Is the Premier League title already Liverpool’s to lose? - Football Weekly

This is the Guardian.

Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

Liverpool, nine points clear at the top of the Premier League, 11 points clear of Manchester City, whose brutal spiral continues.

They were mile off it against Arna Slott's men.

It's Liverpool's title to lose now.

Arsenal score five in a ludicrous first half at the London Stadium.

Chelsea, a third, and a good comfortably seeing off Villa, who are in a right old slump, sound the indirect free kick inside the box.

Claxon, there's a hat-trick of penalties for Justin Cliver, a less dead ballie hat-trick for Kevin Sharda.

Spurs carry on piloting their new game show, Good Game, Bad Game.

Plus, there's some VAR for Russell Martin to complain about.

A Kevin Pressman penalty from Chriswood and Daniel Munoz's redemption story for Crystal Palace.

All that plus your questions.

And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

Bayer says, I was waiting for this four.

This is the peak lineup.

lineup.

This four.

Barry Glendenning, welcome.

Hello.

Hello, Jonathan Wilson.

Morning.

How are you doing?

I'm very well.

Good morning, Barney Ronnay.

Good morning, everyone.

Liverpool 2, Manchester City 0.

I know Liverpool are top and deserve our attention, but for Man City, this collapse continues to be so brutal, as I said in the intro.

Barney, have you found it fascinating to witness?

Yeah, I mean, I think probably, I think even Cities fans have probably, well, I know they have found this fascinating in a way too.

partly because it's a club which has collapse and lurking doom still sewn into its dna despite being completely altered into something else uh and partly because you know football's like this isn't it sports like this we're taught that in the end everybody overstays their welcome and things fall apart and some part of us kind of wants to see that happening because it's part of the story in the arc

even though you know the premier league is 13 games in only there's a there's a lot still to go but this just feels so um profound it was amazing to watch this game the really striking thing about this is partly the way that pep guardiola's

altered in the way his team goes out they just don't look like a manchester city team or a pep guardiola team but also that the 11 on the pitch yesterday was just um it's just not very good

The individual players are just not of the standard that we've been used to.

And I have, everyone has a theory about why and how, but it's just astonishing to see a guardiola who is just the peak of product, who just

so relentless in his details.

And you expect, you know, he's, it's like all the Coca-Cola's good and all the Coca-Colas are the same.

Like he spent his life putting out these elite teams.

And that is not one of those.

It's 4-4-2 with some really mediocre wingers and central midfielders, like the great man of midfield has somehow ended up with this collection of players.

I feel very very sorry for someone like Rico Lewis, who's a young player trying to work out what his position is, who's been put into this situation, partly playing in a team which is going to make 450 passes in this game, who has one guy who's going to make six passes up front, thereby putting a massive strain on everyone else in that team.

But yes, it is utterly gripping to watch.

There's never been a team that's played this badly that's been so gripping to watch, which is kind of a gift to the league in its own way.

Yeah.

Wilson, we wondered wondered how pep would set up orte came in diaz came in walker came in guardiol and greelish and edison were out but it didn't seem to make a whole lot of difference no i mean i i think i i and you know when you get something right in journalism it's always nice to sort of point it out because i'm not very often this is about ronaldo's pressing i just i struggle to see how this is going to get into this

When Guadiola was at Bayern, it was the second season at Bayern, and they had a great start to the season.

I think they'd only dropped points in three games, and they got beat 4-1 at Volfsberg, with Kevin DeBreda leading the charge for Wolfsburg.

And Guadiola realised, okay, it's one thing to sort of beat

the majority of the Bundeseger, but this team's not good enough to win in Europe.

And so he sort of had one of his, and these crises do happen occasionally in Pepsi career, but nothing quite like this.

But this is one of the smaller ones.

And he sort of had this long, dark night of the soul.

And he came out of it and said,

right, I've got to go back to basics.

And the basics are these three principles: which are always overman, have more defenders than they have forwards, have more midfielders than they have midfielders, and make sure you have two central players if they've got two centre-backs.

I play 4-4-2, as Barney says.

Now, in practice, it looks maybe a little bit more like a 4-2-3-1, but fundamentally, it's Foden playing off Hauland, two central midfielders, two wide midfielders.

four at the back.

And that is what he went back to.

And that was sort of what I wanted my column was about on Sunday morning.

And even as I was writing, I was like, he's never going to do this because it just feels too blockish and too inadequate for the situation.

But it is what he did.

And I think what was extraordinary about the game was just

how little of an event it felt.

This should be apocalyptic.

But in practice, a month on from the first defeat of this run,

it just sort of felt a really ordinary game.

Now,

I was at Tottenham yesterday, so I was sort of following this, walking down the Seven Sisters Road, watching it on my phone, having been kicked out of Tottenham because

they closed the stadium 10 minutes in the second half of the other game.

As Liverpool missed all these chances, that first 20 minutes, the first 25 minutes, it could have been two or three in a luck.

Then Salah had that great chance in the second half.

I was thinking the commentators were saying, oh, you know, are Liverpool going to pay for these missed chances?

While I was thinking, I was sort of saying, well, if this was a normal team, you wouldn't be thinking that.

But because it's City, you think, oh, they could get back into it.

And then they just make two mistakes, give away a penalty, and just like a normal team.

And that's the thing is,

they're not a terrible team, but they're now just a normal team.

And the speed with which they've gone from being this team with an incredible aura to just being another side whose players, as Barney says, look pretty ordinary.

Why do we fear them?

What was it?

It's, you know, the curtain's fallen away, and you're seeing the little man manipulating his green lights.

They have no outstanding quality anymore, which is really extraordinary because Guardio is all about, as Wilson says, it's like the overload.

They're always going to overload you somewhere.

And they have one outstanding quality: of this brilliant finisher who entirely piggybacks on the rest of the team to put him in that position.

So, if that's your one outstanding quality and you don't have the team to create those situations, it's completely pointless.

So, you're essentially playing with 10.

It's just very odd to watch.

And we're not talking about Liverpool

because somehow

collapse is more fascinating, particularly if you're kind of, you know, sneering guardian, kind of let's pick apart the bones of this dead carcass people rather than joyful, constructive, helpful people.

