Arsenal re-stake their claim as title contenders – Football Weekly podcast

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

Did Gold Shy Arsenal celebrate enough this weekend?

Arteta's men blow West Ham away with four goals in 15 minutes before half-time, a three-way title race and home fans streaming out of the London Stadium before the break.

The most convincing of the wins for the top three then, with Burnley missing some big chances at Anfield and Everton grimly holding City out for a while until Erling Harlan just upped his power setting to really incredibly high.

Below them, two great games at Villa Park, Manchester United defend stoically and win late on through Scott McTominay, while Spurs leave it very late to beat Brighton in another game that could have gone either way.

Then there's the Bruno Gimaresh show at the City Ground.

Some help me God handball penalties at Luton and important wins for Brentford at at Fulham.

Then blue cards.

Am I the only person on earth who doesn't totally hate the idea?

Sebastian Allair wins Afcon, Qatar wins the Asian Cup, and Harry Kane might not win the Bundesliga.

All that, plus your questions.

And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Barry Glendenning, welcome.

Hi, Max.

Hello, Will Unwin.

Hello, Max.

Hello, John Bruin.

Hello, Max.

Friend of the pod, Autumn Florick says, as a West Ham fan, how should I self-medicate before listening to this pod?

Andrew says, can you release a version with no references to West Ham United?

I hate when they cause me to miss the pod.

And Ian says, are Arsenal going to struggle for goals after not signing a striker in the January transfer window?

I mean, Arsenal, Barry, were exceptional in this game.

And that

was weird, that stacked 32 minutes to 45 minutes.

And even when it was sort of nil-nil and you went, okay, and then suddenly it's 2-0.

And then you think, well, take it to 2, keep it at 2-0, West Ham.

You're right.

And then suddenly it was 4-0.

It was a mad period of the game.

Yeah, to ease

the pain of our West Ham listeners, I'm going to start with a controversial opinion.

I thought they played quite well for the first 10 minutes,

which I think made their capitulation all the more surprising.

And

I'm not sure how much you can read into this game because

Arsenal, who were brilliant, were ostensibly playing against training ground dummies or cones

who had a collective

I mean shocker doesn't even begin to describe how bad they were.

I think the only West Ham player who emerged with even the slightest bit of credit is Lucas Fabianski who made a couple of good saves to keep the score down.

Bukayasaka had a couple of uncharacteristic misses to help keep the score down.

And I think West Ham were very much lucky to get nil and Arsenal were quite unlucky to only get six because it could have been a lot more

and on the Arsenal performance

they were really good I mean but again

I find it difficult to to offer any sort of erudite analysis on this game because they were up against nothing West Ham were

shockingly shockingly bad and as I say I thought they started quite well I was I thought they would give Arsenal a game because obviously they've beaten them twice this season but at the end of the game, their performance was so bad that all David Moyes could do in his post-match presser was remind people of his successes.

Um, you know, that he'd saved them from relegation twice, he got to this to them, got them to the semifinal of the Europa League, uh, they won the the Conference League, and I'm not sure telling West Ham fans they've never had it so good after a six-nil thrashing

is

a good way to go about things.

I think it might be a dangerous tactic, particularly as opinion is very much divided on whether they want him there or not.

But, you know, he has done those things.

It was woeful.

I don't think I've answered the question who asked me, but there you go.

I'll let one of the lads take over.

That's fine.

I love the idea of Moyes just going, fool, you don't know you're born.

He was quite, he was chippy, wasn't he?

I mean,

let's give Arsenal some credit first, if we can, before we go on to West Ham, John.

Because

they scored a brilliant mix of goals, weren't they?

It's the set pieces, and Declan Rice has started taking set pieces, and he's clearly very good at that.

And then a couple of lovely goals as well in there.

Yeah, I mean, you'd say that David Moyes is one of the more adept organisers of set pieces.

So if you're scoring set piece goals against West Ham, then you're probably doing okay.

Though it is this West Ham team.

And unfortunately,

God, I've tried not to talk about West Ham, but

you know, there were times when Joe Biden would have shown Kurt Zuma a clean pair of heels.

They were struggling at the back, let's put it that way.

But yes,

some of the moves came off, say the Trossard goal.

That's a classic almost training ground move, isn't it?

You come in, what you call the half spaces, and you score.

I mean, and then

obviously the Declan Rice goal, the ultimate non-celebration celebration.

I think that might be the best non-celebration celebration I've seen because

the face that he put on of just,

do you know what it reminded me of?

One for the teenagers here.

The Dennis Law own goal for city, not own goal, back heel against,

and the commentator, I think it's Gerald Sinstad or someone just saying, you know, Dennis has done it.

And he's, and he's having to, I think it's Colin Bell having to slap his face to almost like wake him up from this torpor of tragedy.

And Deccan Rice almost replicated that face, and you thought he really does care for West Ham, you know, they gave him so much.

And then, about two minutes later, you see him on the bench and he's giggling away with his teammates.

And I have a few Irish friends who suspect the character of Deccan Rice, and maybe

that was a demonstration of their suspicions.

But anyway, moving on, great performance from Arsenal.

I suppose the one thing you could say is that

if David Moyes is saying you'll never have it so good, neither might Arsenal

in an opponent because West Ham were shocking.

Yeah, Dave says, was it really necessary for Declan Rice to do a non-celebration celebration when all of the West Ham fans had already left?

Good point.

Very good question.

And Matt says, was there anything that summed up West Ham's performance more than the moment two Arsenal players both left the ball for each other?

And then instead of a West Ham player stealing the ball, it rolled to Declan Rice, who immediately scored a banger.

Yeah, that was my thought.

I mean, the question for Arsenal had Barney wrote in his piece saying, look, there's loads written about Arsenals over-celebrating and all that kind of nonsense.

But actually, you know, they're coming up against this Man City team who are going for sort of immortality.

They're coming up against Liverpool, who have got this Klopp is leaving.

This is, you know, this is the narrative.

They've got to bring something.

you know, they are the sort of, in the title race, they are the kind of upstarts here, Will.

And so they have to bring that kind of energy to all of this.

