North London is red while Everton are left feeling blue … again – Football Weekly podcast

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

We'll start in North London, which in banter terms is red after Gabrielle's free header gave Mikel Arteta a vital win.

As of 11am on Monday morning, Spurs are still trying and failing to thread their way through the most stubborn of back fours is Ange under a little pressure.

Then to Villa Park, oh, Everton, the XG on John Duran's shot was 0.02.

But what a way to win.

Naught points for Sean Dych.

You might be wondering why Dominic Calvert Lewin spent half an hour sizing up that chance at 2-1.

Finally, we get a chance to talk Nottingham Forest, their first winner and field since 1969.

A masterclass from Nuno Yoda and his fellow Jedis so well on a slot out thinking they did.

Eric Ten Hag again finds a win when he desperately needed it.

Southampton will rue that penalty miss.

Bournemouth can join them in some ruin, missing from 12 yards themselves and losing to Chelsea.

Also today, something, something, Erling Harland, a banger from Harvey Barnes, Jamie Vardy rounding the keeper and giving it to the Oppo, and Fulham won, West Ham won.

There's some elite EFL.

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

Mark says, elite lineup.

Johnny says, the dream team are back.

Zvonimir says, truly, the Ballon d'Or lineup.

And Mark says, is this the most dour panel ever?

Barry Glendenning welcome.

Hello Jonathan Wilson.

Morning, how you doing?

I'm very good and a warm welcome to Barney Ronnie.

Yeah hi hi.

Just to put the other perspective on that those glowing review pre-reviews just

really make me wonder how bad the other panels are.

Let's start at Whiteheart Lane, shall we?

Barney, you were there for Tottenham Nil Arsenal 1.

How was it?

It was good.

I mean it was an interesting game.

It was kind of, it started off feeling, I was there to write a sidebar.

So you pick out the event of the day and sort of write about that.

And

that 40 minutes gone, I was thinking nothing, there's nothing, I don't know what this is, I don't know what's happening here.

It was intense and sort of feisty, but feisty in a kind of pulling people back in the centre circle way.

It was full-on pulling niggly kind of fouls on the transition and that kind of thing.

And then steadily a picture began to form, and it started to become more and more obvious that this game was going to be decided by a set piece because

there were no other narratives out there except last season's thing.

And it seems to speak to so many elements of these two teams.

And I kept saying to Dave, height, no, this is going to be this corner, isn't it?

It's going to be this one.

And there's Ange standing there, you know, sad, like very much kind of divorced dad at Sports Day on the touchline, like, I'm here for you, even though it's raining.

And

it just happened as you expected.

And it was a strange game because then I knew we'd all focus on that.

And while the obvious thing is one team that overtly practices set pieces, one with a set piece, another team with a manager who has pointlessly put, you know, set himself up as the anti-set piece coach guy.

I mean, why would you do that in a league where there is a danger you could be seen as something of outside the elite?

Perhaps you haven't quite been there before.

There's a bit of anti-Australian prejudice.

Why would you set yourself up as the Luddite?

I don't know.

But

I kind of wrote in my report, it's not really about the set piece because Spurs do work on those and they do have a new coach who works on them for them.

It's not like they just rock up and everyone says, get on the backstick.

It's just that Arsenal are better at those details and

they're better at all the details.

And set pieces are just one detail.

So they're better at the team structure is better the selection is more coherent i didn't quite buy that um arsenal had this terribly depleted midfield and it was a miracle win in the cauldron of hate because thomas parte and georginho is is a really good midfield and is better than spurs's midfield particularly when you don't pick a midfield that that also helped and i just thought probably it wasn't a good game for postacoglu and it was a very good game for artetta who simply unleashed his efficient machine and they deservedly won and it was a very good game, Wilson, for Saliba and Gabrielle.

And they had to do a lot of defending and there is obviously a conversation about Spurs not being able to break down a defence.

But, you know, when you add Ben White and Timber, who is such a unit to that,

they're very, very good.

Yeah, I mean, Arsenal were the best team defensively last season, and it looks like they've really doubled down on that.

That they do have that real solidity.

They are very hard to score against.

But, as you say, that also fits a pattern of Spurs this season.

I don't think think reality would have to be very different for Spurs to have started the season with four wins out of four, and us all be saying how brilliant they are.

And yet, you know, I mean, they've had at least 60% possession in all four games so far, but they seem to struggle to convert that into chances.

Then they struggle to convert chances into goals, and because they're Spurs, they've always liked to concede in a stupid way.

And I mean, Barney's right for all the set-piece talk, I mean, you know, narrative-wise, it was always going to be a set piece.

And they've brought in

he's an assistant coach called Nick moriarty who he's he has responsibility for set pieces but he's not a set piece coach for all that you don't need a set piece coach to tell you that getting under the ball in the way of murder did and then not putting any kind of challenge on gabriel when he's six yards out is not going to help you don't need a set piece coach to tell you don't everybody pile on top of your keeper when he's already not that commanding

So they just seem very basic stuff that they got wrong.

But that's been the way of it this season.

You mentioned pressure on Coglu.

He had that great start of 26 points from his first 10 games, but they've taken 44 from the last 32 league games.

Now, I think

Gary O'Neill made this point yesterday.

He's obviously on a bad run.

That Wolves ended last season very badly, have started the season pretty poorly.

that you have to look at the season as a whole and it doesn't really matter where in the season you get the points.

And that's fair up to a point.

But 32 games is almost a season.

You project that out, of the 44 points, you get to 52, which is what West Ham got last season.

And Spurs, given their stadium, given their investment, given their expectations, would think they'd be doing quite a lot better than West Ham.

So I think

that is starting to become a problem.

Apparently, Baz, there were Real Madrid scouts watching both Gabrielle and Romero.

And you shouldn't make your decision over just one moment, but

probably quite a good idea.

If you want to pick one, look at that moment.

Yes, and yet I feel Romero is the player they would go for.

I can picture him playing for Real Madrid, getting red card after red card after red card.

Yeah, it was poor on his part.