It's easier to talk about collapse in the world.

I have got to say, looking at this Zoom call, it looks to me very much like a pick apart the bones of this dead carcass Zoom call, I would say.

Baz, what did you make?

I mean, I just thought we talked about the midfields in the preview, but it was just City giving them all away or just Liverpool just being relentless.

it was it was like a it was like two different teams i mean it obviously was two different teams you know what i mean liverpool was just so much better yeah they were relentless and they were rampant and

they should have

been

they should have put the game to bed by half-time they missed uh an excellent chance early in the second half when mo sala took advantage of Bernardo Silva's giving the ball away something he did on quite a few occasions during the game, and fired over the bar when you would have expected him to score, you know, 10 times out of 10, really.

And there was always this nagging worry that City might get a goal.

You know, Liverpool would be made to rue all their missed chances.

Virgil Van Dijk had a couple of headers.

He probably should have scored from a corners in the first half.

And then they got the penalty.

Mo Sala put that away.

Brilliant penalty, by the the way, after his miss in during the week

into the bottom corner.

That was that game over.

I think City's only chance of note came after Liverpool went 2-0 up when Kevin De Bruyne didn't quite nut Meg Clevy and Kelleher.

And

I looked at the city lineup.

I was a bit, you know, hmm, no Ederson.

There's something going on there.

Why didn't Kevin De Bruyne start?

I reckon there might be something going on there as well.

We might hear more about

those omissions in days or weeks or even years to come.

Yeah, and then we had all the pantomime of

Liverpool fans gleefully telling Pep he's going to get sacked in the morning, him holding up the six fingers, which prompted all sorts of hilarity on social media.

And it was all quite good fun.

But

I don't think I was hugely surprised that Liverpool won as easily as they did.

But yeah, there was that concern.

concern, oh, they might concede here and anything could happen.

Wilson, has Arnislot changed more than he's let on?

If that makes sense as a question.

Yes, but that doesn't mean he's changed a huge amount because

I think he's got the politics of this absolutely right, that he keeps saying, oh, yeah, I didn't have to do anything.

I didn't have to make any changes.

But he has made them slightly more risk averse.

They are slightly more cautious in how they pass.

But

so I think you have to give him credit.

The job he's done has been astonishing.

Virtually every other manager who's replaced a legend at a club has really struggled.

And for him to take to it as easily as he has,

you have to give him credit.

You've also got to give Klopp credit.

Klopp left at the perfect time.

I mean, I'm sure he's regretting it now because you could have.

It looks now like this Premier League title

could be quite straightforward for Slot.

But he began the rebuild.

He blooded a lot of young players.

He left the club in pretty much as good a state as any manager has ever left a club for a successor.

So, you have to acknowledge that.

But equally,

to adapt to a new league, a new club is not easy.

Slots done that incredibly well.

But I think the most impressive thing is how often he makes tweaks in games and makes them better.

And that's happened over and over again this season.

They had a slightly flat or uneventful first half and then have got a couple of goals in the second half.

So you think of Ipswich, Wolves, Brighton, Real Madrid, Bayer Laverkoos, and I'm sure there's others as well, but

Southampton.

It just keeps happening.

And that's not coincidence, because it's because he's really, really good, not just at being able to analyse a game as it's going on, but actually being able to take decisive action within that.

And that's really not a given for managers, but he seems to be exceptional at it.

I think it also should be said that the fixtures have fallen quite kindly for him, and there will be tougher times ahead when that doesn't happen.

That it quite often seems to be the case that when they get a tough game, the team they're playing against suddenly hit a bad run of form and happened with El Madrid, it happened with City, happened with Arsenal.

But that's not really to detract from what he's doing because

he's won every game apart from two, hasn't he?

So but what we haven't seen yet is what happens when fortune turns against them.

Can they sort of muddle through that?

And that's why even though they have this nine point lead, you you can't say with two-thirds of season still to play that it's over, but they're in a great position and none of the teams chasing them.

Would you particularly trust to go on a run of sort of 15-20 games

of winning in a row?

So it should now be Liverpool's title, but there are still two-thirds of the season remaining, and we haven't seen Slot inadversity.

Yeah, I'd also like to give some credit to Jürgen Klopp, who this is still essentially his team, like all the players are his team, they arrived under him or were blooded under him.

What's really interesting is

Slot is like an example of the advantages of not having a massive monstrous personal ego in that he's he's not attempted some ego rebuild of what Klopp did but he has really worked improving these players like Ryan Gravenberg is such an important player now in that team and such a good central midfielder I mean I was at the Madrid games well and that he was fantastic there against Real Madrid,

the best midfielder on the pitch.

And Trent Alexander Arnold has improved as a player.

They're all finding it easier because he gives them time to rest in games.

But it's like there's this kind of gunpowder that was left by Klopp of the way that team can play, the way it can attack.

And Slot has just been very, very clever in how he's used it.

They're allowed to rest in games.

They played lots of different ways yesterday.

They played with a high press at times.

They played possession football for a while.

They rested on the ball.

The first 20 minutes were pure Klopp ball because that was a time to go at City.

And they had 63% possession in that time and seven shots at goal.

And that's basically where they won the game because there was no recovering from it.

It was kind of the legs are gone, you know, stay in there, Frank, kind of thing.

And that it's just really smart and really clever and hasn't involved erasing the guy who went before you.

It kind of speaks volumes to how Klopp was trying to build and not just to kind of destroy a team and burn it to the ground while winning something in the way of certain other

big name managers we've known down the years.

I think it's slightly unfair to say Liverpool have had a, I know Wilson weren't really saying that, but to say they've had an easy time of things.

I mean, teams tend to have a bad moment when they play this Liverpool team.

And, you know, they've just beaten Madrid and Man City without conceding a goal and without looking like conceding a goal in the space of four days.

And they've won 15 out of 16.

They've now got six of their next nine Premier League games are away.

They've got Everton, the last Goodison Derby, which will be a sort of test, even though Everton are absolutely appalling.

