Crystal Palace win the Community Shield and the Championship is back – Football Weekly

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

Crystal Palace win the community shield.

21-year-old Justin Devenney smashing in the winning penalty after Dean Henderson, I believe the phrase is, did some Dean Henderson things.

Oliver Glasner's men twice came from behind.

They just need the window to close now before Gay, Eze, Wharton, etc.

get nicked.

What of Liverpool?

They started so well.

Ekatike, Vert, Sprimpong, all played key roles.

They lost their way in the second half, but probably shouldn't worry too much.

Also today, some great games in the opening weekend of the championship.

Southampton's stunning late comeback against Wrexham.

Bristol City hammering Sheffield United.

Ipswich getting one of those, the game's gone handball penalties to rescue a point of Birmingham.

We'll round up League One and league two we've had more phd correspondence your questions and that's today's guardian football weekly

on the panel today barry glen denning welcome hi max and i believe it's uh a not the top 20 takeover as we welcome ali maxwell hey ali morning and george ellick hi max kind of means barry we could just you know i guess we probably have to contribute to the community shield because that's football at a level they don't understand but then

but then once we crack into the championship we can just sit back back and just you know let the ball do the work it's gonna well i watched quite a few championship games so i i have a little bit to bring to the good efl party i get the feeling barry would like to talk about the championship much more in fact i think he's got a real soft spot for that division Not anymore.

I don't need to muddy my spats in there.

It's entirely voluntary now.

Let's start then with the community shield.

Palace 2, Liverpool 2, Palace winning 3-2 on penalties.

We should start, Barry, with just that winning penalty.

Just what a great way to win a penalty shootout.

With a penalty.

Well,

the season's barely started, and you're going to be like that.

Then I won't go to you.

I'll go to someone else.

George, what a brilliant, just a beautiful strike.

It was not pressman levels, but it's almost up there with how great a finish it was.

Yeah, a brilliant strike.

And it was kind of...

I don't know, it was a befitting penalty for a community shield final where I wonder if the nerves that course through your body ahead of a Penalty title that means very little apart from bit of celebrations afterwards and beating a very good team is a bit different to maybe in a in a in a knockout competition or a major tournament.

But either way, yeah, a brilliant penalty.

And I think for Palace fans, you know, the community shield is something where when it's between two teams who are relatively used to competing in it because of consistent league title wins or FA Cup wins, there's very little in it.

And even though this was obviously Palace's second most important win at Wembley this year, still the jubilant scenes afterwards and seeing the way that the players celebrated and seeing how much it clearly meant to the fans, there's an element to like what Palace have done over the last six months.

It's kind of what every football fan dreams of if you don't support a team that consistently competes at the top end of the Premier League.

Because Palace are a team who, not that long ago, win the championship, who have fought for relegation pretty consistently in the Premier League.

And now they have, you know, a European tour of some description.

We'll find out exactly what description this week to look forward to.

They've won the FA Cup, they've beaten Liverpool, they've eaten Liverpool at Wembley, following up their FA Cup final win as well against Manchester City.

This is as good as it gets, and it kind of shows for all of us, especially those who like to beat the FA Cup and say it's worthless and say it's a dying competition.

It's absolutely not because if

you get rid of these events, then you're taking away the dream of what can be achieved for Padders fans and everyone else who can aspire to get to where they've got to.

Thank you for answering the question so well, George.

I'd like to point out.

And actually, Dean Henderson, who, you know, he had his little bottle in his, you know, hidden in a towel alley.

And somebody did ask a question, you know, is there enough data?

Cozy Kettle says, is there enough data on players who rarely take penalties for the notes on a bottle thing to be useful in shootouts?

Or is it just more to put doubt in the penalty taker's head?

I mean, I confess, I wouldn't know where that left back that they've just, Palace have just signed, normally puts his penalties.

But either way, you know, Henderson, just there are some goalkeepers that just have that

i i think he's going to save that kind of vibe

yeah for sure that the the doffing of the cap as well after our first penalty save was i don't think that was planned but it was so smooth like it's it's kind of ridiculous celebration for 2025 given that you know the mean celebration these days is is is you know very different to that but i kind of loved it um yeah i mean he's he's done it twice now hasn't he in in massive games like that?

It's a great sort of gene to have as a goalkeeper, and it helps you stand out because people will remember the Henderson final.

They'll remember slightly less, probably the Henderson Community Shield.

And it helps a lot.

And, you know, I find it really interesting from a national team point of view in that we have Jordan Pickford, who by, you know, everyone agrees has...

basically been excellent for England for quite a long period of time and never let us down and see no reason why he shouldn't be England's number one going forward because of that.

But then we also have James Trafford, who I mentioned on the pod last week.

I'm really intrigued to see what happens with him this season at City.

And we've almost forgotten that we have Henderson as well, who is not that old in goalkeeping terms, although he would be if he were an outfield player.

He'd be seen as someone who's probably missed his chance to be the England goalkeeper.

But if we want the best possible goalkeeper for right now, Henderson has to be in that conversation as well ahead of the World Cup.

So kind of all of a sudden, we've gone from having a number one in Pickford without an obvious kind of challenger to, I think, potentially three really strong options.

And that feels good from an England point of view.

And if I could quickly mention, I'm really excited about Deveni, the guy that scored the winner.

And his story is a really good one in terms of, you know, he'd only played senior football for Airdreonions before Palace signed him.

And hopefully, we might see him potentially out on loan in the EFL this season as he might struggle to get meaningful minutes.

But just to stay on the national team theme, if I was a Northern Irish football fan right now, I'd be getting increasingly excited about a group of players that that they have between like 19 and 25 years of age of which diveny is one of which shea charles is another the southampton midfielder that i think is going to be a huge huge player in in the future but also connor bradley and isaac price and and dan ballard pierce charles shea's brother who's a goalkeeper it's kind of a really exciting uh young batch and i think that's tray hume you you of course

i think he's their captain isn't he yeah hume's still only 23 but i sort of think of him like a 30-year-old veteran because he's played played so many games for both Sunday and for Northern Ireland.

So, yeah, I know it's not the international break, but it's just something I was kind of thinking about.

It's exciting to have these exciting new generations coming through, and I think the green and white army have one.

On Henderson, Paul says, just to point out that after saving two penalties, Dean Henderson dropped around to the nearest pub, to the hotel in Marylebone, put money behind the bar for Palace fans to have a celebratory drink.

Thanks to him.

I mean, it's a brilliant thing to do.

