Liverpool one victory from title and Villa win big in race for top five – Football Weekly

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Hello.

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Hello, and welcome to Guardian Football Weekly.

The race for fifth place is still exciting.

Two points between third and seventh.

Thank goodness.

Aston Villa dispose of Newcastle.

The Jason Tyndall honeymoon period is over.

Man City leave it later.

Everton Netto smashes an injury time winner against Fulham.

While Nottingham Forest win at Tottenham later today.

Speaking of Spurs, there's a completely Angelus-like Europa League semi-final win in Frankfurt to cover, as well as Manchester United's ludicrous win over Leon, which, of course, they followed up with defeat to the best team in the world right now, Wolverhampton Wanderers.

We'll do the best of the rest, so not Crystal Palace Bournemouth, but a bit of Trent, a bit of Trossard, and a lot of Fulkrook calling out his West Ham teammates.

I've been criticised for some Steve Coogan-based errors.

We'll ask your questions.

And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Barry Glendenning, welcome.

Hi, Max.

Hello, Jonathan Wilson.

Morning.

How are you doing?

I'm very well, thank you.

And good morning, Barney Ronnay.

Hello, everyone.

Let's begin at Villa Park then.

So, look, the third to seventh is exciting.

I don't think I'm just saying that because it's important that something is exciting in the Premier League.

Newcastle have 59 points, Man City 58, Chelsea 57, Nottingham Forest 57 with a game in hand, Aston Villa 57.

Villa beat Newcastle 4-1.

Barney, you were at this game.

Great result for Villa.

And also great for the neutral to keep this top five as tight as possible.

Yeah, it was a really good game, actually.

It was really good.

The whole thing of it being a boring league, I'm not really a fan of that.

I think...

The football is good.

This was really,

you kind of expected an aggressive game because,

you know, Newcastle's all about the kind of murder ball midfield and Villa, you know,

they like a bit of a press.

And it was from the start.

It was really aggressive.

I don't think it was really a 4-1 game.

I think Villa just kind of ran away with it.

And Newcastle looked tired.

They haven't really rotated the team at all.

Probably for the first time, they missed Eddie Howe's.

I mean, I missed Eddie Howe.

The most remarkable thing about this game was one of the the most remarkable things, apart from the fact that Ollie Watkins, okay, Ollie Watkins played really well and confirmed the fact that he is he's Phillips' best player.

I haven't really understood why he was left out of the PSG starting 11s.

I'm sure that there's a good reason.

I don't like questioning managers on this stuff because managers know their squads and know football better than I do.

But I know Rushford's played well, but Ollie Watkins was brilliant here.

He does more.

He was really involved.

He scored a lot of goals this season.

He said afterwards that he was very angry to be left out, which was also fun.

But someone who wasn't very angry, and the one disappointing element of this game was Jason Tyndall afterwards.

The thing about his press conference is he's like a mouse.

You can barely hear him talking.

And obviously, you expect more from someone who is supposedly the Premier League's most annoying man.

Although there's a lot of competition for that title.

He's really scared and wide-eyed.

And I know he's got that

assistant manager disease.

We were talking about it afterwards, and Richard Jolly, who was there, recalled an occasion where Sammy Lee had to do the post-match press conference for Liverpool.

And the question was basically, it boiled down to, is Stephen Gerrard a good player?

And he'd had a brilliant game.

And Sammy Lee refused to answer this and just kept saying, I don't.

And in the end, just basically said, you'll have to ask Raffer about that.

So it's a bit of that.

He can't really say anything other than, I haven't spoken to Eddie yet.

I haven't checked my phone.

It's obviously a lie.

But yeah, apart from Newcastle were very Jason Tyndall in this game.

They were meek.

They looked a bit tired.

They did some fouling.

Wasn't quite enough.

It's odd to me that Villa are really on the outer of this chase for the top five.

They obviously didn't have a good opening, I think, third to the season.

But right now, you know, the squad is really strong.

You know, they brought on, Emery brought on two players who immediately set up the third and fourth goals.

And they look really good.

They look like they should be in the Champions League.

And I think it now boils down to them and Chelsea, essentially.

I know we're trying to have more Jeopardy than that.

But I would be hugely surprised if they didn't finish finish ahead of Chelsea because they're just a hungry team.

Oh, sorry.

One other thing.

I'm going on here.

I didn't see Prince William and that was disappointing.

I do agree with you.

I was expecting more bombast from Tyndall.

I was expecting kind of sort of Wally Downs, you know, cockney vibes, like just, but, but you're right.

Maybe this is sort of like the Wizard of Oz.

You know, like that,

I was expecting more.

And then suddenly it's all just, yeah, just sort of quite normal man.

And I was just, I was, I don't know what I was I don't know what I was hoping for but he's sort of become less annoying and I wanted him to become more annoying.

Well his his nickname is Mad Dog.

He doesn't really give off Mad Dog vibes.

It's more

timid pop.

Maybe it's all a cover.

Maybe he didn't even think of the photos.

Villa sort of got it launched a bit in this game Wilson, I think.

Yeah, well there was clearly a conscious effort to play over the Newcastle press.

They were clearly hitting that space behind Kevin Trippier.

I think it was 52% attacks down the left, 14 down the right.

So it was very much focused on that side.

But I think the point that Barney makes about squad depth is key and it probably, it should be what carries Villa into a top five.

Whether it was right for Oli Watkins to play against PSG or not.

The fact is he didn't and he was angry about it and he responds to that by playing brilliantly and scoring in the first minute.

So the squad depth, it's not just the players aren't as tired.

It's that there's competition for places and people are going on the pitch with a point to prove.