But it's just they can lose five games now and still win the league it's just hard to see who's going to beat them when they've beaten Real Madrid and Man City I think the player they'd most miss because you think about injuries is probably Virgil van Dijk because he's demonstrably their best centre half I think they can compensate for Salah and also for Alexander Arnold because Connor Bradley is absolutely brilliant but I think Van Dijk has been so good this season that they would miss him but I just unless something really dramatic happens they're not going to lose enough games from here I just can't see it happening that Salah pass to Gakpo was just just so good but don't you think that was incredible he had so much time to do it he had four seconds on the ball and Alexander Arnold had three seconds to measure the pass they were not playing a guardiola team there this really high line with no quick players in the back just the ghost of Kyle Walker kind of wandering around covered in blood saying you are responsible for killing me and and why that was not a guardiola team at all like you don't allow people that much space and time.

And if you, you know, I feel like I'm on match of the day.

And if you give Moro Sala that much time, he'll kill you.

And he duly did.

Yeah, he did.

They've got Forrest next, Paz.

I mean, it doesn't, I would now not be surprised.

I mean, I just think, you know, Forrest are a smart team.

They play well.

They, you know, beaten Liverpool this season.

This city collapse could keep going.

And

I tend to agree, I think, with most neutrals.

I am really enjoying it at the moment.

I did actually start to feel sorry for them in this game.

Like, I felt a bit sorry for them.

I would not not be a bit surprised if they lost against Forrest.

I think I'd probably be more surprised if they didn't lose at this point, because with each defeat, they are visibly

eroding in confidence.

Forrest under there, a very good side, and I suspect it's only a matter of time before the crowd at the Etihad turn on them.

There's only so much goodwill in the reservoir, and

yeah, we know how quickly football fans can turn.

Well, I did see somebody on social media, and I have to say, I'm not entirely clear whether he was being ironic or not, to be to be fair, saying,

Ah, we suck Mark Hughes for less than this.

I know, it was somebody ringing in a phone, and I think I said it on the

talks book going, Bernardo Silver's useless, and he isn't playing well at the moment, but you're like, he's not useless, you know, like he's he has contributed, I think it's fair to say, at this level.

Anyway, that'll be for part one, but we'll begin part two at the London Stadium:

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Week.

Klee, if anyone can catch Liverpool, it's probably Arsenal.

They beat West Ham 5-2.

Very silly first half.

Seven goals, seven different goal scorers.

West Ham fans leaving at 4-0, trying to get back in at 4-2, and then leaving again at 5-2.

Barney, you were there.

Yeah, I mean, this was an amazing game.

I was there with John Bruin for The Guardian, and John was doing a 700-word match report, I think a runner, because it was a late game, and

there were seven goals in the first half.

It's a sort of fairly kind of phlegmatic, bemused look at the best of times, but that was

a test of his journalistic abilities.

It was amazing.

It was so hard to understand what was happening.

For me, it was also quite sort of an erotic spectacle just for the for the Saka Martha Saka Odegaard stuff in the first half which was really brilliant.

It was just like two players.

I mean West Ham stood and watched and enjoyed it too and fair play it was fun.

But those two playing together, there was so much build-up about what Odegaard would do coming back into this team and to actually sort of come back and change them in the way he has was amazing.

I mean they scored 13 goals in two and a half

games of football at that point and the interplay between them them is just so lovely.

And Saka is so efficient and so good at what he does now.

It was brilliant to watch.

I think West Ham will be absolutely fine because there are five really terrible teams at the bottom who are sort of dropping away.

And Kudas will come back for West Ham and they'll win enough games to stay up.

But this was just a complete, it was kind of disgusting at points.

Like the goal where Havert scored and there was just no pressure.

Everyone was just watching.

It kind of felt like it was falling apart slightly.

It was too much.

It was so post-modern.

Let's just not have any football during the football.

But Arsenal were brilliant and suddenly looked like that team again.

And I think Arsenal and Chelsea are going to chase Liverpool to the end.

I know it's a kind of horrible, decadent, debauched thing to say, but Chelsea are really good as well.

And they have so many good players.

And Mareska's kind of taken out the, you know, the whip and put them into shape.

And I think both of those teams are going to chase Liverpool.

We've only had 13 games and look look really full of goals.

Yeah, and Barry,

there's the two parts of Arsenal.

There is the erotic Saka-Odegaard relationship, and then there's

sort of American football set pieces.

And that's how they kicked off yesterday.

And you'd be terrified if you conceded a corner against them at this stage.

Yeah, I mentioned this to you

on the radio that when they take corners, it's like watching an American football scrimmage

because everything happens so quickly and so there's so many different moving parts.

It ends, the ball's in the back of the net and you've no idea how it got there.

Normally it's off the head of Gabrielle, but then you have to watch it in rock and roll super slow-mo to see everything, the various blocks,

the near post shove in the back on Lucas Paketa by Urian Timber,

which probably means that goal should have been ruled out.

But the poor lads in Stockley Park have so much going on there that it would take them 10 minutes to unpick the whole thing are you saying there needs to be like five referees and a flag on the play whenever arsenal have a set piece yeah it's it's a very effective weapon it doesn't always work for them but uh they do score quite a few goals from corners and it's it tends to be gabrielle who does it and in sack and declan rice they have two great corner takers you know when they're on it and sometimes rice his his radar is way off when he's on corner duty.

But I would argue the two best goals of this game were scored by West Ham.

Wonderful free kick from Emerson that went in off the crossbar.

And

I liked Araman Bissaka's goal as well, the brilliant defence splitting diagonal from Carlos Suller, I think it was.

But Arsenal were outstanding in this game, but West Ham made it so easy for them.

That was the really weird thing about it.

There was this complete collapse of constantly goals flying in.

But they're all really good good goals it's supposed to be like mad sort of goal mouth scrambles and people falling over like oh it was it was all bangers all the time uh it was it was very strange to have all those moments of quality thrown together when you assume this is a total collapse but barry's totally right about the corners like what's really interesting is um gabriel's like the running back because everyone there else there is just part of the scrimmage they're just to block they're there to block and shut down the lanes around him and it's really odd that you know this is happening but you can't stop it because he is the person who's going to try and head the ball.