Like, even if you're cynical and you actually don't like doing those things, if you want to become a total hero, it's sort of like that is absolute that's that's you know, definition of how to be seen as total class to just go into a pub and say here's a hundred quids.

But, like, fair play to him.

Well, I think it depends who you are and when you do it, Max, because when Jack Grealish did a similar thing, he got pilloried in certain quarters because, well, why is he in a pub?

He should be available, of course, flagellating himself because he's he's not having a good time with it at the minute.

I really like Henderson, he's he's very confident, almost cocky.

He has a huge, very high, and I think quite justified opinion of his abilities as a goalkeeper.

And I think this was great for Palace because

they won the FA Cup.

Newcastle won the Carabao Cup.

For both those sets of fans, it should have been a brilliant summer, but for different reasons, they've both...

spent the summer being very angry and lashing out at various people whether in Newcastle because of their awful transfer business or lack thereof and because of the Isaac

strike and Palace because of what they perceive to be really shabby treatment from UEFA so

it's nice that the football's back for them and they've won this game with a team that their starting 11 had no new signings in it They've only made one signing.

I think Barnes Sosa, he came on.

And I think they were worthy winners.

yeah actually they really grew into the game George I thought I thought in midfield I mean I always talk about Adam Morton and I thought he was great and his past to SAR was great but Will Hughes as well who's sort of uh

doesn't quite go under the radar you know he's very notable on a football pitch but I thought he had a brilliant game yeah having come on um relatively early on um for Kamaldo who came off yeah I think that's a sign of a very good coach really I mean we all get so obsessed with transfers these days and there seems to be this perception that you can only get better if you buy better players but I think since Ollie Glasner's come in at Palace, there are individuals who certainly haven't necessarily let Palace down in the past, like Will Hughes, but who've basically elevated themselves to be able to be performing at a higher level, regardless of where they are in their careers.

And that, I think, is often the thing that gets kind of forgotten about in the processes of becoming a better team.

Like, tactics are fixated on, transfers are fixated on.

But the individual improvement of players can be unbelievably effective because it means you don't have to spend more money and you've got the players already in the building.

And that's what I think Palace have done incredibly well, especially when, as you say, you consider that they haven't made or there were no new players in the starting 11 yesterday.

You know, whether or not they can keep hold of certain players is yet to be seen.

It's pretty obvious that Ezra is coveted by most teams in the Premier League, and if there is a deal to be done there, then there are going to be a host of teams looking to do that.

It seems like Wharton is happy to stay for now.

It seems like he thinks the best thing for his development is another season at Palace, which should help them.

Gay is another one who's consistently

speculation around his future going forward.

Another, you know, really attractive players, Bitchella left back, is obviously another one who I'm sure wouldn't be shorter suitors.

So Glasner's kind of said in the press, hasn't he, in the last couple of weeks that he feels that they need more additions.

Maybe this win will help in terms of doing that and being able to elevate them.

But he's doing an unbelievable job.

And it feels like whilst there are stars within the team, Glasner's the kind of key to this palace story at the moment in terms of taking them to a completely new level.

What of Liverpool, Ali?

I mean, they did look really good in the first half, didn't they?

Almost a checkbox of things you'd want to happen.

A goal for Eka TK, an assist for Berts, a goal for Frimpole.

Yeah, I I think personally, because the Community Shield,

deep down, no one cares that much, or certainly not fans of the big six clubs who have all got plenty of these and realize that it's rarely

sort of foreshadows how your season will go in that sense.

So, not to take anything away from the Palace fans who are having a hell of a time, but I don't think Liverpool need to be that worried that they didn't win this game.

And I think it's better to focus on the positives, as you say, the attacking play and

the initial link-up play and understanding

between Ekatike and Vietz and the other attacking players was really, really exciting.

And, you know, that's we've mentioned transfers a few times here.

This is kind of the first proper-ish game of the season to talk about.

And a lot of it comes back to transfers again because that's what dominates summer discourse right now.

But when it comes to Liverpool, it's been a very busy summer.

It's been an eye-catching summer.

And I guess fans of every other club is hoping that their £100 million players don't hit the ground running because if they do, it's going to be very difficult for anyone to catch Liverpool.

They were the best team by a long way last season.

If they get better, that's pretty scary for everyone else and very exciting for Liverpool fans.

Mike makes an interesting point.

And it's one that I thought I had to talk about.

The way the news cycle works, you sort of, you know, the Dio Ogo Jota tragedy and that they marked it and like a few Palace fans were obviously just completely stupid and, you know, treated that moment horribly and it's you know anyone who's been to a football match knows that every set of every club has a set of fans like that but Mike says I get that it can't be talked about relentlessly but is it it is interesting how quickly it just gets forgotten this Liverpool squad have just lost their mate in a tragic way he says Van Dijk and Salah didn't play well yesterday does it does it matter not really maybe people should cut cut them some slack and it is true Barry that for these players, you know, this is, you know, it's not just a mate, it's just someone they would have seen every single day.

And every time they go training, every time they play for some of those players, and it will affect them all very differently, this could have a massive impact on them.

Yeah, I think everything that happens to Liverpool this season, for good or bad, has to be accompanied by the big caveat that they've lost their good pal and their teammate, someone they spend an awful lot of time with and who everyone seems to have liked.

I don't think anyone's forgotten about it.

We just don't talk about it as much anymore because you can't because life goes on.

But it's certainly an absence, I imagine, that and a dark cloud that that hangs over Liverpool's players and backroom staff and club staff and everyone who knew him at the club.

And they haven't forgotten about it.

I'm sure it's probably the first thing a lot of them think about when they wake up every morning and the last thing they think about at night.

You just have to do your best to try and get on with things.

And if Liverpool go on to have a terrible season,

that's fine.

It won't matter.

And if it's because of that, it won't matter.

And I'm not sure what else to say, really.

No, no, no.

You summed up pretty perfectly, I think.

Away from the game, Mosala has criticised UEFA for failing to state how a footballer known as the Palestinian Pele died in a tribute it posted.

According to the Palestinian Football Association, Suleiman al-Obayed, who was 41, was killed on Wednesday in southern Gaza when Israeli forces attacked civilians waiting for humanitarian aid.

Farewell to Suleiman Al-Abayed, the Palestinian Pele.

UEFA posted on X on Friday, a talent who gave hope to countless children, even in the darkest of times.

Salah, quote, tweeted it, or quote, X'd it, whatever the right phrase is now, saying, Can you tell us how he died, where and why?

