Villa ticket prices and Leicester’s great PSR escape – Football Weekly Extra

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

We'll begin with Aston Villa's ticket pricing for the Champions League, the first time they've been there since the early 80s and fans are accusing them of being out of touch.

Villa claim they're compelled compelled to do it because of PSR.

We'll discuss if this is a valid argument.

While we're on PSR, how fun.

When is a football club not a football club?

Leicester City won, the Premier League nil.

The Foxes win their appeal because they weren't in the Premier League when they were charged.

Is getting relegated just a clever loophole?

How weak does this make the Premier League look?

And what about clubs who broke PSR and got punished?

And clubs who didn't and got relegated.

It's a mess.

Then to the Internationals, even though he has Carr in his name, it doesn't sound like Lee Carsley has a handbrake.

But will he have any players as the dropouts begin?

Mark Langdon wants to tell tell us off for being dour about the new Champions League format.

We'll answer your question, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

Joe says, how does this pod affect me?

Welcome, Barry Glen Denning.

Hello, Max.

Hello, Mark Langdon from The Racing Post.

Welcome.

Hi, Max.

And Garth says, Lars came back.

Nice of him to rub shoulders with us.

TV star, Lars Sividson.

Hello.

Hi.

Hi, Max.

Just a word of caution there.

I think the last time I was on on television in the UK was in sort of March 2020.

I don't know if you remember what happened very shortly after that, but it wasn't a harbinger of anything good in terms of world events.

So I'm very nervously checking the news now because we did have a bit of a pandemic last time.

Someone somewhere believes that you, the conspiracy that you brought on the global pandemic, Lars.

I'm here for it.

Anyway, Dean says, I feel like villa ticket prices could start a discussion that could fill the pod.

And actually, you three of you got very exercised in the WhatsApp group about this.

Most fans will have to pay between $70 and $97 per home game.

The Aston Villa Supporters Trust said, we met with the club towards the end of last season to discuss season ticket prices, including the Champions League, if we were to qualify.

We made it clear pricing should be no higher than that of a category A game.

For the club to announce these ticket prices well above that is extremely disappointing, especially given the recent match day experience with delays of over 30 minutes getting into the ground, issues with access to seating and toilet facilities.

The Football Supporters Association tweeted some truly eye-watering prices from Aston Villa for their first European Cup campaign in decades.

The thing is, Lars, that Villa sort of claimed that they need to charge this to fulfill PSR obligations, you know, and the Mirror reporting yesterday that they were really close to falling foul of this.

And had they not sold Douglas Louise on the 30th of June, they would have done.

Does that feel like a legitimate argument to you?

Well, no.

The PSR made me do it is my least favorite argument of anything, really,

in the world.

Because it's like

you know what the rules are.

It's over this sort of three-year rolling period.

You can read a calendar.

You can read your accounts.

You know what you can spend and you know what you can't spend.

Just

the idea that no one's responsible for their actions anymore just explodes my brain.

We saw this with Ericon Hogg as well, suggesting that, you know, I didn't really want to sell McTominay, but, you know, we have to because of the rules.

Whereas United, I mean, have the second highest net spend in world football since the summer of 2022.

So it's like, it's a consequence of other actions.

It's understandable that clubs want to maximize their income,

but it feeds into a conversation I think you were having on the last part about the extent to which the extent to which clubs

are seeing their fans just as consumers.

They

can and should be gouged as much as possible.

And the sort of the awful sort of double-edged sword here is that a lot of fans will see, you know, the more money, the more the more money they put into the club, the more they sacrifice, the more loyal they feel.

And

it makes it even more important to them.

Whereas, of course, from the club's perspective, it just means they're very dumb consumers that can be exploited even more.

And

it's very sad to see that.

Yeah, it's interesting, Mark, that...

UEFA has capped the amount clubs can charge for away tickets in the Champions League at 60 Euros.

And, you know, there are

away ticket price caps, I believe, in the Premier League and the EFL.

But the authorities can't cap home prices.

You thought they might be able to do that?

I'm sure they could if they really put their mind to it.

I think it's easier to do it for away tickets because there was a perceived unfairness

around kind of what some clubs were being charged compared to what others were for visits to stadiums.

But I mean, I think this is absolutely just, it feels absolutely disgraceful, really.

I saw on

Twitter one guy say that it's going to cost him and his daughter nearly £700

to watch Aston Villa's four Champions League games.

And they've already got season tickets.

That just feels unsustainable.

I know, and Aston Villa season ticket holder, Stuart Ellis, I asked him what he felt of it.

He said it's outrageous.

He was away for the Bio Munich game and now feels like he won't bother with at least two of the games.

He said he might go to Celtic if there's jeopardy on that one, but seriously, considering not going.

And that just feels like a mess.

They were so excited back end of last season to qualify for the Champions League.

The club is on the up in just about every way, really, in terms of the managers got everybody believing that good things are possible.

They've got an exciting football team that's doing well on the pitch.

But

i think from aston mavilla's point of view it's not only about them it's about all football fans really because um

how powerful would it be if there was like a two-week strike in the in the premier league for instance when nobody went to a game i know that it's not going to happen and um yeah impossible to say that it will but you know going to a stadium and moaning just is it is the worst it's the worst of all outcomes you're giving the club the money you're not really making an impact you know i've done it myself um you know i um was at Tottenham last season when everybody turned their back for one minute because

the club had...