Everyone else is just there to eat the space up.

And that first corner, it was the first corner of the game.

And West Ham have a designated set piece coach, who's Pablo Sance, who was standing, he came up to step to match up with Tova and Arteta, which is really weird because the technical area there is massive.

So it looked like it's two people with their carer sort of on a walk somewhere.

And these two guys,

and I was watching Sants as the ball went in, and he just, his face, his shoulders just hunched.

And he had to turn around and he had to walk back to the bench.

And it's a really long walk there.

It's like this terrible walk of shame.

He had to keep walking down.

But you wonder why they haven't twigged that.

Everyone else there is just blocking.

Just go after the running back.

But obviously easier said than done.

A tip of the hat also, sorry, to Chrysencia Somerville, who

he scored the goal in the game and it was disallowed for offside.

Such a good goal.

Almost should be allowed.

Quite a finish.

He should be allowed a a few more feet if it's that good a finish.

Well, I mean, I'm now sort of really fascinated that the refereeing conspiracy against Arsenal has reached a stage where they're sacrificing West Ham, covering up the conspiracy by letting Arsenal have a goal that shouldn't stand.

I'm giving them a penalty.

There probably was a penalty, but it often isn't given.

So I go, look, who can we?

Who can we give up?

Oh, look, they probably win at West Ham anyway.

Let's give them two goals there, just so we've got that as cover for when we really need to get them.

This is the kind of chat that happens in the holiday in sex parties isn't it what are we gonna do about this this is this is like it's like the um it's like the deep state in italy in the 70s where it turned out the majority of those terror attacks were carried out by their own secret service because they were lobbying to get a more authoritarian regime it's you know we're we're a long long way

through the looking glass in the looking glass.

It's the phrase false false flag operation.

Is that what that game was?

Well, ironically, it was a false non-flag.

Very good.

Just when we thought our notifications wouldn't be full of Arsenal fans criticizing you for something that we then have to talk to Nikki about on a Europod, and she's like, Oh, this wasn't there, it's not my fault, is it?

Um, is uh, is that it for La Potego?

I told he was had two games to save his job, Baz, and one of them was this hammering.

He was in the stands, wasn't he?

And as producer Joel says, he didn't have headphones, so he was speaking into his jacket like he was in slow horses or something.

Well, he had two games, apparently, he won one of them, and

I mean,

Newcastle were terrible in that game that they won.

So,

but

they did win it.

You can only beat the bad Newcastle team that's in front of you, who's playing dreadfully, their worst performance of the season.

And they got hammered in this one.

So, I don't know.

I'm not a fan of managers being given X number of games to save their job.

Either, you know, have faith in them or sack them.

This doesn't help anyone, particularly when the games are against, you know away at newcastle and against arsenal at home you'd imagine uh the west ham overlords were possibly hoping they wouldn't get anything from either of those two games and then they could say well you know we gave you your chance goodbye um yeah david moi is popping up on match of the day too though you know looking quite you know youth energetic youthful so you know who knows um to staff and bridge then chelsea beat aston villa 3-0

um and a case wilson of you know chelsea good villa in a real old slump and actually there was an interesting point made on on that match match the day about, you know, I think Villa made two changes from midweek in the Champions League where they played the inventors.

Chelsea made 10 changes from the Conference League.

And, you know, being fresh is quite a key part.

I mean, Chelsea may well have beaten Villa anyway, because they are good, but that is a real advantage to A, be playing in a lesser competition and B, have such a deep squat.

Yeah, I think the way Mareska's dealt with the Conference League is actually exactly the way he should have dealt with it, which is to say that we don't really care about it, so we're going to play the reserve team.

But it's clearly good for the reserve team.

They're getting regular football.

They're learning to play together.

They're learning Mareska's way of playing.

And when they are called upon, they're fresh and ready.

So

if you've got a squad that's 480 people deep, it's the best way to get something out of it.

But yeah, I think

there's a few things that have come together that

there is an accumulated fatigue, I think, from playing in the Champions League in the Premier League.

And obviously, they're not going to play a reserve squad in the Champions League, clearly.

So, you know, physical fatigue and mental fatigue and emotional fatigue from that.

I think

to an extent, the run they'd been on for 18 months was always going to come to an end at some point.

A team like Villa just can't sustain that unless they keep on pumping in the cash.

And PSR means you can't do that.

And PSR is probably one of the reasons why they offloaded Douglas Lawish in the summer, which

I think he's the player they're really missing in the same way the city missed missed Rodri.

Douglas Owish gave him a sort of coherence in their midfield, and they haven't really replaced him.

So, and plus, you know, you can say Ollie Watkins maybe hasn't been like a lot of players,

he hasn't been quite in his best since the Euros.

So, yeah, it's a lot of little things add up.

And this is my new,

it's not mine, it's not new.

Um, it's so

it's a

point I keep on

banging on about at the minute.

Do you, though, do you, though?

and is it

have you yeah

if you if you hear me on talk spot yesterday you'd have heard what i'm about to say i mean i was i was hosting it and i wasn't listening but carry on yeah sake

one of his sort of key sort of concepts of the game is it's a multiplicatory game not an additional game or not a game of addition so

if when one player drops off it has an impact on all the other players on on the field And if you have three or four players dropping off,

the net effect of all those

deductions being multiplied through the squad can be vast, and that's what we've seen at City, and I think it's what you're seeing at Villa: that it only takes four or five players to knock up a level by 10% again, and they'd be back to where they were, but they've all fallen off, and that's dragging everybody down with them.

We had Barney an indirect free kick inside the box for a back pass.

We need many more of those.

Yeah, it's one of the great.

Everyone loves this.

It's an amazing moment.

Do you remember the one

where Teddy Sherringham did a really old-fashioned back heel to Alan Sheeran?

He smashed it.

That should happen in every game.

If it hasn't happened, they should just stage that at half-time because it's one of the weirdly the most enjoyable things

you can see in football.

Yeah, just all the defenders hurling themselves at it.