And as the lads have said, Gabrielle and Saliba were immense.

Vicario, again, so far as Barney says that Ange has seemed to have accepted this role and embraced this role of being the Luddite.

Vicario, who...

is most parts of his game are really good and he he's a great goalkeeper but on set pieces, he has been identified by other teams as being weak, and he gets bullied, he gets targeted, and that happened again yesterday.

Pundits were saying he should have come for that ball, but the way I saw it, by the time the ball came towards Gabriel, there was nowhere for him to go because several arsenal blockers were in his way, and he couldn't come for it.

Maybe because he was caught flat-footed on his line again.

I think the Real Madrid scouts would

all go for Romero every time, not that it would necessarily be the right choice.

And

when we were on the radio when the Spurs lineup was or the two lineups were announced and you were very nervous because you thought Spurs had picked a far too attacking lineup and there wasn't enough in midfield to hold Arsenal at bay.

As it transpired, they offered very little going forward and they ran out of ideas.

After a good start they ran out of ideas quite quickly and um they never really looked like scoring they had a few half chances but were reduced to just taking pot shots by the end on a weekend when quite a few pot shots went in but none of theirs did i thought it was really funny that on

like ben white didn't technically affect um this goal he he wasn't he wasn't the but he was very much the main man last season when he was undoing vucaria's gloves and uh and Possokogi was asked about that at the time.

Then he said, I'm not interested in that.

That's just funny guys.

We don't pay any attention to that.

Just think about my players.

But this time around,

James Madison was standing right on Ben White.

He'd always been detailed.

They obviously had done some work on this.

They obviously had cared about it a bit, but not enough.

So he was blocking Ben White to a degree that it was actually Madison who blocked his own goalkeeper.

If you watch, Vucario can't get there because Madison is in the way because he's so obsessed with Ben White.

And that's what causes the goal to happen.

And it's an example of doing those details but not doing them, half doing them.

Like, obviously, we've got to stop Ben White, he's the problem.

And it's the difference, as Jonathan was saying, between a specialist who's doing that and nothing else and a slightly bodged version of it.

And the other thing I wanted to say is

there's an interesting Gareth Southgate comparison.

Obviously, I'm still fighting this battle like the last

in a bush on a Pacific island

it's it's it's still it's still going on but there have been two like big sort of fan disenchantments i've been part of because i haven't really done any football since the olympics and i did some cricket and first of all it was like gareth we're not we're not open enough we're too cautious you know that's what's wrong we need to unleash and now with poster cocker it's like we're too open we're not cautious enough we're so naive and both seem to be wrong.

Obviously, there's a question of degree and everything.

But I would say that both teams, England and Spurs, are probably at their level.

I mean, England, I don't think, are a better team than Spain, or don't have a better system than Spain.

They reach a final, that's good, but people aren't happy with the style of it.

Spurs finished fifth last season, which probably seems about right, even though you could probably pick holes in how terrible they looked at times.

And

in a way, it kind of emphasises how much we like to talk about these things.

And there's always a counter-narrative that, you know, what about this, the sort of counterfactual thing of if only England had been more like Posta Cogli, well, what would have happened then?

And if only Andrew's more like Gareth.

A, it's how difficult this is, how many variables, how many moving parts there are, how hard it is.

But also, the quality of your players is so key.

I mean, England did have weaknesses, and that's why Southgate has always been this incredibly cautious England manager.

And Spurs clearly haven't really invested in their squad as well as Arsenal have.

And that is basically the bottom line.

And that's why they have a manager like Posta Coglu.

That's why they're fighting for fourth every season why they probably end up in fifth in our terms of Arsenal Wilson I mean it's really good for the title race that they won this game because they dropped points in the previous game but

they are better than Tottenham but they were missing two of their key players and they had to soak up a lot of pressure in this game even if Tottenham didn't attack brilliantly and it is one of those games where they they played within themselves and they just did everything right and that is perhaps the mark of a team that can come second to Manchester City.

Possibly and you I think we were saying something similar after the Villa game.

And then you had the Brighton game.

I find Arsenal very hard to get a handle on.

For whatever reason, they're a team I don't see live very often.

I think you get a far better sense of mood when you're in the same and mood is sort of it's very hard to characterize, but you get a sense about clubs, the direction they feel they're going in.

But certainly the social media mood around Arsenal is incredibly hysterical all the time.

And that's not the way you win titles.

If that hysteria is anywhere near the arsenal dressing room they have no hope they have declined rice sent off for a decision that could go their way might you know might not and it's this huge soap opera where actually the thing is you're 1-0 up against brighton just hang on win the game nothing else matters just win the game and then mark nodding gets gets injured playing for Norway and suddenly the P2P Arsenal fans who want the entire content of international football cancelled and they don't seem to understand that,

you know, Nathan Ake has also been injured.

People get injured.

It's not some massive global conspiracy, a universal conspiracy against Arsenal.

No, as I say, I think it's probably a social media issue.

But if that is seeping into the stadium, and you did, you know, I was at the Bayern game last season when they were totally in control, one thing goes wrong, and they then have 20 minutes of panic.

I was at the Brentford game, which he did end up winning.

when they battered Brentford first half, let in a stupid golden stroke at half-time and then really struggled.

Brilliant as it were at times last season.

89 points is a huge number of points.

Yeah, you can't say they're anything other than an exceptionally good team.

But I don't think they handle adversity particularly well.

And even though they came through the villa game, they came through yesterday,

I'm still not convinced that if things go badly for them, you know, what if they hadn't scored that goal?

What if with 10 minutes to go, it was still 0-0?

Would you have trusted them to score?

I'm not sure I would, even though I think they are better than Spurs.

So I still think that, and I realize this

is a daft thing to say about a team who've got 89 points, but just tells you when modern football is.

I don't really think that

they've got it in their character to win the title.

People will yell at us again for them playing well and winning and being diligent and

not just being effusive with praise because I guess the point is we are talking at that fine margin level, right?

But okay, but that point you make about them playing within themselves and doing it, absolutely.

And we said the same in the Villa game.

