The new Champions League, England’s squad and dynamic pricing: Football Weekly

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly, our chance to take a look at the new Swiss model of the Champions League and Europa League.

Now the draw has been made.

As football fans, we hate change, but do we need to open our minds?

Could this be better?

Avoid the dead rubbers, or are the legitimate concerns about too much football and a league where you don't play everyone?

Legitimate.

And then on to the England squad.

Hands up if you had to Google Angel Gomez.

Lee Carsley certainly put his stamp on it.

Will it work?

And then there's dynamic pricing, an explanation on the increase of archery celebrations.

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

On the panel today, Barry Glen Denning, welcome.

Hello, Philippe O'Claire, bonjour sava.

Sava, max, bonjour.

Sava.

Noradine Chowdhury, hello.

Hiya.

Let's start then with the Champions League.

The draw was done on Friday, but we didn't have time to talk about it yesterday.

So more teams, more games, a single league table replacing all the groups.

but not a league table where you play each other, which I think will confuse everyone forever.

36 teams in this league.

Each team has eight matches, two from each of the seeded pots.

The phase will go into the new year.

It finishes with an 18-game mega finale at the end of January, which will lead to the longest episode of Football Weekly in history.

Teams 1 to 8 automatically go into the round of 16.

Teams 9 to 24 will be in a knockout playoff round.

The hope from UEFA is that the table is fast-changing and that the games have even more at stake every round.

Before I go through who's got what,

Barry, I mean,

my first instinct is I hate this,

but you are more open-minded than I am.

Yeah, I am.

I mean, you really don't like it.

And I was kind of surprised by how emphatically against it you were.

I think I don't have a problem with change, even though I'm quite, you know, old and set in my ways.

But...

I think the worst case scenario here is that it will be no more boring than the usual group stages,

but just boring in a different way.

So that's fine as far as I'm concerned.

Now, the difference here is instead of having to play 96 matches to get rid of 16 teams, which are the usual group stages, we now have to play 160 games to get rid of so that's an awful lot more games.

And you know, you spoke yesterday of someone tells me something is changing.

I go, how will this affect me?

So it's going to increase my workload.

And that is a bad thing.

Now, I say that the group stages are normally boring.

I mean, you often get some very good games, you know, individually on their merits.

Some games are really good.

Some are rubbish.

But there's no real jeopardy.

the richest teams almost always go through.

You'll occasionally have a couple of surprises, like badly run clubs go out.

I think last in the group stages last season was Barcelona and Manchester United.

Although I think Manchester United going out wasn't that much of a shock for those of us who were watching them play on a regular basis.

The one thing you didn't mention in your description of the new format, each team has eight games, but they're against

eight different gate sides and you know four at home, four away.

So say if we look Man City, their first game is against Inter at home.

Great, brilliant.

That should be interesting.

But, and they also play PSG away, but that's their second-last game.

So, it's a glamour fixture, it'll be hyped up,

but there will almost certainly be nothing at stake in that game.

It'll be more or less a dead rubber, and there will be a lot of games like that.

It's bloated,

it's been introduced to sort of pacify clubs who want a super league and as with everything in football it will generate more money so it might be interesting but as i say at worst it will be just as boring but will in a different way and will take longer yeah i i'm i mean i did i spoke to someone sort of quite close to all of this who said you know look they've modelled it a million times and it does end up with fewer dead rubbers right which is good i suppose philippe in the old system

there were groups that were over, but at the end, there were groups, there was at least one or two that were still alive.

So you just watched those ones.

Well, last year there was a Newcastle group.

That was amazing.

That was amazing.

So it did stay alive for sort of neutrals, I guess, because you just go to the group that was interesting.

Yeah, first of all, can I make a suggestion here not to use the word Swiss system again?

If you don't want to get a lot of very irate chess players, I want it.

Telling you that the Swiss system has got nothing to do with that.

and actually a Swiss system would have been a fantastic way of doing it because you know what happens in the Swiss system

okay I definitely want more information to confuse me about this thing no no no but you will like this the first round first of all anybody can play anybody else and it's a league format that's fine first round

the stronger players play against the weaker players.

You use your ELO rating, which is a bit losing like a UEFA ranking.

But then afterwards, each round you match players who have had the same number of points which means if i win three games and draw one i will play in the fifth round against another player who's played four

one three draw and one and which means which is fantastic because there's suspense until the very end yeah it is absolutely brilliant so which is of course that would be uh for the fans it would be fabulous

but for the clubs it would be absolutely horrendous because that's the very opposite of what they want, which is guaranteed money, which is what they're going to have.

I know showing a piece of paper on a podcast doesn't mean much, does it?

But I actually put all the games together on a single piece of A4 and two sides.

I have to say, the one thing I liked about it is that

some of the games had a kind of old UEFA Cup flavor.

If you see what I mean, like teams which

like, I don't know, Club Brugo is going to play Stormgrats or something like that.