I I also think, I mean, they'll have now, they've won 10 of the last 11 games, the odd one out being the way going against PSG, so you're no disgrace in losing that game at all.

So they're in the best form of

those five teams going for the three places.

They do have the FA Cup semi-final coming up, which I guess could be a distraction.

But they also, they really need Champions League football next season.

So their losses last year...

took their losses over the last three years of £210 million, which obviously is double the £105 you allowed.

They do have £90 million worth of acceptable deductions and they have tweaked the accounting period, so they're probably just inside.

But the Champions League football to enable them, I don't know if they want necessarily to make Rashford and Sencio permanent deals, but say they did.

I think they'd need the Champions League football to be able to do that and to keep building.

It's very rare for a team without state support.

And I know they do have

a huge amount of money coming in from the owners, but it's very rare for a team to break into those top echelons and get

potentially two successive Champions League qualifications.

But if they did, you'd sort of think they're in a good position to sort of remain there for quite a while.

And does that mean like the other sides going for this Champions League financially don't need it as much?

Or I don't know if you have all the accounts to hat in your head right now.

Well, one of them is Chelsea.

I mean, they desperately need it because that club is heading.

I mean, the Club World Cup is bailing them out.

Usually, they're going to get...

60 million, 70 million just for playing in that, getting out of the group stage.

It's a total win-fall.

It's like selling your chopping your arm off and selling it to yourself again.

But the rest of them, maybe.

And the fact that

they're getting taxed on that by the US government, which apparently doesn't normally happen with FIFA tournaments, that's actually quite a blow for them because they hadn't, yeah, they decided they wouldn't get taxed because normally FIFA negotiates a sort of an exemption.

Certainly for World Cups, obviously, this is the first time a Club World Cup's been anything like this scale.

So I think PSR means that everybody kind of needs it.

But obviously, as Barney says, Chelsea needs it more.

Villa needs it a lot because they just don't have the depth of resources that Say City have.

So, you know, it's important for everybody.

Perhaps more importantly, Ian Mattson became the first Ian to score a Premier League goal since 2010-2011.

Ian Evert, thank you to Daniel Story, who'd gone through every year from 2005.

Yeah, haven't been many.

Good news for young Ian Rushton when he breaks onto the scene with his Maverick.

Maverick name.

Did you have any strong thoughts on this game, Barry?

No, not really.

I thought

Villa probably should have won by more, actually, because they hit the post three times.

Nick Pope made some good saves.

They

could have had a penalty for a shar

challenge on Watkins.

And just they very much exploited that attack down the left, Newcastle's right, and

targeted Fabian Scher and Kieran Trippier, who sort of showed their age a bit and were very badly exposed.

But beyond that, no real strong thoughts.

Watkins clearly was very angry at being left out of the PSG game, so he should be.

And he said he and or Unai Emery described their conversation as being very good.

I'd like to have heard that conversation.

Yeah, I was there when they they asked Umay Emery about the conversation.

We asked in the press conference, like, you know, what was this conversation?

And he did this thing of like basically putting his head in his hands and he he kind of you could see him thinking how can I say something here without saying anything at all and he just said the word fantastic a lot.

He went fantastic, fantastic, fantastic play.

Just say fantastic, keep saying fantastic.

Over.

The irony of this is I also had a fantastic conversation with Guardian bosses have been bumped off this game to let Barney do it.

Oh, really?

That's huge, isn't it?

How late was the notice?

Was it like you were injured in the warm-up?

It was about a week before you weren't there.

And I got moved to Leicester.

It was fine, actually.

It was quite useful to have a Saturday.

Look how that rage drove you on.

Look at you now.

You're absolutely incandescent, but on fire.

You are.

You're really delivering on this podcast right now, wasn't it?

Has to be said.

We'll do the run-ins at the end of this bit once we've done the other games.

Man, City won Tuna Everton.

Quite a good game.

I thought City were perhaps a bit lucky, Barry, to win this one.

Yeah, Everton had plenty of chances.

Tarkowski headed one against the Post.

He had another header at free kick.

He teed up Jared Brantwaite, who brought a brilliant save out of stefan ortega ducoure forced a good save out of ortega so everton could have been ahead uh probably should have been ahead city did have chances to pick for that to make a good save from cevino but uh ultimately city prevailed i'm i'm not going to say they wanted it more but there is a bit of an end of term feel about everton at the minute as there is with many teams and uh ultimately yeah, City

were probably worthy winners, but they had to work hard for it and probably work a bit harder than they might have expected to have to work.

Barney, I keep thinking City will just, you know, go.

I mean, they can't go on a run of their normal duration because there just aren't enough games left, but they will just do enough.

What are you making of this sort of current Man City iteration?

They are doing that.

And it's interesting that...

they seem to have had a better run of results since Erling Haaland is not starting in the team.

They haven't lost, they've kept clean sheets, they've actually had more possession.

That's not because Erling Haaland is a bad player, but I think the way

he plays, I mean, it's fine if the entire team is functioning at incredibly high level and you can essentially play with 10 men and an incredible poacher, but maybe it suits this version to have more people get involved in the game.

And now they just look like a good team,

not someone who's going to go on a 17-match annihilating run run and win a treble and they look fine i think they will now clearly finish in probably in the top three and um

it may just have been a little bit of a benefit to play with a more prosaic everyday pattern interestingly kevin de bruyne seems disappointed not to have been offered a new contract I think it's quite good not to offer players new contracts when you think I think it's good I think it's good business city you always say how well run they are I know fans will always want to keep the favourite players and that's what one of the good things about the game but I think for City, it's probably just exactly the right thing.