But But the game away at City last season, the sense was there was a chance there to really put their foot on the throat, to really open up clear water, and they didn't take it because they were playing slightly with a handbrake on.

No, so it becomes one of those things that if it works, then great.

If it doesn't, then you get criticised for it.

And so you then start to think, well, it's not really a thing at all.

Let's go to Villa Park.

Villa 3, Everton 2.

Oh, Everton.

I mean, they've just become the second side in Premier League history to lose back-to-back games, having led by two goals in both after Bournemouth in October, November 2022.

I mean, the winning goal, Barry, is absolutely ridiculous, isn't it?

You could just imagine being an Evertonian going,

it would only happen to us.

You know, you could tune it up and then you could see that.

Yeah, it was a really good strike of the ball by John Duran, who's having a...

a great season off the bench for Villa.

I would be reluctant to compare this collapse in Inverted Commons to the actual collapse they had against Bournemouth

because I think against Bournemouth for 87 minutes they were the better team and deserved to be 2-0 in front.

In this game I don't think they were the better team really at any point during the game and just happened to find themselves 2-0 up.

Then Villa, as soon as Villa pulled a goal back, which a goal they deserved to score, you're kind of thinking, oh, here we go.

And I'm sure that feeling seeps into the the minds of the everton players and the everton fans and they're going to get nervous so obviously dominic alvert loon had that wonderful opportunity to put everton three one up but he took an eternity to try and take the ball uh around emi martinez allowing esri conse to to clear up get back and clear up and then it all goes horribly wrong for them as

you know

It wasn't entirely beyond the realms of possibility.

and i i don't think they deserve to win this game i think they probably deserve to win the game against bournemouth but uh not this one and

i'm still loath to write them off because we know what they're like and what they can do uh when this string is run the results together but it's looking pretty bleak for them i was interested in uh sean dyesh afterwards seeming uh baffled by the fact that they couldn't hang on you know two obviously two weeks in a row it looks ridiculous um

uh and it feels feels like bad luck.

And when a goal goes in like that, but on the other hand,

why can't you control and kill off games?

They had 27% of the ball.

And no other, I think they're the only team left now in the Premier League, now that David Moyes has gone, which actively concedes possession and tries to win like that.

They were really tired against Bournemouth at the end, where they also had less possession.

And they're probably the one team that doesn't at any stage try to rest on the ball, which relies relies on hard defending and duels.

And it doesn't, it seems structural rather than bad luck that eventually, if you keep giving people the ball and giving them chances, someone might whack one in from that far out.

I thought it was really unfair that it was Calvert Lewin's fault.

You know, he missed this chance.

I didn't think it was that great a chance.

You had to do something though.

You had to make an angle and try to score.

And you can miss those.

But when you make so few chances, and maybe when you do the good ones because the other team is attacking, you're going to isolate Calvin.

But if I were him, I might be thinking, try to have a bit more possession, give me more chances, and we might score more goals and win more games and control more games.

Wilson, you wrote a piece about the fact that fewer goals are being scored from outside the box.

On a weekend, where lots of goals were scored from outside the box, which obviously gave, I mean, were there lots?

There was this one, there was Harvey Barnes, Hudson Adoy.

quite a few.

Well, the first Newcastle goal, which got a deflection, but the shared deflection.

Yeah.

yeah.

And you know, Jamie Carragher on comm spent two minutes lamenting the fact you don't see goals like this anymore, having just seen a goal like this.

So, did you feel were you sad that all those goals went in this weekend, or was it a nice Yaboa-like throwback?

No,

people are very welcome that I wrote that piece and encouraged people to shoot and,

you know,

look at the impact it's had.

I did make the point that the Euros showed a I think so so basically the piece was was based on the fact that last season

the proportion of goals from range was 11.2% which is the lowest in Premier League history I think it was up to 14.3% before the start of this weekend at the Euros it was 16 and a bit percent so I did suggest in the piece that that maybe I think these things often go in I don't want to say cycles because I mean that seems to suggest it's sort of it's inevitably comes back around that's not what I mean at all but they do go in in sort of waves that for whatever reason players don't shoot and I think to an extent that might be an understanding of XG that the players realize if I'm 25 yards out you know there probably are better things I can do with it

I suspect that's not necessarily just to do with an awareness of the data though I think the way teams play now the way pitchers are the way the the laws of the game are in the old days if you got a shooting chance take it because you never know when a bobble is going to take it away from you you you wouldn't dare try and play three or four more passes to create a better chance because a bobble a terrible foul can end that and so I think there was a sort of tendency to snatch at chances a bit more 30, 40 years ago.

But I think maybe that at some point starts to bounce back.

That people realise, well, hang on, if this team's sitting deep against us and they've got these two banks of four, we've got to pass three from 25 yards out.

Maybe having a ping every now and again is useful, not just because we might score, but at least it then it says we have this capacity to have a shot, so maybe you're going to have to come out and challenge us and that might create a space.

So

what was the question again?

Sorry?

I can't remember.

It was so long ago, Wilson.

Absolutely no idea.

Well, I'm sure that was a very good answer to the question.

It was a really good, it was an excellent answer.

I think that the interesting point is about, you know, it's a bit like teams that insist on playing out, right?

Sometimes it's good for the goalkeepers and knock it long.

So the defense have to think that might happen, right?

There's a whole thing of saying that Man City do this.

That's become they have a very programmed and structured sense of free variation when Edison,

in a much practiced move, hits the ball straight down the middle.

It's sort of like a, you know, it's a kind of robotic variation programmed into the system so that people on punditry shows can say, well, everyone says they're really predictable and they just play from the map.

But actually, look, four times a game, Edison will pump the ball down the middle in a very, and he's really good at it.

I mean, his long, flat passes are amazing.

And that variation is programmed into the system.

And it seems to be a massive surprise every time, certainly on sort of match of the day, that they actually do that.

um obviously it helps when you have a kind of large terrifying viking man up front who will simply run straight over ethan pinnock which i i thought about barry when that happened yeah well no of course we did we'll get to we'll get to him bottoming ethan pinnock out the way in in a second look good volley watkins to get a couple of goals another decent win for villa yet to be really convincing I have conceded in every game.