I think, ah it's not quite the europa league it's not quite it's got this kind of 1970s youth cup flavor we'll all have lost interest by what uh christmas okay by which time there will still be an awful lot of games to be played but we probably will know by then who is going to get through i think a difficulty they have for the first time it happens is you know match day one will be over and we'll all go well i don't know what that means yeah it's it's a it's a complete i mean first of all i love the idea of irate chess players like what are you gonna do what are you gonna do attack me diagonally

but into it but in terms of yeah it's it kind of reminds me weirdly of do you know when when you used to watch the orphan sound contest and you knew there was loads of politics at hand you knew certain countries would always vote for other certain countries our friends and neighbors side by

exactly and and and then they introduced this whole thing where like half of it is the audience half of it is a jury and then like halfway through you think you know what's going on and then suddenly it all changes changes and like the country that's third from bottom is suddenly like at the top so it kind of feels like that where there's no way of keeping a track of things i thought i thought the actual um the way they did the the preamble to the actual um the actual uh draw was ridiculous where they had all these big stars i don't know if you saw it like they had the video with cheferin in it yeah yeah and like

it was it was so cringe they were trying to do some kind of like funny succession type thing it was embarrassing you had all these like footballers in it saying like oh this makes no sense.

This is so complicated.

And then the big ending was Latan,

who was going to explain how simple it was.

And it just turned into him sort of speaking nonsense over the Champions League theme.

And it made no sense.

And it kind of proved the point that it is all nonsense.

And then you had a draw where

the whole point of a draw

and the reason why you have like

velvet sort of bags that you pull balls out of or it's all transparent, is to show that it's got integrity.

But you've got a hybrid where you've got that, and then you've got your supercomputer, and

you've got a ball being drawn, and then you've got Ronaldo with his like magic button.

And then you're supposed to trust it because UEFA say it's all above board and honest.

And of course, when UEFA says that you know it's true, but

it was just a complete mess.

One of my big issues is: am I correct in thinking that

even of the eight teams you play,

it's just either home or away, it's not both.

Yeah.

Which for me, like, looking at it in terms of a football fan, and I agree with what Philippe said,

it is great having that retro feel of like playing teams that you wouldn't usually play or seeing teams that you wouldn't usually see.

But part of that is traveling to those countries.

So now you've got a situation where you've got Milan playing Liverpool, except the Milan players will never get to, well, in this phase, won't get to experience Anfield because they're they're not going there.

It's just in Milan.

You've got Liverpool fans who would usually look at drawing

Bologna and think, you know, that's an amazing city.

It'll be a great away game.

They don't get to go because it's at Anfield.

There's that.

And there's also this idea of like, with any tournament, you want momentum.

You want it to build up to something that's more and more exciting.

This feels like the opposite of that because they've designed it so that the big teams are playing each other straight away.

And

you kind of don't want that.

Yeah.

And also, there is that kind of, well, you know your celtic and real madrid might have done you at the burner bauer but you know you wait till you get back to our place exactly that that narrative that revenge yeah

another thing is that um when it was put to the people at uefa that this system would as all league systems would uh favor the big guys in the end obviously because there is no real jeopardy their argument their counter argument well do you know that to qualify uh for the knockout stages you could qualify with playing eight games, only winning two and drawing two, thinking, well, do you deserve to go through that?

You've been rubbish.

It means that the big guys will go through, they will anyway, and some teams which will have had rubbish results will go through as well.

And just to reinforce what

Nose was saying, like, for example, Liverpool is going to play Bayer Liver Cousin.

Now I'm really looking forward to that.

But I would also be really looking to see them at the Bayer Stadium.

And I won't.

That's ridiculous.

The thing about games and the number of games, is there any sense that the players are going to properly organize in terms of a union and looking at how many games playing?

There is actually, at the moment, the FIF Pro is preparing

a big

comms exercise.

I can't say much more than that because it's embargoed at the moment.

So the typical what happens with the Football Weekly when we do that in the morning.

But yes, absolutely, FIF Pro is very, very, very worried about the burden it's going to put on some of the players.

Again, UFR has defended itself by saying that

in fact the players would not play, most players wouldn't play more than 54 or 55 games per season, but some of them will play close to 70.

especially those who are internationals.

So the burden is absolutely incredible.

And yes, FIF Pro is looking at it.

And we know that there were noises actually early in the summer or even towards the end of spring that they were looking at the possibility of direct action about that.

And direct action only means one thing, which is a strike.

But as we know, FIF Pro, when it comes to taking these kind of decisions, they don't do like, for example, baseball players have been doing in America when they went on strike for a long time or scriptwriters in Hollywood.

No, they just go, we are really angry.

And you know what?

We are threatening to go on strike.

And that's about where it stops.

But in this particular case, it's possible that it might go further with FIF Pro on one hand and European Leagues, the Association European Leagues on the other.

Can you imagine if there is a strike and then you've got players who are scabs?

Yeah,

really good.

Who would be a scab?

And I don't know if we can speculate on that.

Crossing the picket line with an Armani wash bag under your arm.

Massive, really big headphones and a balaclava.

The Champions League,

I don't know what it's like in other countries, but in the UK,

I think there's very, very, very little interest in the group stages apart from supporters of teams who are directly involved, because for the past several years, it's been on TNT or BT Sport,

a quite expensive TV network that most people don't have.

I don't think people like people like me who don't have a dog in the Champions League fight, well, not me, because I have to take an interest professionally, but friends of mine who don't support teams who are

in the Champions League, they have zero interest in the group stages.

But who love football, but who love the game?

Yeah, they go to games, they support teams, but their teams aren't in the Champions League.

So they are not in the slightest bit interested in the group stages.

You know, after Christmas, or once the knockout stages start, they sort of, right, here we go.

Let's what?

Let's get stuck into this.