He's been brilliant for them, and that's it.

Can't really run anymore.

Go to America.

The one thing I left out in my summary of this game, Everton's performance visibly dipped when Tarkowski was forced off with the Hammy injury.

Michael Keene came on and was not as good.

I do like Barry calling Tarkovsky Tarkowski.

It's kind of like America during the culture, Moscow.

It's good.

Or like coach Tarkowski, you know, get down and give me 20, like that.

Yes.

Hey, Will, hey, Wilson, what do you make of Nico O'Reilly and Matthias Nunez playing fullback?

Is this just so that Pep hopes next season every other team copies him by playing sort of attacking midfielders at fullback?

And then he can he, you know, he can then expose that.

I mean, he, he's, he said, I thought there was an astonishing thing to say about Matthias Nunez.

This is, I don't know what it was, like two weeks ago,

something like that.

He just wasn't good enough to play midfield.

He clearly sort of thinks that fullback is a sort of, it's a lesser position than midfield.

And I guess that sort of fits for Kyle Walker.

Kyle Walker, you know, obviously great athlete, great pace, great at what he does, but you wouldn't say he's sort of somebody who necessarily

plots the game out several moves in advance.

But I just thought that was a sort of...

interesting sort of insight into how Guadiola sees players on the pitch.

And if you think that he had Philip Lam as as a fullback and I guess sort of turned him into a semi-midfielder because of his tactical intelligence.

So how are the teams going to copy?

I don't know.

I feel the fullback is this position that's in a constant state of flux.

There's a real danger for fullbacks of getting left behind by evolution.

But fullbacks now seem to run the full gamut from Dan Byrne to

Nico O'Reilly, who are very, very different players.

This is a position that you can invent however you want.

It was quite funny a couple of weeks after Pep Guardiola basically publicly shamed Matteus Nunes for his lack of football intelligence, that in the build-up to the first goal, Bernardo Silva had to basically stop, turn to Mattheus Nunes, and point to exactly where he wanted him to run, i.e.

the byline, so he could slip the ball to him and then Nunes could cross for Nicarilli to sweep at home.

Let's go to the Chelsea win at Fulham then.

Huge result for Chelsea.

I i mean that neto goal like it could prove enormous and such a brilliant goal by like technically brilliant and hit as hard as yaboa brilliant and both bits are wonderful to see yeah i mean he always looks like he's on the verge of doing something like this and then sort of doesn't he's got that armantrore vibe of it's like if this was just five percent better this bloke would be absolutely incredible because he's brilliant on the ball and really quick i seem to remember chelsea back in the day used to score a lot of goals like that they used to smash the ball into the goal a lot that's very much a Mourinho's Chelsea thing of real kind of like alpha male goals of like, yeah, screw you all, we're going to do this.

And it felt like a throwback.

I love the way he ran to the fans.

Obviously, it was a huge moment.

It's a shame for Fulham because they were leading and they have been really good, but they look like they're kind of going to be struggling.

Well, they'll probably make some form of Europe.

And Chelsea keep hanging in there despite having a manager that the fans seem to have already given up on and who is a strange and amusing man um whose sort of every moment seems to be spent i mean i don't know if it's familiar to anyone on this podcast his every moment seems to be spent talking about football in a way that implies nobody else understands football except for me um

except

he's just this complete evangelist who's decided there are truths in the universe and only i understand them and everyone who doesn't get them i mean i find maresca really entertaining now you know how we feel, Bernie.

Yeah, I mean,

that was the joke I just made, which is it's good.

It's good to catch up with these things.

And I just did it there.

So, yeah, I'm the Maresca.

Barry's probably someone a bit more fun, the Anchilotti Wilson, Mourinho, Max.

I don't know, really, Michael Eminalo.

Yeah, I'll take that.

Is Maresca not a very good manager, or is it just his lack of charisma and sense sense of sort of sniffy superiority that makes him so unpopular?

I'm can't really feel like is this a question about Barney again or is this?

No it's very much a question about Mareska.

Yeah, I'm not sure he is unpopular.

I think people secretly like him behind the veneer of pretending not to like him.

That's obviously an answer about me, not Mareska.

It's because

the football that they play is not the football that Chelsea fans in the stadium particularly want.

There's a lot of passing.

I mean if you look at the stats they actually have quite a lot of shots.

They're They're not overly hugely passing the ball

more than other teams, but there is an obsession with kind of periods of slow possession, which drives people slightly mad.

And also, he doesn't have the profile that Chelsea, everybody at Chelsea wants a cool uncle manager.

You know, they want someone super cool, like Carlo, Jose.

And he doesn't really have a profile of that.

And yeah, he's very patronizing and he's really spiky.

And if you criticise him, he'll tell you you don't understand.

I no longer have any idea who we're talking about.

Worlds are colliding, like the barriers of breaking down.

It's actually really offensive that you say that, Barry.

It just shows that you don't understand barriers falling down and meta conversations.

I'm simple folk, Baronie.

You need a simple one.

Otherwise, you know, the whole thing falls apart, Barry.

You're the voice of the people.

Wilson, what are Chelsea good then?

I mean, I know it sounds like a silly question, but it seems weird that, you know, you've got City and Chelsea in the mix who both had terrible seasons, and then Villa, Newcastle and Forest have all had good seasons, all very close to each other.

Clearly, expectation makes a big difference on how your season is viewed.

I don't think they are particularly good, no, particularly not for the level of expenditure.

I mean, you can look at it two ways.

For the age profile of the squad, they're doing fine.

But for the amount of money they've spent, they're not doing fine.