Maybe, maybe it was the kind of energy from last week's celebration that put the fear of God into West Ham so they didn't show up.

They're sort of really worried that they're on such a high arsenal that they can't compete.

So they'll just, we'll leave this weekend.

Of course they have.

And every team plays better when they're confident.

And if you get confidence by beating really good teams like Liverpool, and that will then seep into the next game.

Admittedly, West Ham were terrible.

But

that's what you do.

That's what top teams do.

We'll talk about United later, but United look confident they're playing better.

And that's the nature of football.

And if you have to celebrate big wins, because you need to know how it feels to have big wins, then good on them.

And they're playing very well.

They played football that West Ham couldn't cope with, although you know, my toddler could have played at centre back yesterday, it made no difference.

And that's the nature of it.

Saka looks confident, Odegaard looks confident, Rice scoring

the non-celebration came after a really good goal because he's

got the confidence in him to whack it from 25 yards.

Admittedly, he probably should have been closed down by someone, probably in the 30 seconds it took to get the ball from the edge of the box to him, but that's a different matter.

And yeah, Saka's showing the skills that he needs to cut in inside and score those goals.

Like the set pieces are working, and when set pieces are working you know so many goals come from them it shows that everything's clicking the right time and for everyone in football it's just a case of sticking those results together and those performances together and arsdal know that they need to ride these positivities for as long as possible yeah there's been a sort of marked improvement in that sort of in the amount that they've been delivering in the last i think they've played what 24 in the first 12 games i think that's the day put up a stat saying you know they'd been pretty flat and they hadn't delivered and actually they really turned that around um jacob steinberg saying i made the grave error of taking my four-year-old four-year-old son to this.

In tears by 3-0.

He decided he wanted to stay for the second half, maybe because he'd been promised chocolate.

Chris Sutton saying, True fans don't leave at half-time.

Barry,

are you allowed to leave at half-time with the score at 4-0?

If you want to, yeah, I'd have no problem.

I'm one of those people who sticks it out to the bitter end, but I have no problem with anyone else leaving.

It's Sunday, if things to, you know, there are better things to do than sit watch your team get absolutely thrashed when you could, you know, go for a couple of pints or whatever, go home and

have a nice dinner.

But no, I have no problem.

True fans can do whatever they want.

They pay their money.

They pay a lot of money.

They get

treated abhorrently by

TV companies, some of whom hire Chris Sutton to pundit for them.

Yeah, I have no problem with fans leaving at halftime or any time.

I seem to remember that they

was it when Leicester lost it it was when Southampton lost 9-0 to Leicester on a Friday night and it was horizontal rain.

Horrible.

I think by seven and a pundit was saying you shouldn't leave your team like this and you're like, come on, you know, it's so wet and it's like the roof is doing nothing for you here.

The thing is with that though, Southampton, it's a sort of uncovered walk to wherever you're going.

Yeah, I mean,

it was a sort of reasonably bright day yesterday.

I mean, I think the thing is with that walk from the London Stadium is it's so long, they'll probably get to the pub by full time because it is just this, because it

West Ham's transport links, it's not true, really, because it's near nowhere.

And also,

I'm led to believe that the most expensive pint in the Premier League is at West Ham.

So if you want to drown your sorrows, go into Lassaguan is at Westfield.

Probably, you know, go elsewhere if you're on a a budget.

Yeah, as Baz says, you pay your money, you do what you want, you leave when you want, that's fine.

And

criticising fans is a complete waste of time because everyone knows they're all, you know, fans are what they are, then they'll be back next week, but there's no point wasting an hour of your afternoon watching your team get absolutely hammered due to the poor performance.

Not as if, you know, Arsenal Buddha would anyway, but it's sick still because your team were terrible.

Go home, enjoy life.

There's more to life than football.

I left a game recently at 70 minutes and got home three minutes after full time and we won that game so you know

so i know i'm i'm with barry i would never leave but i don't mind if people do the other fan who was doing what they wanted was brilliantly on match of the day and they must i'm amazed it didn't get picked up or maybe they just couldn't drown it out enough but a 4-0 there was one west ham fan who was very near a mic just basically yelling the c word really gravelly just absolutely furious and they just couldn't dull it enough and you just heard this you're just thinking surely someone will will cut that out but he was really letting everybody uh know what he thought about this well the ones the ones who stayed to the end probably stayed to beat the traffic it's true it's a good idea it's true isn't it should we stay beat the rush yes to be fair max up person you heard shouting the sea word was jacobs four-year-old so yes no no that's fair um so look brilliant win for arsenal um maybe a statement win i don't know and compared to the other wins the wins for liverpool and Man City, it was certainly the most convincing.

John Liverpool beat Burnley 3-1.

And, you know, they deserved to win.

They scored three headers, of which I think Darwin Nunes was the best one.

But, like, Burnley had moments in this game, didn't he?

Yeah,

the issue is that Burnley have moments in most games, it's fair to say.

Or they certainly have of late.

They've improved without...

you know, their joint bottom.

I think for Liverpool, there was a hangover from Arsenal, wasn't there?

Because that was a very poor performance from them,

including from some of their leading players.

Yeah, I mean, they scratched out a win.

They're all delighted with it.

And

I think, funnily enough, many Liverpool fans watched that game and then immediately tuned in to watch Bay Levikus and to see the future rather than living in the present.

They're ticking off, aren't they, towards that climax around

Klopp's departure?

They expect to beat Burnley.

They probably expect to play better.

But well done, Liverpool.

Commiserations, Burnley.

It's not happening for them this season.

It's fair to say.

But I do think they've improved.

It was a routine but unconvincing win for Liverpool.

Burnley making the same mistakes they always make.

They're very poor at set pieces.

They're not very good at playing out from the back.

They give the ball away too easily, but they did have chances.

And with better finishing, they could could have got something from this game.

Yeah, I don't disagree with that.

I don't feel like there's a lot to analyse in this game, actually, Will.

I mean, we all know that Diego Jotter is brilliant in the air, and

Liverpool are a better team than Burnley, and I suppose Manchester City are a better team than Everton, aren't they?

And

it took them a while.