And the knockout stages are invariably very good, but the group stages, you do get good games but largely it's just so predictable that i don't know i don't there isn't but i believe now that uh they're going to be highlights on on bbc they're going to have a show so that might drum up more interest you know yeah lar civilton's already been on it may let's hope he remembers us uh jed says the new format leaves it more open for the odd game to be played in the us or saudi right do you think because you don't play teams home in a way philippe i don't know obviously you'd still say well hang on we've

we haven't had the right right number of home games, but I don't know.

It's a possibility.

Yeah, this will happen at some point.

I mean, loads of competitions have already moved up sticks and planted the circus stance somewhere else where they shouldn't be.

It probably will happen for economic reasons.

I'm not sure that the new system makes it likelier.

I think what makes it likelier is the way that the business of football is evolving.

You know, if it's fine to have the Coppa del Rey or the Coppa Italia played away from home, the finals, Yeah, why not the Champions League?

Why not go back to the old Tuscud de Mosul 39th game and so forth?

I mean, but I don't think the new format really goes into that.

The new format is meant to placate ECA,

which means basically Nasser Al-Helaifi and his chumps.

It's meant to produce more money.

The problem is that the television money, which is

which is basically irrigating the business of football, and in particular of the clubs which are part of the Champions League, it all depends on on the advertising revenue they can get from it.

And the thing is that we're all very keen to discover what the viewing figures are going to be for the end of this group phase, or league phase rather than group phase,

because there is at one point where

the broadcasters will say, you know what, we're not getting our money's worth here.

And I was also thinking if they apply dynamic pricing to the tickets of the Champions League, I think some of them will be bloody cheap at the end i can tell you that i mean we're going to get into dynamic pricing uh in part three um richard says i know the pod generally doesn't mention the europa conference league but a word on lawn and tns being the first northern irish and welsh teams to reach a group stage would be nice there you are we've done it and it is nice and stephen says lovely correct prediction that the luxurious hair of christian carambo would be seen at the european draws last friday as he represents former club and conference league champions olympiakos there was christian although he didn't do any of the drawing because there was only one button to press.

It was a much tougher gig to get.

Well, it was what, Gigi Buffon, and

Cristiano, weren't they?

Cristiano Ronaldo.

So, you know, they're pretty big now.

Christian isn't going to get nothing ahead of either of those.

It's hard to select Caronbo.

When they said the team news is in, Caronbo's on the bench, you know, he'd take that, wouldn't he?

Anyway, that'll do for part one.

Part two, we'll do Lee Carsley's England squad.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

What changed for the team today?

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Play is everything.

Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So Lee Carsley's first England squad was announced last week as well.

Swindle says, when was the last time something big like an international squad was announced and you didn't know who one of the people involved was in reference to me having to Google Angel Gomez?

And I don't know about you, Barry.

I was like, I don't know who that is.

Did you know who it was?

I knew who he was, but I had no idea where he played.

So I had to Google that.

And he's, and now I can't remember.

He's in France somewhere, is it?

Lille.

He's at Lille.

So tell us that.

But he's a Man City Academy.

Man United.

Man United.

No, he was at United.

Was it Man U or Man City?

Okay, I clearly didn't know very well, but I had heard of him.

Well, I hadn't, but I have read up since.

But anyway, Philippe, tell us,

is he the answer for England?

Probably, but what is the question?

Well, that's a good question, isn't it?

We need to keep the ball against Spain about three months ago, Philippe.

Can Angel Gomez do that?

He's good at that.

He's good at he can play in a more withdrawn position.

He can play both in an advanced position, like almost like a second striker or a number 10, or he can play in a more,

what would you kay, kind of pillow position.

And he's good at

even though he's tiny.

You've seen him.

I mean, he's really, really slight.

But he's good at getting the ball where it matters, protecting his back forever and so forth.

Yeah, he's a bit of a complete midfielder, really.

But it doesn't look like what you expect from one of those complete midfielders.

It does look quite slight, but he's done terrifically well in France.

Absolutely.

I mean, I don't know if it's the answer to the long-standing problem that England hasn't had

a Michael Carrick since Michael Carrick, basically.

Which they didn't use, by the way, either.

Yeah, of course we didn't.

It was too good.

Yeah, I was quite taken by the squad.

Likas turned up and, you know,

he could have been much more boring.

And, you know, bring in Liv Ramento and Gibbs White and Mad Weke.

And, you know, it's, you know, a lot of people he's worked with before, but I don't know.

I was infused.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of like you can have like two types of substitute teacher.

You can have the substitute teacher that's just like, well, show me the notes of the last teacher and I'll just go along with them.

And then you can have the other kind, which uh sort of just perches himself on the edge of the desk and just says, like, like, just call me by my first name, throw, throw away your textbooks.

Like, this is a new regime.

You're saying he's Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society.

Is that what these garden is?

Is that your captain?

My captain sees the day.

Exactly that.

Yeah, you're going to have,

he's going to inspire the likes of Harry Kane to sort of like find himself.

No, no, it's and but again, like the angel gomez thing, like, i i i love things like that because he was he was one of those players at manchester united who who who um got a lot of people excited when he was in the youth team and i'd i'd say the two players that have been lauded for having like the most natural skill um within the within the youth uh set up at united in recent years have been angel gomez and rabbo morrison uh just in terms of like natural talent um and and it kind of felt like for for very very different reasons both of them were going to, well, didn't make it at United and moved on.

And it kind of felt with Angel Gomez's career that it was just going nowhere, really.