Yeah, it's sort of, you know, I guess it's as close to the trenches or something, isn't it?

I don't know.

But yeah, it's a shame.

The only way we could get it is we did if we just penalised all handballs in the box with indirect free kicks.

They were never penalties.

Then you'd get a lot of them, but maybe a lot we'd just get overkill, and it's just seeing them so rarely.

But I loved that bit.

Well, they'd be like they'd be like short corners in hockey, yeah, which we always go to.

You'd have a specialist taker as well.

Callum Giles could come on and take them for who I was playing.

We probably should mention Cole Palmer's goal, Baz.

It was a total delight.

Yeah,

Cole Palmer scored a totally delightful goal.

That's something he does

quite frequently.

After the game,

I always like seeing him get interviewed.

And he was asked, you know,

what was good about this game from his personal point of view.

And he just went the three points, when quite clearly

his goal was the best thing.

But, you know, it was a very diplomatic answer from Cole.

And then the look on his face when he was asked if he thought Chelsea could mount some sort of title challenge, which, you know, God, no way.

And then Zomareska said the same thing.

He said, look, we're just just not as good as uh arsenal and manchester city and liverpool and i would argue that they quite possibly are better than manchester city and arsenal um don't know about liverpool probably not but uh i i wouldn't be surprised if it was chelsea that finished second behind liverpool uh to old trafford man united for everton nil a lovely home start for reuben amarim in the premier league following up a slightly less comfortable win over bodo glimpt on thursday night i mean i guess barney if if he wanted two players to get on the score sheet to get confidence, he'd probably have picked Rashford and Zerxe.

This was sort of like perfect game for him.

Yeah, it was really interesting, wasn't it?

Because the tonal difference was really there.

I found it really strange.

I couldn't work out what I was watching at one point at the beginning because there were these

players in Man United kit

running forward really fast.

And it feels like something that I haven't really seen for a long time.

And it took a while to kind of decode that this was happening uh amad um was really involved in i mean he's i he i think he's great i really do i mean obviously he's got lots to learn all that kind of stuff but his directness is obviously really appealing to amarim and he was involved in these goals just by pressing um from that kind of uh in-between area which is something you really haven't seen and and i've noticed pundits referring to uh to teams jumping.

This seems to be a phrase now, where you basically spot the moment to counter-attack and three or four players go.

And they did that really well in this game.

Rashford sprinted beyond the player with the ball to score his goal, which is something he probably sort of forgot was possible.

Is that even allowed under the laws of physics?

And it was really good.

They looked really hungry and spiky and it's amazing the difference a different kind of voice and a different energy can make.

As people listening to this podcast are probably thinking wistfully and hopefully and longingly about next week's podcast.

But I also enjoyed Xerxes'

machine gun celebration.

It wasn't that nice to see just score a goal, machine gun the crowd.

It's what the world needs now.

Such a lovely, a lovely message for football to be sending out.

Good for him.

He'll send off a nuclear bomb, but if he scores a hat-trick, that'll be just to send off a nuke.

Tell us about the shape, Wilson.

Is Amarin doing what we all have thought he would do?

I think fundamentally, yes.

But I think it's Amanjallo's, the slightly unexpected aspect of that.

I mean, we knew that Amarin

has in the past converted players who had been seen as forwards into wing backs.

But

I saw quite a bit of Amajallo at Sunland season before last.

And,

you know, lovely player, fantastic left foot, remarkable power for somebody so

slight.

You know, real energy about him, a real sort of infectious enthusiasm enthusiasm about how he plays the game.

I never thought he could be a wing back.

I never

occurred to anybody before whether he could do it against a side that's going to put more pressure on United than Ipswich and Everton have.

I'm not sure.

But in those games where United are likely to dominate possession or where they sort of feel they're the better side,

then why not?

And it really worked yesterday.

And

my doubt with him had always been,

absolutely not technically at all.

I mean, I think technically he's one of the best players I've seen at Sundland in 10, 20 years.

But I did wonder, is his size going to be a problem?

But actually, I wonder if,

because although he appears slight, he's actually really sort of muscular in a sort of wriggly way.

And that, I think, presents problems for defenders.

I think most footballers are quite muscular.

No, but I think he's unusually so for somebody, certainly given how he appears.

And because he's so short.

Like groundskeeper Willie in The Simpsons.

In a more lithe way, yeah.

Actually, I just realised that's what Mohamed Salah reminds me of.

Did you see the incredible moment yesterday where Salah was offering out Bernardo Silver on the pitch?

He was really clear.

And there was these two really slight, lithe, incredibly toned little guys.

He probably weighs seven stone squaring up.

He's probably incredibly strong as well.

But he had found someone on the pitch who he towered over.

And I did think, oh, Silver's not going to come out of that very well.

know what Salah's got under that jersey, yeah, and it's deep, it's deeply appealing.

Carry on, Wilson.

Where were you?

When he's up against the centre-back, he sort of slithers through under their defences because they're not used to dealing with that combination of somebody who's four foot two, but also got to be powerful.

These two giant, like the big things in Fraggle Rock, like James Tarkovsky and Jaron Braithwaite, just sort of lumbering around as this little muscular, uh, little sort of borrower speeds through them i mean everton barry are two points off the relegation zone no wins in five no goals in november all feels very everton to me and that they'll probably be fine but they were okay for about 15 20 minutes and then nothing yeah they were okay for 15 20 minutes they kind of had a couple of half chances that betto fired one out of the stadium when he probably should have slipped the core in and then

one of those shots for the sake of shooting into the side netting when

he probably should have held the ball up and tried to do something more productive with it.

But defensively, they were all over the place.

I mean I'd like to hear a Wilson dissertation on their shape where I think it was the third goal where they didn't have any players in one half of the field, like lengthways half of the field.

And Diallo had had free the freedom of the park to

pass into Xerxe.

Yeah, I think Everton are a bit of a mess.

Well, they definitely are a bit of a mess.

Haven't scored in four games, and they've some very tough fixtures coming up.

Wolves, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, and then a gimme against Man City, obviously.

Will Sean Dye still be there by the time they go to Man City?

I don't know.