Because of the high line.

That was through my fingers, Max.

But no,

because they're starting to phase out OAP

prices.

But one minute doesn't make any difference.

The only reason I did it was so that I, you know, kind of blended in with everybody else.

I didn't really feel attached to that.

West Ham fans were kind of releasing black balloons at Crystal Palace and then minutes later they're on the pitch celebrating a goal that, or certainly sort of, you know, over the advertising hoardings of a goal that was scored.

And, you know, the football teams need to

need to think about the kind of the medium to long term because the only reason I'm interested in football is because my dad took me and was able to take me.

at much more sensible prices back in kind of late 80s early 90s i don't think he would be able to take me now at the kind of that the prices that we're talking about and that's why i love football it's it wasn't a tv event for me it was somewhere where you go to the stadium i think for now for many sort of younger fans it is a tv event or it's maybe not even a tv event it's watching youtube of somebody else telling you what's going on as kind of this is what football is now um and At the moment, it's kind of you've still got the kind of older sort of fan kind of propping up, but eventually that will go.

And

by the time it actually, the big problem comes, the clubs won't care because the people making these decisions will be long gone.

They would have flipped the cub probably a couple of times and it'll be somebody else's problem.

But it will become a problem, whether that's in five years' time, 10 years' time, or 20 years' time.

It's completely unsustainable.

And actually, Barry,

the problem is, isn't it?

It's that constant debate about market forces and

trying to introduce sort of socialism into football or like having a club going all tickets are 30 quid because we can make money in another way no that won't happen i mean i agree with the lads this is scandalous but it's not particularly surprising because villa know exactly what's going to happen they announce these prices their fans get outraged uh for a couple of days and then pay the money they're being asked for and file into Villa Park for these matches like a docile flock of sheep.

And that's not to be disparaging of Villa Villa fans.

Football fans everywhere are much are the same.

And it's a textbook example of fans loving their clubs, but their clubs don't love them back.

They don't care about them.

And as hard as that is for some fans to accept, it is the fact of the matter.

You know, Mark talks about these these half-arsed, ineffectual protests that never work and that

many people don't even notice, you know, whether it's marches in inverted commas to the ground or turning your back on the team or not entering the stadium until the 15 minute mark if you're going to protest the only way to protest is to do it properly now anytime anyone moots you know a boycott of a game people say oh well if I don't go my ticket will be sold someone else will take my seat but if season ticket holders don't go their seats will be empty now I don't know how many season tickets there are at Villa Park I presume it's around 30,000 maybe more if there's 30 000 empty seats at a game, that's going to be very embarrassing for the club.

And people say, well, why should I take a financial hit by buying a ticket and not going?

But by buying a ticket and going, you are taking a financial hit.

So

a protest, it has to involve, you know, a bit of sacrifice.

It has to hurt you.

to hurt the club.

And if that means taking a £70 hit or a £90 hit for the greater good, then so be it.

I remember you had this conversation about the dynamic pricing stuff

on the last pod, and I just there was a phrase in there, I think it was Valentia who put it out, that like in line with trends in other entertainment events and things around the world, that really sort of got my hackles up a little bit because you see this as a justification quite often from clubs that say, well, if you go to the theater, it costs this much.

If you go to a concert, it costs this much.

But the key point here is that, like, if you go to, let's make it cold play.

I know you like them.

Listen, if you go to a cold play concert and, like, Chris Martin is, like, constantly falling over and vomiting on himself, there's like no expectation that the fans will like support him and get this back on track.

You know, whereas football have this, there is this symbiotic relationship between the fans and the club where the fans are expected to provide atmosphere and support and whatever.

And you're not expecting them to behave as normal consumers.

Because normal consumers, if the game is crap and the team is terrible, they'll just not come back next week.

That would be what it would be be like.

But clubs are very quick to expect loyalty and support and whatever, but they reserve the right to treat fans as just any old bunch of customers, just particularly gullible and stupid ones, is how the clubs insist on treating fans.

And I just think they should be really careful with that.

If you insist on treating fans as just customers, at some point they might start acting like just customers.

And I don't think football clubs would like that very much.

I think, Lars, if you're going to use the lead singer of a popular band falling over constantly and vomiting at himself, Oasis might have been a better analogy than cold play.

Well, in this case,

that's another sense where

someone insisting on rinsing their fans during a cost of living crisis.

I mean, maybe that seems even more apt.

And also, actually, the analogy is better, I think, with the theatre.

You know, like a long-running play, as if a real fan, I suppose some do go week in, week out to cats.

You know, there are cats ultra that go week in, week out.

It's slightly different, isn't it?

But again, if the if the characters kept, like, again,

randomly attacking each other on stage or just kind of falling down or just forever forgetting the words, like, you would maybe stop going every week then.

Yeah, Mr.

Mistopheles coughs up another furball.

We're like, come on, I'm done with this.

I burn my season to get to cats.

On the subject of PSR, let's talk about Leicester City.

They've won their legal dispute with the Premier League over an alleged breach of profit and sustainability rules.

They had been charged with a 24.4 million breach, which, based on the punishments that Everton and Forrest got last season would have resulted in the club being docked up to seven points if found guilty.