But that's because they've bought a load of children, which arguably is...

not a great idea, certainly in the short term.

I think they've only won five of the last 11 in the league.

So that's not fine, particularly when they're running is Everton, Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester United, and Nottingham Forest.

All of those are difficult games.

I would say that they're probably, well, I would assume at the moment they and Forest be the two who miss out.

The fact they're playing each other in the final day means I guess you know, one of them could win that to sneak into fifth.

They also have the Conference League, which, I mean, they should win.

That's sort of this pressure as well, that if they don't win it, they're going to look very silly.

If they do win it,

you've just beaten a load of teams with a budget literally sort of 50 times less than your own

well done do you think that they might be the first team to win a trophy lift it on that podium and be booed as the ticker take goes up but that's exactly the right point though that this disjunction between the manager and the squad is so obvious like you buy these young players in order to improve them because they're assets and because okay we're going to buy up the talent like it's a draft and we're going to these players will be sold on this a really good idea put them on massive contracts and then you hire a manager who is not interested in in doing that who wants his players to utterly submit to his will and become drones to the tactical system and if you go forward and i don't want you to go forward i will drop you it makes absolutely no sense they needed to hire someone who will become a salesman who will polish these assets and make them seem every single player score worse like hang on we paid 70 million for this guy and you've dropped him because he had a shot from 30 yards it doesn't make any sense as a tactic i mean it's not the only thing that doesn't make any sense at Chelsea.

It's the worst run club ever in the history of the Premier League, to the extent that they're now financially drinking their own urine to survive.

But

it doesn't make any sense to have that manager.

and those players.

Nobody has thought about this properly.

Well, and yet, if they got a goal scorer, yes, I mean, it's not going to happen, but say Erling Holland suddenly went from City to Chelsea and they started taking some of those chances, they'd win every game 3-0 and every be very happy.

It's just that, and I don't say this critically of Nicholas Jackson, who I think is a perfectly good forward for what he does and is still learning the game and still being experienced.

And I know he's had loads of grief this season, which I don't think it's been entirely fair.

But if you had Holland rather than Nicholas Jackson, if you converted, they'd regularly have 25-30 shots a game and score naught or one goals.

If you had a goal scorer, then it would look fine.

Very hard to get a goal scorer when you've only got a billion pounds to spend, Wilson.

Of course.

So, look, Chelsea's running Everton, Liverpool, Newcastle, May United Forest, as you said.

They've also got to play

the 9% Swedish beer, Durgarden, in the Conference League, which is a great story.

Actually, they have done incredibly well, you know, for two Scandinavian teams in the semi-finals, them and Bodo Glimpt.

It means

zoo, doesn't it?

Georgordon?

Animal Garden.

Thank you so much.

Man City have Villa, Wolves, Southampton, Bournemouth and Fulham.

Villa have City, Fulham, Bournemouth, Spurs, and Man United.

That's a fun last two games, isn't it?

Against two teams who might be playing the Europa League final, resting everybody.

Newcastle play Ipswich, Brighton, Chelsea, Arsenal and Everton.

So, and Forest, of course, they play Spurs tonight, then Brentford Palace, Leicester, West Ham, Chelsea, which feels not unpleasant, actually.

Who do you think makes it in, Barney?

It's five, isn't it?

We're talking five at this stage.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you basically are losing two of these.

Yeah, I think it's Villa and Newcastle and the obvious three.

Who's the third of the obvious three?

Man City.

Yeah, Man City.

Come on.

Yeah, okay.

Okay, okay.

Barry, you happy with those?

Yeah, I think Villa look to have the easiest running,

but

much, I suppose, would depend on their game against City in midweek.

And Wilson?

Yeah, yeah, the same three as Barney.

Okay.

And of course we've got the FA Cup semi-final.

Three of those sides are in those.

They could could make a bit of a difference.

Spurs play for us tonight.

We will talk about that on tomorrow's pod.

But it is worth touching on that Eintrech Frankfurt win, which Wilson was a completely un-Ange-like performance, wasn't it?

It was dogged, disciplined, sort of Jose/slash-Conte-esque.

I suppose by

the end of it was.

I thought the first half they played really well.

When Madison was still on, I thought they did really well.

I thought they held the ball intelligently.

I thought they were much more...

Without sort of being the normal, ludicrous, possessicogly, gung-ho style, they were far more of a threat.

The penalty was definitely a penalty.

When Kulosevsky came on for Madison, I don't know if it's because he naturally plays slightly further forward, whether he's just not quite up to speed after two months out with the injury, but

they seemed a bit more disjointed and Frankfurt got back into the game.

If that Frankfurt right back, was it Christensen?

Yeah, he had a few chances.

He had two or three really good chances.

So, yeah, they were clinging on a bit by the end.

And when they suddenly went to three at the back, but on Kevin Danso, I was, what are they doing?

Just sort of, it's going to be 15 minutes or 10, 15 minutes of just sitting on the edge of the own box heading it out.

But to be fair, they did head it out.

And even though there's a handful of corners in that period, they dealt with them well enough.

I think certainly first half performance.

And to be fair, the second half performance in the first leg was really good.

So

though, you know, the second half of the first leg,

first half of the second leg,

they were much the better side.

But so they should be.

Their budget is three times Frankfurt's.

That's a really good point.

I think there's this tendency to celebrate how Spurs and Man United are going to rescue their seasons.

But I think it's a real shame that these really poorly run and managed superclubs with vast budgets and tiers of administrative people doing a poor job get to destroy teams with their smaller budgets and get in the Champions League.

And sort of, phew, we saved that one, lads.

