Manchester United and Spurs head for Europa League final – Football Weekly (bonus)

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Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

And so, we have a Spurs-Manchester United Europa League final.

We wondered how much jeopardy there would be for Spurs going to a plastic pitch in the Arctic Circle.

Turns out, not much.

Not Angeball, but a very professional-away European performance.

The Norwegians had a dream, but couldn't get past the Spurs bus.

Meanwhile, two lovely moments from Mason Mount, who settled the nerves at Old Trafford and finished things off from miles out as Manchester United beat Bilbao 4-1.

Both sides did the hard work in the first leg, really.

We should have done a pod that night.

Also, Chelsea through to the Conference League final and Sheffield United with more than one foot at Wembley in the playoffs after a 3-0 win over 10-man Bristol City at Ashton Gate.

All that, there's Cambridge United's retained list.

Has Ryan Loft made the cut?

Your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Barry Glendenny, welcome.

Hello, Max.

Our Bodo Glimp correspondent, Lars Sivitson.

Hello.

Oh, hello, Max.

And from the Excellent Sweeper podcast and Bristol City fan, Paul Watson, commiserations, Paul.

Thanks, Max.

Yeah, as you said before we came on air, all the matches I watched were shit and we lost 3-0.

That could be my epitaph, couldn't it?

We'll get to that game.

Anyway, look, we hoped, I suspect, for a bit more drama,

but we do have a Europe League final of Tottenham versus Manchester United on the 21st of May.

and we'll look ahead to that in part two.

Let's take a quick look at the games, though.

Spurs went to Norway, Barry.

Johnny says, let's hope the 99 games Barry said we have to watch before the next cracker are not like this first game.

It wasn't a great game, but I suppose you have to say it was a very professional European performance from Tottenham.

And you don't always expect a very professional performance of any sort from Tottenham.

No,

I'm sure I'm not alone in having hoped

they would slip up.

I was going to say as a neutral, but presumably that makes me not a neutral.

If I really wanted Bodo Glimp to beat them, Bodo Glimp did everything in their powers.

You had the fireworks and the pyro outside the Spurs team hotel at 2.30am.

the night before the game.

I say night, it was still daylight, but at 2.30 a.m.

The weather wasn't great, but it wasn't particularly cold, it was good and wet.

And they played on a plastic pitch.

And we know how much they struggled to beat Tamworth Town in the FA Cup when on their last outing on a plastic pitch.

So the ingredients were there for an upset, but Tottenham were disappointingly professional.

For me, the standout moment in a very, very boring first half was Vicario getting warned about time wasting after seven minutes,

which I was tremendous.

And that sort of set the tone for Tottenham.

First half was something of a non-event.

I think each keeper had to make one sort of not very good save.

Spurs, yeah, won it fairly handy in the second half.

If Bodo Glimpt had scored, it would have made things interesting.

But they didn't.

And

Spurs just did exactly what they did needed to do.

They didn't try try too hard.

They weren't too adventurous.

And they were never really under any threat.

I mean, Cynics Lars will say it's only Bodo glimpsed, but we have talked, and other people have talked about their home record being it.

So how would you rate this Tottenham performance?

Apart from really boring.

So I watched this on Norwegian television and the sort of co-commentator

said towards the end of the game that he had watched really all of Bodo's big home games in Europe over the last few years and Spurs were the visitors who who dealt with them the best who who defended the best who were the most diligent and cutting off passing lanes and staying disciplined and staying in their shapes and just really doing all of the things that we never see Ang poster coglers taught them do in the Premier League which makes it a slightly confusing performance to me but but really

we've been hammering Spurs and we've been hammering Ange for months now

for never like adjusting to circumstances or for keeping making the same mistakes all over again and making stupid mistakes at the back.

And I think the second leg against Fangfoot in particular and this leg kind of shows that they are able to not do that,

admittedly, against perhaps slightly weaker opponents than some of the teams they face in the Premier League.

But

I came away from the thinking that it is to Tottenham's credit that it was a boring game.

Border Glimps usually are able to open up opponents at home, and they have done so against teams in the last few years who have been quite a lot better than what Spurs have been for a lot of the season.

So I think Spurs deserve a lot of credit for that.

And Ange deserves credit for

finally unearthing a plan B and executing it very well with his team in two very, very important games now.