The Premier League said it was surprised and disappointed.

And subsequently, the Premier League have requested Leicester submit their

23-24 accounts by the end of December to establish where they breached PSR for that period.

As far as I can tell, Mark,

this charge has fallen apart because...

Leicester got relegated and so they weren't in the Premier League when the Premier League said you've broken the Premier League's rules.

Yeah, I mean, they moved their accounting records

quite shrewdly from May to the end of June when they were in this kind of.

You call it shrewd.

I mean, others might call it otherwise, but yes.

Yeah, so someone's moved up in the world and, you know, you do more admin, I guess, these days.

So you have more of a

football club like lawyer or accountant, and that is their job to kind of look at this.

They knew they were in trouble.

Are there any loopholes?

I kind of almost admire um the the way that they've they've gone um about their business of moving the accounting back to the end of june put them in this kind of no man's land of um you know that they weren't regulated by the premier league nor um by efl i think the big embarrassment here is for the premier league who like to that their their

their case seemed to sort of resolve around the fact that

well everyone knows what the rules are supposed to mean and you know we're all just going to be in it together and it's absolutely crazy that they've come to a situation where they haven't got watertight rules and that not one of the kind of very expensive i'm presuming early paid kind of premier league lawyers has looked at the contract and said what about if somebody just you know does x y or z um and yeah so i i mean it is an it's a huge embarrassment um to to the premier league leicester still might end up with a points deduction because they they they will have another sort of case against them for other seasons.

But yeah,

I sort of half admire what Leicester have done.

And

yeah, it just shows the Premier League up as not really being

fit to run their own PSR rules.

So this is calculated on a basis of like a three-year rolling registration period, right?

So that's 156 weeks.

I'm really good at maths.

156 weeks.

So for the last two weeks of the 156-week rolling period, Leicester were technically speaking not in the Premier League, which means they are exempt for any kind of consequence for what may have happened in the preceding 154 weeks.

I mean, you can kind of see the Premier League's point of view here: is that this is clearly ridiculous.

Like,

they very clearly overspent, and they very clearly overspent in the time they were in the Premier League.

But I guess, yeah, maybe that is the future.

If you're in PSR trouble, got to get yourself relegated.

If Todd Bowley and the boys are listening to this, I mean, this could be a way for Chelsea to make things add up this season.

Well, what Leicester have done is completely legal.

They've exploited a loophole.

It's very much not in the spirit of the law, but

that doesn't matter, and they don't care.

They've made the Premier League look like chumps.

All this just makes me think

Manchester City and Lord Panic, they're just going to make mince meat of the Premier League, aren't they?

They're like, absolutely.

It's a completely different scenario, but they are going to run rings around the Premier League.

Yeah, I mean,

they definitely haven't been relegated in this period, City.

You would say.

I mean, it does seem completely mad that there's a time when you have fallen out of the Premier League, but what shoot haven't done the league ladders yet.

So you're not in the championship yet.

And, you know, the EFL said, look, we share the frustrations of the Premier League.

Cannot be right that clubs potentially escape the scrutiny of the agreed rules and sanctions due to movement across the decisions.

And also, interestingly, despite the PSR rules being described as flawed by this independent commission, the Premier League's got no plans to redraft them because they're in the process of being phased out.

The League has introduced a trial of so-called squad cost control rules, thanks for all staying awake this season, under which clubs spending on players, coaches and agents will be limited to a maximum of 85% of their football revenue.

I don't know if that includes buying hotels and selling them to yourselves.

And net profit loss on player sales.

The league hopes these rules will replace PSR next season.

For clubs competing in Europe, the limit is 70% in line with UEFA regulations.

I suppose, Mark,

if you're not a Leicester fan, if you're a Leicester fan, you're like, oh, this is great.

But then it sort of just becomes, you know, you're supporting lawyers.

And we're talking about fans going to clubs, you know, with the Villa thing, you're supporting your lawyers.

And the Everton and Forest fans are going, well, what?

Well, this is ridiculous.

And then the teams that finished below Leicester are going, well, this is also ridiculous.

Yeah, well, there weren't too many that finished below.

They ended up up in the same kind of situation in terms of the championship.

I think the anger from Everton and Nottingham Forest fans should be directed towards the Premier League if they've got it rather than towards Leicester.

They've got better lawyers, but I think PSR has proven to be an

I was going to say an absolute failure, but I mean, I suppose if it has helped in some ways calm down some of the spending, then it's probably not a bad thing.

But overall, the kind of the profit loss kind of for everybody here, I think is well in the negative.

The idea that selling youth team players is the way forward, the fact that you're able to move a hotel around and that's considered right,

the cost being lumped on to supporters in terms of ticketing prices.

I don't think any of this has come out

in a way that makes the Premier League kind of a better place to be.

So I haven't looked into these new rules, Max, but hopefully,

you'd be hopeful.

You'd be hopeful that they're at least a little bit better.

Well, I would worry a little bit about Aston Villa because I was in relation to the ticket pricing stuff.

I was looking at their finances.

And according to the all-powerful GOAT of football finance reporting,

Swiss Ramble, his excellent sub-stack,

for the last years, we have numbers from, which is 2022, 2023, uh, Villa's wage to turnover ratio was 89%.