I think he went to Lille and then went

on loan to Portugal for a while.

And it kind of felt as if he was drifting away from

top-like football.

But to see this rejuvenation and

to see this reinvention, because at United, he was very much like a winger number 10.

And all it takes is for somebody to trust you, and all it takes is for somebody to try you out somewhere else.

I think it was Fonseca who tried him like further back, and

suddenly he's found himself.

And

I think that's great in terms of you see all these great young players who don't fulfill the potential and then fade away or get disheartened

and then fall out of love with the game.

I think this is a great example of a player who's not given up,

has reinvented himself.

And again, like the thing about his size,

he is absolutely tiny.

Like, I've seen him in a flesh, and he's so, so small.

Between the two of you, I've now got small man in a box, Rob Bryden, this tiny little man.

He is, he's,

there's nothing to him.

And, and, and again, this, um, this obsession with uh getting getting uh big players in, and, and, and even there was a, there was a strange situation

with Manchester United's transfer strategy where people, there were fans who were complaining about um, about Ugate saying he's only six foot.

And I didn't realize six foot was an issue in terms of not being tall enough.

So if you've got that kind of mindset and you've got a player like Angel Gomez who is doing it.

Five, six.

He's five, six.

Yeah, well, well, that's the thing.

But doing it in a league like France, which can be very physical,

is very impressive.

One thing, the fact that

you said that you didn't know anything about

Angel Gomez,

I find quite revealing of the total lack of interest interest in England for

England teams which are not the senior team, which I find extraordinary.

It's not the case elsewhere, by the way.

It's like Espois, Espois really matters to French people.

You know, when Chile went to the Olympic final.

But this guy has been a world champion with the U-17s, and he's been a European champion with the U-19s.

It's as if he's unknown.

which is crazy when you think about it.

And he's been regularly selected in every single age group as an England international.

So his promotion, especially coming from Lee Carsley, because we know his background, is not surprising at all.

And I think as well, the other reason why you can feel just a bit excited and you're thinking, that's actually rather nice, this new thing of having people who have taken care of the youth teams being graduated to the senior team and therefore taking care of players that they have known since a very young age.

This has worked for Spain.

magnificently.

Why couldn't it work for England?

Because it worked with Gary Southgate.

Why wouldn't it not work with Lee Carsley?

So I think we're all

a little bit optimistic.

And the other thing is that who cares about the results of those games coming to the Nations League anyway?

Just as a sort of tenuously related aside, Nas mentioned Ravel Morrison there.

I noticed,

I think it was

a couple of days before deadline day, I think it was the PFA organised a kind of trial match for out-of-contract players to show what they can do to any know scouts agents whatever teams who might want to sign them and ravel morrison was one of those players in that game yeah i don't think he got picked up according to wikipedia he didn't he doesn't have a club last spotted at dc united but um it's quite the fall yeah extraordinarily talented play and we just saw him moments didn't we i think we did he scored one goal for west ham where he just ran through everybody i think you just think ah you know but that isn't all you need i guess is it uh jack gridish and harry maguire recalled no ben White.

Lee Carsley said, as far as I'm aware, he wasn't available for selection and nothing has changed in my two weeks.

That's where we are with it.

Carl Walker was left out, so it might be the end of his England career until obviously Pep gets the job in a couple of months.

Kieran Trippier announced his retirement from international football.

on Thursday.

Simon says, are you firmly Carsley out now that he's dropped Adam Wharton?

Yeah, he's Adam Wharton's going to play, get some minutes for the 21s.

And it could all be different in November.

Yeah, but I mean, I do love, I still love watching Adam Wharton pass the ball forwards quickly to teammates.

But yeah, interesting.

Dude Bellingham's out injured, of course.

No place for Marcus Rashford, James Madison either.

What about France,

Philippe?

How are we feeling?

Wesley Fafana's withdrawn from the squad.

You wrote a piece about the,

you know, about Thierry Henry and the Olympics, and so that clearly, obviously, when the Olympics is in your country, it's different, but still it was big for France, that wasn't it.

It was big, and it's been very big for two players who are making the jump from the Olympic team to the senior team, Michael Olissé and Manu Connet,

who have been brought in

by Didier Deschamps.

Connet is partly as well because Camervinga is also

cannot actually

be part of the squad.

No big surprises.

I mean, I looked at the squad again this morning and well, Benjamin Pavard not being in the squad is not exactly a surprise.

Adrienne Rabiot is not in the squad.

Kingsley Coman, not in the squad either.

And of course, the great absentee, the man we will never see again in a French shirt, is Olivier Giroux, who's retired and rejoined his mate Hugo Loris in California.

He's going to have a great time in California as well.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And we're playing Italy.

on the 6th, this Friday.

And then we're playing Belgium on the 9th.

And what is quite strange is that I think not that long ago, the prospect of playing Italy and Belgium within a week would have had us really excited about it.

And this time, not really.

And I don't know if it's just because of the fact that Italy is not quite what it used to be and that Belgium remains Belgium.

It's also because the Euros were so recent.

And this nobody likes this international break.

It's a terrible time for the international break.

I mean, it's been an absolutely I mean, it's been non-stop because we had the Champions League final, then we jumped to the preparation games for the Euro, then we had the Euro, then we had the Olympic tournament, then the league started again.

And in fact, once the Olympic tournament was playing, we already had qualifiers for the Champions League.