And Erling Haaland, I don't know what's his power more to you that smacking that first one in with his weaker foot or barreling not a small man, Brant Thwaite, to the the floor on his way to the second.

Also, just to add, having been to half of Burnley's home games this season and not seen them get a point yet, I could give you chapter and verse on them making the same errors every game.

Don't you worry about that.

Yeah, it was an interesting game for City.

I watched the first half.

Well, I had to go to Nottingham for the match,

and it was just one of those classic cities, utterly dominant.

I could bet them to score at some point.

I was quite relaxed about it.

It was all quite straight straightforward.

Yeah, Harlan being back, and you know, he's he's not scored since november because he's not really played much um but yeah

he shows his striking instinct for the first which is his weight's in the right position he knows where the ball's going to bounce and

i mean to admit he is left-footed but i think it's fair to say it's uh his right one's more than just a swinger it's a it's a cracking finish like jordan pickford just couldn't deal with the pace of it it wasn't that far away at all it's you know managed to zip it off the surface it's uh it's a cracking finish and that probably gives him the little bit extra confidence that all strikers need, even when you're Erling Haaland scoreing 50 a season.

And so then when for the second one and I think Bran Freight,

the nature of the game meant that I'm pretty sure he was very tired by that point.

It takes a lot of mental concentration because Everton played really well

because their strategy worked for 70 minutes and you lose onto a set piece, the ball bounces in the wrong place in Everton's view.

But the mental energy it takes in those performances is incredible.

And I think just Bran Fwaite was probably quite tired at that point.

And Haaland,

with his sort of you know, seven touches a game, can be quite energetic in the final few minutes and just absolutely battered him off the ball,

just too physical, and he couldn't cope.

And Bram Fwaite will learn from that.

But yeah, it's just probably possibly an indication that Haaland's really about to take the second half of the season in the same vein of form he did last time.

And it'll be interesting to see if he can manage two goals a game because he's he's got it in him.

Yeah, it's an interesting point you make about tiredness.

I think we don't sort of factor it in unless someone's lying down with cramp at the end of the extra time, we sort of presume they're all just fine the whole time.

But you're right, not like mentally and physically, you will eventually be as weak as a kitten, won't you?

Well, players, you players used to get tired, though, didn't they?

That's the thing.

Like the last 10 minutes, you know, socks rolled down, you know, players sort of, you know, Gary Pallister sort of bent double or, you know, breathing very heavily.

But the fitness levels now are such that, yeah, that's absolutely right.

And although, having said that, if you look at the stats of how there have been more goals this season, a big factor in that is that there is added football because of the time added on, and that has meant more goals.

So it does show that players that the fatigue has to be a factor within that.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, imagine playing against City when they play the ball.

And they always say, don't they, I'm never quite sure how this is, but they say it's more tiring to defend than it is to attack.

100% true.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And what's it?

Brendan Rogers used to call it resting on the ball.

If you have the possession.

So, yeah.

I thought actually that when you asked the question to Will about the most power, the most power I saw from Haaland was the celebration.

It was that was like he sort of burst out of his skin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Superhero.

superhero.

But if we're getting the celebration police out there, what sort of charge are we looking at there for a goal against Everton?

Phil says, Was it peak trolling by City to have a 300 million pound bench against a team facing multiple points deductions for financial irregularities?

I mean, it did cut to their bench, and because I think, you know, Nunes and a couple of other sort of their squad guys had started, their bench was just totally ridiculous.

And what was Everton's was like Alan Harper and Danny Callamar,

Michael Branch turned up, yeah.

Interesting, uh, and Brett Angel, yes, interesting quotes from Pep before the game about Jack Grealish saying this season was not like last season, but he's getting better.

This season lately, he's getting better.

And we're looking forward.

He's doing the steps to get to his best level.

And now he's competing with players at a high level.

This is the only reason why he has to demand himself to get back where he was, especially last season and all the time in Villa.

I'm looking forward to giving him minutes.

He's only got 20 minutes in the last four games, four games before this one, and he came on as a sub in the 87th minute, which I guess is a sign of how strong their side is, Barry.

But also, you wonder what a hundred million pound player is thinking if that's the amount of football they're getting.

Yes, um, I mean, Calvin Phillips was a 50 million pound player or thereabouts, and he's made it clear that he wasn't really happy with

the manner in which he was treated or the lack of game time he got at City.

We were all I mean, we've spoken before on this podcast about having seen how good and electric and exciting Jeremy Doku was, what would that mean for Jack Grealish?

And

it's meant he's not getting as much game time as he would like, anywhere near as much.

I suspect after last season, he probably thought he'd be

an ever-present or as near to an ever-present as you can be in the city team.

And that has proved to be anything but the case.

So

do you want to stay at the best team?

probably in the world and win trophies but not play as often as you'd like, or do you want to go somewhere else and

not win as much stuff, but play more?

And some players may well be happy enough on the bench and getting

regular cameo appearances, but others would not be.

So he's a decision to make, doesn't he?

Yeah, he does.

That'll do for part one.

Part two will do the race for the top four.

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Max here.

Barry's here too.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So, then the race for fourth place.

If we presume that Spurs and Villa aren't in the title race, Spurs have 47 points, Villa 46.

Manchester United now 41 after that 2-1 win at Villa Park.

Four wins in a row for them in all competitions.

Really enjoyable game.

Both teams were good.

Villa could have scored hundreds.

Inana was excellent.

Incredible pace to this game.

John, United aren't shite.

Question mark.

No, no.

Yeah,

this is a novel position for me to be on the pod in over the last couple of years.

Yeah, a team of fortitude.

You say that Villa created a lot of chances.

They did create a lot of chances.

That's true.

But they were never quite the chance that they wanted, were they?

I mean, apart from obviously Douglas.

Douglas Louise scored the goal, and then he probably had the best chance.

The one where yeah, Watkins had a couple.

Yeah, Watkins had a couple where it was sort of point blank and you could only shoot straight at Inanna, yeah.

And actually, the same happens to Douglas Louise, where Dalla and

Inanna get in a mess, and then the ball comes to Louise, and he just the wrong foot.