89% of money that comes in, came into Aston Villa that season went straight back out into wages.

Now, I don't know how the squad cost is calculated, but I suspect if 89% of your...

turnover goes straight into wages, you're not going to come in under 70% on the squad cost anytime soon.

So they might be one of the clubs who have some issues there as well.

I just would like to see clubs take more responsibility for their actions on this.

Stop going, like, oh, well, the rules are this, so we have to do that.

Well, maybe just spend less money.

How about that?

Maybe just look at what you make and look at what you're allowed to spend and sort of try to aim for that rather than just overspend and then look for people to blame and look for people to shift the costs onto.

Villa should probably spend some of the revenue on a plumber who might, and then they might avoid the embarrassment of

the gents' toilets at the Holt End

overflowing with rivers of piss during their game against Arsenal earlier last weekend or the weekend before.

You say that, Barry, but that happened at the Tottenham-Milan Champions League game a couple of years ago, before the match, at the new Whiteheart Lane.

And as I was kind of half deciding whether to go in and sort of brave it or not, the bloke behind me just shouted, oh, this smells like the old Whiteheart lane.

Isn't it brilliant?

Maybe not everybody forgets it.

that's what we want we want good ticket prices and it's a stink of dry stale urine uh and that'll do for part one part two we'll talk about actual football and lee carsley's first game in charge of england

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So, Ireland, England, on Saturday at five o'clock, Phil Foden, Cole Palmer, Ollie Watkins have withdrawn from the England squad.

This is the international break that nobody wants.

Arsenal fans are furious that their players haven't dropped out.

They seem to think they're the only ones that stay there, and eventually it'll just be Declan Rice and Bukayo Saka getting knackered against 11 Irishmen.

We talked about it on Tuesday, but Mark, as a fellow England fan, what do you make of what Lee Carsley has said and done so far?

I've been reasonably excited by a new squad.

I think that that

always feels fresh.

The Southgate era had definitely run its course, even when he was sort of making surprising decisions.

The same old arguments about the handbrakes being on were still there.

So

to see new faces is never a bad thing.

You spoke about Gomez on earlier pod this week.

interested to see Morgan Gibbs White, I think a very talented player.

Maybe not exactly what England needs at the moment, given they've got many players that can sort of fill that position and probably too many as it is, but he's somebody that I think deserves an opportunity.

I think Gomez is somebody that looking to just,

has he got that ability to keep the ball?

You know, that argument has just gone on for too long now.

And

he has shown bits of that at Lille.

And I'm also pleased that you can go abroad and get selected because I think Southgate did have a bias towards the Premier League.

There were times when Chris Moring and Tamori particularly were playing really well in Syraha and were kind of just disregarded as if they were playing in sort of League Two.

Tammy Abraham was another one before his kind of injuries that were scoring a lot of goals at one time and I think that Carsley hopefully is showing even in the short term a path that if kind of the young player gets stuck or even an experienced player there is an opportunity to maintain your your england spot if you're kind of not in the premier league and i think that that that's a positive vibe as far as carsly goes though my concern for him is that this is a much bigger competition for him than it is those england players you've already mentioned some of them that have withdrawn if he has a bad nations league i think it becomes very difficult for the football association to appoint him um you know on a long-term deal whether the players are that fussed about the nations league having been relegated from the last one, I'm not so sure.

So his biggest job might be to motivate those players to be as eager as what he is to get the wins.

I suppose Laura's perhaps in his favourite is a lot of the players know him and they might

do it for the gaffer type.

Yeah, and also just with England having been relegated into League B or the B tier of the Nations League, they're in a group with Greece, Ireland and Finland.

England have got an incredible squad.

Like they got to the final of the Euros for a reason.

That group should not be a problem.

With any sort of...

You could pick an all-out B team and still comfortably win all your games in that group, really, if they're operating at anything close to maximum capacity.

And

I'm going to say that, so Mark or Max doesn't, so no one can accuse you of sort of English exceptionalism or whatever.

Like

one of the foreigners on the panel who quite likes making fun of England,

I am here to say with that squad, you should have no problem whatsoever in that Nations League group.

Barry, I don't know if you know this, but

Jack Grealish played at youth level for Ireland, and Declan Rice actually played for the senior side three times.

And Lee Carsey obviously played quite a lot of times for Ireland.

39.

Yeah.

What do you,

I mean, actually, on a serious note, like, there have been problems before when Ireland played England, and that was a long time ago.

Presume it'll all be fine.

I would expect so.

I expect there to be a lot of pantomime booing of Declan Rice and Jack Grealish.

I hope the Ireland fans, I presume it'll be a full house, give them loads.

I wouldn't foresee any problems at the ground, possibly outside the ground or in the city centre.

I imagine England fans will probably congregate around Temple Bar.

Dublin city centre is not a safe place to be at the moment because there's a lot of problems with

people basically bullying immigrants and asylum seekers.

So there's a lot of violence in the city centre.

I suspect there could be problems that might not have anything to do with Irish football fans, but just Irish people that are an embarrassment to their own country, which is slightly ironic because they're complaining about people who want to live in the country and will probably offer a lot more to the country.

So yeah, there could be problems.

I don't foresee problems in the stadium.

Ireland fans aren't violent.

They're not aggressive.