His death added to a growing toll of athletes lost in Gaza since the war began.

At least 662 sports people and their relatives reported to have been killed.

A fixture in the Palestinian national side, this is Al Abayed.

His debut debut was in 2007, played 24 times, scored twice, the PFA said last week, most memorably with an overhead kick against Yemen during the 2010 West Asian Football Federation Championship.

He scored more than 100 goals in his career, making him one of the brightest stars of Palestinian football, said the PFA.

The number of footballers killed or who have died from starvation has reached 421, including 103 children, said the PFA.

288 sports facilities have been damaged or reduced to rubble across Gaza and the West Bank, from stadiums and training grounds to gyms and clubhouses.

The majority were in Gaza, 268 of them, 20 in the West Bank, with about half serving football directly.

Among the sites hit was the PFA's headquarters in Gaza, which was struck during an Israeli air raid.

And that'll do for part one.

Part two, we'll begin with the start of the championship season.

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We're here.

welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly on the 11th of September.

We're playing the Troxy in London.

Hello to Oliver, who I met in Victoria Park on Saturday morning.

He's planning to run to crew up the canals of the UK, which seems an awful long run.

Anyway, he said he was going to go to a live show.

Maybe it was just his polite way of leaving the conversation.

But I'll see you there if you've finished your run.

We can announce the panel, Barry.

Oh, great.

Are you excited?

I am because I don't know who's in it.

Jonathan Wilson, Nikki Bandini, Jonathan Liu

will be in the hot seats.

We've got some cameos planned too.

We'll announce them as and when.

What a night it'll be.

Go to theguardian.com/slash football weekly live.

If you're not in London or you can't be bothered to come, shame on you.

But also, we'll be live streaming it

tickets from the same link.

So wherever you are on Earth, whoever you are, if you're listening to this, you have no excuse.

And if you get the live stream, you can watch it whenever you like.

Over that week or something like that,

you know, follow our Instagram, our TikTok, or our Blue Sky to find out more.

Hey, Ali, you tweeted the most watchable championship opening weekend I can remember.

It was good, wasn't it?

Excellent from a neutrals point of view.

Just we had the top line stuff,

I think, five injury time winners across the EFL on Saturday, but most of them in the championship.

It seemed like each of the televised games had a lot of drama.

If you're into refereeing controversy, there was plenty of that for those that are.

But for me, it was more about the way that the football was played and the kind of tactical battles between teams.

I felt in each game,

even those containing teams coming down from the Premier League who are expected to finish first, second and third,

subject to Leicesters' potential points deduction.

They were all really challenged by the teams that they played against, Birmingham and Wrexham and Sheffield Wednesday.

But not only that, some of the other games as well that I caught on TV, there was just ebbs and flows, loads of attacking intent on both sides.

I'm really encouraged by what this means for the championship this season because we focus so much on who's going to go up, who's going to go down in the kind of preseason predictions.

But I think

one of the great selling points of the championship is that a game between two mid-table teams is rarely a boring game.

Like it's almost always pretty entertaining as well.

So yeah, really encouraged by that and absolutely loved the start of the championship season.

What was the pick for you, Baz?

I really enjoyed Southampton Wrexham on Saturday lunchtime with Steele's first game in charge of Saints.

Wrexham back in the championship for the first time since 1982.

They looked very at home there, I thought, against a team who were in the Premier, well, sort of in the Premier League last season.

I think they were kind of unlucky to lose because they had several chances to win it when they were 1-0 up and just failed to get that the second goal that you think might have put Southampton away.

I really liked the cut of Will Still's jeeb already because

the refereeing in this game was erratic to say the least.

And in his post-match interview, he was sort of invited to criticise it and wasn't having it.

He said, look, a couple of decisions didn't go our way, a couple of decisions didn't go their way.

So

I'm not going to complain because we all make mistakes.

His opposite number,

Phil Parkinson, Rex manager.

Yeah.

Phil Parkinson, by contrast.

As you tried to erase him from your memory, haven't you?

I think

I mean, you'd have to erase a lot of people from your mind if poor performance at Sunderland meant you wanted to blank them out, wouldn't you?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, sorry.

goodbye david mois um

he he in contrast was very critical of the refereeing but he was he did that thing managers do where they're selectively critical so he pointed out the mistakes that didn't go that that didn't benefit wrexham but failed to address any of the clear issues that did benefit wrexham but um that aside it was a really entertaining game uh Southampton won it with two late late goals and added time one of which was an absolutely splendid free kick and yeah so that i think i watched four championship games and they were they were all pretty decent i was surprised birmingham ipswich on on friday night i was surprised by how poor ipswich were and i was very impressed with birmingham who like wrexham looked to the championship manner born yeah so ryan manning scored that free kick for southampton it's absolutely brilliant free kick with his left foot into the top corner i mean just before that gavin bazzuna makes an amazing save which means wrexham would have won that game.

The Friday night game, I think Barry makes a good point.

It was a survival, it was which got away with murder.

Not just because their penalty is one of those where, and maybe that's the law now.

And I can't believe this early in the season I'm saying this, but I just, there's nobody, nobody who grew up watching football thinks, yeah, that should be a penalty.

Maybe people do think that now.

I feel like you could cut and paste me saying this from any pod from last season, but it's such a frustrating way for that game to end.

Yeah, I agree.

I think with the handball rule, it just feels like created a mess, like a massive issue where there's no answer.

There's no right or wrong.

With every single handball decision, there's a huge quantity of people who think it's a penalty.

There's a huge quantity of people who don't think it's a penalty.

Neither of them are right or wrong.

Like there was a...

a penalty shout in the Wrexham Samson game that to me looked way more like it was a penalty with the arm clearworth of Wrexham's arm away from the body.

It was probably a shot that was heading towards the goal and it wasn't given.

If you compare that to the decision on Friday night where the penalty was given to Ipswich, it's a total farce that one of them was given a penalty and the other one wasn't.

But then on the flip side of that, I kind of think that the Kleeworth 1 shouldn't be a penalty because if you're running full pelt towards someone about to take a shot, it's pretty unlikely that your arm is going to be plastered to the side of your torso.

So like the whole thing just

reforms.

Breach, George, breach.

What it doesn't need is VAR.

I'd like to point out that isn't the answer, as we see in the Premier League.

But it needs someone to basically tear up the handball rule and start again.