Yeah, which I guess you wonder, Paul, is has he found this plan B soon enough for his own future?

It's hard to say, isn't it?

But I think he might have.

Because I think if they win it, it's going to be a hard call to sack him, isn't it?

Surely.

I mean...

It would be incredibly funny, though, Paul.

I'm sorry to puzzle.

But like, can you imagine if Tottenham, after all these years and after all the stick they've gotten for not winning a trophy, if they win a trophy and Daniel Levy immediately sacks the manager?

I mean it would just be like incredible.

Like just for the summer of banter on the social media, it would just reach new levels.

Just do it for the bench, Daniel.

Just please.

It might be a bit like when 10 Haag won the FA Cup and it was too embarrassing to sack him.

You know, they obviously were going to sack him.

They won the FA Cup.

And so United kept him on.

And he was basically a dead man walking from that point onwards.

It was kind of pointless.

So it could be one of those.

but I just, I don't think you can sack him if he wins it.

I don't think so.

I'm worried they will.

I think I agree with you.

I mean, considering how, and we'll get to, you know, their European records in part two, but considering how rarely Tottenham win anything.

Having said that, you know,

they could quite easily lose the final, I guess.

It's hard to pick out performances in a game.

Well, it's not hard, Barry, I guess.

It's just different because normally you try and pick out, you know, the greatest attacking player.

But I suppose Basuma, who has not played a lot recently and has come in when bergval and madison were injured for tottenham and that is a big creative gap for them he did the same uh in the first leg as well he came in and i thought he was really very good and showed signs of the basuma that we remember from from brighton yeah i mean i'm probably not the person to ask because i was

uh We're recording this just minutes after the final whistle, and I was trying to watch two games at the same time.

And what happened?

I knew what would happen, and what I knew would happen happened in that I ended up not watching either of them, really.

I had Spurs Bodeglimt on the telly and Manchester United, Bilbao on the tablet.

But from what I saw, Pedro Porro seemed to be heavily involved.

His goal was superb.

I don't think he meant it.

But

he seemed to be

in the thick of a lot of the action.

See all also Christian Romero, whose

knockdown for the opener was superb.

Ives Brissuma may well have been superb.

It passed me by if he was, I have to admit.

I mean, Bodegnes, Patrick Bag, the midfielder, was interviewed on the pitch after just after full time.

And one of the questions he was asked is, How long did you believe that you could turn this around?

And he'd given very media savvy interview answers thus far in the interview.

But he would ask that question, he just kind of laughed and shrugged.

Say, Well, you know, when the opponent's fullback knocks a cross in off the upright, you just kind of sense this is not your day.

And I, I guess that's kind of what that was.

I thought Romero was really good, and I thought there was a couple of moments where you had the pace.

This was the Romero van de Ven defensive combo in all this glory.

Like, Romero was flying into challenges, he was breaking up stuff, and Van de Ven used his pace to stop things.

Uh, the Norwegian commentary team, team, again, a fair few times, pointed out that, like, you know, this would have been a lot easier if they didn't have Van de Venn, because he is so quick.

And the few moments when you manage to get in behind Spurs and you think you're creating an occasion, suddenly Van de Venn just turns on the turns on something, whatever he has in his legs, he turns it on and just eats up the ground and solves everything.

So there was a fair bit of that.

I also just thought it was a good game for Bentunker.

There was a few moments when he just, he's an experienced, intelligent guy.

He can put his foot on the ball.

He can cut out things.

You know, it's a hard game to talk about because there weren't a ton of chances there weren't a lot of exciting things but just having watched a lot of taught them this season having watched them do a lot of really stupid things they went through 90 minutes without doing any stupid things and i i that that's a big moment for them that's that's that's that's impressive um just a word on bodo like no club from norway has ever got this far so like it's a it's a great achievement in itself isn't it and like their story which we know vaguely we know pretty well from you uh is is a great one in a world of not amazing stories, I guess, when you peel back the curtain of football.

As I'm assuming a lot of listeners know, I'm Spurs, but

I felt quite conflicted going into this.

And it's not just because I'm Norwegian, that's part of it, but it's also

so much of what I think is wrong about modern football is the fact that it is an ever-increasing or ever-decreasing circle of giant and very wealthy clubs that win all the things.

And we're seeing this even in the Europa League now, because if you go back like the last nine years, years, I don't like the last nine years, 18 finalists in the Europa League have come from the so-called big five leagues.