I think if anything starts, we know who will start it.

But

it takes two to tango, doesn't it?

And I don't think Ireland fans would get involved.

Beyond that, I think this is a, you know, England should win this game.

I have a feeling they might not

because I think the Euro hangover.

And

so for Hymer Halgrimson, the new Ireland manager, this is his first game.

It's a free hit for him.

And if he can knock it out of the park, he will instantly endear himself to Ireland fans.

And he's had a free hit against England before in 2016.

And he biffed that one out of the park.

So let's hope he can do it again.

And much as my pain, it was worth it now for the Steve McLaren watch-along on Skysports News.

It was one of the greatest bits of television.

Yes, Lars?

I'm just curious about this game.

I'll be watching it intently, seeing if we will have someone score and then have to do a muted celebration because they've scored against their former country which isn't something you typically see in international football but that could be good what i really hope is that if declan rice or jack reelish score they give it back to the irish fans i want cupped ears you know finger to the lips shushing gestures the works it would be amazing if declinerist put his hands up you know and said you know and got a round of applause for all that he's given irish football it'd be absolutely sensational if he did that i said one interesting point mark is that you know Harry Kane looks like the only centre forward there, right?

Solanke's injured.

Watkins has pulled out.

Tony's not in the squad.

I think Anthony Gordon played up front for Lee Carsley in a sort of, you know, nippy, false nine-ish type way, I guess, in the 21s.

Yeah, he did.

And I think that was maybe one of the reasons why the Football Association kind of bumped Carsley.

up slightly.

They won that tournament.

And as an international coach, you do have to sometimes think on your feet and kind of change things around because obviously in a tournament situation

or even in this squad level, you can't just buy another forward.

So you have to come up with creative solutions.

And he did do that.

I suppose I'm not expecting Ireland to be defending anywhere sort of near the halfway line.

I imagine it'll be sort of edge of the penalty box.

And the same will go for the other games, really, that England are playing.

So whether Gordon's sort of his qualities would be suited to that, I doubt.

But that is in Carsi's locker to be able to create and find new positions for players.

And I thought Gordon was underused at the Euros, and he always looks dangerous whenever I see him for Newcastle.

When will Gareth just make some changes?

Barry, Craig Bellamy's first game in charge of Wales against Dark Horses Turkey Friday night, 7:45.

Yeah, so Wales are in the second tier of the Nations League League in a group with Iceland, Montenegro, and Turkey.

Craig Bellamy's first game.

I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of team he puts out.

Well, I know what kind of team he's going to put out, but how they play, what their style is going to be.

I think Craig Bellamy will be a good manager for Wales, if even half the reports I've read about how meticulous his preparations are, how in-depth his knowledge of

football in general, coaching, data analysis is, and his knowledge of the pool of players available to him and of Welsh players at all age levels is if even half of that is true, he he could be, you know, the next Lobanowski.

So people are worried about his hot-headed nature.

You know, Craig Bellamy, he's growing, he's quite old now.

He's a middle-aged man.

He's he's not the young Craig Bellamy of your.

I never saw him get particularly animated on the touchline when he was company's number two with Burnley.

And when he was in charge of the team, when company was banished to the stands,

he was always very measured in his post-match interviews, even if things hadn't gone his team's way, as they generally didn't, as far as Burnley were concerned.

So I think he'd be a good manager.

I would imagine he'd also be very fair with players.

And

he will have very exacting standards.

And if anyone who fails to meet them will probably get kicked to the curb.

But otherwise, I think it'll be good.

And Wales do need a new manager.

Rob Page

did a decent job, but things were getting very stale under him.

My only concern for Craig would be the very limited sort of players he has at his disposal.

Dan James is probably one of their better ones, and he's out for this game.

Aaron Ramsey is

captain, but I think Rambo's best days are long behind him.

Well, just on the subject of Craig Bellamy's temper, I was nearly subjected to Craig Bellamy's temper once.

Back in the olden times when I worked for Norwegian television, I was kind of covering the Oliguna Sosha adventure at Cardiff quite closely, and he was on the coaching staff there.

And I was once in the players' tunnel at the stadium in Cardiff, and I got a text message from like HQ asking me to do something that I didn't want to do.

I forget what it was, but at least I swore sort of I muttered under my breath, or maybe over my breath, I said a bad word.

Unbeknownst to me, that was just as Craig Bellamy was walking past me in the players' tunnel, and he immediately did a heel turn and kind of squared up to me and looked like he was quite keen on punching me in the face and was like, you what, mate?

And I was like, no, no, no, no.

I was very much like muttering at my bosses in absentia.

No, not you, Craig Bellamy.

And that managed to kind of diffuse the situation just about.

And he sort of looked at me again and sort of disappeared off down the tunnel so that's that's one so as far as i'm aware one national team manager who's definitely wanted to punch me at some point uh could i mean maybe if moisey gets the scotland gig that could make it too so i mean there's an exciting development for for me

and you've got the moise anecdote in your locker so look we'll save that for another day even less interesting than the anecdote i just deployed on us but i figured what is international what is international week for if not this sort of nonsense barry scotland play poland They're in League A, aren't they?

So that's tricky.

Poland, Portugal and Croatia.

Yeah, Scotland's nations league record is terrible.

They've only won once in 12 attempts and that was against Gibraltar.

