenty-one matches.

You could be committed.

Richard Keyes might be about to start the Qatar pod.

I mean,

as well as that, Dave, just the idea of Julia Lopotegui and his staff being chuffed to bits to qualify for the World Cup it's just feels like a completely un-World Cuppy type of emotion.

I'm chuffed to bits.

Yeah we chuffed you mate.

Well done yeah.

Yeah lovely stuff.

Keesey's latest obsession meanwhile Charlie has been to rummage through his old belongings

including his old football books from his youth and

I think he's

going back through his lucky football monthly magazines and things like that and he tweeted out a little collage from a picture of one of one of his magazines with George Best, Bobby Moore, Peter Osgood, Nobby Styles, and Colin Bell.

And with the simple tweet of, How much would this little lot be worth today?

I love little lot.

So, I mean, so many avenues he could have gone down, but yeah, that's pretty much perfection from Keesy.

I feel obliged to actually work this out, Dave.

George Best, at his peak, is a £150 million footballer in these days.

All things considered, you know,

he's greelish and more.

Probably more 80?

80s, 90s?

70s?

80s?

Yeah.

I mean, more.

He's the most expensive centre-back.

Right, yeah.

Okay, yeah, it's about 80.

Yeah.

Something like that.

Peter Osgood,

45?

He's better than Joan Whiser, though, isn't he?

I think.

I think you.

What a debate.

The age-old Joan Wisser, Peter Osgood debate rears its ugly head again.

We've got to be beyond this, lads.

Come on.

Don't get Keezy started on this.

Different eras.

Wouldn't be fit fit to tie Osgood's boots.

Styles,

bit of a less glamorous player.

But still, World Cup winner and all that.

Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

Yeah, fair play.

The World Cup winning premium.

Yeah, imagine the premium there'd be on World Cup winners now.

I suppose he's like Enzo, then I guess, isn't he?

What, like 100 plus?

The Enzo Fernandez of his day.

Many people are saying it.

Colin Bell, an absolute solid performer for Manchester City, and you know, stellar presence for them.

So yeah, he was a legend.

I mean, high 40s, low 50s?

I think more.

Yeah, fair enough.

So, upwards of 400 million, I'd say, for that little lot.

So,

get your checkbook out and your time machine.

But, yeah, Keezy, there you go.

Still causing debate even now.

Right, hope everyone enjoyed the Manchester Show last night, even though I'm talking about it before it's happened.

We'll see you in Leeds at the wardrobe tonight, all sold out, 6:30 doors, 7:30 p.m.

start.

Thanks to you, Charlie Eccleshare.

Thank you.

Thanks to you, Dave Walker.

Thank you.

Thanks to everyone for listening.

See you soon.

This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network.

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