I think that for this season, the...

the place that goes into the Champions League should be abolished or given to the most deserving team who doesn't win it if one of those two win the Europa League.

And that's my Scrooge-like take for today I think that also applies to the conference league Chelsea shouldn't be well Chelsea probably will win that but that is not what that competition was invented for so Chelsea could take the bare look off their otherwise dismal season they have to look at the league table if it's someone like Chelsea qualify you go you can't be in it Brentford go for it because that is a Brentford tournament right that's sort of what the conference league should be and it was great when West Ham won it I mean well it's not even it's supposed to to be a Brentford or a West Ham tournament.

Like when West Ham won it, they were by a mile the richest club in it.

It's supposed to be a Shamrock Rovers tournament, a FC Talon tournament, some team from Lithuania, Sconter Riga tournament, you know.

Got it.

Anyway, we will talk about Man United's victory over Leon and their defeat against Wolves in just a second.

Hi Pod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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A proper football journalist, mate.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

JB says, did we overreact to United's Leon Remontada?

Will athletic Bilbao make light work of them?

It was exciting, yes, but indicative of their woeful season.

They've even got into needing such heroics in the first place.

They played Leon on Thursday night.

It is a few days ago now, but it was an astonishing game.

I mean, five goals in extra time.

I don't know what you made of it, Wilson, but I, I mean, I was sort of with them.

By the end, I was like, this is completely ridiculous.

But

my sort of level of sort of, I don't know, pity for Manchester United has got to the stage now where I was sort of delighted for Harry Maguire.

Oh, I was delighted for Harry Maguire, I was delighted for Cobby Mainew.

But

you can't get over the fact that they're 4-2 down against 10 men, having been 2-0 up.

I mean, yeah, there's a moment that's, yeah, I was sort of thinking, kind of, I was doing my column on,

I was told, do something on Tottenham and Man United in the situation they're in.

So I I always say, if they both just go through the boring two of the winds, like there's nothing to say here.

And so at half-time, at an extra time, I was thinking, this is brilliant.

Even by recent standards, even by the standards of the last 50 years, they found an entirely new lower, a low, you know, they've gone down in this basement full of shit.

They've been swimming around and they found a trapdoor and they've opened it and they've plunged through into an even lower basement full of even worse shit.

And I said, this is, this is, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to use that as an intro.

I was going to say, that's not a paragraph I've seen before in your work, but I would embrace it.

But then it's brilliant to get out.

And, you know, who's the man who turns it around?

It's Casemiro, really.

You know,

he sets up...

Does he set up all three of the goals?

I think it's his assist for the two other goals, isn't it?

I mean, just, and actually, I...

I'm not a huge fan of Lyon as a club for various reasons.

I felt the way they celebrated the fourth goal was.

I've now got a new theory about celebrations.

That's why I think when I played hockey to a reasonable level at school, we were always told to celebrate every goal because it really rubs the opponent's noses in it and it makes them feel inferior.

So psychologically, you gain an edge.

And

I think in penalty shootouts now, players are told to celebrate scoring for the same reason.

It sort of emphasizes the power dynamic shifting in their direction.

But I think if you over-celebrate a goal, it partly destroys your own concentration and partly it sort of says,

We weren't expecting that.

Oh, we're not really worthy to be doing this.

And so, when United took the lead at Anfield in January, I was really conscious of this celebration is mad.

They've still got 35 minutes to play.

They're never going to hold on.

Why are they going over the top with this?

This is like the celebration if Tamworth had taken the lead against Tottenham.

It's sort of this sort of thing.

Even just taking the lead on this stage is sort of too great for us to compete, so we're going to go berserk.

When City took the lead against Real Madrid, there's a similar thing.

There was this sort of this abandon about the celebrations to sort of said you know this this just scoring is our cup final and leon going going 4-2 up their celebrations were way over top and i just sort of thought yeah well you've probably not mentally equipped if united do do sort of push at you i didn't expect them to but then when they did leon sort of fell apart i mean celebrating as a i just imagine of you sort of

sharp elbows gum shield in charging at opposition players going in your face with a hockey hockey stick.

I'm trying to imagine.

I was a goalkeeper.

You were a goalkeeper, were you?

Okay.

All right, but you can't charge around like that.

So, did you celebrate like all the way back in your big clod hopping outfit?

Like, did you go wild?

No.

No.

Okay.

Were you good at that?

Yeah.

Okay.

I remember in the build-up to the 2012 Olympics, I had to go and film a video where I trained with the Team GB women's hockey team and they dressed me up like is it Jason from Friday the 13th, and then took pot shots at me.

And because I was a journalist and they don't like journalists,

I would say they were hitting the ball much harder than was necessary.

And I don't envy Wilson his gig as a hockey goalkeeper at quite a high level in school.

No, if you were, as long as you were brave, it was fine.

Yeah, but I'm not brave.

No,

the reason I gave it up was because you need good equipment if you're going to play at any kind of level, because otherwise it hurts.

And at school, we had really good equipment.

I got to university equipment was shit, so I just started playing in midfield.

This is probably more information that people needed, I think.

The hockey career of Jonathan, you can do that somewhere else.

But I would just like to say I did play at a higher level than Wilson.

Tom says, regarding last week's listener, disliking the English bias on commentary with Arsenal's time wasting, how were they feeling listening to Ferdinand and Savage's elation after Maguire's winner on Thursday?

I actually Barry was sort of with them by then.

Okay, good for you.

Yeah.

I don't like Rio Ferdinand.

I've just got to put that out there.

And

I have previews of Robbie Savage, but I have no problem with Robbie Savage.

I think he's a grand fellow.