And the two exceptions are Rangers, who, of course, are a pretty big club in their own right, and Ajax, who are like their own kind of weird giant of the game.

So you just don't see clubs from the smaller leagues.

get to this sort of level and it's important that they can like it matters like a lot of people don't actually support one of these like seven very rich clubs a lot of people go and support bristol maybe or in my like Brunen, my hometown club.

It is important that whoever you support, you go to the match every weekend with some kind of vaguely realistic dream that some things can go right and you can have this incredible run and you can have these incredible moments.

So seeing a team actually do that, seeing a team from the Norwegian league with the budgetary restrictions that come with that, get to a European final, even if it is the Europa League, I think that would be really good for the sport.

I think it would be a validation that this model still vaguely works, which it often feels like it doesn't.

So I did kind of want that to happen, but obviously, it's a huge thing for Spurs to get to the final.

But, yeah, I, yeah, I'm kind of sad for Bodoglimt, and I'm sad that we didn't get,

I wanted a period of football over these two legs where they could play towards their best because obviously they would have had more eyeballs on them now than in any of these other games that we've talked about.

And we never really got a spell, a five, ten-minute spell where they move the ball as well as I know they can, that I've seen them do against other big European teams.

And I think that is a bit of a shame.

Yeah, I suppose it's a standing ovation from the sweeper pod, uh, from what Lars said there, Paul.

Or once a team gets to a semi-final of a major competition, do the sweeper pod, Paul, have to just

send them away and go, You're too big for us now.

Are Bodo Glimp too big for you now?

No, no, well, they've become a bit mainstream.

We had this, um, we had this same debate about

it's like REM.

I liked them before they were good, you know.

No, Max, we're at the point where we had this debate about KR Klaxfig of the Ferroids last year.

They only got round for about three rounds.

No, actually, we're talking about Buddha Glimpton on the next pod.

And, you know, they are an amazing story.

It's been a lot of fun watching them.

Tonight, actually, the guy that I feel for is, did you see about the fan who bartered five kilos of semi-dried fish for a ticket?

I'll be getting the fish back personally to me.

But no, it's been a great run.

And I think they can take a huge amount of pride out of the way they've performed.

And as Lars says, like, this is what these competitions are supposed to be for.

And it's great to see, you know, someone breaking that up a little bit, even if tonight, yeah, the real disappointment is that they've been a lot better than that.

I really thought they'd get at Spurs, and it just never really seemed like they did.

Those first 10-15 minutes, I was like, this is going to be hell for Spurs, and it just wasn't really.

You mentioned the dried fish.

There were stories in the bill up of fans swapping reindeer meat

tickets as well.

Yeah, which is excellent, isn't it?

There were 50,000 fans in the online queue for 480 tickets that went on general sale.

Anyway, let's do Manchester United beating Bill Bow 4-1.

The other game, Barry, that you watched but didn't watch.

But hopefully, you saw Mason Mount score two goals, like the crucial one to equalize to put the jeopardy out of the game, and then a brilliant one in injury time.

And just a lovely moment for this kind of forgotten footballer.

Yeah, I hadn't forgotten.

I knew who's there.

I know he's struggled badly with injuries.

On TNT comms, Robbie Savage was saying he had the best half hour of his life.

He was one of three changes that Ruben Aberman made shortly after the hour mark, and he had a serious impact on the game.

United were a goal down on the night.

Lenny Euro advanced, slips the ball to mount.

Lovely Crif turned from him just inside the Athletic Bubau penalty area.

And then he curled a beautiful shot past Girazabala.

And then his second goal was beautif as well.

It was 3-1-up, tie over.

But I think it was a bad pass out from the goalkeeper.

The ball came to Mount and he just slammed it back with interest from a few yards inside the Bilbao half.

He looks so happy just to have had an impact on this game.

He hasn't had much impact on the season.

And

his career at Manchester United has never really got going, hasn't through no great fault of his own.

So he seems like a good bloke.

Hopefully, this can be

helped kickstart his United career.

That's another thing.

We've spent a lot of the last six months, it feels like, talking about the various players that don't seem to suit Ruben Amarim's preferred formation and stuff.

But Mount is one of those, if he can stay healthy for two minutes, I think

that sort of slightly behind the striker, helping out the wing back, sort of that sort of vague attacking midfield role.