But yeah, that was pretty grim yesterday.

David Moy's looking young on match of the day, so rubbing his hands with that one.

He'll take over Everton and West Ham, won't he?

All right, that'll do for part two.

Part three, we'll rattle through the rest of the Premier League.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Wolves to Bournemouth 4.

This was a fun game.

A hat-trick of penalties, all won by Evan Nielsen, all scored by Justin Clivert.

First player to score three penalties in a Premier League game.

Barry, I think you have the stat for the last player to score a hat-trick of penalties in the top flight.

It was Ken Barnes.

Wilson also has it.

No notes.

Yeah.

Ken Barnes for who and when, please.

It was Manchester City in

1957 against Everton.

Thank you.

Between you, you get a point.

I guess you are on the same team after all.

But look, Baza, really, Bournemouth are just really great, aren't they?

And they are dynamic.

And Evan Nielsen sort sort of leading the line.

And I thought it was interesting that he is similar to Solanke and he doesn't score buckets, but he never, ever stops.

So the guy they replaced,

they replaced him with someone who does a very similar job.

Yeah,

the thing that stood out for me in this game was probably Bournemouth's fitness,

the manner in which they just hunted down Wolves players relentlessly whenever they had the ball.

Generally, a pleasure to watch.

And

sorry, this game was so long ago I'm struggling to remember what happened

no but Barry's right because this game was really really hard to understand there was so much happening it was so insane and everyone at every moment in the entire 90 minutes every single person involved on the sidelines or in the crowd or on the pitch seemed incredibly upset and angry all the time it was amazing and and this is what's good about the Premier League there were so many odd things like why were the Wolves players dancing when they just made it 1-1?

Why were they all dancing?

Well, you don't dance at that point and then you go and lose.

Gary O'Neill blaming his players at the end.

That really felt end of days.

Like, when that's happened, it's kind of over and you're just...

I mean, I feel he may be in trouble.

He always looks...

I like him because he's so involved in it, but he always looks like...

he's about to get divorced and this is all just a terrible episode in his life and he needs to go on holiday holiday somehow.

It was amazing.

Everyone was giving away a penalty all the time and there were constant breaks and nobody ever stopped running and everyone was exhausted afterwards and probably cried a bit.

Probably everyone had a cry after this and then felt better.

But it was a brilliant game and Bournemouth.

Bournemouth must be like the third or fourth best team in the world right now.

Like they're just amazing.

I can't believe there are better football teams than them.

They're miles better than Real Madrid.

Somehow they're only about 12th in the Premier League.

But whenever I watch them, they're just incredible and doing amazing things.

Yeah, the move for the Kirk S goal was absolutely brilliant.

Brilliant football.

There was the moment where I think for the third penalty, a Wolves fan

of some considerable size lifted his shirt up and pulled his trousers down to sort of why-front Justin Cliver into confusion.

I was speculating with Barry yesterday that if the entire stand did that, would it I think it would put off the player.

I'm not saying I'm not encouraging it.

I think you're not meant to encourage that sort of behavior, but I think it would actually have a material impact.

I think classically you are encouraging it, Max.

Are you saying Wolf's fans didn't want it enough?

The fact that only one of them wanted to do it

is like if you're pressing, if you're pressing, you've got to do it on maps.

Well, you just have a trigger guy.

You have a trigger guy, he goes, and then you all go, right?

Argentina fans do that.

I've never seen another, you know, people take their their shirts off here, but Argentina national team, the only fans I've ever seen,

there's no other way of putting it, waving their cocks around while supporting their team.

I remember that happening at the 2014 World Cup and thinking, well, there's a new one.

One of them tumbled after they scored.

I remember tumbling down the seats into the press box, sort of naked clothes pulled down, falling almost into Stephen Howard of the Sun's lap.

And it was, he was sort of very wry, sort of raised an eye about, oh, there's another unusual thing that's happened, but maybe that should happen more often.

Maybe it's just normal, the end, end point of all that.

Jose Sa, the Wolves goalkeeper, was involved in a confrontation with his own fans

at half-time in this game.

I think a few fans were escorted off the premises.

You forgot to include that, Max, in your extensive summary of the game which led up to the hospital pass you

lobbed my way.

Well, that pass being Barry, Barry, what did you think about this game of football that was on television?

No, it was more a Barry.

I've just exhaustively detailed every single thing that happened in this game of football that was on television.

Tell me what happened in this game of football on television.

Well, I thought Barney answered it brilliantly, I must say.

But also, now that Barney has articulated what happens to the, when you get to the extent degree of men taking their clothes off at football grounds, I don't want to be part of encouraging it.

I would like to point out.

Yeah, then after that, Jose Sar gave away the most obvious of all the penalties.

Well, to be fair, he was getting hospital passes as well.

It's not just me.

He was.

You're right.

It wasn't the greatest bit of playing out from him and Craig Dawson, was it?

Brent to beat Lester 4-1.

Producer Joel has written this joke.

Lester went 1-0 up through Buna Notte, but it was very much good night, Lester, after that.

I mean, that's agonizing, isn't it?

But, you know, I will credit you.

What will Rude Van Istroy have made of of this

Wilson?

Well,

the good news is he's starting from a low base, so it's unlikely he's going to make things worse.

Because that looks a team that's totally demoralised, totally devoid of confidence.

I know Wolves Evan, West Ham, and Leicester are all playing each other in some combination, but

so I mean, that's a big game because West Ham are also not particularly good at the minute.

It's it's a game where if you're looking for where yeah, if you're Leicester, where can we get points?

That's a game you you would target.

So

not a lot of time for Ed Venusoy to get going, but

I think there's probably some fairly easy wins to be had there.

I mean, sorry, easy wins, as in easy improvements you can make, just by doing some basic defending and getting them sort of looking a bit more interested in the game.

Do you think they have the players that can do basic defending?

I mean, they still keep picking Vout Fast, which would imply no.

My only note on that game is Vout Fast running back towards his goal.