Each of their wins is by one goal.

And John Duran has got the winner in all three of their wins.

So he's he's done very well.

Anyway, well done to them, that'll do for part one.

Part two, we'll begin with Nottingham Forest, brilliant winner and field.

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Barry's here, too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Jim says, let's be honest, it would be objectively very funny if you still didn't mention Nottingham Forest this week.

Osh says, having relegated us in your preview pod, both me and Barry, do you want ice cream or custard with your humble pie?

Their first win at Anfield in any competition since 1969.

Paul Hayward tweeted out an amazing thread about this, a snowy picture from 1969 with Ian St.

John and two Forest players in saying, in February 1969, struggling Forest visited second place, Liverpool.

Anfield was covered in snow and was only deemed playable after a 10-minute practice match featuring the referee and Bill Shankly.

And Paul said, look, the astonishing stat about that,

you know, that time that Forrest haven't won at Anfield is that Brian Clough was their manager from 75 to 1993.

But, Wilson, it was a brilliant performance from Nottingham Forest.

Yeah, it really was.

I mean, that's if you, and I'm sure that's exactly how Nuno planned it, that you sit deep, you frustrate Liverpool.

I think possibly, I don't want to say slots been worked out already, because that's clearly not true, but I think he does underuse the flanks.

And I was thinking more generally about managers being worked out.

I was doing a live event last Monday, and I was asked who's the worst manager in the Premier League.

And there is one obvious answer, but it's really not as easy a question to answer as it has been in previous seasons.

That I think the vast majority of managers in the Premier League are actually really, really good.

There's no obvious dinosaurs or Frank Lampards.

What I think you see does happen is that you look at people like Deserby, maybe we've seen it with Glasner, that they have a very defined style.

And after a while, teams do work out how to play against it, and it can then become very difficult for those managers to

sort of come back from that.

And yeah, it's early for Glassner.

It may well go fine for Palace.

But I do wonder if people have worked out with Slot that he does like to play through the middle a lot.

And Forrest did keep their back four in the midfield for very narrow, so there was loads of space out wide, and Liverpool didn't really seem to try to use it.

Having done that, they bring on Hudson-Doyle and the Langer.

They have attacking width on the break, and that's what brings the winner.

David says, Will Nuno's managerial comeback be recorded as one of the great reputational comebacks within the Jedi archives?

The force is strong with this one.

He seems a living Jedi now, Barney.

He sat next to Samuel L.

Jackson.

He's there making big decisions on what to do with Darth Vader.

There was an incredible sort of moment at the end, seeing him smile

and laugh and joke.

And he actually said, I'm really enjoying myself.

And

he actually has a beautiful smile.

He looked amazing.

I suddenly got his box full box office charisma.

And yeah,

it was a lovely moment.

Can I just say, everybody listening to this is thinking, he said there's one obvious answer as to who the worst manager in the Premier League is, and then didn't say who that was.

So I presumed he meant Ten Hark, but I don't know.

Yeah, so I presume that as well.

But I don't mean to presume.

Well, I thought when I immediately presumed when you said there's no obvious dinosaurs managing the Premier League, that there'd be howls of derision from any Everton fans who might be listening.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah,

maybe that is true.

Yeah, yeah, sorry.

You're quite right.

I'm not necessarily saying Sean Dice is the worst manager, but I would certainly put him in the

Jurassic era.

He's the most prehistoric, is he?

We had a timeline of where they are.

He's the prehistoric.

He's a dishosaur, if you will.

Yeah, very good.

Very good.

Where were we, Barney?

On Nuno.

It was great.

I mean, Forest have some really good players.

They have Champions League level players.

You know, Hudson Adoy is a really good footballer, and he's been in really good form, and the team's really well set up.

And they are a big, functional club with an ambitious owner and a good manager.

And

there's no reason why they should be seen as

a team that you expect to walk through.

Having said that,

I mean, it was a bit of a weird game for Liverpool.

I don't think Slot managed the game very well.

I don't really understand why

he moved Connor Bradley, brought Conor Bradley on right back and said, go and defend against Hudson Adoy when Alexander Arnold then went into midfield, and that just very, very obviously backfired

most obviously for the goal, but he ran past him time after time.

I thought it was a bit cruel.

It's a very hard thing to be able to come on and do.

I wouldn't blame Connor Bradley for that.

But on the other hand, people shouldn't overreact.

My theory on Slot is that

may he may even be destined to kind of fail, as in not establish a Klopp style dynasty.

I think that that would be quite a likely outcome, but that he will be, if that happens, he'll be a good failure.

He will do good things.

Failing in a good way would be a success.

He's not going to buy stupid players.

He's not going to annoy people.

He's not going to, he will bring in, he'll bring the players on, he'll coach well, he'll be like a Julier type figure in the best sense of Juliet, and that it's good, even if you tread water.

And also, it's a three-stage to it.

You change your tactics, other people adapt, you have to adapt again.

So people don't get found out.

But if you do something new, you know, this league is very open.

People do study what you're doing.

And the test will be to kind of keep progressing from there.

Liverpool fans seem very depressed by this defeat, but

it happens all the time.

Klopp had a really slow start, too.

It takes a long time.

And I think Slot's the right person to build a kind of soft dynasty, even if he's not waving trophies around in the air at the end of the season.

I think Slott may not rate Trent Alexander Arnold as a fullback.

Just on the evidence of what I've seen so far, he constantly seems to be giving

Trent sort of mid-match pep talks and then throwing his arms up in frustration when Alexander Arnold tries some pass that doesn't come off.

And maybe that's why he brought on Connor Bradley because I get the impression, and I could be mistaken, that he just isn't a Trent fan.

you you made a good point barry about slot yesterday and comparing his reaction to this match to the uh manchester united match well yeah after the manchester united match he he went on sky and sort of broke down

united's many shortcomings and explained how he had exploited them and he pointedly didn't do this on Saturday after losing against Forrest.