Because right now,

there's no definitive answer in a game that is way too subjective already to have such a grey area with different decisions being made in different games on the same weekend.

It just makes a bit of a mockery of the whole thing, really.

And it's just going to create more angst towards PGMOL and towards the FL and anyone else who people can blame.

So I agree, a total farce.

I do think that the kind of the main takeaway from this weekend, and you don't want to jump to conclusions because of all the teams who probably do the most business between now and the end of the window it'll probably be the three relegated sides for the premier league but normally on opening weekend whether it's whether it's burnie a couple of seasons ago whether it's leicester a couple of seasons ago under maresca there's normally in that first weekend you see a team and you're like oh yeah hello this this look these look like they're a cut above you know of course leeds last season burnie as well to an extent i didn't get that really from any of the three sides you know obviously Southampton and Leicester both when they were behind um were able to pile on the pressure um but in both games at nil-nil, there were massive issues with both.

Ips, which, as you say, looked completely undercooked and a shadow of the team they were a couple of seasons ago.

There's obviously loads of time to change, and you shouldn't be making sweeping statements off the back of one game.

But the limited evidence we have, it looks like it could be quite an open league this season, especially with, as you say, Birmingham looking really impressive on Friday night.

Matt says, it'd be good to get Ali and George's opinion on Wednesday.

Despite the absolute shit show going on around us, thought we were fantastic today.

I fully expected a 4-5-0 defeat.

Hats off to all involved.

Yeah, they were one they're luck.

They lost in the 87th minute.

Our mate, Valtfass, scoring the winner.

Barry Bannon sent off.

I mean, he probably deserved it for some dissent and then, you know, probably a yellow card.

But I sort of think you can't send off Barry Bannon given what's happening at Chef of Wednesday right now.

I just felt that referee just absolutely, that is, you know, it's the right thing, but it just felt wrong.

But I was so gutted for Wednesday, Ali.

Yeah, it kind of felt like everything that happened in this game from the start until the end was almost sort of pre-written in a script designed to show that football doesn't care how hard done by you are.

Football doesn't care whether

the club is up against the wall, and football doesn't care if your team is just sort of based on the guys who are somehow still under contract and then a load of kids on the bench.

But yeah, I mean, Wednesday's first half performance was absolutely brilliant.

They looked way more coherent than Leicester.

They looked much more up for the fight.

They looked much more up for it out of possession.

And they went ahead

via Chalibur, a deflected goal.

It just seems pretty clear that they were going to find it hard to keep it up in the second half under pressure from a team with lots of individual quality and also having had a disrupted preseason and very little off the bench.

And that's basically what happened.

And it's, you know, I always think like it would annoy me even more.

that both goals came from set pieces, that one of them, the first one, looked like it could have been ruled out for a player in an an offside position interfering with the ball as it came in.

And then the second, just a free header at the near post.

It's like, not only have you lost

from a position of being in front in kind of heartbreaking fashion, but also by goals that didn't show that the opposition were the better side with a better individual quality and the better attacking ideas, just sort of a bit more heft and brawn right at the end when you'd kind of run out of steam.

Of the pitch, George, what is the latest with Wednesday?

I mean, some small slither of hope, hope, I guess.

Not in terms of a takeover, which is obviously what has to happen, but their embargo has been lifted in terms of bringing players in.

They still can't pay a fee, and that's because outstanding debts have been settled.

Now, what that means, we don't really know.

It's obviously likely there's been some kind of cash injection to the club.

We can speculate what that is.

And that's been used to settle those debts.

It's obviously a short-term measure.

There's no cause for optimism so long as Chanceri's at the club.

What I would say is that, you know, when the team came out yesterday, you did look at the 1-11.

You know, you're like, there's a lot of championship minutes here.

There's a lot of kind of decent players.

It doesn't help that Chalaba, the goal scorer, went off injured shortly after scoring.

And of course, Bannon will serve a one-match ban now.

But there's the bones there, as was shown by the performance itself, that if they can find a way and find a buyer, you know, maybe they don't have to write this season off.

But frankly, for Wednesday fans, that's kind of the last thing I'm thinking about right now.

It's more about making sure the club still exists in the season rather than thinking about survival.

But hopefully,

you know, with the ability now, they've been linked to a couple of players on loan from Manchester United.

Hopefully, we'll see some additions coming in in the short term to just enable them to be competitive at the very least, because on the showing of Sunday's game, there's no reason why they can't put up a fight so long as they're able to continue playing.

On the subject of players with championship minutes in their legs, Liam Palmer, I read somewhere, he played for Sheffield Wednesday yesterday, 15 years to the day after his debut for them.

And I think he's been with them all that time, apart from one loan spell somewhere else.

Quite a stint for Liam.

Good shift.

Yeah, absolutely.

James says, can you discuss?

I mean, it's not the coming up 20 years for you on football weekly, is it, Barry?

But

how we celebrate 20 next year.

It's very exciting.

James says, can you discuss Struberball and Bristol City's demolition of Sheffield United?

Nice to see front football attacking football after years of Manning Ball.

Yes, so the Bristol City manager.

Specifically, a year and a half of Manning Ball.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A year and a half of Manning Ball, which was so terrible, but they did quite well under him.

So the new Bristol City manager, manager, who is the former Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Stroener,

because Chevy United thrashed Bristol City in the playoffs, and that isn't that long ago.

They're like the last competitive games that Bristol City played.

So, Ali, what's happened in this time?

Yeah, so yes.

I was completely in love with my former partner.

And yes, it might have appeared like I was blissfully happy.

And yes, it might have appeared like I was pretty heartbroken when she left me for someone else over the summer.

But now that I've had some time to think about it, I realize I didn't actually like her that much.

And the new person that I'm seeing now, I can't tell you how exciting they are.

They make me smile, they make me laugh, they make me feel energetic.

I wake up feeling motivated when I'm around them.

That's Gerhard Struber, Liam Manning, and Bristol City fans right now.

And it did make me laugh a lot.

And also,

what I really want to do is celebrate what was a really exciting and very significant away win on opening day.

But even the idea of like super attacking football, I think, is slightly massaging the truth of the game on Saturday, where

Bristol City's goals came mostly on the counter-attack and mostly having won the ball off Shefford United's defence or midfield and then breaking quickly and scoring.

And Bristol City did both of those things quite a lot and quite well last season.

That's why they made the playoffs.

They were really good out of possession and in general they sprung forward pretty quickly on the counter-attack.