When you see that that that could be a naught from a lot of games

poor val i think it's because he scored those two own goals at anfield and he has big hair and maybe we wouldn't notice there are probably other centre backs big hair never has never does there are probably other centre backs it's probably yannick vestergaard or jan bederek whichever one it is he's probably not playing great either um meanwhile brentford at home are excellent are they kevin shadow should note his hat-trick um and an assist as well so well done to him.

Spurs Fulham.

Wilson, you were at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Fulham pretty unlucky not to win this.

Oh, I think so, yeah.

I mean, you know, Tottenham,

especially when Solanke isn't there, I guess for Charlotteson as well.

But when they're playing Son through the middle, they basically can only attack in transition.

And Fulham just didn't really give them the opportunity to do that.

So when Tottenham scored, it was totally against runner play.

I mean, I was reading before the game,

if you look at the underlying data, Titan actually haven't been particularly inconsistent this season, it's just their results are inconsistent.

I think they've they've scored the most certainly before the weekend began, they've scored the most goals, had the best XG

or yes XG not including penalties, and I think defensively with the fourth fewest goals conceded.

But the problem is, if they win a game

so every game they've won has been by at least two goals and only one has been by two goals, so we keep winning by three and four, but every time they lose it's by a a single goal.

That basically is not very good in games where they're not dominant.

And this was one of those where Fulham just sort of gradually ratcheted up, ratcheted it up.

And then when Tottenham scored, you suddenly thought, oh, maybe, maybe this is going to be the day when they win a game, we don't really deserve to.

But yeah, Tom Kearney scored

that great finish.

And you suspect that if he hadn't been sent off, Fulham would have been the more likely to score in the last 10 minutes.

But I mean, his red card, as even Marcus Hilfa acknowledged,

was deserved.

The studs into the back of Kilosevsky's calf, it was an obvious red.

I was struck by one incredible moment in this game where

Fulham set up a defensive wall with no draft excluder player lying down and Madison hit the ball into the space where they all jumped.

It was the astonishing arrogance of not having a draft excluder exposed.

It's like not having a set piece coach leaping up.

This is what will happen.

And

it would have been goal of the the season.

It was really smart.

Well, Fulham were really lucky there because I can't remember which player it was, but whoever was the least jumpy of the players, the ball just flicked the bottom of his toe.

And if it hadn't, I think it would have gone in.

I think it was that diverted onto the post because it was a corner was given.

You say

the least jumpy as the Fulham player who is least afraid of, you know, like being spooked by people, you know, hiding behind a door.

Who's the bravest?

The most

phlegmatic of a Fulham defender.

The John Bruin of Fulham defenders.

I think Fraser Foster probably deserves some praise for his performance in this game because

he rescued a point for Spurs basically with four or five excellent saves.

A lot of people were very nervous about his presence,

and I think it is quite a drop-off from him or from Vicario down to him.

But he played quite well against Roma in midweek and

was instrumental in helping Tottenham get a point they probably didn't deserve here.

Yeah, probably.

I mean, I guess the question is, Wilson, does that,

you know, him being there, he did make lots of good saves he did against Roma, but the way they play out, I don't know if it made a difference.

Well, Vicario's pass completion rate is 91%, his was 78%.

Vicario hits 93% of passes short.

He hits

14 out of 18 short, whatever percentage that is, which was just over 70%.

So it does change how they play.

You can't avoid that.

But fundamentally, I mean,

the two saves you made, the save to his right from Ral Jimenez from that sort of hooked volley, and then the tip under the bar from

Iwobi,

they were, I mean, they were both outstanding saves.

Agreed.

I do like, you know, Fulham's, that Smith Rowe, Nelson, Iwobi, Arsenally three is really nice behind Jimenez, isn't it?

And they definitely deserve to win that game.

What was weird was, I think there's four former Arsenal players in the Fulham side, but only Smith Rowe got booed by the Tottenham fans, which I don't know if they've sort of decided that we can't sort of scatter this among four.

Smith Rowe's the most important, we'll focus on him.

But yeah, it was very much a booing was Smith Rowe focused.

True, but he's really Arsenal.

He still is really Arsenal, Smith Rowe, isn't he?

I think.

I think that I can understand that.

I mean, is he the most.

I suppose Rhys Nelson left relatively recently, but I guess had not played as often.

So yeah, I think that's probably his true.

Brian won Southampton one.

southampton should they should they feel aggrieved should russell martin feel aggrieved barney good chance you haven't had a chance to go on var yet and i know you love this subject yeah i mean russell martin will feel aggrieved because he just is so good at it you know stick to what you're good at um he's brilliant to watch isn't he um

there were still people yelling about this um on the radio this morning about this decision um i don't really get it like um it's obviously just correct and that's the end of that really you'll never You'll never get Talk Sport Breakfast, Barney, with that attitude.

You'll never get that show.

They seemed really angry, like, to genuinely mean it.

And I believe people when they seem...

I mean, hopefully they weren't putting this on, but they genuinely seemed aggrieved about this three days on.

I didn't get it.

It just seemed like the correct thing to do.

And let's give our poor, embattled

referees, you know, some credit for doing the job properly.

Seth Hammer's first away point of the season.

A bit of a set talk.

Quite like like the Russell Martin Fabian Herzler hatred.

I didn't see that coming.

Well, Herzler is very spiky, and he does get a lot of yellow cards.

He did last season as well.

I noticed Joe Lumley started this game for Southampton in goal.

I've completely forgotten about the existence of Joe Lumley.

The goalkeeper, he came in, Alex McCarthy was dropped after just one game,

which, you know, life as a keeper

got perilous.

And

yeah, it was very fractious and narciss on the touchline throughout.

There was a good phrase, wasn't there?

Respect goes both ways.

I thought that was really good.

I thought, I must remember to say that.

That sounds really menacing.

You haven't actually threatened anyone, but it sounds threatening.

And he followed it by going, it has to be reciprocal.

But the way he said reciprocal, it was like the most menacing word he could conceivably have used.

Yeah, it's like that's what happens when I gut you with my love.

Crystal Palace won, Newcastle won.

The narrative arc of Daniel Munos.

A huge miss, one cleared off the line, and a last minute equaliser.

He celebrated like he'd won the World Cup and the Champions League together, Wilson.