Or, indeed break down his own team's many shortcomings and explain how Nottingham Forest had exploited them.

Let's move on to the worst manager then in the Premier League as Manchester United won 3-0 at Southampton.

I mean, Wilson, it could have been very different, right?

Cameron Archer, who I think had about 25 minutes to work out what to do with that penalty because it just took so long to take it.

But that is a sliding doors moment.

But after that, United looked pretty comfortable, I thought.

Yeah, I mean, I should say with Tanag.

I mean, he obviously did great things with Ajax.

So maybe he's not a bad manager.

Maybe it's just the whole Manchester United's nonsense is dragging him down.

But I think he is what he is quite bad at is communicating after games.

He often sounds absurd after games, and that doesn't help.

United were

pretty ordinary, concede the penalty.

And then if that goes in, maybe it's a very different game.

But the fact that they then score three minutes later, get another goal before half-time, and it was very, very comfortable.

And the third goal is a really nice goal.

It's really well worked.

What I would say, this is a more general point.

And I suppose we said this every time Arian Robins scored a goal, but really, how hard is it for a fullback to stop a winger cutting inside onto a stronger foot?

So Rashford's goal, it's not, I suppose it's not really a wing, you know, directly a wing against a fullback, given that it comes following a corner.

But the Hudson Adoy goal, the Harvey Barnes goal, is it difficult for fullbacks to stop that?

It seems.

I don't know.

Well, on Match of the Day 2 last night, Danny Rose was a pundit, and he said it's a a lot harder than it looks and he also said

i'm i'm prepared to take his word for it i used to be a fullback i didn't play at quite the same level as uh

danny rose and um didn't play as often as danny rose but uh he also said what you you want the centre back to to come out and help you to to prevent the player cutting in.

And if the player, the winger, sort of goes up your outside a couple of times and then cuts inside,

you're in two minds because you now don't know what he's going to do whenever he's on the ball.

So that was Danny Rose's explanation.

Sure.

If it's Aryan Robin or Andros Townsend, you know they're only going that way.

Gary O'Neill was very frustrated by the Harvey Barnes goal.

He felt Nelson Somedo.

He said, we work all the time.

The fullbacks have to show the winger down the outside.

And Nelson Somedo did that all the game apart from on that one occasion.

And he kept on referring to that as a disappointing moment.

So when he was talking about the game, he was very much saying Wolves played fine.

It was just two moments.

And I thought he was going to say there was an unlucky deflection, then a brilliant goal.

But he didn't.

It was an unlucky moment and a disappointing moment.

So he was clearly really frustrated by that.

Back to United and Ten Hag, Barney.

I mean, he does this, doesn't he?

He's hanging off a cliff.

He's on the branch, which is just breaking.

And then he just sort of gets his hand and he gets back up.

And then about a week later, he gets hit by a bus.

And then he's holding onto the branch again.

And then he just slowly clambers himself up again.

Yeah, I mean, as

should be the case.

I mean, they've spent a lot of money on players.

They have, on the face of it, good footballers.

They should be able to win enough games to kind of potter along.

But I think this is a really key season for them.

We've always asking ourselves,

how long can it go on like this?

How long can this thing remain, this vast commercial operation, while also being unhappy, kind of menaced by the past all the time, not being in the Champions League?

It just keeps rolling along, endless noodle partners, endless revenue.

It's all fine.

We're a massive brand.

Stadium needs to be bulldozed.

Doesn't matter.

We just keep going.

And I think that a step change will eventually happen.

We've always felt that.

And that we might be close to it.

I mean, Man United are not in the expanded Champions League, which it didn't used to really matter.

You're going to play six games, maybe.

Um, this is huge, it's a huge sort of parting of the ways.

If you're playing, uh, you know, Bodo, Glimpt, and uh, Salonika, and all these teams,

they're not in the thing that football has been building towards for so long, effectively, a super league.

They're not in it, and there's very little to recommend them to sort of younger eyeball consumers out there beyond

people, X-Players with podcasts who can't stop talking about them.

In the end, that runs out of steam.

And I think this season is so important.

And to be continuing to argue about a manager treading water that I'm not convinced at all by ENEOS, because there's no reason to believe that they can transform the most sclerotic institution.

in world sport because nobody's ever done that before.

I think it's really, really key that they get this right.

And

I I just don't really understand why they're sort of toddling off down the same path again.

I think it's a really key moment for Manchester United, the institution.

And if they don't get this thing right, by the end of the season, it could start to feel a bit odd.

Quick question on Southampton, Wilson.

Stuart Pierce on Comms on Talksport said actually

the goals they conceded, it wasn't sort of Russell Martin ball.

This wasn't just sort of...

playing out relentlessly it was just sort of a bit of bad defending in a sort of old-school bad defending way I think that's probably true.

And equally, they miss a lot of chances, which has gone on to do with Lussel Martin ball.

It's to do with the fact that their players aren't as good as a lot of other players in the Premier League.

The problem is, if you then play

Russell Martin ball and you're not scoring goals and you are letting goals in, and your method of playing means that you're going to misplace passes in key areas, which is going to give away more goals, I'm not really sure where you're ever going to win a match.

Which is an issue, I guess.

Yeah, I mean, very few teams have stayed up without winning a match i think that's that's true but i mean i think with it's already it's looking like it could be will they get 20 points 25 points i don't think they're a bad team this isn't one of those things where they could click you know people say it could click you know teams that play like this i just don't think they've i just don't think they've got enough goals for it to click i think if you had that base plus somebody could get you 15 goals a season now the ross stewart of two years ago maybe could have done i think ross stewart was a very good championship striker it's possible he could have become a very good lower Premier League striker.

But that Achilles injury he got or FAC up fourth round

season before last,

he's just,

I was, it's one of those things.

Yeah, Ross Stewart was great for Sunderland.

I was disappointed to see him leave, but I understood that 8 million for a player who you're not really convinced he's ever going to get back to that level was a good fee, especially when he only had one year left in his contract.