Scotland's fans obviously provided some very memorable moments at Euro 2024.

Their football team, not so much, took one point from three games.

And fans at home were very angry with them at how poor they were.

They still failed to win a game at a major tournament.

I have no idea how many attempts it is at this stage.

Steve Clark, he probably needs, you know, some decent results in this nations league to retain confidence of the fans, and it's going to be difficult to get results because they've been promoted to this division.

Portugal and Croatia are very difficult games.

Poland are more or less in the same situation as Scotland, had a very underwhelming, typically underwhelming performance at the Euros.

No James Forrester, Greg Taylor for this.

Ryan Gould

of the Vancouver Whitecaps fame.

He's in

and could make his first appearance for Scotland.

And yeah, I'd say Scotland could really do, or well, Steve Clark could really do with a win here.

And if you finish in the top two in

League A now, they've extended the Nations League.

So it used to be you had to win the group to get to the next phase, which is the semi-finals.

But everyone knows there's not enough football at the moment.

So we extended the Nations League by another round.

So yeah, there's a quarter finals before the semifinals and finals.

Brilliant.

Brilliant.

And there's also relegation playoffs, which I think are a new thing as well.

Making a competition.

A lot of people already have no understanding of more competition.

Well done, UEFA.

Quickly, Barry, Northern Ireland, Luxembourg.

How's Northern Ireland shaping up?

Northern Ireland are in the third tier.

They're in a group with Luxembourg, Bregueria, Belarus.

You know, this team is obviously pitting teams of the same sort of ability against each other.

They play Luxembourg, I think it's tonight.

Yep, tonight.

Johnny Evans is retired.

So Michael O'Neill is going to rotate the armband

as he sort of auditions various successors and Sunderland defender Trey Hume will be wearing it tonight.

You know the way people are always obsessed with who's the captain of a team and it really doesn't make any difference.

So I was impressed Trey Hume was asked, you know, will the burden of the captaincy weigh upon your biceps or your shoulders and affect your performance?

And he went, look, it's not really going to be any different.

I'm just putting a bit of cloth around my arm.

So good.

So well done, Sunderland's Trey Hume.

He sounds ideal for the job.

Yeah, so Michael O'Neal has basically said this competition doesn't really matter how we do about it.

It's all about developing a very young and inexperienced squad, and he's probably right.

Elsewhere, Ronald Kuhman's given some quite strong reasons for leaving Stephen Bergwine out of his squad after Bergwine moved to Saudi Arabia.

The book is basically closed to him.

He knows what I think about this.

When you're 26, your main ambition should be sporting, not financial.

These are choices that players make i've never been in that situation because i could go to barcelona not like kuhman to say i was good at football

uh he could have said it ayax that's not bad is it you have to respect that choice but personally i wouldn't have moved sorry just to be clear didn't ranald kuhmin take someone who plays in the saudi pro league to the euros yeah vijnaldum uh wasn't the southern yes genie would i yeah and and he he did address that he said something along the lines of you know vijnaldum had a difficult situation at psg he needed to play but it's like probably could have gotten a contract somewhere in europe couldn't he so that's that's not it's not an entirely valid reason but it's an interesting subject because i wonder like is ivan tony going to be considered for selection for instance um because i would always think once a player decides to basically kind of pack it in in terms of elite club football if you move to saudi you're no longer playing at a credible level uh day to day but there can be a situation where you have players who play in a position where you're a little bit short and you you really need someone so given given England's slight sort of striker shortage, I do wonder how the Tony thing will develop in the next couple of years.

Speaking about players who play in Saudi Arabia, did anyone see Cristiano Ronaldo suggesting that once he realizes he's got nothing to offer Portugal, he will step aside?

So,

does anybody want to tell him?

No, no.

You crack on, Cristiano.

Luis Suarez has announced his retirement from international football at Uruguay's game against Paraguay on Saturday will be his last.

He played in nine international tournaments.

Most memorable, would you go handball, then the bite, then some of his goals.

But, you know, I don't know, Mark.

When he was crying, I thought, like, fair enough.

Like, he's got a bit of scoundrel in him, but we'll miss him.

Not an easy person to love if he doesn't play for your team.

I think it's fair to say, given all the incidents, I thought he was over-criticised, though, for the handball against Ghana.

That was

a very natural instinct.

I'd actually be surprised if any professional footballer just allowed that to go in at the time that it was.

So that didn't feel like kind of as disgraceful as some of the other things that's been involved in 12.

Yeah, actually, do you know what?

The Patrice Evre racism thing completely slipped my mind when I was, you know, gently saying a bit of scoundrel.

Lars, Norway.

You've got Kazakhstan away, Austria at home.

You've got some good players.

What's going on?

Will you be good yet?

I mean, we have some good players, but mostly in the same area of the team.

Defensively, things are slightly concerning.

That shouldn't matter against Kazakhstan, but it's more likely to matter against Austria.

So that's...

And I've also, I've been on a whole sort of...

I know this is the international window nobody likes.

I am kind of hyped for international football.

I really enjoyed the Euros.

I had a great time with the Euros.

I enjoyed football more during the Euros than I think I have for a while.

And I'm now like more keen than ever to see my country actually get to one of these things.

And doing well in the Nations League can end up mattering.