But it was very fan TV,

but I wasn't watching it live.

I was in bed, asleep, so I didn't catch up on the highlights till Saturday.

And

yeah, it was a bit.

it doesn't matter does it I suppose I think it does actually I really hate it at least to on some level commentators and pundits should be objective you know it's it's it shouldn't you know they they should be better than fan tvs that's not what it's about they are to some extent you know they have many of the privileges of journalists but they don't really act like journalists and I'm made very uncomfortable and I sort of I'm sort of with Barry on Rio Ferdinand he he once pushed in front of me in a Q ⁇ A nice screen shop in Baden Baden in 2006 and I've never entirely forgiven him.

But I think he's a terrible pundit.

Yeah, I find it nauseating as well.

And I think it's a problem for the media.

I think a lot of in our algorithm-based world, so much media has gone towards simply telling people what they want to hear and appealing to kind of tribal sympathies.

I don't think that those people are capable of actually

analysing things.

in a way that is interesting.

I don't know if you saw the commentator Cam moment where Men United scored.

And to be fair, the commentator, who I think is called Darren Fletcher, like referees, I don't really know.

I make a point of not really knowing who they are, which is, I think, how it should be.

He was telling them to be quiet and not to shout, to let the crowd noise do the commentary.

because he's a professional commentator and he understands what is good broadcast material and that is not someone yelling um into your ears it's just not entertaining it's not when people say oh football's boring, the league's really boring, it's this overly technical football.

That is very much because you don't know how to analyze it, I feel.

And it comes from that generation of pundits who are perhaps a bit out of the game now and haven't really...

I mean, Gary Neville's talking quite openly about the fact that he was really close to football and really understood it, had lots of contacts in the game when he first retired.

And that now the game has moved on a bit.

And it becomes something where you, if you can't analyze it, you're going to say it's boring and i think it's a real shame that we're presented with this can i just say rio ferdinand may have pushed in front of you in a ice cream but i've always thought a nice guy because i went to a school sports day once and he was there sort of off the clock and he was really nice and he signed everybody's things talked to everyone and really talked to all the kids and

i thought oh you're actually a nice bloke but maybe um there was no ice cream present so his kind of competitive tendencies

ria ferdinand man of man of contrasts But I tell you,

the other problem I've got, and maybe this is a slightly more general point with the way media's gone, Rio Ferdinand has his podcast, you're fine.

But he got Robbie Keene on then.

Robbie Keene, the people who don't know,

coached in Israel, hugely controversial in Ireland, resigned after a year.

And the sort of the truth behind that he'd never talked about exactly what happened, why he decided to stay, why he decided to quit with a year remaining on his contract.

And he does an interview on Rio Ferdinand's podcast.

So the only person who's ever asked him about this and got an answer is Rio Ferdinand.

And he gives quite a good answer, saying that he felt a responsibility to the people who'd employed him, to, you know, for instance, a data analyst who'd been working at Middlesbrough for 12 years, he took with him.

And he was sort of like, I can't just leave after two months and sort of abandon this guy.

So he felt like I have to stay for a year.

And

if you listen to the podcast, you can hear that he is waiting for a follow-up question on it.

And Rio Ferdinand's next question,

and he delivers it like he's, you know, Walter Conkite got Nixon on the ropes.

So you can see him there, sort of sucking the end of his glasses, kind of, right?

But what about Klobber, suit or track suit?

And

you sort of think, no, but this is a really interesting, important thing, and you completely missed it.

You ruined it.

Then I was in Budapest for Robbie Keene's first home game as French Voucher manager.

And I asked him about leaving Israel.

He said, oh, I've dealt with that on Rio's podcast.

And it's like, well, you haven't really.

You've answered one question on it.

And this hasn't been followed up.

You clearly had more to say.

I totally get why Robbie Keene doesn't want want to sort of keep going on about it because it is such a sensitive topic.

I think this is a really important point because these are the people who, A, who will give you the you've never kicked a ball stuff, I am the authority on football, but who have no skills for journalism and have not sought to acquire any and to someone who is interested in actually analysing what's happening, appears to be completely amateurish in a situation like that.

But also football has never been so complicated.

It's never rewarded analysis so much.

I mean the entire game is power, politics, money, and on a micro level much more complex than it was say in the 90s as a spectacle.

And it's not the moment to be simply yelling at it and shouting the words ballon d'Or, which by the way turned out to be also to be incorrect.

It doesn't help the spectacle.

It doesn't, it fits with the way lots of media has gone in that shouting loudest is often rewarded.

But i think it's a a real problem and and it's a real shame that we've kind of gone down that road is there is there a point i'm conscious of you know our ages and the way we consume football and what we like about football that that actually the sort of proliferation of media there are positives to that in that people can get different types of media rather than 30 years ago where you just you know this is this is who gave you the football and you had no

way of choosing but i don't think it's spreading different kinds of media i think it's just shouting over the top of everything and that the the trend is towards very partisan, non-analytical, giving people the simplest thing because that fits into a short clip and will get the most noise on the internet.

I mean, I don't think it's even controversial that that's necessarily a bad thing because one, we've never had so much of a platform and yet the loudest noise tends to crowd things out.

And I don't just don't think that's a good thing or a good development.

And somebody yelling ballon d'oeuvre, which seems to be the best way of summarizing that that way of looking at things is not healthy and doesn't it doesn't i mean if you're saying it's to do with younger people i don't agree that young people want that necessarily they may be serve that up but don't people aren't stupid um that

there's there's this marketing people will often justify the way they present things by saying well young people only want to consume six second gobbleds of information i simply don't think that's true young people also like these sort of superhero films that go on for six hours.