I think it's perfect for that.

I was kind of double screening, and I'm slightly being being a massive nerd.

I'm slightly more experienced at the double screening than Barry, who I believe has a full and has a fulfilling social life.

So he's not as good at this.

I really don't.

I was watching this and it just kind of occurs to me that

maybe I'm doing this thing of lulling myself into a sense of United, maybe being good against it.

Imagine like Bruno and Mason Mount in those two roles behind a striker who can actually score and add another midfielder who can run to the midfield.

and yoro is really good he's going to be a great center half and yeah there is the beginnings of a team here and i i say that having also watched them be horrible in many games in the league but yeah i that was great and yeah i'm team mount i know john bruin believes he's in it too inherently southern to succeed at manchester united but i i i i i don't think that is the case i believe in mount I might not have those t-shirts, Make.

I think the sales would be meager, but I do believe in Mount.

David Beckham was quite southern, wasn't he?

Yes, I was about to say that.

He was the first that sprung to mind.

I mean, I turned the there aren't many other huge successes at Manchester United who are very southern.

But maybe, you know, Surrey is even more southern than Essex, but I don't know where Mason Mount is from originally.

I mean, I just presume he was born in Cobham, but it may not be.

Yeah, and I suppose, actually, on that note about Manchester United getting good or vaguely good, Paul, like, I don't think,

I think a lot of people thought Bill Bauer were favourites for this tie.

And to hammer them twice, okay, there was obviously a you know a big moment in the first leg when there's a red card, and Bill Bauer started that game really well.

But to get through seven on an aggregate, is it, I mean, is that a statement or is that going too far?

No, I think it could be a statement, Max.

Yeah, um, I mean, it was, as you say, the nature of the victory is so emphatic, you can't, you can't quibble with it.

Like, um, you could talk about the red card in the first leg all you like, but no, I mean, they've dominated twice.

Um, tonight actually could have been possibly easier had Garnacho missed a really, you know, as he will, missed a one-on-one

pretty early on, which again, you know, they could have seen this one away earlier.

And there was only really a very limited spell where you just felt that athletic were getting up ahead of steam and a bit of momentum.

But by the end,

it was a procession.

And as Lars says, I've got to the point now where it feels...

quite unsettling to see Manchester United play well.

And this is probably because it took me about 15 years to to get used to the fact they weren't any good anymore.

So, I'm only just getting used to that.

And now it's odd to see them play as they did tonight.

And they looked like a really different side.

So, no, I think they take a lot of credit.

If I could quibble slightly, I would argue they did not play at all well in the first half.

And when they went to goal down, the tie did look a bit in danger getting away from them.

And

they didn't really

lock down the tie until that first mount goal.

What was that?

After 65, 70 minutes, 70 minutes.

So, and then it was a procession from there on, but they didn't look particularly impressive in the first half

at all.

It's worth pointing out, Athletic Bilbao, we're missing both Williams brothers and their first choice sent forward.

I think that's like, it is, you know, I know that was last week, but it is the moment of the sending off that kind of kills the tie, really, because what Bilbao has been great at at this season is they've been great defensively.

I think they've conceded the lowest number of goals in the league at the second lowest XG number.

So they are, you know, straight up one of the best, if not the best, defenses in Spain.

And

when that goes to hell, basically, because they concede a penalty and a red card to a central defender, it's like, uh-oh, trouble now.

And then you're missing both the Williams brothers for this.

Nico Williams in particular is such an incredible player.

And if you're trying to overturn that kind of deficit, yeah, I don't want to take anything away from United, but this was definitely bad, like just such a bad starting point for athletic in any kind of way.

Rio Ferdinand, Paul Ince, Teddy Sherringham, Paul Parker, some other.

I mean, Teddy Sherringham is about as southern as it gets, isn't it?

And

yeah, even Paul McGrath was born in Ealing.

This was my internal monologue in that episode when Bruin cast that slur, that slur on Mason Mount and his inherent southernness.

But you know,

let that slide now.

You can be southern and succeed at Old Chafford.

Anyway, that'll do for part one.

We'll look into the final.

In brief, we'll do a bit of Chelsea Durgarden.

And hopefully, Fiorentina Bettis will have finished by the time we tell you what the score was in Fiorentina Bettis in part two.

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here too.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly then.