So there's been absolutely no break, which is why I think...

Oh, yeah, okay, all right.

What we should do is enlarge the Champions League and just so we get a bit more.

bit more football.

Barry, look, yesterday we once again patronised Jaime Helgrimson forgetting his name and just saying he was a dentist.

His first game in charge for Ireland, of course, they play England as well.

Do you have high hopes, hopes, low hopes, any hope?

I have hopes.

Yeah, I wouldn't say they're high.

The manner in which he was appointed was

rather farcical, but more or less what you'd expect from the Football Association of Ireland.

Various names were bandied around.

In the eight months it took them to replace Stephen Kenny or appoint Stephen Kenney's successor.

Lee Carsley was one of those names.

Chris Coleman, Neil Lennon, Chris Houghton, Gus Poyer, Roy Keene, Steve Bruce, a very uninspiring bunch.

A very good team in about 1996.

Yeah.

John O'Shea was an interim charge for four games.

I think people were kind of expecting him to get the gig.

I think he was kind of expecting to get the gig, but he didn't.

And then they announced Hymer Halgrumsen as the new manager with John O'Shea as his assistant.

He is of course the former Iceland manager who was in joint charge of the team when they knocked England out of Euro 2016 and then he was in sole charge when Iceland got to the 2018 World Cup and were 18th in the world rankings or the FIFA rankings.

I think he could be exactly what Ireland need because when he and Lagerbeck took over Iceland, it was a team with

mostly bang average players, a very disillusioned fan base, and they worked hard to get the fans interested again.

Halgrimson used to go to a pub where the fan club was, the Iceland national team fan club was based in Reykjavik.

He'd go to this pub and chat to them

two hours before every home game.

He'd tell them the team before it was officially announced.

He'd tell them how they were going to play.

He'd show them the motivational video that they were going to show the players before the game.

And the fact that the team started getting results really re-engaged the fan base.

And I think that's what Ireland needs because people are very disillusioned with the football team, mainly because of the people who are in charge of it.

I don't really care how Halgrimson got the job or what choice he was.

He's there now, and I really hope it works out for him.

I mean, I thought Stephen Kenney would be a good appointment, appointment, and

that was pretty disastrous.

But yeah, hopefully he'll be good.

He's said he wants to have the team to have a bit more bastard in it.

You know,

he's aware of the fact we don't have any real superstar players.

But

I would say man for man, the Ireland squad is a lot better, has a lot more talented players than the Iceland team he took over.

So if he can get them pulling together in the one direction, yeah, who who who's to say he won't achieve similar levels of success?

It's unlikely, but coming up.

So we've got England at home on Saturday.

They might have a Euro hangover.

We might get a result.

I'd say it's quite unlikely.

But

then after that, we've games against Greece and Finland.

So I'd be cautious.

Greece will be a good sort of marker of where Ireland are because Ireland were well beaten by them homing away in the Euro qualifiers.

All right, that'll do for part two, part three.

We'll do any other business beginning with a bit of Manchester United for NAS.

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Hoon says, as an FC Scharden Freuder fan, can we have a lovely little Nas heavy session on the travails of Manchester Reds?

How are you finding things, Nas?

Same as I've always found them in the last few years.

It's just

Watch United is so weird.

There seems to be no plan of action.

Seems to be no formation, no idea.

None of the players know what they're meant to be doing.

But apart from that, it's great.

it's it's um

the thing the thing is obviously we saw casemiro struggling um

and one of the most tragic uh parts of that was um

when he when he for this for the second mistake where

he overran the ball um there was a bit where in slow motion you could see him sort of like yeah his hands sort of sort of scraping for the for the ball and

it and it was such a tra it was like something out of um watership down or something it

It was such a desperate moment, especially in slow motion.

Just gnawing at like fate.

Obviously, Casemiro is not the player he was, and he's struggling sort of emotionally as well.

And I also did like the fact that

his wife came out in support of him, because that's what you do for people that you love.

And

that obviously is a sign that he's going through a tough time.

But

he is also part of this team that doesn't seem to know what it's doing or has made panicking into a strategy because, um, a big part of the team tends to be rushing and feeling as if you've got to get forward as fast as possible, no matter what the circumstances are.

And that's essentially the first mistake was Casemiro playing a blind ball.

And you could say, why did you do that?

There was no pass to be made.

But that seems to be how Ten Hag has taught his team to play.

Like, like, doesn't matter, like, don't put your foot on the ball.

Um, you had a situation where the two the two players in Manchester United's team against Liverpool who who did actually take a moment and did play the ball intelligently were uh Delo and Rashford.

Like, Rashford started to get booed because he wasn't taking on his man or because he was slowing things down.

But you need someone to slow it down, you need someone to just assess the moment and sort of play the intelligent pass or play the intelligent cross.

And it seems as if the team have been taught not to do that.

There was a there was also a situation where i can't remember which liverpool player it was maybe it was gravpack or someone but um they played a blind pass or they tried to flick it and uh slott was really angry on the on the touchline because that's not how he wants his team to play that's a risk not worth taking whereas

united seemed to be uh obsessed or ten hog seems to be obsessed with with this idea when he came in he talked about he wanted united to be the best transitional team in the league uh and it felt like quite an an arbitrary decision to make considering the Ajax team that he had played really nice controlled football.

But he decided because of the players that United had,

that was his best way of doing it.

But

lots of players have changed.