You know, I know if you're an English listener, it feels like the Nations League doesn't matter.

Because I think for the clubs who are going to qualify for the tournaments anyway, they kind of don't.

But

they can be coefficient things to be.

There's some sense in the Nations League.

It can make your difference.

But

even that,

even with that at the back of of my mind,

I'm not massively hyped for Kazakhstan away.

That isn't a huge one.

But on Friday, I mean, France plays Italy on Friday.

If they bring in dynamic pricing for Kazakhstan Away, Lars, that's not going to.

Yeah, trouble being the airlines very much do dynamic pricing.

So I think the flights to get to Almaty is not the cheapest place in the world to travel to.

I guess the only sort of big thing from Norway Corner at the moment is that we've had a player reject the Norwegian national team this week.

We have Osam Saraoui, who I believe is born in Norway.

I know he's born in Norway, but he plays for Lil now.

He's decided to represent Morocco rather than the Norwegian national team, having been involved in the under,

the sort of various age groups previously, but not been capped properly yet.

And that's prompted some soul searching.

in the Norwegian footballing sphere about whether enough is being done to

reach out to players players who have other options but who might not be in the senior squad right now.

And it also prompts the question of should we even be doing that?

Is it more a case of just let players pick whichever country they feel affiliated with?

So that's been a whole debate, which I wanted to bring up because I think that that might be something that happens in other countries as well.

And it is a fascinating thing about modern international football is that more and more players have more than one country they could play for.

And to what extent should FAs basically be trying to recruit players

or or should we just wait for them to do what they want to do?

That is a subject that fascinates me a little bit, and that's been kind of colouring the whole thing this week for us.

Anyway, that'll do for part two.

Mark will defend the new Champions League format in part three.

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Mark, you wanted to launch a defense of the new Champions League format.

Are you in the pocket of Big U Africa?

Is that Leonardo Shefferin in his shiny shoes sitting next to you?

Were we too dour?

Were we too...

Barry wasn't, of course, but

yeah, I was a bit football dinosaur about it all.

Yeah, I mean, I was doing the washing and drying up while listening to the pod, sort of getting more angry at kind of the just suggestion that it was bound.

Scrubbing the meat of a big baking jar.

I can see a roasting tin dripping everywhere.

Yes.

Yeah, we did have lamb steaks, actually.

But yeah, it was.

I agree with Barry that I think the worst outcome here is that it's as dull as what the current Champions League group stages are.

I think that playing eight different teams is better.

And now you can, I totally get the point that there's too much football and maybe six is better.

But, you know, you guys were sort of saying that, you know, you wanted the sort of revenge factor of playing the same team again sort of you know three weeks later i i mean i'm much more excited by when i looked at the fixture list seeing the fact that teams are playing against eight different teams felt more exciting immediately um to me um you you spoke about the fact of you know it kind of uh robbing fans of trips to good away cities or whatever but yeah but taking that back that doesn't make sense because you still have good away there's actually more there's now four to choose from rather than um three uh there are more games at the level for each team.

So a pop one team never used to play against another pop one team in the group phase, but now they'll play two games against sort of a fellow big hitter.

I also think that will encourage the teams at the bottom to not feel like they're kind of tailed off, you know, right from the start because they're playing against two teams theoretically at a similar level.

Because, you know, a pop four team used to just be massive outsiders

against everybody they played they've now got at least a couple of matches where um you you will want to have got a chance of winning if you look at i thought you were disparaging about kind of when you get through to kind of the top eight oh that's done i mean it's not because you're seeded right through for your league placing determines your place in the draw for uh future rounds so the higher up the league table you finish theoretically the better chance you've got of winning the competition or or getting easier draws and you know we've seen a lot of teams that the usual suspects be through after three matches and there's actually nothing for them to play for in this case you will want to finish first or maybe second um third etc so it'll keep everybody honest i think until um the end

i'm going to get a little bit mathematical um now but the monte carlo method i mean you've already as producer joel says you've already ripped us a new one.

You've torn us apart here.

This must be how the Premier League felt.

Here we go.

Carry on.

So the Monte Carlo method is where you run a series of simulations to kind of model.

It can be anything.

NHS would do it on various things.

But from a football point of view or a sporting point of view, kind of 10,000...

sort of runnings of a competition for a computer is seen as generally a good guide.

And I think that that suggests that for you to get,

in the top eight, you're going to need

a 76% chance you'll need 15 points.

So, you know, a lot of teams are going to have to keep winning to get into that top eight.

And then if you look at sort of some of them teams, like Bayern, Liverpool, Barcelona, only got a 50 to 60% chance of actually finishing in the top eight.

And a lot of big teams that we kind of come to expect

into Atletico Madrid, they're less than a 50% chance of qualifying for the top eight, which again, I think will make the playoff round potentially better.

I know from sort of in F1, I was speaking to someone who does the analytics for a team, and they actually do a million simulations of each race.

So, after about two, after about two laps, they know exactly what's going on.

I mean, one real race is shite.

Imagine a million simulators.

So, yeah, so this was done on 10,000, and some of the data there is from a Twitter site, Twitter handle football meets data.

But yeah, I just felt that at worst, it would be, as Barry says, like just as bad as what the current format is.

You've made it sound like the greatest football tournament that's ever been.