Yeah, I mean, he really should have scored the first of his three decent chances, but yeah, at least he did get the equalizer.

And I think it was a game where if Palace hadn't got at least something out of the game, they'd have felt pretty aggrieved and pretty doomed, because Newcastle's XG was 0.02.

So that was the other strange thing after the game.

But Eddie Howe and whatever Newcastle players were talking about, it was Anthony Gordon, saying, oh, yeah, we played really well, we negated the threat.

Even though we didn't have a shot on target, it wasn't really not a shot on target game.

I think, well, 0.02 XG suggests it really was very much not a shot on targeted game.

And maybe you're getting a goal from 0.02 XG suggests you got away with it.

But I guess it is possible to be good defensively and negate Palace's threat without really offering much of a threat yourself.

Probably not the way Mark Gay envisaged scoring his first goal for Newcastle.

Good to get off the mark, isn't it?

Finally, Forrest won it, switched nil.

Oh, that penalty, Barry.

I loved the way Chris Wood struck that.

Yeah, he pretty much blasted it, didn't he?

It was

Jota Silva went down under the challenge of Smodic

to give away the penalty or to win the penalty and just

bury the ball down the middle.

No nonsense, Chris Wood.

And this was kind this game was kind of the Chris Wood

Liam DeLap,

you know, battle of the old-fashioned number nines, and Chris Wood came out on top.

Excellent defensive performance by

Forrest.

And I think, yeah, Marillo and Milenkovich are just a superb, superb partnership in the heart of that forest offense.

Yeah, it was a real Seb Hutchinson win-your 3 pm that no one's watching

that game.

But, you know, Forrest doing very well up to six.

William says,

Good evening, Wilson.

Perhaps one for Max to bring up the next time you're on Football Weekly.

Is the representation of cricket in Sister Boniface season three, episode six, the least accurate there's ever been?

Otherwise, a fine, cozy murder episode, but my word, the cricket.

Do you know what he's talking about?

I've never watched Sister Bonniface.

However, I've started watching Lincoln Lawyer as my sort of absolute sort of, when my brain stopped working, what can I put on that will like have nice colours in front of me?

And the representation of football on that was astonishing.

They seemed to have the referee running down a touchline with a whistle.

Like he was a linesman but had a whistle.

And then the next episode they had some of the least convincing poker ever seen where four aces were beaten by a straight flush to prove that this woman was great at reading body language.

If you've got a straight flush you don't have to read body language, you just win, right?

So

I would also disagree with the question that the least convincing representation of cricket ever televised is the third test between England and Sri Lanka in the Oval last summer summer, where England just pretended to be playing and were having a laugh and waiting for the golf to happen.

That trumps anything.

There was a very poor representation of cricket in an episode of the new reboot of all creatures, great and small.

And

I don't know if I mentioned this to Wilson.

I certainly meant it.

In the Smash Hit

Disney Plus series, Rivals, which is the adaptation of Jilly Cooper's book,

which which is very good.

I heartily recommend it.

One of the main characters rocks up in Malaga and tells another character he was there for the Hearts game the previous night.

So I duly went on soccer base and Hearts never played in Spain during the 80s.

So another one for the file of

how hard is it to get these things right?

Well, I mean, okay,

but two things I said about that.

A, did you check pre-season friendlies?

And B, there is at least an element of plausibility to that.

And plausibility, I think, is the key thing.

It's completely conceivable.

Malaga and Hartz could both be.

That's who you told me, isn't it?

I feel like I've been bullied in this podcast.

I think there have definitely been podcasts with this lineup where you have been bullied, Barry.

I don't think this is one of them.

But

amazingly, there's still time.

We've got an EFL pod tomorrow, but Barney, you had some EFL thoughts.

Oh, I mean, I was just gossiping with you before the pod about my amazing journey to Plymouth the other day, and I just noted the fact that Wayne Rooney's Plymouth have conceded 10 goals in the last two games, which oddly enough, by pure coincidence, coincides with the start of my own journey to Plymouth to interview Wayne Rooney

just before that run of results, where

it was an amazing thing.

I went down to write an article about what a great guy Wayne Rooney is and how much I like him.

He's really popular.

You know, it's a really remarkable thing.

England fans sing his name.

You go around the grounds in the championship.

People like Wayne Rooney.

He feels really authentic.

He wants to do this.

He's kind of a pre-academy player, we remember.

He seems to speak to some other time of more sort of honest, approachable values, which is an odd turn-up in his own life, given the way he was treated by the media when he was 17.

So I had to pre-write all this about what a great bloke Wayne is, how much I like him personally.

And then I got to Taunton, and Wayne cancelled the entire media day, including

he was going to a primary school.

That was part of my piece, where obviously all the teachers would have rearranged their days.

The children would have been excited.

Everyone's rearranged it around Wayne Rooney turning up.

And he cancelled it.

So all of the journalists going down had to turn around on the train and go home, having spent an entire day going to Taunton.

And they've since shipped 10 goals.

And Wayne seems really unhappy with the unprofessionalism of his own team.

which I just thought was kind of a telling as a little glimpse behind the curtain there.

And probably a piece that will have to be spiked, sadly, and and replaced with one about Wayne Rooney's very unlikable dissolute kind of amoral collapse at Plymouth Arcade which is a shame but it was just an interesting moment and good luck in in the next few games though because

10 and 2 isn't isn't great to concede.

I got to Stoke once on the train to interview then Stockport manager Diddy Herman for Sokor AM when he

texted the producer to say I'm not talking to those idiots and actually probably fair enough.

It wasn't Plymouth's fault.

The club were absolutely destroyed.

They're really nice.

The club is really nice.

It's just, and I think it's to do with Wayne doing a Netflix documentary personally.

It's probably why that happened.

So, primary schools, sorry, but you can catch Wayne on Netflix.

That'll do for today.

Thanks, everybody.

Thanks, Barry.

Thank you.

Thank you, Wilson.

Cheers.

Thank you.

Thank you, Barney.

Cheers, everyone.

Bye.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

We'll do some EFL tomorrow.

This is the Guardian.