I think John McGinn was saying afterwards that, you know, normally it was a bit full on the other foot, that that would have flown in, and who's to doubt that?

Yeah, Villa played really well in the game and came away with nothing.

But I think in the last

10 minutes of actually talking of fatigue,

or was it fatigue, the game sort of slowed, didn't it?

After being at this breakneck pace for such a long time.

And you could see the person most concerned about that was Emery on the sideline.

And Emery is always a constant present on the sideline.

You could hear him actually on the T V over what was a great atmosphere.

And you could see that he was worried his team were going to sit back.

And in their minds, they're thinking, we hold off, we retain an eight-point gap on United, we're in fifth, hey, we're still in the Champions League hunt,

and that's when they got done.

That's when United finally put together passing combination, great goal, Scott McTominay, the new Oligon-Solskjaer, slash Javier Hernandez, Super Sub, David Fairclough, whatever you want to call it.

And

United snatched it in a manner that you would have to say over the last decade, there haven't been too many moments like that from Manchester United.

Manchester United, Villa Park,

it has those sort of

historical significance, doesn't it?

And

I was just thinking about Villa Park.

It's one of my favourite stadiums to go to.

It's a great atmosphere when it really gets going.

Aussie Osborne pumping out before the game.

It really, really gets going.

And also the fact that the Villa fans have this.

Well, they have the same syndrome that a lot of fans have.

I saw this from both Sheffield United and Luton fans over on Saturday: is that referees have a global conspiracy against their team, and any decision against them is, of course, the Premier League being corrupt.

And so that they booed every decision given by the referee.

And the thing is about a boo, and one of the contributors to the

NBM said this yesterday does actually make for quite a good atmosphere, doesn't it?

The boo.

Like, it does.

Yeah,

yeah, it adds a bit to it.

And so, yeah, great win for United, great game, great outfit for the Premier League.

Um, United are back, but we've seen that before as well.

True, I mean, I suppose we were unlucky for that first goal, weren't they?

Because it's not a free kick, it's a dive from Rashford.

It's offside, Casimira's offside when the ball's put in.

It might not have been a corner anyway, but you know, they still couldn't defend it very well, they couldn't.

I mean,

Harry Maguire, it was just sort of like launched like this gun shit.

It was just like this aim here and

I think it's Camera, wasn't it?

It's supposed to be marketing him.

He had no hope of getting and they couldn't find another defender to, you know, if maybe if Villa had

a stronger defender,

that might have been.

But Maguire just killed it.

He's got maybe he's got a hard and a soft forehead because it was quite nicely cushioned, wasn't it?

It just hit his head and went to Hoyland.

Well, he's got a sort of buffony hair, that's true.

So he could sort of, yeah, yeah.

Quite a few interesting United players to pick out, Barry.

I don't know if there's anyone specific you want to, like Inanna, who'd be been very critical of, McTominay, who keeps screwing these goals, Cobby Mainu, who who, like, I don't know if it's too late for the plane, but looks like a real talent.

Yeah, well, you've picked him out, so there's no need for me to do it.

I thought Diego Dallo was very good.

Yeah, he had a good game yesterday.

The cross for the McTominay goal was perfect, and he posed Villa all sorts of problems.

Um,

Garinacho was okay.

Uh,

He's had better games than United shirt, but

I mean, this game,

I'm not sure how much to read into it from a United perspective.

I don't think the better team won this game.

I think the more confident team won it.

Because Villa came in on the back of a couple of bad results.

United had won three in a row.

Hoyland is obviously confident because he's banging them in at a rate of a goal a game now.

But

Villa Villa were ahead in most metrics.

More shots on target, more big chances, more possession, more corners, more crosses.

And I think it was just poor finishing that cost them the three points.

So, you know, it was a decent enough performance for Manchester United, but there's a hell of a lot of room for improvement.

particularly at the back.

Yeah, Freddie says, after the Douglas Luis dancing, what's the dance move you've done you regretted the most?

Hard to know what he was doing there, Will.

I mean, I'm obviously not young anymore, but it's a very sort of I don't reminded me of a sort of, I don't know,

I don't know.

The song that sprang to mind was Sunita's So Macho, that like a dancer in the background of that, like wearing maybe just a waistcoat and nothing else, so just going and just sort of shimmying a bit.

The Lambarda, the Lambarda, yeah, Lambarda works too.

It's pretty worrying when you're coming to me for the voice of youth on this pod.

You're absolutely right.

Oh, here he is, 36-year-old Will.

Let him talk to the kids.

It was a very

jazzy movie.

Yeah, he seemed a very sort of something you could do for quite a long time, as you say, as a background dancer.

You know, he'll be there on Strictly next year and

jumping off a stage or something and then doing that as a little kicking a boy.

The combo things just before the show, but not actually one of the main

main dancers.

He'll kick a boy into the goal, then jump off.

And a sort of like when Adams was on.

Is there not a suggestion that Raphael Varan was the target of this three amigo style pelvic thrust?

And

in the event of McTominay's goal, I believe,

I think some words might have been exchanged between the two.

I think Varane

Varan didn't do his own thrust off.

It wasn't like West Side Story or anything, but it was, you know.

Like a dance-off, like it's Varane and Douglas Louise doing run DMC and

Jason Nevins remix.

Yeah.

Doing a full dance off.

She's our cultural reference,

aren't they?

If United and Villa finish joint points and everything, maybe should decide fourth place on a dance off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Good idea.

I think it's a.

I don't know if anyone else noticed it, but Casemiro's indignation at being completely fairly booked on 37 minutes was just a piece of performance art.

He sort of did the who me to all four corners of the ground and then went to the ref and did the textbook

South American.

I got the ball gesture, despite the fact that he hadn't.

It was like a tactical foul.

In months to come, it may earn him a blue card, more of which anon, but it was sensational and it's really worth digging out if you haven't seen it.

This game has dancing, villains, acting, booing.

You know, this is the greatest.

This is the greatest show on earth.

Stick your super bowl.

This is how it is.

Scott McTommony.

Patrick Mahomes will keep McTommon.

Anyway, so Villa means it all means that Villa is still a point behind Spurs who beat Brighton 2-1.