But you know, you have like, you make some really good points.

And I...

Well, watching your face there, Max, as your arguments were just dismantled one by one was an absolute joy.

No, I was just praying.

None of them were really my arguments.

I just said it looks shite.

I hadn't done much.

Well, blame the lads who aren't

here to defend.

Maybe I wouldn't be so bullish if Belique was sort of on the floor.

I'm throwing O'Claire and Chowdhury under the bus there.

Mike, many apologies.

Since we have two Spurs fans on,

we might as well do five minutes on how their season started, Lars.

Do we have to?

Well, I just feel like they should have nine points.

I feel like, you know, we should be sitting there going, second season of Ange is going great.

Yeah, we're not, though.

I'm

slightly worried about two out of the three performances and the one i'm not worried about was against everton so you know that it could be who knows i i just there's there's an element of that draw against leicester and the defeat against newcastle it just kind of felt like games we'd seen a lot of times before in the temps at tottenham have a lot of possession they do very well getting to the final third but that they get a little bit like the decision making in the final third and finding the right pass at the right time that seems to be a problem so with all this territorial advantage they have, they don't actually create that many huge chances, and then they concede unnecessary and slightly daft goals, possibly as a consequence of playing with a very high amount of risk.

I feel like we've seen that film quite a few times now, uh, so it worries me that within that exact trajectory kind of happens in three in two out of three games at the start of the season.

That makes me feel like lessons haven't really been learned, and that's something that would concern me a little bit.

I'm worried that the next game is against Arsenal, and if that result goes badly at home,

I feel like

those that are still on the fence as to whether this is the right way to go will maybe tip the other way,

given who the opponents are.

I'm more in your camp, Max, that I felt pretty comfortable watching those three games in terms of the overall performance and the fact that their three sort of strikers were missing against Newcastle.

if you include Lancashire as the third one behind Rich Alison and Solanke, that did impact, I think, the overall result.

The second goal for Newcastle, I prefer to look at that as really good play from Newcastle.

Joe Linton got out of the press and

it was a

great pass, great run, and

Tottenham were undone in that moment.

But I was...

happy enough with the three performances so far but not the results but I've avoided Tottenham content this week because

it's getting quite noisy, I would say.

I would just impress upon the panel that I'm much happier in general than I was during the sort of nonsense era of sort of Mourinho and Conte, where the club was just completely misguided in its sort of general direction.

And I accept that conceding the odd, unnecessary goal is kind of just an offshoot of wanting to play in the manner that I enjoy watching them them play.

I just think

when you're making some sacrifices,

it's the short blanket theory that Sid always brings up.

Is that a Rafa Benitezism?

I think it is.

It's like in football, you can either cover your legs or you can cover your chest.

Like one of those things are going to stick out.

And there's one area of the team that...

Tottenham's current approach is not covering very well.

And that's fine.

I'd much rather watch a team that does that.

But then you do actually have to have a bit of killer instinct when you do get to the final third.

And maybe this will transform when Solanke becomes available again.

I think the lack of a clear centre-forward who makes sort of centre-forward runs has been a bit of an issue.

Trust Tottenham to sign a striker whose like chief weapon is that he's always fit and available and never gets hurt.

And then he immediately gets hurt.

I mean, this is the kind of thing that just is very spursy, isn't it?

John says, having narrowly missed out on Jamaica, isn't it grace that Steve Bruce still got himself a dream job by the beach?

Yes, Blackpool have appointed Steve Bruce as their head coach on a two-year deal, his first job since being sacked by West Brom in October 2022.

We wish Steve Bruce all the best.

Although I say that as another team struggling near the bottom of League One, I wish him no luck at all because, God,

we need some teams to struggle if we're going to survive.

John Bruin did an excellent football daily yesterday where it was just one

sort of club announcement after another saying, you know, Huddersfield, Hull, Sunderland, whoever, West Brom, Newcastle, announcing the departure.

We'd like to thank Steve for his efforts, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And just a big long litany of those.

And then the Blackpool announcement

saying, we welcome Steve Bruce.

That isn't fair, is it?

I mean,

you could do that with any manager.

He's a lovely man, Steve Bruce.

And, you know, we wish him all the, no, we don't.

I don't wish him all the best, but I hope he has a nice time all the same.

Nick says, who from the pod would be unable to sit in row A of the Milton End at Fratton Park?

Yeah, Sheffield United's fan services tweeted ticket information for our trip to Portsmouth, including Portsmouth advised that supporters under five foot four will not be able to see the pitch if they're seated in row A.

If you're below this height, please select a row further back.

I mean, that's not tall, but like, it's not tiny, is it?

A lot of children will be under 5'4.

And even if you're 5'5, like, you like, can you see all of it at 5'5?

What happened?

Big Kileroy was here.

Man, peeping up.

I might be okay, Max.

I might just be all right.

Depends how my hair is styled.

Might have to flatten it.

Yeah, it's as Joel says, it's just like the neighbor from home improvement.

Yeah, Angel Gomez would struggle.

We need to see over that.

Anyway, that'll do for today.

Thanks, everybody.

Thank you, Lars.

Thank you, Max.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Max.

Thank you, Barry.

Thank you.

Pootbook Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Phil Maynard.

We'll be back on Monday.

This is The Guardian.