And seeing him on Saturday, it's just a bit sad that he's clearly not got the mobility back yet.

And after 18 months, you wonder whether he ever will.

And that's a real shame because I think

he was a very good player.

And if that injury's cost him, then

that is incredibly sad.

I would say Southampton did play very well for half an hour in this game.

And they were giving United the run around.

Then they got the penalty and missed it.

And

the manner in which they more or less gave up after that, once United had scored their two goals, like they came out in the second half, offered nothing.

Tyler Dibling, he made his first Premier League start on the right wing for Saints.

He was very good.

He won the penalty, brought a brilliant save out of Andrea Nana.

So there are a few reasons to be cheerful.

But it wasn't, you know, we were talking about Edison pinging balls long at this game.

Aaron Ramsdale did that a few times in this game.

as well you know

which suggests uh russell martin may not be as wedded to the the playout from the back principle as as we thought yeah it's difficult to see them surviving with with a very

bang average front three

you know and ross stewart now back but

that you know there are green shoots of optimism don't you think russell martin has misunderstood the assignment he looks really cross um just just lose stylishly it doesn't matter like just lose stylishly play nice football look as though you're really relaxed this is all part of your master plan maybe wear a blazer and a baseball cap and you can fail upwards and that that's how it works like no nobody wants you to fight your way to premier league survival this is a job interview as a coach so um if you can just relax a bit and talk about all the good things they're doing as they relentlessly lose um

I'll see him at maybe at Dortmund next year.

To the bloodbath in Bournemouth.

Bournemouth Mill, Chelsea won the record for bookings in a game of 14.

Wilson, in a game that didn't really feel like,

you know, it didn't feel like a bloodbath.

Well, it wasn't a bloodbath.

But equally,

I don't think Anthony Taylor was particularly finickety.

I think it's just modern football.

It's quite easy to get booked, and a lot of players did.

I suspect it's

an element of momentum to it that if, say, there hadn't been a booking in the first hour, maybe a couple of things happened after that.

Anthony Taylor wouldn't have bothered getting the other card out for.

But once he started it's quite hard to it's quite hard to stop and Bournemouth having won their previous game not really deserving to this time probably lost the game but they didn't really deserve to.

There were a lot of bookings this weekend for players preventing the restart of play which is clearly a dictate which has been laid down in the referee meeting or seminar that was held during the the international break.

And if you can just briefly go back to Spurrus Arsenal, at half-time it looked like there was no way that match was going to finish with 22 men on the pitch.

And they had Mike Dean regularly offering contributions as opponent, which are referee sort of analysts, which I don't think is a good idea because it's only going to fuel further paranoia among already bonkers fans.

But he said the threshold for a second yellow has got to be a lot higher than you know the first.

If you've already given a player a yellow card, the threshold for the second one has to be higher and i i don't understand that because players know what the threshold for a yellow card is before the game starts so surely it's up to them not to cross that threshold rather than for the referee to make it wider or higher or whatever it is you do with the threshold it's also ridiculous like if i were a manager i'd be telling my players to get booked early on because then you can get away with murder like you're like you're literally allowed allowed to foul people.

Brian says, Does Mike Dean write his own jokes?

Or does he have a bance expert allowing him to turn up ready to unleash?

I mean, I didn't hear any of Mike Dean.

I do love the idea of a writer's room.

A writer's room for Mike Dean is something I just, you know, before soccer Saturday.

It would be tremendous, wouldn't it?

Could you work with this one, Mike?

You know, asking out-of-work comedians, what do you do?

Well, what I do actually, I spend a lot of

my time is writing for Mike Dean.

I was writing for Peter Walton, but it didn't go go so well.

So now I'm working with Mike.

Anyway, yeah, good win for Chelsea.

Good

strength from Christian Cuncu as the Bournemouth defense sort of disappeared.

And I think you're right, Wilson.

Bournemouth deserved to win that game.

That will do for part two, part three, a beginning of the Etihad.

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here, too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Joey says, Are you running out of ways to describe the fact you're running out of ways to describe Erling Haaland?

Yes, I mean, absolutely.

I don't know what to say.

Like, I really enjoyed the Ethan Pinnock barge, Barry.

I don't know if it hurts you deeply.

Well, it's that stage now where anytime anything of note happens to Ethan Pinnock, my phone just lights up.

I get text messages from people I haven't heard of from for months, years.

And I feel inextricably linked and entwined with Ethan Pinnock.

And despite having been asked by Robin Cowan to do a birthday message for me

last year, I'm very much working on the assumption that Ethan Pinnock has no idea whatsoever who I am.

But yeah, so if nothing else, Ethan helps me to stay in contact with people I would have otherwise lost touch with a long time ago.

And I would like to say that in this game, he also had a header onto the bar and

did quite well in various duels against Erling Haaland.

But the one he'll be remembered for is when Haaland was running on, ran past him to go onto that through ball from

Ederson, then stopped to allow Pinnock to basically run straight into him, which more or less gave him a push start

or a jump start to continue his run and sweep the ball past Mark Flecken.

But to be fair, I thought Brentford were outstanding in this game.

And they lost.

Lots of teams will go to City and lose, but they gave City plenty to think about.

They scored first.

And I do wonder, like

Johan Wisson scores after whatever it is, 30 seconds.

Is he thinking deep inside, oh, God, I really shouldn't have done that?

You know, I should have put that over the bar.

Is Thomas Frank going,

Johan, what are you doing?

The point is, they could have scored, they could have been 3-0 up.

You can't say, we've scored too early once, we can't do it again.

You can't think that, can you?

But they had two very good chances after that.

before Haaland equalised.

And of course, as soon as Haaland equalised, you're presuming it's going to to be four, five, six, one, but they only won about two.

And Yaramaluk had a decent chance for Brentford.

That could have rescued a point for them.

Now, look, the 115 charges, Barney, are that the hearing apparently starts today in an unknown location with unknown people there in an unknown way that we know nothing about.

Is this the right, you know, this lack of transparency?

I think it's actually the Premier League rules, but do you think it's the right way for this to be carried out?