Jason says Spurs, seven points from the top, does not get spoken about.

Surely the percentage...

Oh, yeah,

we've never mentioned Spurs at all this season

you're right surely the percentage chance of them winning the league has gone up from 0.1 percent to 0.2 percent another really good game bows another game a bit like villain man united where for a bit i thought am i watching this on times two speed it was like incredibly quick uh game of football and I suppose the key moment is the the winner, which was like a beautiful move.

And the more prosaic of us, i.e.

me and John, would be thinking it's injury time, get it launched.

But Ange has And his ways, which is let's just keep playing football.

And it transpired to be the right thing to do.

Yeah, I think we used to praise Spurs for getting late winners.

Then we were criticising them for conceding late winners.

So now we have to praise them again for getting another late winner in the 96th or 7th minute, I think it was.

Really good goal.

Richarlison sort of played the ball forward to Son, the returning prodigal son, who's back from the Asia Cup, on the overlap.

and his cross was a thing of great beauty.

And Brennan Johnson, I think, you know, was quicker than his marker and swept it home.

So it's a great winner, and it was a good game, and it's a game that could have gone either way.

Top Brighton were good.

We tend to think any team that loses a football match must have been bad or must have played badly.

Not always the case, and particularly not the case on a few occasions this weekend.

But, yeah, it was a really good goal.

And

Son, I suspect it was a goal they may not have scored if someone else had been on the overlap instead of Son.

It was a brilliant cross.

Yeah, it's interesting, John, that these two sides who play so similarly, it seems to me that there is so much pressure on the sort of deep-lying central midfielder who takes the ball either from the keeper or his centre-back basically sprinting towards his own goal.

And his job is to beat his man, and then you're in.

And if he loses the ball then they're in and that is sort of the whole maybe it's an oversimplification of how these two sides play but it's sort of seemed to be that it's like if you're bent encourag or whoever was doing the same for brighton it's like it's on you mate you get past this we've beaten the press if you lose this they'll probably get a chance yeah i think

i think that's why there are these teams that have feet seem to feature a lot of high scoring it featuring a lot of high scoring games brighton in particular it's like the brighton trick once you've worked it out is essentially that, isn't it?

It's trigger this, and we all go together, and then we can also get caught the other way as well.

What does it say about the Premier League?

It's just very exciting, I suppose.

And

obviously, Roberto De Zerbi

his toothache because he wasn't there, of course.

Yes, invasive dental surgery,

not just dental surgery, invasive one.

Sounds terrible.

I mean, I mean, we probably shouldn't speculate, but that sounds like a wisdom tooth or something, doesn't it?

Unless he's got a Brendan Rodgers fit, a Jürgen Klopp.

You never know.

We'll see what happens.

Well, maybe if he just comes back with

a full set of gigs.

He's comes back from Turkey, and it's like, ah, hello.

But I've never thought of him as someone with particularly bad teeth, but there you go.

But he,

his assistant was saying, wasn't he, that

he'd watched the game.

And they'd been in contact with him.

And I wondered if he was just under the dentist's chair

with with

because I went to a dentist near here actually

for for actually some rather invasive dental surgery and they had Netflix on

while I was yeah yeah yeah but they had Netflix with a poor internet connection so it kept buffering

while so like so I hope that Roberto deserved Biza do you think he had those things you know the bits of foam in and you know the dentist starts saying so you know I you know what do you do and you're like don't ask me a question I've got nothing to say and they're on the phone to deserve it he's like I can't.

All I want to do is swallow.

And I don't know if I can swallow what's currently in my mouth.

It's just there.

I've got these bits of foam.

I look like a gerbil.

Just leave me alone.

He's telling his assistant to go 4-4-2.

And it's like, half past two?

What?

You know, I didn't.

Anyway, Ansu Fatty had a massive chance this game.

As you said, Baz could have gone either way.

And Vicaria made some really big saves from Wellbeck, I think, at 0-0, Matoma at 1-0.

But Spurs now will have got their full-strength squad pretty much.

You know, know, there'll be so many injuries, and they haven't had their players because of AFCON and the Asian Cup and stuff.

They've got quite a nice run of fixtures.

Wolves Palace.

Okay, Villaraway is not easy.

Fulham, Luton.

They don't really win convincingly that often.

But what's the

feel like?

Because after that, they've got an unbelievable, I think it's March or April, where they basically play Liverpool City and Arsenal in three weeks.

It's just something hilarious.

So it's either they've got to win all these to put themselves in a good position, but they will find themselves, if they do well, in really quite a promising position they don't win many games convincingly but still brendan johnson scores a very very late win and then just walks off as if

he's tap tap toned the 17 at five aside against you know a team a team of players that have not played in 18 years i was googling for a brighton connection there you know the non-celebral loves the seaside yeah where's it where he spent all his holidays as a kid so just

wanted to wanted to honour the the seagulls that didn't nick his chips yeah

yeah i know that's it it's funny that having a full choice squad options off the bench would really help you as a Premier League team.

They did a bit of business in January.

I still think

they're probably a little bit short for top four, I'd argue.

But as we've discussed already, momentum is always a key thing in football.

And

as we've said, Brighton played really well.

You're beating good teams in whatever manner, and you go into the end.

you've got that boost of having son back must be incredible because he is your talisman whatever you want post kane he is the man that makes a difference van der Vend's been incredible since he came back from injury Vicario has settled in very quickly and you know you might not want to admit it but you do target games and they do have a very winnable set of games and those can add the psychological pressure onto the other teams.

If you do get 12 in 12

points, not 12 in 12 games, that'd be silly.

Those other teams are going to have a massive sort of negative impact on them because you look at United yesterday, they're desperate to close that gap on Villa, and Villa are desperate to keep it at eight points as discussed.

And they know these things matter at this stage when you know the days are getting longer.

The season isn't that far from concluding.

There's only 14 games left for many teams.

It's a fun time.

I think it's going to be a big, big month for this.

10 games against the Bitter Send, 14 games to go.

That sort of, you know, negotiations.

Right, okay, I'm with you.

Forest 2, Newcastle 3.

Gimmer had a brilliant game, two brilliant goals.