So look, Manchester United Spurs is the Europa League final.

United obviously have a slightly more glittering track record in Europe, three European Cups, a Europa League, a Cup Winners' Cup.

Spurs have two UEFA Cups.

So the last time they won this competition was 1984.

They won the Cup Winners' Cup in 1963.

So on that scale, Barry, for Tottenham to get to a European final, I think it's their only their sixth, and having not won this for

40 years, 39 years,

it is a massive achievement, even though it sort of doesn't feel like one right now.

Interestingly, that one they won nearly 40 years ago.

I remember watching that.

And it was a great game.

They beat Andlecht

on penalty.

Tony Parks.

And Tony Parks was in goal.

And

it's one of the first games.

Certainly one of the first club games I remember watching in its entirety.

It was really, yeah, that sticks in my mind.

So you can't remember either of the games tonight, but you can.

No.

But

did Tony Parks,

did he come on as a sub or was he a...

I think he was the reserve.

I think, I can't remember, it must be Ray Clemens.

Ray Clements would have been, was injured.

And he was the shootout hero.

But I was unaware that Spurs hadn't won a European final since then.

Look, it's the Europa League.

They're

16th in the Premier League.

They're playing 15th in the Premier League in the final.

One of them is going to get a place in next season's Champions League.

They're so lucky.

And whoever misses out will be absolutely gutted.

Yeah, it's a good achievement.

Ange has been pilloried for his

insistence, and he's just stating the fact that he always wins something in his second season.

It's a hard one to call, obviously.

And

every fibre of my being suggests Manchester United will win this on penalties.

Spurs have beaten them three times this season.

Ange always wins something in his second season.

They will lose.

And I literally don't care who wins.

I really don't care.

But

I just know it's written in the gods that Spurs will lose this week.

I suppose, Lars, that is what, you know, when Ange sits there and says he's trying to change the narrative, that's the narrative there, isn't it?

Like, I feel it.

I feel what Barry's saying.

The muscle memory of Manchester United.

It just terrifies me now.

So if it was athletic playing in their hometown, Spurs would definitely have lost that.

Like, there's no way that would have ended well.

I do think it's feasible for Spurs to beat this Man United team, having just talked up their potential.

I don't think they're there yet.

I do subscribe to the Barry Glandening School of thought that they weren't great in this game until Athletic kind of lost it towards the end.

I just

throw this out.

A mayonnaise me,

when United or Spurs win the Europa League, will their fans feel better about their season than Arsenal fans do right now and I immediately answered no clearly not but I have been thinking about it in the last sort of 20 minutes and I mean feel is is is the key word here right because Arsenal are almost certainly finishing second in the league unless City can overhaul them they've gotten far in the Champions League like it has been an objectively good season but when a good season kind of falters the way it has done it's kind of hard to feel good about that good season whereas one out of these two fan bases who have been through a lot of garbage this year are going to end it lifting a trophy in a really rather wonderful city break destination and will eat tremendous food and have a great time.

So

if we're going just on vibes,

maybe that's true.

Maybe that's true.

But it's also about expectation, isn't it?

And especially for Tottenham, Paul, you know, Imagine United have won trophies when they've been bad.

They've won trophies when they've been good.

Tottenham have been to, I'm trying to think, the last few finals and barry's talked a lot about you know harry kane not being fit but the champions league final they didn't turn up they've had two league cup finals i think where they haven't really turned up the desperation as barry said because there's a champions league place as well as a trophy on this the desperation for both these sides will be ridiculous yep and it will make for what will almost certainly be a horrible scrappy nasty spectacle right i mean that's the one thing you can be sure of yeah i i i think the this weird thing it's almost like as you say it's like the poker table where the chips have just got so huge now, stacked up on this one game.

I think United, it feels like Man United have got a slightly nicer narrative leading into this that, like, you know, Amarim is going to take some time, but you know, maybe things are going in the right direction.

Whereas for Ange, it's like this horrible, desperate, all-or-nothing

match.

And that just makes me think it's so much more likely United will win because that's the way the world works, right?

It's, it's just, it's, I think it's just too much pressure for Spurs.

And Spurs, if there's one thing they don't like, it's pressure because they're without Madison and Bergbaugh.

If Sun is fit, just to see, like, we talked about Harry Kane, seeing him get drunk on Instagram.

I can't imagine King Winston would get drunk on Instagram, right?