They didn't score four goals very regularly, but they scored four goals on the weekend from their first six shots, one of which was a Scott Twine free kick, and he's the best free kick taker in the world.

And I've run the numbers on that.

And no one has scored more direct free kicks in world professional football since Scott Twine started scoring free kicks in 2020.

A really nice counter-attacking goal for the second, a deflected strike for the fourth.

And, you know, it was really good.

away attacking football against a team that's expected to beat you in dominating possession.

There's still lots to prove as to where the Strubas football will be constantly really exciting and attacking.

And the proof will come in home games where they're expected to break down teams who come and play for a point.

That's something that Bristol City weren't very good at under Manning and haven't been for a couple of years.

So yeah, I mean, the positives are obvious.

It must have been bedlam in that away end because

Three months ago, Sheffield United beat Bristol City 6-0 on aggregate in the playoff semi-final.

It was as big a golfing class as we've seen really in the championship playoffs for a long time.

Not helped with a red card in the first leg early on from Rob Dickey.

And they capitalised on a Sheffield United team that made a big call, you know, the owners made a big call to get rid of Chris Wilder and bring in Ruben Sayas.

Could not have gone any worse for Sayas in his first game in the dugout, in that, you know, whatever you thought about Wilder's Sheffield United, they were an excellent team that picked up a lot of points and generally looked solid defensively.

And here, that back line looked all at sea.

And I'm a little sympathetic to Sayas because actually, the players that have left, including Ahmed Hodzic, this week,

I wouldn't say they've got the replacements in the building for either him or Vinicius Souza.

And those two players are 15 million pound players.

Most championship teams are going to find it hard to replace them.

And instead of doing any sort of succession planning and bringing players in ahead of their sales, they're now scrambling around with a lot of money burning a hole in their back pocket.

And everyone knows they've got it and exactly what positions they need.

So for me, it's been a bit of a,

it looks like a bit of a mess off the pitch in this sort of transition period for Sheffield United, and that bled onto the pitch as well on Saturday evening.

I heard a panel on 5 Live, I think it was on Saturday afternoon, discussing Sheffield United.

They have apparently gone off in a new direction and they're paying more attention to

recruitment through the use of data and that's why they got rid of Chris Wilder and brought in sellers.

Can you tell us a bit more about that?

And is that part of the problem?

Such as it is a problem after one game.

Yeah, I mean, it feels like every single club in the country now tells their fans and everybody else that they're data-driven.

With Chef United, they took it a step further and they've kind of openly said they're going to be using AI

to identify players.

So far, the recruitment has been

either relatively kind of standard fair.

Basically.

Have they signed Johnny Five in the short circuit?

No, but they've basically signed so far, AI seems to constitute of players that Ruben Sayers has managed before, which I don't think you need chat GPT to tell Ruben who he's managed in the past,

or players who've turned up from Bulgaria with very little history of looking good enough to play in the championship.

So we'll see.

I mean, my kind of reading between the lines, Chris Wilder has had issues in the past in his first in at Sheffield United and at Middlesbrough in terms of a bit of a power struggle when it comes to recruitment.

And whether it's AI, whether it's data, whatever else it is, it feels like the new owners of Sheffield United want to be in charge of recruitment for the most part.

And therefore, I think

the forecast of a power struggle was probably played into the reason they decided to sack Chris Wilder.

Albeit, it does make a bit of a mockery that two of their first signings under Ruben Sayers, as I mentioned, were Louis Barry, who played for Sayers at Hull at the back end of last season, albeit was injured for most of it, and Tyler Bindon, who can basically credit Ruben Sayers with his career because he brought him into Reading and gave him minutes at a very young age before his move to Nottingham Forest, where he's now on loan.

So if you're Chris Wilder, you're probably looking at those two signings thinking, well, yeah,

AI seems to be serving you well.

But yeah, I mean, as Ali said, it was almost the worst possible game first up because of what happened in the playoffs.

And it just couldn't really have gone worse.

And

I think even though I, and I think Ali does as well, really great Ruben Sayers as a coach and would like to see him do well and think there's a chance he could do well with time.

He's not going to be given much time and things are going to get nasty very quickly if results don't improve after that on Sunday, sorry, on Saturday afternoon.

Feels like such an open goal to think about the meeting where somebody went to Chris Wilde and said, we'd like to use data.

And just to see sort of how that panned out.

Maybe that is being harsh.

Your new number two is grok.

Given last season, he said the words in an interview, you can stick your data wherever you want to stick your data, which

for data-driven owners probably wasn't the best thing they wanted to hear

take that usb stick chris and uh anyway anyway um what else what else to you are you your boys lost one nil to to portsmouth george and i think probably i have seen more of adrian segacic uh who scored for portsmouth than anyone else given that he was playing for well

he was playing for sydney fc last year i did an a-league show i did i'm pretty sure i watched him a lot but i can't totally remember but like he's a portsman sign a lot of Australians.

I wonder if they all just arrive on a ship that lands at Portsmouth.

Are you saying you guys, did you guys not nickname him the Veggie Mite Messi?

Because

that's what I'll be calling him based on that performance.

I think when you're covering the A-League for Australian viewers, you can't put Veggie Mite in front of every player.

It just doesn't work quite as well, doesn't it?

You just pick a football and go, oh, look, yes, that's the Vegemite Mario and Bellone.

That's all over there.

Look, lovely finish from him.

I don't know how the game went.

I didn't watch all of the game.

It was a good, good, I mean, yeah, it was actually, I think, a very,

it'll be an underrated goal because it was a strange goal where Colby Bishop was set through one on one after Cameron Brannigan decided to pass to Michal Hellek without looking that he was actually standing behind him and set Bishop through one on one.

And Jamie Cumming made a great save.

And the ball kind of very sharply

went out to Segacic.

And his first touch and finish, given Cumming was still there and Hellek was on the line, was like unbelievably good.

And he came close a couple of other times in the game.

He looked really lively.

yeah.

It was a game that Pompey deserved to win, they had multiple chances in the first half.

Oxford kind of huffed and puffed, didn't create too much an open play.

Um, I think Gary Raut has been relatively open in the press that a pre-season tour of Indonesia during monsoon season probably wasn't the best idea in terms of a way to

get a team prepared for

the upcoming season.

And it resulted in quite a lot of injuries and players being behind where they should be going into the season.

A couple of players blew away, don't know where they are.

Yeah, so I mean, the games were a farce, played on terrible pitches in like ridiculous weather.

So maybe not a matter surprise that Oxford started the season looking a bit undercooked.