The first, especially, that volley is masterful.

Will, you were there.

Did you have a nice time?

I had a lovely time.

You know, it was just two very flawed teams.

It's quite interesting.

Newcastle's games have now had 90 goals in 24, which is quite impressive.

But at no point did they really threaten too much outside of set pieces and a mistake from Alanga just to pass the ball to Gwynmarausch, but

you know, and they couldn't cope with the pace of Alanga.

It was quite fascinating to watch.

Neither team really could control it too much.

Newcastle started off the better, but Forrest are just there to play on the break and they knew that they had

burn on toast, if you will.

um

and so they're always in it whatever happened but the problem forest got is they just can't defend set pieces they've conceded more set pieces and excluding penalties than any team in the league like it's really farcical and then new know after the match was like oh the first one oh it was it was really well done to be fair so fair play sounds like i mean you did leave a man in about two three yards of space at the back post of volley home i mean It's well worth

it, but your job is to counteract it somehow.

Like maybe someone, you know, just keep half an eye on Quimmaresh, see what he's doing.

It's a great, great volley, and it's a great finish for the winner.

Newcastle, they've scored that goal before last season against Brentford, except Guimarez headed it instead of volleying at that time, but it was an identical goal.

I don't expect Noon or anyone else to, you know, watch every Newcastle free kick or corner ever taken.

Isn't that someone's job?

Yeah, I was just saying,

Carrie, if you remember something,

I think they should remove it.

That's the bar.

You should be the Nottingham Forest set piece coach.

I'd like to see you on the bench there, getting high-fived when Nottingham Forest don't concede from a corner.

The highlight of sort of one of the coaches from Forest was they got the iPad out to show the fourth official the non-penalty award and was sort of shaking it in his face and received a booking for that.

What, but did you have it up on Twitter or something?

Well, you've got a live feed on your game.

Oh, actually,

I think that should have been a penalty, actually.

I thought it was a penalty personally.

The reason it doesn't seem to have been given is because Wanyi was running out of road.

He hadn't much pitch to operate in, but that's irrelevant.

Dubravka deliberately tried to bring him down and did bring him down, so it's a penalty.

It must be a time here as well where Forrest have to start sacking a few people for scapegoating for errors.

So the set piece coach must be looking over his shoulder right now.

Yeah, could go.

Exactly.

Bring in Glenn Denning.

I mean, it was one of those penalties where I thought, well, if I was at Stockley Park, we'd still be there.

We'd be going, I just don't, I'm just not sure.

I thought Botman got him first and then Dubrovka got him.

I thought,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

I thought maybe

they were both fouls, but neither of them were fouls.

You know, neither of them were that fouly.

But you're very much

entering the realms of the ex-pro.

You know, it wasn't enough.

No, I agree.

No, no, you're right.

I like to feel sometimes.

It's either a potion.

You're right.

Mr.

Blue Cards here.

Yeah, yeah.

It is a foul, but it's not a foul.

Just got to be stronger.

They've all got to be stronger, Jeff.

And that Fabian Schaer's turn unfinished was worth mentioning.

That was really excellent, wasn't it?

Anyway, Forrest in a bit of trouble, and that'll do for part two.

Part three, I'll begin at Kenilworth Road.

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here, too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Uh, Luke Monchov United 3, John, you were there.

Um, those penalties decisions.

Oh, I mean,

Pimgrim says, like, I assume the whole panel thinks the Hanball pens yesterday are shit, but what would they actually change?

Like, how Hanball is defined, the punishment, or introduced Baz's appeal system, which would be a bit like crickets.

You know, you get three appeals for your VAR.

Like, we all think those decisions are abjectly terrible.

I don't know if I blame the ref or VAR or anyone because we're all so confused.

But what should we do about it, John?

You're asking me to.

Oh, God.

Can't I just talk about the game?

No, but yeah, yeah.

You can do whatever you like.

I mean, VAR, I mean, it's just unleashed.

I wrote this the other day, unleashed the bowels of hell and we're sort of stuck with it now, aren't we?

And these decisions happen.

And I suppose that the best thing I could say about that is that Rob Edwards in defeat just said, listen, neither rubber penalties.

And

you get the impression that quite a lot of people in football are just like, that's part of the game.

Now, we almost have to accept it and get on with it.

I suspect not everyone has that attitude, mind you.

And yeah, actually, the key player in the game, Vinitius Souza, was the guy that conceded the Sheffield Luton penalty.

Now, he

managed to handball it

behind himself.

I mean, there's no way that he could have known

that he would do it, but he actually had a very, very good game in midfield, won the ball to set up the deciding goal, which he scored himself, Ross Barkley.

Ross Barkley at Kennilworth Road, you know, lords it.

You know, he's like this sort of almost, you know,

Italian style central midfielder, you know, playmaker.

And then Sousa just ran straight through him, took the ball off him, and Cameron Archer played his part as he did, scoring a very good goal after

a very bad miss, actually.

He showed real fortitude, missed a chance.

You just thought, how has he missed that?

And you expect a young striker's head to go down within seconds.

He picked the ball, gone straight through Osho,

give it the eyebrows to keeper and defender, and scored.

And you thought, That's a player of talent.

Every time I see Cameron Archer, he does something like that.

He's real, real talent.

But it feels like it's not consistent enough.

Yeah, I agree.

Here was a game when Luton were favourites to win the game, perhaps for the first time this season, and they didn't deal that well with it.

And I've seen that happen before,

where teams start to haul themselves out of relegation.

Remember this happening with Marco Silva when he was hull manager a few years ago.

They got to this point where it's like, we're going to get out of it.

And then they somehow managed to lose to Sunderland and blew it at that point.

I think that's what Rob Edwards, who has done such a great job and won such applaudits, absolutely deservedly so,

is that he's going to have to somehow change the mentality of the team from that underdog spirit to being to actually believing that they deserve to be in that position because it felt like they didn't really know how to break down

Shepherd United.

And I was sat with a colleague and she was telling me that she wasn't used to Luton having the ball so much.

And they didn't deal that well with it.

And then, of course, Chris Wilder,

Ever, the press conference performer.