But just seeing him lift a trophy with his, you know, that smile.

God,

I would really, that's going to be so sad when he does.

Anyway, you you know, we'll obviously do a pod after that game.

Conference League then.

Now, this was so my screen set up, Barry.

It started with Tottenham on the TV, Man United and the Bristol City Chef United games on the laptop.

Ian arrived, and so Stinky and Dirty went on a cartoon about a sort of two-friendly

garbage truck and a digger who sort of, you know, they get themselves out of little scrapes with their imaginations.

That went on the main TV.

It already sounds better than Spurs Brawl Blue.

In many ways.

But the thing is, I've seen the follow-the-line episode about 4,000 times.

And even then, yes, it was better.

But what it did mean is I didn't have any eyes on Chelsea Durgarten.

So I go to our most professional multi-screener, Lars Sivadson, to say,

tell us what happened.

No, I went two screen.

I can't do three screen.

I've been very clear on this.

I can do two screens really well.

I'm pretty good at that.

And the trick is, I think I've told you this before, but you got to keep your eyes on one and have the sound from the other, right?

Because then, like, whatever, what they're told you'll alert you, that's how that works.

But if I have experimented with three, I have dabbled with three, but it just turns into mush.

And I also just kind of had no real hopes of this turning into an interesting game either.

The other one did turn into, it's still going on as we record.

But yeah, Chelsea's you got it's a game that happened that Chelsea won.

And Jurgon, as we've established from this, I mean, they're very lucky.

There's fans of smaller clubs in the Conference League who come up against these big teams.

They should feel very fortunate that they get to get knocked out by a team whose budget is like 40 times their own because that is a real privilege.

And that's why those teams are in there, I guess, is the argument.

No?

16-year-old Reggie Walsh made his first start for Chelsea.

He was taken directly to school from the plane after making an appearance off the bench in Sweden last week.

When he was born, number one was The Promise by Girls Aloud.

Oh, that's a banger, isn't it?

Reggie does sound like, you know, something from the 1950s.

Do you have any thoughts on Jurgarden, Paul?

Or have you seen anything from this game?

Jurgarden generally, I think one of the most telling things that I saw was after the first leg, you know, the...

It was 4-1, it looked pretty dead.

There were some suggestions Jurgarden might actually play a weekend side for this because they're struggling in the league.

They've had a really poor start to the season.

They're in 11th and there's kind of a gathering pressure on them to get some league results.

And when I read that, I thought, oh, this, this doesn't bode well, does it?

Playing a weakened side.

I don't think they did, but

yeah, you know, that tie was so dead before tonight that as soon as that first goal went in,

yeah, I wasn't tempted.

I'm not asking this to be contrary.

I'm asking because I genuinely don't know the answer.

But do Chelsea fans even care whether they win this tournament or not?

I mean, they kind of have to win it now because it would be embarrassing if they don't.

But otherwise,

it's almost beneath them.

Yeah, I take that point.

I think when you get,

maybe it's a bit like

I think you make a point that going out at any point in this competition would have been really bad.

And so by winning it, that's that's sort of the least that they could do.

And then maybe in a slightly different way, it's like the LDV vans or whatever that is in League One and League Two.

Like nobody cares about it at all until you're suddenly, oh, we're in the semi-final or the final.

Then you go, well, it's a day out, so you might as well have a day out.

And I think that's probably how they see it.

But yeah, I don't know if that reflects on.

Look,

you can only enter four competitions.

And if you win one of them, I suppose it's better than not winning it.

But I don't necessarily disagree with you.

I don't think Chelsea fans are sort of eating and breathing it in the way that Tottenham and Man United fans will the Europa League.

Fiorentina 2, Bettis 2, Bettis going through 4-3 on aggregate

as things stand.

This is exciting, isn't it?

A minute to play.

Anthony at Bettis, Lars, on that, you know, Leave Manchester United being a good idea.

Scored him both legs in this game.

Yes.

Been quite ridiculous how well he's played.

He's scored an absolute banger again.

And it's...

I don't know.

I made fun of Anthony quite a lot.

Maybe, yeah, because he was quite bad and United spent an inexplicable amount of money on him.

But there have been signs.

There have been signs of life at Bettis.

And maybe that's, I wonder sometimes if footballers are kind of cursed by these transfers.