Lots of players have come in and out.

And

he's still trying to play this transition game.

And it's with different players that he's had a hand in choosing, and it's still not working.

It's so bizarre.

And

I kind of fear for him in terms of his future because

you kind of want to see signs.

You want to see signs of improvement or signs of development.

And you really can't see that at the moment with United.

You see a little bit, but then it quickly fades away.

And yeah, it's a massive concern.

And rather than being the best transition team in the league, they're the worst transition team in the league in terms of if you get past one of their players or you get past one line, United is essentially screwed.

Jamie Carragher and Gary Geneville Neville were having sort of their post-match debrief on Sunday, and

Gary Neville sort of saying, oh,

he's the right man for the job.

You know, just leave him there and hopefully something will fall into place.

That seems quite a forlorn hope, really, you know, on the evidence of what we've seen so far.

It's unlikely to happen.

Yeah, I like the idea that you say everyone's panicking, that he's just like Corporal Jones, one for the kids, Corporal Jones from Dad's Army on the training rounds.

Just like, don't panic, don't panic.

Everyone's going, oh, fuck, why are we panicking?

Shit, just boot the ball away as far as we can, just every single minute of every game.

But this is the thing about Ten Hagi is that

I really

admired the fact that so many fans backed him when

United had such a poor season last season.

And obviously, there was the cup win, but still, you wouldn't have blamed the fans for getting on his back, but they backed him to the hill and they wanted him to stay.

And i do think that that might have been part of the factor why why ineos kept him but the problem he's got and it go again it goes back to this thing of needing signs or wanting signs of improvement is every argument to keep ten hag

is because of mitigating factors so you say he's not succeeded because he's had uh an atrocious setup behind him he's not succeeded because he's had all these injuries and he's not succeeded because the glazers like made the club such a calamity and it wasn't football focused etc

He was being told to

do too much himself.

And now, this new regime is in charge, and he deserves time to work under this organisation.

He deserves time to work

with a squad that doesn't have the atrocious injury record that there was last season.

And those can be legitimate arguments, but they are all mitigating circumstances that defend his bad performance.

The problem is that where are the positive signs?

Where are the things that you can point to and say,

this is where United are showing improvement under him?

This is where

United's pattern of play is improving, how their composure is improving, how playing out the back is improving.

At the moment, there's not enough signs of things that are getting better.

This just mitigating circumstances of things that have gone wrong in the past, and therefore he deserves more time.

And that deserving more time seems to be because he's had such a bad time of it rather than than because there's this positive science for the future.

I'm inclined to think there might be some of those mitigating circumstances might be fair enough.

I mean when Ralph Ranik came in and was managing United

we got all these long reads about what a visionary genius he was and then once he left United everyone who wasn't familiar with his work before thought he was an absolute clown.

But now he's at Austria and he'd done brilliantly there.

You know, he's got a kraken team playing for him with them.

So you know, maybe it is.

I think there's a lot of blame to go around for the shambles at United at the moment.

Yeah, I think so.

And Ten Hag is clearly a decent coach, but he doesn't seem to be the right fit there.

Philippe, you wanted to talk about the transfer market.

What did you want to say?

There would be plenty of things to say about the transfer market.

And I mean, again, because we live in the football continuum, it hasn't really, I think,

grasped the attention of many people because there hasn't been a kind of super, super, super transfer.

Quinn Bappé, we knew he was going to reel Madrid.

There's no money in the rest of it.

But there are still some quite extraordinary things which happened.

The not extraordinary thing is that the Premier League again has spent more than anybody else.

But that's it in terms of net transfers, which is the only thing which matters.

Gross transfers don't mean a thing.

Net transfers, it's actually the lowest that the Premier League has spent since 2015, 2016.

And so basically, nobody has spent a lot of money, except if you can guess which three clubs have spent the more money net during this transfer window, I think that you'll have a special prize max.

Which three clubs have spent more than anybody else on the transfer window in the net terms?

You know, not rooms like Chelsea or Aston Villa.

I knew Brighton were one of them.

Okay, Brighton is number one.

Brighton is the club which has spent the most money in the world.

I've got Ipswich written down.

Is that true?

Ipswich are number three.

Right.

And number two.

Is it another English club?

No, it's an Italian club.

And I think by saying that, pretty much.

Oh,

Napoli, I've got to be Napoli.

It is Napoli.

It is Napoli, which is totally insane.

And Brighton, you can completely understand because they've made so much money.

They've made a lot of profit on the transfer market over the past few years.

They had a record profit in 22-23.

They're basically investing the money that they've made through their performances to make sure that they stay at this level and good for them.

Switch, it's a classic case like Dante and Forest in the past.

You get promoted, you need to get the players to stay there.

So therefore

you just put a lot of money.

Napoli is crazy and that's a typical thing.

It's like they have spent 140 million quid net.

This is insane.

And one of the reasons they spent so much money is because they were

hoping of selling Victor Ossiman, maybe to your club, actually knows, for a large sum of money, about 100 million.

They didn't manage to do that.

They didn't manage to sell him to a Saudi club, more about this in a second, because

Osaman doesn't want to go to Saudi Arabia.

So now they're about to loan the guy to get at SRI.

So they're going to loan out

their best player.

their most expensive player, despite the fact they've just spent 140 million on the transfer market.

This is totally nuts.