But either way, a one-nil defeat at home to Aside, who I think, you know, who came up with a couple of seasons ago.

I was there and it wasn't great.

Also, you know, it wasn't terrible.

Pompey, without Josh Murphy, still looked pretty good, especially in the first half, and managed the aerial threat of Wilvox's trebuchet throw pretty well, too.

So, yeah, good start to the season for Compey picking up where they left off at the back end of last season.

Yeah, for Oxford, probably some pre-season optimism making way for not panic, but a bit of concern with an opening day defeat and no goal at home.

Anything else take your eye, Baz?

I thought Stoke were hugely impressive, and it's quite a well or a much trotted out stat that

since their relegation from the Premier League seven years ago, I think, they have not finished in the top half of the championship.

On the evidence of their performance

on Saturday, I would suggest they will do so this week.

Or, sorry, this season.

It's obviously far too early to say, but

they have been something of a managerial graveyard.

They have a high churn of managers.

No one can sort them out, but it looks like Mark Robbins has whipped them into some sort of shape over

summer.

Yeah, two late goals for them.

Ali, anything take your eye?

Yeah, I saw Millwall beat Norwich second half performance very, very impressive at Carrow Road.

First half, they kind of, you know, they sat off Norwich and I think kind of lulled Norwich into a sense of control.

And we're seeing in the championship, like in the Premier League, that actually it's what teams do out of possession and in moments of transition

that are kind of almost more important than your build-up play and how good you you are in possession.

And I think Millwall under Alex Neil might use that to their advantage this season because he's such a good tactician.

And because they have real threats at the top of the pitch, two up top, good wide players.

They counter-attack really well.

And yeah, having kind of gone in at halftime 0-0, but Norwich feeling like they'd probably dominated the game, they then just came out swingy in the second half and won absolutely deservedly with Macaulay Langstaff scoring.

Now, he signed after being the League Two Golden Boot winner in 23-24.

He signed last summer, found the step up to the championship a bit difficult, which isn't too surprising, only scored one league goal last season, but sprinted in behind and finished very, very well here.

And, you know, I think we often forget that if a player has a difficult first season, they get written off quite quickly.

But I think the smartest clubs...

give players that they sign, particularly from overseas or particularly asking them to jump up to divisions.

You can't be signing them and expecting them to hit the ground running, but you can get a lot out of them in year two and year three and make sure you're not wasting money on them.

And maybe Langstaff even if it's just as a sub for Coburn and for Ivanovich

can offer plenty.

I love the Preston goal in their one-all draw at Loftus Road.

I mean I don't know George if that is an unbelievable assist from their keeper Daniel Everson you know striking across the ball modern keeper style really low like a one-iron or just some old school getting it launched that got lucky but it's uh and it was a lovely finish from Osmaich who you know

might not be the greatest bloke in the world but it's a good

yeah

I think we give him credit.

I also love the fact that he was being aggressively closed down as well.

And he very easily could have just absolutely volleyed it into the

pressing QPR player that I think was Burrell.

A brilliant goal.

I wouldn't say it was necessarily deserved on the balance of play, but a moment of quality away from home.

Brilliant ball.

And then Osmaic has the pace to get in behind and the quality finish too.

Certainly one of the more eye-catching goals of the weekend

in a game between QPR who have this remarkable team of three exciting, diminutive attacking players, and Ilyas Chair, Karamoko Dembele, and Kwame Poku, just surrounded by brutes.

And it seemed to work for the most part.

And they had the better chances in the game.

But Preston, as you say, with Everson, who's come back to the club after a couple of good loan spells, he's now their player, replacing Freddie Woodman, who's gone off to be Liverpool's sub-keeper probably for the next 15 years.

What a life.

But yeah, a good point for them because two teams that, you know, certainly is an Oxford fan, you're looking at and hoping they aren't going to be too strong.

Producer Joel was desperate to get Charlton high up the running order, but this is where they are.

They beat Watford 1-0, an injury time winner from former Cambridge legend Harvey Nibbs.

Graham says, if Watford lose against QPR is Petzolano in trouble, Paolo Petzolo.

Simultaneously, Ali, someone I'd never heard of, but could also have been manager of Watford five times.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

And

comes in with a reputation of guaranteeing promotions.

And that's why he's been hired.

He's done so in the Uruguayan second tier, in the Brazilian second tier, and in the Spanish second tier.

And there's quite a lot of buzz around Watford heading into the season.

They've got a very sort of very fun, young team on paper with some very exciting technical players.

And it's his job to make sure that they are also a serious football team that defend their box well and can play for a full 90 minutes rather than in bursts.

And they struggled with that last season under Tom Cleverly.

And I think they had some okay moments at Charlton.

Didn't quite connect in the final third.

Their new striker, Kierumgaard, scored a lot of goals in the Danish second tier last season.

He looked very, very good on debut.

But

they couldn't resist.

Nathan Jones is Charlton, who scored an injury time winner.

Jones going nuts in front of the fans.

Charlton back in the championship.

They've only had one season in the champ, I think in the last 10 seasons.

And they were relegated straight away back down to league one.

So I think they're coming up a little under the radar because of Birmingham and Wrexham coming up and expected potentially to challenge for promotion.

But like, I'm really positive about Charlton and I think it was a really positive start.

It looks to me like that they're going to translate what they became last season, which was a tremendous League One team and should sort of build on that and go again this season in the champ.

All right, that'll do for part two.

Part three, we'll round up League One and League Two.

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Barry's here too.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Actually, I was having quite an interesting discussion off-air while my Wi-Fi was failing about kind of analytics and data and sort of what we went into and how actually

this perceptionality is just not what it is.

Like every club is using this.

So, you know, when middle-aged men make jokes about Johnny Five from short circuit references that you don't understand, actually, it's sort of stupid now because every single club is doing this kind of thing.

It's not so binary.

Yeah, and I just sometimes I feel like, and not the way we discussed it, I hope, but sometimes I feel like it's still being framed like it was in sort of the early 2010s of kind of like a club is either being run by Boffin sitting in a basement somewhere or by a Neil Warnock and everyone sort of dancing to that tune.

And I just think there's so much in between that and every single club probably fits.

Like I feel a bit bad for Chris Wilder who with the Sheffield United situation, albeit it is clearly true that the owners want a different type of head coach that is not Chris Wilder.

But again, I think it frames him as some sort of dinosaur and he couldn't have had the career that he's had.