Obviously, their bank accounts are not, but like when they make these big moves, sometimes footballers get like slightly over-promoted.

I do wonder if like someone like Anthony would have been better off going to a mid-table team in Spain or someone like that and just being a little bit of a bigger fish in a medium pond because he does have some technical gifts.

And when you, but you, when you arrive at Man United and they've spent like 90 million or whatever crazy sum it was on him, the expectation is you have to be world class from day one.

But you didn't pick the transfer fee.

Like, this isn't your fault.

You've just said yes when you had a very large contract put in front of you.

And it becomes a really awkward situation.

And

on that side of his career, I can have some sympathy for him.

I don't think you deserve to become this figure of fun just because you said yes to this offer and you don't pick your own transfer fee.

With Anthony, he seems a very bullish individual.

There have been some unsettling reports about his private life.

He's not an

instinctively sympathetic person, maybe.

But he has shown some stuff, at least from a football side of things, at Betis.

And you do wonder, on a slightly more light-hearted note, what on earth are they putting in the food at Old Trafford?

Maybe Inos is right to sack everyone because it does seem like they perk up immediately when you just leave the building.

Are they putting like arsenic in the supper?

Or like, what's happening there?

Well, they're giving all the good stuff to Mason Mount and just Betsy.

Very slow release.

Very slow release, oats, and suddenly he is blossoming.

It has finished.

Well done for filling, Lars.

So yeah, the final Chelsea versus Rail Bettis.

That'll do for part two.

Part three.

With apologies, Paul, we will talk about Sheffield United's 3-0 victory at Ashton Gate in the playoffs.

HiPod fans of America.

Max here.

Barry's here, too.

Hello.

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and we're back live during a flex alert dialed in on the thermostat oh we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m.

folks and that's the end of the third Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.

Clutch move by the home team.

What's the game plan from here on out?

Laundry?

Not today.

Dishwasher?

Sidelined.

What a performance by Team California.

The power truly is ours.

During a flex alert, pre-cool, power down, and let's beat the heat together.

Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So yeah, Bristol City, Neil, Sheffield United, three in the championship playoff first leg.

Bristol City had Rob Dickey sent off for a silly professional foul on Kiefer Moore when he was cleaned through.

It was a straight red card.

Sheffield United scored the penalty and from there, Paul, it was sort of done.

I'm really sorry, mate, because I don't know how much hope you had, but like it has been truly extinguished while you were trying to watch two other Europa league football matches.

The weirdest thing is actually how much it hurts.

I've got to be honest, because realistically, we had no hope.

I mean, you only have to look at the league table.

Sheffield United got 90 points, we got 68.

We,

you know, I say we didn't really scrape into the playoffs.

We were there and we looked like we deserved it.

But the gap between us and Sheffield United is pretty clear to see.

It's funny, actually, I saw some people commenting on Twitter as usual about the fact that our fans invaded the pitch at Ashton Gate after we qualified for playoffs, saying, you know, what a tinpot thing to do.

I think

it's a real measure of just how unexciting it's been to be a Bristol City fan for so long.

This was a massive deal to us.

2008 was the playoff final heartbreak

at Wembley against Hull.

And since then, we've often come top of these things that say who are the most boring club to support because we are 12th merchants.

And so the whole way along this season, I've been sort of saying, yeah, we're going to finish, you know, mid-table, mid-table.

And suddenly, you know, we got the spurt on and got into playoffs.

And you sort of hope that this weird logic kicks in where the fact that we were so clearly the moment that the penalty and the red card were given, the game was really up, to be totally honest.

Yeah.

And it's in those moments, isn't it, Paul, where, you know, Dickie just has to be like, okay, instinctively, you just go, I need to get something on this because he might score.

But if he doesn't do that, Kiefer Moore probably scores and it's 1-0, but it's 11v11.

To be honest, I think it's partly that he's got himself into a bad position and he's all over him before he even.

I think I can't really, you know, I'd love to quibble it, but I think it's a really hard one to argue against.

Maybe it wasn't a red card as well, but also I'd struggle to say that.

What was weird is it was actually a weird deja vu moment because exactly the same thing happened, not exactly the same, but pretty similar against Sheffield United when we played him in November.

That

Dickey again got sent off giving away a penalty that Burroughs scored to, that was actually to in stoppage time at the end of the game to to win that one for Sheffield United.