I think we discussed this yesterday.

I didn't eat a sandwich in front of him.

I had one in my bag.

And I was thinking about the reason for this.

And the reason I didn't eat it was that there were some sausage rolls going around in the room.

So it's possible.

It's possible that someone was munching on a sausage roll while Chris Wilder held his press conference.

And he didn't mind that.

He was okay enough because he was absolutely obsessed with having lost 5-0 to Aston Villa before.

And he paid in,

let's say, over eight minutes of talking.

He probably referred to that about six or seven times.

That obviously hurt him.

Chris Wilder, of course, is 100% blade himself.

His friends are all blades.

And that hurt him.

And this felt like some sort of penance, some vindication for that.

I like a man who only has friends who support the same football team as him.

You will not be.

You can't.

Hull City, sorry, mate.

Blades or nothing.

Stevenage, sorry.

Brett for one tuning at Wolves.

Actually, massive win for them, Barry, because they were starting to teeter.

They were below Crystal Palace, which I couldn't quite believe.

And Ivan Toney makes a big difference.

Yeah.

And after the game, he said, I'm a Brentford player for now, but no one can predict the future.

Which I thought was slightly weird thing for him to say because when he scored on his comeback, he

said in his post-stratch interview that he had predicted it that morning.

So, you know, either you have a crystal ball that functions or you don't, Ivan, make your mind up.

But yeah, it was an important win for Brentford.

One of their goals came from

bad Wolves pass playing out from the back.

They had another chance.

And Wolves lost Mateus Kuna after 20 minutes.

I think that probably had a major say in the outcome.

But

I think Brentford will be okay.

I mean, there are

teams around them that I would say are in far more danger of being relegated.

Yeah.

And frustrating for Wolves, given they've had some really big home wins.

And then, you know, you turn up for this one.

Not unlike, you know, Luton suddenly being favourites again for a win.

And you turn up for this one and you just don't really perform.

I agree with you about Kunha.

But still, they weren't great.

And Brentford were good in this game.

Finally, Fulham three, Bournemouth one.

Fulham's first wins.

It's the new year.

Puts them above Bournemouth in a very mid-table-y game.

I think my favourite moment was Decordover Reed's cushioned header to assist Mooniz for one of his goals, if I remember it correctly.

But well done to Fulham.

Good win for them.

Palace Chelsea played tonight.

We'll cover that on Wednesday's pod Champions League's back, of course.

Mark says, How do you feel, Max, that you're not sympatico with your hero Ange over the blue card debate?

Are you questioning your life choices?

Yeah, plans were unveiled on Thursday by ifab: that a trial could commence soon where a blue card would be shown for dissent and professional fouls where the offender would be sent to the Sinbin for 10 minutes.

FIFA's clarified the trial will not occur in elite football.

While football's lawmakers, ifab will not publish plans for the sim bin trial until next month, and said, One team being down to 10 men for 10 minutes, you know what it's going to do to our game?

It's going to destroy it, mate.

You're going to have one team just sitting there trying to waste time for 10 minutes, waiting for a guy to come on.

Every other sport is trying to declutter.

All we're trying to do is go the other way for some bizarre reason.

I mean, look,

it was almost universally panned by everybody in the game.

Except me, I don't hate it.

But I'm interested to gauge the feelings of the panel, Will.

My view is, is that Simbins are obviously awful.

No chance of Simbins, I agree with Ange on everything there.

Is that actually the blue card could make sense if you differentiate dissent as,

you know,

if you differentiate...

descent from fouls and things like that and handball because it is very different and if you want to get rid of it maybe have it as a blue card.

And then, if you do three pieces of descent, then you get a one-match ban.

Because

calling the referee a nonce when you're very high on energy and it's a dramatic game of five minutes to go is probably a bit different from two-footing some bloke.

And that's the nature of it.

And so, if you want to get rid of descent and be a bit harsher, make it a different offence.

And that would be my suggestion.

And then, you know, three strikes and you're out for a game.

But if you have a sim bin, bin, it would be absolutely ludicrous.

Um, yeah, my instinct is that considering that we're still unravelling the wonderful world of VAR to add an extra layer is probably a bit much at this point.

Um, and

I've always had it been fairly resistant to uh

the types of people that want to change the rules of the game and discuss this type of thing.

You know, the type that phone in David Meller on 606 from some lively soccer chat in like red hot soccer chat

red hot soccer chat and you know what it changed the game it's like the game is just about perfect or was

uh though i also at the same time i wonder if angie's against that type of thing i wonder what angie's

like ideal football was what what stuff that they've added on would they take away would he be you know would he this sort of absolute base level football you know would he would he have offside would he uh you know would he do you know what I'd be interested to see.

I'd be interested to see what the sort of, you know, what was the feeling about the backpass law before it came in?

Because that's clearly been a law change for the better, right?

Yeah, it was amazing.

It was amazing.

It was also very funny to watch certain goalkeepers not being able to do it.

But I bet there were people who said, I bet there were people who said,

this will kill football.

This will be a disaster.

I don't remember.

But I suppose my...

It was a different era.

Liverpool football fans might have been against it.

This was the joke, wasn't it, at the time that this was Liverpool's dominance of the 80s was, you know, Grobola

out to Hansen.

The balls with Gillespie now

back to Grobola.

And

that was the, you know, and

certain Liverpool of a certain age will say, oh, but there was a lot of skill in that game because you had to spring from that.

And, you know, whatever.

But there wasn't anything against it because as soon as it happened, it was like, wow, gate football can be an attacking game because the late 80s, 90s wasn't.

Yeah, I suppose

my thoughts, Barry, are

I played at

grassroots football and we've had Simbins.

You've mentioned it before, Max.

Yeah,

sorry.

And obviously, there are no comparisons between elite and grassroots footballers, right?

Apart from perhaps dissent, where it is just men showing at another man, right, over thing, you know, and obviously it's more trivial at grassroots because it's not your job.

But Simbins actually work really well as a deterrent.

The idea isn't that you have 10 V9 players.

The idea is that people don't do descent anymore.

And so they stay on the pitch, but no one's abusing the referee.

So that's sort of the descent side of things.