He has been excellent in almost every single job that he's done for like 15, 20 years now, had success pretty much everywhere.

There is absolutely no chance he could have done that

but you know if he didn't have some appreciation for you know the modern aspects of the game that have come in particularly in the last 10 or 15 years.

So yeah, I just I do sort of tear my hair out sometimes.

And the thing about Cheff United that's that's wound me up most is that I don't believe they are doing anything different to any other club in the championship when it comes to using data to basically search for players.

That's what first and foremost in recruitment what data really offers is the ability to search the globe globe for footballers that fit certain parameters or play in certain positions and play in certain roles quickly.

Because previously, if you didn't have data, that would have taken months and years, and you'd never bother because it would just be too much in terms of human resource.

Now you can do it very, very quickly.

And there's still so much more that goes into it after you kind of filter and you identify the players.

And it's not all about numbers at that point.

It becomes much more about video scouting, scouting in person, referencing,

due diligence on character and the player situation.

There's so much more that goes into signings in certainly in the Premier League, but Championship League One, League Two as well.

And yeah,

them claiming that they're using world-leading AI just pissed me off, basically, because I think all they've done there is upgrade the word data to the word AI as if it's something new.

And I don't believe it's new in the slightest or particularly impressive based on their current transfer dealings.

I think Chris Wilder is unfairly stereotyped because A, he's northern,

pushing on a bit in years and quite blunt in

conversation.

And I think using data and AI and analytics, et cetera, and so on, I don't think...

I would imagine it makes it a lot easier to sort out the wheat from the chaff to sort it right.

Well, this is who we definitely don't want.

So now we've got this short list of guys who fit the parameters.

Let's do our due diligence on, you know, have a chat with them, find out about their character, as you said, etc.

How they'll fit in around the training ground and all that.

So,

yeah, I do agree that Wilder is unfairly maligned.

He occasionally doesn't do himself any favours either.

Well, you could argue that Ruben Sayas doing his post-match team talk on the pitch after a 4-1 defeat where they'd been booed off was, and I think Jonathan Wilson's written about it on a sub stat this morning, an extraordinarily high-risk strategy for your first game, given that the idea is that it sort of creates an idea of, I guess, togetherness and kind of group responsibility for a poor performance.

But actually, most people aren't going to see it that way.

They're going to see it as a very high-risk strategy.

The last thing I'll say about Wilder, and look, we've been big fans of him on the podcast because we've consistently covered good Chris Wilder teams, more so than most other managers, is that it's also not the case that he just buys old proven pros and gets an old school team playing old school football successfully.

Last season, you know, if you, if you want to talk about data as a way of getting value in the transfer market, which is another, you know, kind of its, I guess, perceived as its biggest strength and what it can offer clubs, then like, how about buying Michael Cooper, who'd never played in the never, well, who had played in the championship for Argyle, but not that much, and is now worth probably 15 million quid in goal.

Harrison Burroughs had never played in the championship, is a young fullback who Wilder developed unbelievably as a defender as much as anything else.

Femi Suriki has has made his way into the team as an academy player.

Sidi Peck and Ollie Arblaster, two young midfielders that Wilder's got to being first-team regulars and potential stars of the team, and they are so young that therefore that creates a lot of value for the team as well.

Someone like Tyrese Campbell, they signed for a free and now looks like, you know, one of the best finishes in the league and potentially top goalscorer in the championship this season.

These aren't old...

grizzled pros that Wilder brought in because he knew them from before and he could trust their characters.

These are young pros that were bought, not for loads of money, that he has created a lot of value for the club for.

So, yeah, just a few things I wanted to point out there.

Chef United, I just find a very interesting topic of discussion at the moment on and off the pitch.

And it was, of course, Wilder who came up with the overlapping centre-backs, wasn't it?

That was a Wilder innovation.

Yeah, or possibly Alan Mill, his assistant, who's often credited with a lot of the tactical detail.

Another thing that gets missed in managerial discussion is we don't always know exactly what managers are doing when it comes to training tactics.

You know, often that the staff are doing so much on that front.

So, yeah.

From League One, I mean,

what stood out for you, George?

Obviously, I mean, this was the second weekend of League One action, and I'm pretty concerned about Plymouth Argyle, who came down from the championship,

who, of course, lost to their manager Mira Muslich during the summer, who did incredibly well at the back end of last season.

They were beaten at home on opening day by Barnsley under new manager Tom Cleverley, didn't look particularly strong.

And then they were well beaten 2-0 by Bolton and to rub Salt in the wounds, of course.

The Bolton manager now is Stephen Schumacher, once Plymouth R Guard manager who led them to the League One title before he decided to chance his arm and be the latest victim of trying to be a good Stoke City manager.

The squad is basically unrecognisable from the one who came up a few seasons ago, apart from Barley Mumba.

They've recruited Young, which is part of the ethos of the club.

But they're one of those teams now where I think at the beginning of the season, the expectations weren't particularly high.

The idea was we're going to recruit Young.

We're going to recruit a young manager who can grow with us.

But, and again, you know, you've got to say it's early days and you don't want to

get ahead of yourselves because things can change very quickly.

But on the basis of the first two games of the season, they look like one of the poorest teams in the whole league.

And, you know, it's not unheard of for teams who get stuck in a rut.

to maybe be a bit complacent in terms of recruitment and then find themselves lower than they thought possible.

So a bit concerned about them.

But on the flip side, I think Huddersfield looked like a very good side.

And with Lee Grant,

their new boss, who was part of Kirin McKenna's coaching star for Lipswich, it's his first job.

You never know how it's going to go.

But back-to-back wins for them.

And, you know, they went to Reading and beat them 2-0.

Did so with a set piece called Start and then

a teenager, 18-year-old Ashi, with a really good finish to make it 2-0.

And that's off the back of beating Orient 3-0 on opening day.

And then Orient themselves looked impressive in a 2-0 win over Wigan on Saturday so that form has been franked off the back of it.

So yeah, one positive, one negative.

It's Hardersfield.

It looked like a good side to me and our guard I'm a bit concerned about.

And Ali, a shout for Barnsley, 2-0 down to Burton.

I saw that going, God, Burton, I know, are bad.

They've always been bad while I was actually focused on League One.

And they're 2-0 up against Barnsley, who are sort of odd team,

I think.

But then 37-year-old David McGoldrick scoring the winner for Barnsley.

Yeah, Burton are always bad in the first few months of the season and then somehow change manager and achieve a miracle survival.