Like people like long-form things if they're good.

And

humans are not necessarily becoming dumber, but the way of presenting information to them and monetizing that possibly is.

And that's run by middle-aged people who see the bottom line, not by, you know, 12-year-olds aren't in charge of how things are punted into their phones.

Anyway, Wolves then went to Man United and 1-1-0.

Barney, should Pablo Serabia get the ballon d'Or?

Yeah, I mean, that was a pretty amazing goal, wasn't it?

And

yeah i mean another

though i don't know if you saw that thing on there was a thing going around on on on social media of uh why haven't why can't they rate why can they raise the mary rose but they can't raise the titanic and it was just a series of screens going mary rose here and then another debt another one another one showing how much deeper the titanic is and and it you know i see man united metaphors

are swimming in a in shitbit of all that everywhere man united are the greatest metaphor since the Titanic set sail and you kind of feel it feels a bit like that now.

I know football's really simple and sometimes you do change a few things and suddenly a few results happen and it's okay.

But I feel that the idi people are going after Rubin Amarim a bit now and I think you have to remember just how many Twitter screens down they are on the ocean bed, kind of run by run by very strange people with a weird squad.

Is it not fair to say though, Barney, that Vittor Pereira is making him look bad?

because the manner in which the turnaround he's achieved so quickly at Wolves compared to the remarkable lack of comparative progress at Manchester United.

I'm not sure it is comparative.

They're very different jobs.

I mean, yes, one man will do well while another man does badly.

But managing that Man United squad and that club...

It's a very strange job.

And you're being asked to do something different.

You're not being asked to grub results, are you?

You're being asked to build some kind of thing that's going to take you to whatever elite level you believe you're supposed to be at.

I wonder how Ruben Amrim would do at Wolves.

That would be an interesting control experiment.

And maybe soon we'll get the chance to find out.

At Wilson, you were bumped to Leicester, obviously, because of inferiority in the hierarchy of.

No, no, no, it was just a favor because I had this lunch I had to go to.

It's not like that.

We're a collective.

It's all right, Enzo.

It's all right, Enzo.

We know how this works.

You did see Trent Alexander Arnold score a lovely goal.

I did.

I mean,

I'm very conscious, or I have been very conscious over the last three or four weeks, of the dangers of projection.

That

are all these games really sort of slightly dull, played at a three-quarter pace, your end of season, everybody's given up because it's obvious what's going to happen, or is that just the way I feel?

And probably it's a bit of both.

But this is such an odd game, this.

I think the post was hit, or the woodwork was hit five times.

Mads Hermanson made two or three pretty good saves, and yet the whole thing felt totally futile uh totally without excitement i guess maybe lesser would have got a draw and

you know delayed things for another week but yeah i've now been there for both southampton and leicester's relegations this season i very much hope that barny doesn't bump me off the ipswitch treble they're quite a bad side you know you don't look at that squad and think oh they're going to romp through the through the championship next season and it was just so acquiescent there was no sort of i guess you know they've known since december that they're going down.

But, you know, they haven't scored a goal at home for nine home games.

I know.

The graphic is amazing, isn't it?

When it was put up on Match of the Day and it was just nil, nil, nil, nil, nil.

That's hilarious.

That's 13 and a half hours.

So in that time, you could watch King Lear, Hamlet, and all three parts of Henry VI.

If they go another home game without scoring, that's the entirety of Wagner's ring cycle.

On the day when Bobby DeCord Verid scored his equaliser against Brighton, that was the day that Bashar al-Assad was toppled as as leader of Syria, which feels like a, you know,

years ago.

At the risk of sounding like a Philistine, I would rather watch 13 Hours of Leicester than all those plays with just matches.

But that's just because I hate the theatre.

You know your role here, Barry.

You won't be alone.

Van Dijk signed a new contract.

£220,000 a week could rise to £400,000 a week with performance-related bonuses.

It's very much how Football Weekly deals are structured.

Salar is due to re-sign, but we don't know when exactly.

And we presume that was a goodbye celebration when Trent whipped his shirt off rather than a actually I'm staying celebration.

But

how do we know for sure?

Anyway, that'll do for part two.

Part three, we'll round up all the other Premier League games.

Hi Pod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So Arsenal won 4-0 at Ipswich.

I mean, this was very easy, Barry, for them, wasn't it?

Especially after Leif Davis was sent off for a pretty nasty challenge on Bakayo Saka, which presumably terrified every Arsenal fan.

And also, probably started even before the game when the team was announced.

People are questioning whether Arteta was right to pick all the good players.

But it was okay in the end.

Yeah, he has to find this balance between maintaining the momentum and sharpness of his big, big stars and

keeping them wrapped in in cotton wool so they don't get their Achilles rake by Leif Davis.

It was as if Leif had somewhere important that he needed to be because,

and this game was an imposition on his time because, in the build-up to the second goal, he left one in on Leandro Trossard that went unpunished and then committed that foul on Saka, unquestionably a red.

And I imagine Arsenal fans, as you say, were terrified.

Luckily, he's okay.

And

it was just a perfunctory walk in the par I'd say Arsenal would have had far tougher training sessions last week than this game.

They won four and a half, they could have won by five, seven, nine.

Name another odd number, yes.

Clef Davis is a really interesting player, isn't he?

Because

last season in the championship when Ipswich were dominating games,

him being so attacking from left back was a real strength for them.

This season when they've been under pressure, him being such an attacking left back has been a real liability.

He's just a player who's

absolutely the right club last season, is absolutely the wrong club this season.

And I just sort of think he's a great sort of

straightforward case study of how it's often not about whether the player is a good player or a bad player.