Do you think this will help the conspiracy theories either way?

I do think it's the right thing.

You have to sort of trust that these people are serious people.

And because, you know, football is a sort of frenzied place.

I mean, these people have to exist and have lives once this is all done with.

I think football demands that there's a degree of secrecy about it because...

I mean, let's face it, people are insane and, you know, really are quite heavily affected by this stuff.

It is fascinating.

It's a shame it's going to take so long to resolve again and certainly so long before we hear anything about it.

But I think it's correct to trust the process and to trust that these are serious people who are not actually, you know, primarily Arsenal fans or whatever.

And there's an absolutely ludicrous objection from City that,

you know, a KC's...

proclaimed football fandom in the legal 500, which I can tell you they just make up to make themselves seem interesting.

They don't care.

They're not all mad keen goonas.

It's going to affect their judgment in this case.

It's absolutely insane.

I mean, football is so obsessed with its own importance.

That would never happen.

But,

you know,

it's going to linger over everything.

I mean, there are three outcomes here.

City are found not guilty, which will lead to a huge,

totally destructive backlash,

outrage, and possibly the destruction of the Premier League.

City are found guilty and heavily punished which will lead to a huge backlash outrage and possibly the destruction of the Premier League.

Or City are found guilty and are kind of under punished or just slightly punished or fined or which is obviously the most likely outcome.

I say it's an independent process and obviously it is but if you are the football authorities what you want here is a resolution.

Nobody wants to kill the golden goose.

By far the most likely outcome is City are found guilty of some things, kind of punished, and everything keeps rolling along.

Because the other two outcomes are a serious problem for the league.

They can't afford to

kill this thing,

no matter what's happened.

You know,

what's keep your eye on, you know, follow the money.

And the money is not in fearlessly seeking justice or in allowing this very powerful club to very publicly get away with it.

So I suspect a fudge and will take a while to get there.

And then everybody can simply carry on arguing about whether they were found guilty or not.

I was walking past the Dorchester Hotel this morning and I saw Gunnar Soros getting out of the back of a limo, wearing a horsehair wig and carrying a briefcase.

I was going to say, until we find out the independent panel is Ian Wright, Robbie Lyle, and that guy with the googly eyes who really really celebrated,

I can't remember which goal.

I understand dancing couple in the stands are also involved.

Yeah, possibly.

Anyway, to Mollin New, we've done quite a bit on Wolves 1 Newcastle 2, but like, Wilson, it's a brilliant start for Newcastle, given everything, given all the noise.

And this was a really interesting game where they were great for a bit, Wolves were great for a bit, and then they were great for a bit.

I mean, great is generous, but good, good.

Okay, yeah.

I mean, that was definitely the dynamic of the game.

Newcastle started well, Wolves got back into it.

Scored a really nice goal.

I think Larson up front looks really useful for them.

He's a big lad, but he's got more to his game than that.

But then Newcastle, sort of from midway to the second half onwards, really put Wolves under pressure and you could sort of sense the equaliser coming.

So yeah, it's their best start

for 29 years to a Premier League season.

And anyhow.

It was very pointed what he said afterwards that

he said, you know,

enormous stuff about, you know, my job is just to win football matches.

When asked about his relationship with Paul Mitchell and the civil war that

is going on,

my job's to win football matches, and it's easy to do that when everybody's unified.

And that means players, fans, and coaching staff, which seemed

a very pointed dig.

Sorry, something's just come up on my screen.

I don't know what it is, and it's really annoying.

I'm going to try timing a password in and see if it goes away.

Oh, it's okay.

I think it wanted a software update.

Okay.

But I remember my password, which is under pressure.

It was remarkable.

That's an interesting password.

You always do a queen song, a different queen song for

every single long time.

I have no idea what we're talking about now.

The weird thing about Newcastle is, as Wilson says, it's their best start of the season in 29 years.

They're not actually playing very well.

Joel Linton isn't performing.

Bruno looks knackered.

They keep giving the ball away.

Eddie Howe felt the need to make a triple substitution at half-time yesterday, and it paid off handsomely.

But,

yeah,

they're not playing well, and they could have lost quite a few of the games they've won, but they are getting the results.

It will be interesting to see what happens when they come up against a really good team, like

a big four team or a top four side.

Because the way they've been playing, I think they could get hiding or they could continue to get away with it.

We can only wait and see.

I think you really saw why Howe is frustrated at the lack of transfer activity in a summer in two areas.

So I think centre-back and the right side of the forward line.

So Jacob Murphy is fine, he's solid, but they created very, very little down the right yesterday.

So all in the first half, all came to Anthony Gordon.

And then they've got Harvey Barnes.

He's scored in the last two games, looks really sharp, looks really good.

But he also wants to play in that space on the left-hand side.

So Isaac got an eye injury.

And I don't think Isaac's been anywhere near his best so far this season, but he clearly is a very good player.

But he got a knock in the eye just before half-time.

So he went off, Gordon moved in the middle and Barnes on the left.

But that is an issue that they're most effective two forwards at the moment.

Both want to play on that left side.

And equally, playing Dan Byrne and Cher at centre-back.

They're not quite the level that Newcastle want to be at.

And Larson

really did create problems for.

I mean, yeah, you'd think Byrne physically would be able to outmatch him.

That didn't really happen yesterday, so I think you can see why they want to strengthen there.

Three games to rattle through.

Tom says, Is there anything quite so predictable and enjoyable as Jamie Vardy latching onto a through ball, dispatching it, and giving it to the crowd as if it's the biggest derby game of the year, regardless of the opponent?

Yeah, lovely to see that.

It was a great first touch, wasn't it?

2-2.

If it's been Palace and Leicester, I'm genuinely sceptical about the value of having referees doing co-commentary or bits upon the tree.

But Mike Dean did make the point, and I thought this was really interesting, that Crystal Palace is the hardest ground in the Premier League to draw the lines properly because of where the cameras are.

So

the first Palace goal,

to the naked eye,

it looks a bit weird.

It looks offside.