And by the way, and I'll close on that, it's been very,

not many people have talked about Saudi Arabia,

but there has still been a lot of transfer activity

in Saudi Arabia.

And in net terms, in fact, they're the third biggest spending

league in the world.

And they would be the second if it were not for Napoli.

And there have been, you know, like Moussa Tiabi, for example, has gone to Ali Tihad.

Ivan Tony has gone to Al-Akhli.

João Cancelo has gone to Al-Hilal.

I don't know if many people are aware of that.

And then you've got players like Daniel Podense, who is leaving Wolves to go there.

And Usa Usamawa, who's left Roma to go to a promote a newly promoted club in Saudi Arabia.

And altogether, they've spent 240 million quid net.

So the idea that the Saudis are suddenly taking the foot of the pedal is actually not quite right.

They haven't spent quite as much as last year, but they're still very much in the transfer market.

And that was the end of my little rant.

I enjoyed it.

Good.

I enjoyed it.

I like the fact you enjoyed it.

Nos.

A question from the back.

You, sir, in the back.

Okay, Fiona, Bruce.

No,

it was the

one thing I've kind of noticed, and maybe it's just anecdotal, but

it feels as if there's a change within fandom about the attitude towards Saudi Arabian transfers in terms of...

And again, we know why Jordan Henson received so much criticism for

going to that league because he'd been such an advocate of LGTBQ plus rights and everything.

And then he went over there.

there but it does feel as if there's a normalization to players going there now.

There used to be a situation where anyone who went there was sort of criticized for moral reasons

and

there's big sort of factors which should

mean that high-profile players shouldn't go there.

But now there seems to be an attitude because I've seen like with with with with Ivan Tona with Chris Morling I've seen people say oh well they deserve it.

I mean, go and get your bag, go and get your money.

You deserve that sort of money at the end of your career or for your final contract.

And there seems to be a sense of like,

rather than criticising players for going to the Saudi league, it's sort of they're almost

praised for it or sort of they deserve it.

And I think part of that is just natural.

Sadly, I think people just get used to situations.

I think, no matter how sort of morally sort of abhorrent or sort of problematic, people just get used to situations over time but also um

i think saudi to a lot of play to a lot of fans are seen as like maybe a get out of jail situation in terms of uh oh they've got a play that they don't want on a lot of money maybe saudi will come in and give us a give us a chunk of money and and that'd be a problem of our of our wage bill and of our

our sort of um financial fair play issues so it it just it's just something i've noticed and and it's kind of depressing how normalized these things become.

Saudi Arabia are hosting a snooker tournament at the moment with all the world's top players, and it has the same prize money as the World Championships in Sheffield.

So it's now coming as the joint richest snooker tournament on the calendar.

And Football Weekly is brought to you by the Saudi tourism.

Hey, Barry, Max here.

Have you ever been to Saudi Arabia?

Hello.

Bob says, with Valencia looking to introduce dynamic pricing, is this the next abomination to come to the Premier League?

Could it actually work for some lower league clubs who struggle to fill their grounds?

Obviously, this was big in the news this weekend because Oasis introduced it, I think, for buying Oasis tickets.

Valencia are set to become the first major.

Well,

Oasis didn't introduce it.

It's been

quite a lot.

They had it, right?

Which is basically what...

Sorry, forgive me, Barry, for being an idiot.

You don't know how much you're going to pay until they say, well, actually, it's this now.

Well, tickets are advertised at a certain price.

You go online to buy them and then when you if you're lucky enough to get to the front of the queue the ticket you're you want is suddenly tripled in cost uh so you can either pay what you want pay what's being demanded for it or lump it so not get soft market forces is the argument right like hotels are more expensive in the summer yeah it's thoroughly unscrupulous i'm not sure why it's not illegal and it's not just for tickets airlines do it hotels do it so if you've you've paid triple the odds for an oasis ticket in Dublin, say, and you're flying over to go to see them in Dublin and you want a hotel room, you're going to be paying three or four times, maybe ten times the odds for your hotel room as well.

And then, when you go to the pubs, you'll be getting rinse too.

If you go wander down to Temple Bar and have a few pints before the gig, you'll be paying, you know, eight, nine pounds euros a pint.

So, it's not just the ticket market, it's uh, lots of people do it, It's thoroughly unscrupulous.

The thing with the tickets, though, if ticket master do it, they can only do it if the artist agrees to let them do it.

Right, okay.

So, some artists will say, no, we've advertised the ticket prices, that's what they have to be sold at.

But if Leem and Noel go, oh, yeah, get whatever you can for them, then they will do that.

Well, if you want four middle-aged men to sing Champagne Soup and over to you, I mean, the four of us will do it, and we will charge £50 and no more and no less.

I'm not doing that.

under any circumstances a friend of mine from sunderland uh named jonathan who isn't jonathan wilson he spent about 10 hours on saturday trying to get oasis tickets failed and the irony is his brother is in an oasis tribute band from sunderland and they're called howasis anyway anyway valencia valencia uh on their website one of the new features of this season will be the implementation of dynamic pricing for ticket purchases Following the global trend in shows, sporting events, and entertainment, Valencia will join this practice, which has the support and technology of La Liga.

Tickets will therefore go on sale at a base price, which could increase as the days go by, always subject to various parameters such as the occupancy of the stadium area and the proximity of the date, amongst others.

Buying your tickets early will ensure you get the best price, plan ahead, and get your tickets in the best area, and that the best price prices can be viewed online.