It's about whether they're the right player.

And last season he was the right player, and this season he's the wrong player.

Ips, which are not down because there are five games to go, and they are 15 points behind West Ham

with a minus 20 worst goal difference.

So it would be very funny if they won all five and west ham lost all five and i could certainly see west ham losing all five

well yeah they drew with southampton which is some feet yes barney i just wanted to briefly mention michel mourinho's incredible pass which is the cyst of the season um and an interesting example of how maybe being a centre forward isn't that difficult maybe if you're good enough to be a midfielder you can be a centre forward they've been really good with him do you know arsenal's top scorer is still kai haverts and nobody's in double figures that's insane when you think that they're running away with second place it's very interesting and someone who understands it a bit better needs to produce a comprehensive study of what that means did Mourino play up front again I wonder if he was in I wonder if he went deeper well he he never really plays up front he kind of you know he fluids around but clearly that assist was um you know it was it was beautiful but he's a good finisher really good finisher i think yeah and no one really talked about that goal in the first leg because of deck and rice's free kicks but they will have to do something

yeah yeah they will have to do something different when they because Thomas Partey is suspended so perhaps that as you know Trossard will play and and Marino will go deeper um yeah so West Ham drew one all with Southampton Nicholas Fulkrug's rant afterwards was uh fantastic very angry today not disappointed just angry about what we did after the goal it was difficult to bring the boys back to push up we didn't push up anymore we tried but we didn't have the ability or motivation to push up again i'm very very angry that we played like this the motivation to want it more sorry it was shit and i'm very angry it's not the first time that we scored a goal.

The next goal kick, we just shoot the ball long.

We don't try to play football anymore.

We don't push up.

We just sink.

A big surprise that he doesn't just want a goal kick knocked long so he can, you know, chest it down.

Also, funny that Jarrow Bowen afterwards went, Look, we weren't good enough, but it is what it is.

And then Fulcru comes out and says, This is what it is.

It's interesting to know, Barry, how that would go down in a dressing room.

But he's right, isn't he?

West Ham have been very poor under Graham Potter.

They've got 13 points in 13 Premier League games.

So

if you're in the dressing room, you might not approve of a player

publicly lambasting you like that, but you know whether he's right or not, and you know whether the criticism is fair.

The only thing I would say is he hasn't contributed a great amount to the West Ham cause this season, mainly through injury.

So maybe it's not for him to be the one who comes out.

If Jared Bowen came out and said that, then you'd definitely go yeah fair enough but he was speaking on behalf of the coach wasn't he made a point of saying the coaches have told us what to do and we're not doing it um so i guess that's his point but he seemed to be speaking very it seemed to be really specific he kept night narrowing it down without quite there are like two or three people he's actually talking about there and i'd like to know who they are that was what was interesting is that it's not the coaches it's not quite them it's like i can't really say well if there'd been another follow-up question he was speaking speaking so honestly, I reckon someone said, who is it?

Say who it is.

Exactly.

Name and shame.

The next question was about his clobbery.

Exactly.

Augustuki's finish was brilliant.

And Southampton now leveled on Derby's record of 11 points.

Brentford beat Brighton 4-2.

Mbemo and Wissa have a great partnership.

Mbemo's got 18 goals, and Wissa has 16.

They still could get into Europe.

And I don't know if anyone has any strong feelings on that game.

It It was one of the better games of the weekend.

Brentford were really, really good.

Brighton's season is going out with a whimper I didn't expect.

And they're the first sort of early signs of dissatisfaction with Fabian Herzler.

I think his position is probably secure.

I do remember this time last season, his predecessor,

whose name I've forgotten,

Deserby was busy talking himself out of a job.

But,

yeah, I expected more from Brighton this season.

I think Herzler's gone from a B plus, A minus to a C plus, and he's clearly frustrated with the players.

Incidentally, it was just because Brentford have no trouble scoring goals since Ivan Tony left.

I had a look to see how Ivan is getting on.

in Saudi Arabia with Al-Ali, and he's doing well, actually.

19 goals in 24 appearances.

But they're only fourth in the table.

Uh, Gavin says, I challenge you to spend more than 30 seconds talking about Palace Bournemouth.

Even the three and a half-minute highlights were well over three minutes too long.

Worst game of the season, Wilson.

Uh, maybe, yeah, I mean, I didn't watch it, no idea.

I mean, the main talking points were about the Chris Richards red card, which it could be argued was a little harsh, and then the two, possibly three red cards, various Bournemouth players didn't get for identical or slightly worse offences.

And apart from that there was nothing

actually if we could just quickly go back to uh southampton max i have a question for you can you name the manager they sacked two weeks ago oh

damn it

how long did you say you'd be a year i said september after russell martin ivan urich yay oh it didn't it took me a minute didn't it um please listen to the guardian women's football weekly to get the loadout on the Champions League.

Arsenal lost 2-1 to Leon.

Chelsea got hammered by Barcelona.

Ian, and not the only person to send this message, says, hi, Max.

In 1975, no one died.

In 1976, no one died, etc.

Are actually words of the unnamed pool supervisor played by Steve Coogan in Spoof Fly on the Wall documentary, The Pool, which featured in the Day Today.

Stop getting Partridge Wrong.

Ian Duncan Aberdeen, I apologise.

I did know, and it is my mistake, for which I am truly sorry.

Anyway, that'll do for today.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, Barry.

Thanks, Max.

Thank you, Wilson.

Cheers.

Thank you.

Thank you, Barney.

Cheers, everyone.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove, and our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

We'll be back tomorrow.

This is The Guardian.