Steve Cooper made reference to that afterwards.

So yeah, Mike Dean's saying that Palace is the hardest ground to judge that properly.

I thought actually genuinely was a valuable insight.

Did he do some imprompt after that?

These are the conversations referees have: like, oh, it's the hardest ground to draw lines

in the world.

It's, I don't need to know that.

I don't want to know any of the.

There was a terrible refereeing moment at Spurs, by the way, which I'm just going to share.

Darren Kahn, the linesman's linesman, a real, he's a bravera linesman.

He's a showstopper.

He's good at it.

Yeah, well, apparently.

Arsenal had the ball.

They were playing it around in their own half.

Spurs sort of briefly had it.

Nothing was happening.

Over on the far side, someone in the Spurs team strays offside.

Nothing situation.

Nothing's happening.

But Arsenal have the ball.

Darren Can puts his flag up.

Miles over on the other side.

Really, you know, and they really like, look at me, my flag is up.

This is very keeps it up, won't put it down.

So you obviously have to say, even though Arsenal have got the ball, they're attacking.

You have to say, oh, 20, you know, 30 seconds ago, a Spurs player was briefly and pointlessly offside.

Darren Cann finally is satisfied, lowers his flag, and Spurs almost scored from that because Arsenal was so busy saying, Well, hang on, we've got the ball.

And Spurs almost scored a goal because of that from being offside.

So it was to their advantage to be offside.

It stopped because Darren Cahn must be heard.

His flag must be raised.

I thought it kind of told you everything about over-interventionist, like this is a lobby group.

It's not just a bunch of people trying to make this thing work.

It is people who want to be involved.

They even decided that Arsenal have to play in black, which nobody in football wants, but too much white.

I don't think Darren Kahn decided that.

Maybe Darren Kahn did decide that.

If anyone can, Darren can.

Very good.

PGMO decided it.

Too much white in the shirt.

They're now judges, they're now kind of you know, aesthetic judges as well.

It's um, it's it's mission creep.

Get Darren Cann's arm down.

I'm gonna say

Fulham one, West Ham, one and Brighton nil Ipswich nil.

If anyone has any strong thoughts on this, I think, is it Arno Murich, Ipswich goalkeeper, has been much maligned on this podcast, and he was outstanding against Brighton.

Yes, he was brilliant.

And it was nice of Danny Ings to make that 1-1 so late on in the Fulham game because we all thought it would be 1-1.

But he took his time and he reminds us of his existence a couple of times a season.

Well done to him.

Steve says, where does Abu Adams miss for Derby rank on the Rosenthal scale?

So if you haven't seen this, it's Derby Cardiff, and it's a Cardiff corner, and it's cleared, and Adams is running through.

The keeper, for some reason, comes out and he heads it past the keeper, and he's running down on goal, and the goal is gaping, and he just calmly, with his left foot, side foots it.

I'm going to say four yards wide, Wilson.

I like to think that the reason Rosenthal's miss is so glaring is because he's in total control of the ball and he's basically stationary.

And I think Adams is sort of up there with this yeah i don't think the rosenthal miss is that bad

okay i think it bobbles slightly as he hits it yeah i agree with that yeah this is overstated he's quite far out as well that far out well the boo adams took his shot from outside the penalty area no a really great miss are those ones where you miss from one yard where it's it's physically impossible but it hits your heel and goes over the bar no but quite often the ball is moving at pace and it's with rosenthal he's in total control He's rounded the keeper.

The ball's moving at pace.

I'm a professional footballer and

the ball moves at pace.

I mean, that's what the ball does.

Rosenthal is just standing there.

He's rounded the keeper.

He's in control of the ball.

The ball bubbles.

Bubbles.

The old pitches were hard.

Right.

So Adams is worse than that.

This is a point I was making in my column.

I haven't seen Adams.

I don't know.

I was trying to deflect from the fact that Adams.

I haven't seen it.

No, the key thing about Rosenthal's miss is he got there first.

It's like being the Beatles or Elvis or whatever.

Once you've done that, there wasn't much televised football in those days.

That was a bad miss that was caught.

And he's become enshrined as this thing.

Chris Iwelamo as well has.

I mean, Chris Iwelamu has become enshrined.

And the commentary for Iwelamo's is amazing, right?

The Scottish commentary is like so sensational.

Like the absolute shock, like the complete disbelief of the commentators sort of makes it.

I've met Chris Iwillomu.

on several occasions and that miss is all I want to talk about but I feel it would be impolite to bring it up

because I'm sure he doesn't want to be reminded.

I'm sure he thinks about it at least five times a day without

some

Johnny's just mentioning it to him.

I mean,

the ball is moving at a slow pace, but still at a pace for Iwellamo, I think.

I'm just interested by that you're you're you're very sympathetic to somebody who's committed a terrible faux power in previous life that other people keep bringing up.

And I was just wondering why why you think that that might be, that people keep harking back to a misdemeanor of your past.

I don't know who you're talking to.

I'm talking about Munich.

Right.

Oh, yes.

Oh, I see.

Sorry.

I was mentally going through a long list of faux powers and wondering which one you were.

What would be great is if every time Chris and Willemos seen Barry, he's wanted to bring up Munich, but he's been too polite to say.

Anyway,

not enough time to talk about the QPR Goldmouth Scramble.

Go and check it out.

It was tremendous.

I reckon as we speak, someone at the athletic has been tasked with the horrific job of

forensically going through

which player touched the ball, with what, where it went, and who touched it next, and how it eventually went into the goal.

Because that is a three-day job, I would imagine.

Oh, the goal mouth scramble.

You're totally right.

Go and check it out.

Anyway, that'll do for today.

Uh, women's football weekly returns on Tuesday this week.

Faith who's in the panel are previewing the WSL season, available wherever you get your podcast.

We'll be back on Wednesday.

The new expanded Champions League begins, and we'll be talking about the first games in that.

But for the time being, thank you, Barry.

Thank you, thank you, Wilson.

Cheers, thank you, and thank you, Barney.

Cheers.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Steve.

This is the Guardian.