Um,

nos

awful, understandable the way it's going.

What's the verb?

No,

it's not understandable.

The thing is, there's certain things in life which you switch off your brain and you switch on your heart.

And football is one of those things.

Music is one of those things.

And

it's basically leveraging that love that you've got for that thing.

to make

the maximum money possible.

And it's ugly and it's disgusting.

And

again, it goes

back to this thing of like normalization that we were talking about before is is if is if people accept it then it will continue to happen and and that's why I was glad that so many people were irate about it um

with the oasis thing is that you should be angry because they're taking

they're taking the piss out of you and and and and this whole and they're making enough money anyway right then they're doing all right the issue is it's not even a simple case of supply and demand because

for supply and demand like you you've got a price and you decide uh whether you want to pay that based on on the supply and demand model but this is

this is basically waiting until you're at the front of the queue and then and then suddenly telling you it's a different price and it's and it's this it's this thing of so it's manipulation of the of the individual not only are they taking not only are they manipulating the fact or leveraging the fact that you love this this this band or this football club, they are then leveraging the fact that,

well, there's obviously a FOMO situation going on as well, where everyone wants to be part of something.

And then you've also got this situation where when you're at the front of the queue,

having

waited 10 hours and

ignored your family, and then you've invested that time of your day

to finally get to the front, and then you're told, oh, it's £350.

You're not just paying for the ticket, you're also thinking,

I've invested this much time in waiting.

I've invested like 10 hours.

So there's got to be a payoff.

Otherwise, my whole day has been futile.

And again, like I saw, I think it was Stan Cullimore or someone who sort of referred to gambling and how it's the same serotonin hit.

And

you can totally understand that because

there's a euphoria to getting a ticket and there's a euphoria to having to wait for ages and finally getting your opportunity.

And it's monetizing

that feeling that you feel of sort of finally getting your chance to buy this ticket that is no different from

um the ticket that somebody paid 150 pounds for and and you paid close to four 400 with uh with booking fees i i could say a lot about oasis but i i'm not going to because i i just don't there's no point in getting really angry that's in fact anger is a sentiment that is not worth having but when it comes back to football the argument that it's a means to fill the stands perhaps well i can tell you what you can do to fill the stands.

You did what Parry Football Club, not PSG, did last year.

They basically made the entrance free and they thought, well, at least the fans are going to spend the money on the drinks and the food they're going to have there.

And they were packed.

The stadiums were packed.

There was a great atmosphere and so forth.

If you have a problem, that's very simple.

Let the people in.

They will come.

It also goes back to what we were saying when we had this conversation with

Kirin Maguire, Max.

And I was saying at the time, the worst thing for football business people is the existence of seasoned ticket holders.

They want to get rid of us.

There's absolutely no doubt about that.

They can see how much the tickets are being sold for on the secondary market, which is totally illegal, but it actually drives me insane.

Yet these websites are not blocked.

You can go to these websites in Britain.

It's very easy to block a website.

You could do it.

They're not doing it.

What they're proposing is illegal.

But I can get you tickets for anything and make you pay 300 quid for a ticket which in my section of the stadium will be 40.

The clubs know it, so therefore they're thinking, well, how can we do something which is going to enable that lovely, lovely bonnet to go not to

touts or season ticket holders who want to make a quick buck, but get to our

in our own pockets so we can buy another player for 65 million pounds.

That's why they're interested in dynamic pricing.

But the problem is that there are some areas where you can sort of understand dynamic pricing.

If you try to buy

Eurostar tickets, for example, it's dynamic pricing.

The difference is that they're capped, that you know what is the maximum you're going to pay.

And if you're really quick, you can buy a return to Paris for 80 quid, right?

Which isn't bad.

You can do that.

That's dynamic pricing.

But you will never pay more than a certain amount for the return ticket.

This is not what they have in mind.

Sounds like we shouldn't do dynamic pricing for a next tour, Barry.

That's what I'm getting from the audience.

Well, I've already texted you and producer Joel to say we need to start thinking about our reunion tour before we've actually split up

while we're still going concerned.

Because if we leave it too late, I'll be dead.

And if we that's true.

But if we plan it too early, we might not have broken up.

The band might still be together.

We could have an AI hologram of Barry Glentoning.

Oh, God.

That's it.

Right.

As long as my estate gets the royalties.

A massive hologram of Barry just going, I don't care.

Finally, Omar says, I think the archery-related celebrations in football are based on UFC champion Israel Addisanya, who did a very memeable celebration after regaining his title against a longtime foe.

It was thrilling.

So thank you for letting us know.

I was expecting some Premier League players to do that, you know, the Turkish pistol guy from the Olympics.

Oh, yeah.

I was thinking they'd do that, but then, like, with guns, like,

for some reason, like, guns feel more dangerous than arrows.

I can't work out what that is, but I think you're spoken like a man who has never been shot with a crossbow.

You went in the Hundred Years' War, now we know.

Anyway, that'll do for today.

Thank you, Philippe.

Thank you very much, Max.

Cheers, Nose.

Oh, sorry.

I've just got one question for Barry.

Barry, what did did you do yesterday?

That's a good question.

I watched Return of the King, among other things.

Oh, and I listened to What Did You Do Yesterday?

First episode.

Very good.

Thank you, Barry, as well for doing this podcast, which I also love doing.

You're welcome.

Your island spines.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

We'll be back on Thursday.

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