Yeah, McGoldrick scoring the winner is really fun, partly because he's old, he's 37, and he did something very rare.

He moved upper division, age 37.

Having been at Knott's, his hometown club for the last two seasons, he's still clearly got juice in the tank, which I think is a complete mishmash of analogies there.

My favourite thing about this is

that's the 20th consecutive season in which David McGoldrick has scored a league goal and the 11th different side that he has scored.

That is some career, isn't it?

That's amazing.

Into league two, George.

Only three teams have got 100% record.

Crew, Chesterfield, and Fleetwood.

Are they the three you expected to have 100% records at this time?

Chesterfield was top of our 1-24s, so we can pat ourselves on the back there.

Fleetwood have been a side that I've been...

crowing about for a long time with Pete Wilde in charge.

They signed Will Davis from Sutton from non-league who's kind of scored a lot of goals through non-league and has started the season with three goals in his first two games, which is impressive.

And under Wilde, it's very hard to see why they won't put a couple of really disappointing seasons behind them.

But the story and the one that I think we have to give massive credit to is Akru Alexandra, who we were pretty concerned about preseason.

They finished last season in pretty desperate form.

They were celebration, and rightly so, when Lee Bell was targeted by League One.

Burton Alabin last season and he decided to stay at the club.

But basically from the moment that he did decide to stay at the club, the form tailed off, and it looked like he might come under pressure if they didn't start the season well.

But they started the season brilliantly.

Two wins from their first two games.

They beat Accrington at home 2-0

on Saturday and did so impressively.

You know, they're a side who a couple of seasons ago, of course, got to the lead two playoff final and were beaten, having been on the fringes of the top three for most of that campaign.

And early signs that, you know, that was a side that was so impressive in terms of the way they played, like really attacking football to start the season.

And they look like they've kind of gone back to that after

being a bit of a shadow of them for themselves last season.

Literally playing front foot attacking football and doing so very well.

So, yeah, they're certainly the surprise package at this early stage, in our mind, at least.

Although I know that a fair few crew fans were more positive than us.

In the Inter Guardian cartoonist podcaster Derby, one of the biggest of the seasons, the Bragging Rights, and he did text me just in Capital Letters, Bragging Rights, go to David Squires, 3-2 victory for swindon town over cambridge united um we went 1-0 up i started to think okay this is really good now the whatsapp group got excited uh but yeah uh we gave some goals away in that one and he says based on the opening games which of their one to twenty four predictions do you think might be widest of the mark for you chaps allie across all three divisions well yeah the way that crew have played in their first two games certainly is not wherever we had them sort of 20th in the league level i don't think that they have the the most depth in their squad.

And last season, they showed that, you know, even when they were looking pretty good in the first half of the season, they did tail off.

So, you know, it's very early, but certainly based on their performances, they would be one.

And just a bit of respite for you, Max, if it makes you feel better.

Of the four teams that came down from League One last season, which include your beloved Cambridge United, you're the only team that's won a game so far in the first two weekends.

A combined record of one win, one draw, and six defeats for the teams that have come down, including a horror start for Bristol Rovers, who expected to go well with quite a big budget, and a returning favourite in the dugout in Daryl Clark.

A bit of a horror show for Shrewsbury, drew 0-0 on opening weekend at home to Bromley and then got thumped 4-0 by Tramere

and Crawley as well, who just lost at home to Newport, having been absolutely smashed on opening day.

So Cambridge, if anything, looking like the best of that quad.

We're the shining light.

Mark says, have any of the panel played football with someone who then went on to be a PGMOL referee?

This is

a message that was put out on Blue Sky.

Whether it's true or not, I don't know.

It just says, Hugh Gilroy, assistant ref at the West Brom game today, used to play for the Sunday League team I ran 10 years ago.

I bought him on as a sub in a semi-final once.

I had to sub him after five minutes as he was having a mare.

His replacement got the winner to take us to the final.

Seems that's doing no favours to referees who have got some actually, and we haven't talked about it that much, but officials have quite a lot of stick batters over this first couple of weeks of the EFL season.

Yeah, I don't want to stick to booting, but I would say on the evidence of what I've seen,

some of the refereeing has been,

I'm going to say, I use the word already, erratic.

Southampton Wrexham, certainly, I thought the ref in the Birmingham Ipswich game was just too fussy.

He seemed very whistle-happy when there wasn't much need to be.

But look, everyone's a bit rusty, early doors in the season.

So, you know, I'm not going to stick to Boofu.

Fair enough.

Let's finish with this from Nate, who says, Hi, Max Barry and the gang.

My name is Nate.

I'm a Brighton fan from New Jersey, longtime listener, first-time emailer.

I wanted to add to the chorus of other doctoral students who listen to the podcast while working on their theses.

I will sometimes put the pod on while translating medieval Japanese poetry.

The other day, however, I accidentally found myself translating a poetic turn of phrase originally written by a 14th-century monk in Japan as, quote, get amongst it.

And I decided I probably needed to confine my listening to when I take my lunchtime breaks from writing.

Barry is right.

No one beyond my doctoral committee and maybe an unlucky friend or two I asked to help me copy edit is ever likely to read this thing.

Ideally, it's the year or two managing in League Two for a coach who's just done their UEFA badge or whatever that no one besides that team's fans are likely to remember.

But done right, it could be a stepping stone to bigger and better things, despite there being a very small and competitive market for, in this case, fairly low-paying jobs and a very limited audience for more polished polished research.

Still, I love what I'm doing.

It's a privilege to be paid to learn something otherwise deemed useless by society and not have to work from an office.

There was a time when knowledge of the court poetry I study was about as well remunerated and publicly renowned as football.

Although, to be honest, I'm not upset to live in a world where this isn't the case, even it would increase my job prospects.

Imagine tuning into Sky to watch a bunch of aristocrats compose linked verse every Sunday.

Anyway, love the pod, Nate.

Thank you, Nate.

Appreciate it.

And to all those

one, imagines the remake and success of the excellent Shogun

probably is bringing medieval Japanese poetry to a wider audience.

That's set in the 16th century, I think.

Is that medieval?

No, that's medieval to me.

It's not medieval.

But, you know, it has put Japanese poetry back on the map, I would say.

Anyway, that'll do it for today.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, Not the Top 20.

Thank you, George.

Thank you, Max.

Thank you, Ali.

Thank you, Max.

Cheers, Baz.

Thank you.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

Premier League predictions in the next couple of pods.

This is The Guardian.