So there was this weird deja vu seeing him do that.

I've been in this position before.

What do I do?

I know.

What do you do?

Oh no, that's what you don't do.

You're wrong.

But yeah, honestly,

it was painful.

And

you kind of know you're in trouble when at half-time in your home leg of a playoff match against a team that are, you know, objectively a much stronger side, you're hoping to keep it to a 1-0 defeat to take it back to their place.

You know, that was the best we could hope for.

And

Sheffield United are just, they're far too good for that.

So,

yeah,

it's a really weird deflating feeling because I kind of always think I'm too old for this,

feeling it quite so acutely.

But

it hit me quite hard in a weird way.

And it, yeah, God, I didn't think I'd be doing that.

I thought you'd do this podcast.

I thought I'd be doing the pod after we'd lost 1-0.

Yeah, I honestly thought I'd be coming into this, and we'd lost 1-0.

And I still have this kind of hope that maybe we could, but no, 3-0 in the first leg and having to go back to theirs is

pretty impossible to imagine anything that we can do, really.

But I've got to say, though, I'm, you know, the club should be enormously proud of what we've achieved this season, and especially Liam Manning, like incredible coaching job.

I would say the best job in the whole of the championships.

He's got an amazing amount out of what is a thin squad against, you know, teams with massively bigger budgets.

And

also done that against the backdrop of the tragic loss of his very young son during the season, Theo.

So, like, what an incredible achievement for that man.

And I imagine he'll be poached from us now.

But

yeah,

he's done an immense job.

Yeah, I always spoke to Ben Fisher about what Liam Manning has been through, and he did a brilliant interview with him, which you should, if you haven't read it, just go back and find it because

it's a fascinating read.

Sunderland played commentary in the other semifinal tonight, Barry.

How are you feeling?

I'm I'm totally calm because I keep flip-flopping between wanting Sunderland to get promoted and not wanting them to get promoted because as Jonathan Wilson pointed out in a recent podcast, they're just

really not ready to be in the Premier League.

And I worry that if they get promoted, they will just get slaughtered week in, week out.

And

I would rather they stay in the championship than suffer that kind of embarrassment every week.

They're a very young team.

They go are going into this

playoff semi-final in a shocking run of form.

They've lost five in a row.

I think they've only scored two goals.

One suspects this play-off final is going to be Frank Lampard against Chris Wilder.

And

Sheffield United's record in the play-offs is so bad that one suspects it'll be Coventry that go up.

I'd have no problem with Coventry City going back, getting back into the Premier League.

Come back to me with 10 minutes to go in the second leg when it's nicely poised at one all and I'll probably tell you something completely different.

Not applicable says Cambridge United's retained list.

Thoughts?

At least we're guaranteed another year of loft chat on the pod.

Yes, we signed Ryan Loft for money and gave him a three-year deal.

No one's quite sure why, but he's there amongst about six players that we've retained and everyone has disappeared.

So a very exciting news for Ryan Loft.

At this stage, he'd have to play 90 minutes every game in at least two positions.

So hopefully, we get some more players during the summer.

Producer Joel writing, I'm ashamed to say I found Fabrizio Romano's Here We Go Pope announcement quite funny.

Yeah, big picture of the Pope.

Here we go.

Robert Francis Prevost has just been unveiled.

New Pope Leo the 14th, is that?

Yeah.

So good luck, Leo, and a lifetime contract,

£350,000 a week plus bonuses.

Well, good luck to the new Pope.

Well, he's the first ever American Pope, but he's quite anti-Trump.

So Trump put the message on social media, sort of going,

well done, Pope.

Didn't take the credit for it, which I was surprised by, but all these far-right conspiracy theorists, loons, are already digging back into

the Pope's previous social media Pope.

He seems like quite a progressive guy and

who flies in the face of everything Trump and his toadying lick spittles are very much against, so it should be fun.

Well, thank you for a bit of news.

We suddenly became news.

The rest is Football Weekly politics with Barry Glendenning, but yeah, thanks, Baz.

Uh, all right, and that'll do for today.

Uh, thanks, everybody, and um, we'll be back on Monday.

But, um, commiserations, Paul, and thanks for coming on.

Oh, thanks, Max.

Cheers, Lars.

Thank you, Max.

Uh, thank you, Barry.

Thank you.

Hey, Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

This is The Guardian.