The tactical foul side of things, I guess it depends.

Do you think tactical fouls are a big problem in the game?

I, it's 70th minute, someone's running through and someone just clips and takes a yellow card, doesn't mean anything to anyone.

Or do you think something's going to be done about it?

Because if you do think something should be done about it,

then you have to do something about it.

I'm probably minded to think, you know, A, because of how much people hate it, and B, because you're right, once VAR, I would get rid of VAR and I'd swap it for VAR.

But I just wonder if I wonder what you, I wonder if you think tactical fouls are a big enough problem that need a solution or not.

Well, they are a problem, I think.

And the problem with the problem is there's already a punishment in place for tactical fouls.

It's a yellow card, and often that punishment isn't given.

As, you know,

Fernandino seemed to have some supernatural ability not to get booked uh

for for those technical fouls and but you if you do get a yellow card at some point you will get a suspension you know after you've picked up five but it's not really the team you've committed the technical foul that benefits from your punishment it's the team further down the line there's also a punishment in place for dissent already which is a yellow card but refs more often than not don't show them.

With regard to the blue card, I'm not...

I'm kind of ambivalent, but

what happens if you have the Manchester United scenario where seven shaven-headed, angry thugs surround the referee and are all screaming in his face?

Do they all get a blue card?

And they're Manchester United down to four players for ten minutes?

You say it's there as a deterrent.

It will deter people up to a point, but if a particularly egregious decision or what they feel is a particularly egregious decision goes against them, you will have a scenario where players surround the referee and we're all calling him all sorts and effing and jeffing in his face.

He can't blue card the lot of them.

No.

So what?

Does he just pick one?

I'm just imagining the Twitter debates over what the blue card offense, you know, because no one knows what a foul or a ham ball is.

I mean, not the social media should should dictate any of this, but can you imagine?

You could have a lip reader in the bar room.

That'd be great.

I think he could have said ducking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, but

it wouldn't have been put in the hands behind the, you know, the dissent behind the hand.

Maybe that's a blue card in it.

That's a blue card in itself, yeah.

Get them off.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, fair enough, yeah.

I suppose there's another, yeah, there's another interesting point, which is just the instant reaction, which is I hate change, right?

And that goes for life.

Yes.

And so within football, it's like ifab aren't, and I've no time for ifab.

I was saying to Barry on the radio yesterday, I emailed ifab about the handball law a while back.

They replied once, and then they totally ghosted me.

I've been ghosted by ifab.

That's where my life has got to.

But, like, we can try things, and if they don't, if they don't work, right?

You know, it's not saying we're going to bring it in for the Champions League final.

Like, that's not, that's not what the plan is.

Um, anyway, uh, it will be interesting to see, but, um,

I'm probably on the wrong side of history before it's happened.

Um, Well done to

Ivory Coast, who won AFCON.

We don't have a huge amount of time.

Well, if I may, we were talking about the effects of fatigue earlier.

And I think fatigue played a huge part in this final because Nigeria have been forced to basically feel the same team every single game they've played.

And Ivory Coast, because they were so terrible.

earlier in the tournament, they were forced to make loads of changes from game to game to game.

And I think it was quite obvious watching this game that Nigeria's players were.

And remember, it was played in very humid conditions.

Nigeria's players were knackered and Ivory Coast weren't.

And I think that's what made the difference.

That and the fact that Ivory Coast, I don't think any team's name has ever been written on a cup in larger, more

fluorescent lights than theirs was on this one.

It's a remarkable achievement for them.

Yeah, Solis made the point, didn't he, about Nigeria, that they hadn't changed any of their players and they were, you know, they were knacuds.

I mean, the Sebastian Lair story is amazing, isn't it?

You know, and for what he has been through and to get over cancer and come back and score the winner.

And actually, it's a really clever finish, isn't it?

So wonderful moment for him.

Lovely to see Didier Drogba in kit.

You know, celebrating, but in kit was really good,

wasn't it?

Also, well done.

Did he go full John Terry or was he just wearing a shirt?

I think just a shirt.

Wasn't it more Nelson Mandela 95?

You know, just shirt with.

Yeah.

Yes.

Didier Dropboard wear suit trousers?

I can't imagine it, but you know, maybe a pair of jeans.

I reckon maybe a small jean jeans.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, a smart jean or a cash.

And a brogue.

Yeah.

He's probably wearing short, you know, like sort of three-quarter length.

He can probably get away with, you know, ankle tappers.

Qatar won the Asian Cup against Jordan.

Akram Aviv's got a hat-trick of penalties.

Apparently he did some magic.

I haven't seen this.

He did some magic to celebrate.

We'll just release some just soared Debbie McGee

after winning.

After winning.

Jordan actually looked well like from the highlights that I saw, looked like they played quite well in this game, but he scored three penalties.

Well done to them.

Big results in Europe.

We've got Champions League pods this week, so we'll go into them in more details.

But, you know, Mark says, how many ladders do you have to walk under for your two best chances of winning a league title to be denied by Leicester City and Bayer Leverkusen?

Yeah, this is after Leverkusen beat Bayern 3-0.

I just won't be able, I won't be able to handle Harry Kane walking around a pitch, sort of glumly applauding respectfully the Bayern fans after he doesn't win the league.

He'll have Eric Doe with him to do it, though, won't he?

So, you know, we've been here before, old Sun.

Yeah, you're right.

And when he wins the Euros, it'll make it even

sweeter, won't it?

We haven't got time for Alexander Sheffrin spending ages putting through that new statute that meant he could run UEFA forever and then saying, actually, I can't be bothered.

But at some point, we'll talk about that.

And uh, yeah, Neil Warnock back in charge at Aberdeen.

Uh, they won 2-0 against Bonnie Rig Rose in the Scottish Cup.

Fitbar is on our agenda.

The title race is very close and exciting, and we apologise for not being fully focused on it of late.

Uh, but that'll do uh for today's part.

Uh, thank you, Barry.

Thanks, Max.

Thanks, Will.

Thank you very much, Max.

Thank you, John.

Thanks for having me.

Pubble Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

We're back on Wednesday.

This is The Guardian.