Liverpool and Manchester City drop points in the title race – Football Weekly

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

Two of the title races drop points.

At what point do we stop saying, well, Manchester City will win the last 20 games of the season and walk away with it.

Crystal Palace's comeback featuring Roy's joyous grin as Phil Foden flattened Jean-Philippe Matetta.

Time to take Villa seriously.

One point off the top, you don't have to take Martinez versus Mopai seriously if you don't want to.

Arsenal make relatively easy work of Brighton, and then there's Liverpool 0, Manchester United 0.

I guess you have to credit United, but that was tough.

Elsewhere, Sean Deish dishes his way to victory at his old house.

There's more kudos for kudos.

Raul Jimenez bum sees red.

Chelsea turn a little corner and Spurs stay in touch.

All that plus your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly

Callum says elite lineup Williams says the A team is back and very hard to cast these four in the roles of Hannibal BA Face and Murdoch but Barry Glendenning welcome pity the fool Max pity the fool Barney Ronnie hello Hi everyone.

Hello Johnny Lou.

Hi.

Wow you sort of sound us.

That's really the Barney role to

sound that upbeat right from the top, Johnny.

Was it because you went to Anfield yesterday?

No, it's because I woke up nine minutes ago.

Oh, okay.

Oh, well, you can ease yourself in.

Got back at 1am.

I woke up at 4 a.m.

UK time yesterday.

It's set the arm for 4 a.m.

to get the flight from Berlin to London.

And then

I had about 15 minutes at home, then got the train to Euston.

And, you know, I was eventually back about 1 a.m.

So it was a 21-hour day yesterday.

And I'm not saying that I didn't enjoy that game, but would I have liked it to have been better for the 21 hours invested in it?

Yes, probably.

Well, we'll get to that eventually.

Let's just start sending our thoughts to Tom Lockyer.

Bournemouth Luton was abandoned when he suffered a cardiac arrest on the pitch.

The latest statement from Luton Town says, while our captain Tom Lockyer remains in hospital following the cardiac arrest he suffered on the pitch at Bournemouth yesterday, we understand understand that supporters are concerned for him and there's widespread media interest in his condition.

Tom is still undergoing tests and scans and is awaiting the results before the next steps for his recovery are determined.

We're unable to provide a running commentary on his situation and request that all media please wait for any updates to be released via the club's official channels when the time is right.

We all want the very best for Tom, his partner Taylor and the whole Lockyer family and politely ask that his and their privacy is respected at that difficult time, which will of course do.

Dominic Booth in the paper writing,

praise is deservedly being dished out to Phil Billing, who was the first to dash over to the stricken Lockyer and to his teammate Dominic Solanke, who was seen urgently calling for medical support.

The speed with which they grasped the severity of the situation was commendable.

They played a part in getting Lockyer the help he needed.

When the game was abandoned, it was with the full support of the Bournemouth players, staff, and supporters.

They showed the best of the beautiful game.

And there's not Barry a lot that we can say that hasn't been said.

I mean, it really reminded us all, I think, of the Christian Erickson situation.

And Tom Lockyer has a long journey to whether he plays again or just back to health.

Um, but it was obviously a very traumatic experience for you know everyone who was there.

Yeah, um,

it reminded us of the Erickson situation, it reminded us of the more

of the Lockyer situation at the playoffs final last season and

various other situations in which

players haven't been so lucky and have lost their lives.

But I'm not sure there's a whole great deal else you can say apart from to to wish him the very best of luck at what will be

a very uncertain time for him.

Absolutely and we do that.

Let's go to matters on the pitch.

Looking at the top four in order of games that were most to least interesting.

So Johnny you can wait for a bit on your Anfield experience at the Etihad Man City 2, Crystal Palace 2.

I mean surely the highlight of the weekend Barney is Roy Hodgson laughing sort of in Pep's direction after that late penalty is awarded.

That really was a very surprising result.

Obviously

Roy didn't seem that surprised.

He seemed quite pleased.

But

I find cities

sort of dip in form really fascinating.

I've got this theory about them, which is obviously wrong, but is an interesting theory that there was a bit a slight kind of Robert Johnson going down to the crossroads thing about last season season and that they had this perfectly functioning team.

It was just such a brilliant team.

The team that lost to Real Madrid in the Champions League late stages the season before last, playing with false nines, just everything worked perfectly in that team.

And in the league, they're incredible.

And signing Haaland, who was exactly the opposite of that, and is basically just a

loaded gun to go at the front of the team, was like a deal with the devil.

The team will continue to function so well that he will just score all the chances it makes and you will win everything for a season.

But it's short term because eventually signing a player who doesn't fit your system and not tending to other bits of that system, as Guardiana always has every season, he's made the team better in the same way.

But it's like they just said, all right, we just got to win everything, let's make that deal.

And I would like to think, just because it's an interesting narrative, that this is the kind of payoff in that they, for once, he didn't tend towards what he really wants to do, which is create a team full of midfielders playing beautiful frictionless football and instead just said sodik we're going to fire the kalashnikov at this thing and win everything and that this is the payoff um that beautifully functioned team functioning team has lost lots of really important players um who are more important than uh a gundagan to the way you know gundagan uh brilliant midfielders who are more important to the way Guardioli wants to play than Haaland really is.

And this is the bit where,

you know, Mephistopheles knocks on the door and says, we're going to call in that debt.

On the other hand, they probably just win 20 in a row and win the league and win the Champions League again.

And it's all fine.

But as a neutral, there is something about City that the only really interesting thing is when they struggle

because them winning is kind of what I expect to happen, given the amount of talent and the brilliant management and the way the clubs run.

So failure is interesting, even if it's not really failure yet.

And yeah, I look forward to that winning run.

And this aged well.

I mean, I had actually written, Johnny, at what point do we stop glibly saying, well, they'll win 20 a row after Christmas and win the league?

Well, this is, you know, I think it's understandable because of the way that Guardiola tries to get his teams to peak for the spring, basically, for the run-in.

And, you know, he wants his teams to try and not sort of, you know, cruise through the first half of the season, but

this is the point of the season where normally they're still working things out and then things click

and they go on a run.

I don't think that's out of the question this time, but there is something slightly different about it this time.

There is very clearly like a transitional season for City.

And I think Haaland last season papered over a lot of

that transition because he was just so brilliant.

And obviously they didn't have him this time.

They had a problem.

converting shots, they have a problem kind of basically warding off transitions and

they have a problem

defending their own penalty area.

These are things I feel like Guardiola is kind of, this is the sort of moment he's going to relish.

He's got a problem to fix.

He's tried four central defenders and he's tried Alvarez in this sort of

weird midfield role.

And now he's going to have to find a new solution.

Because yeah,

they're clearly not where they are.

They were at this time last season.

Now obviously they go to Saudi Arabia to play the

World Club Championship.

And

there's a different kind of pressure on them now.

As I mentioned to you yesterday, Baz, I really enjoyed the different levels of composure in Phil Foden in his

assist for Jack Grealish's goal, which was just so beautiful.

And then that just massive hoik at Matetta to give away the penalty.

But like that, he had so many chances to either clear the ball or attack in a different way or just put it in Rose Z before that penalty was conceded.

And I just wonder, you know, like Pepper's trained these players so much that they could never do that, even in like the 94th minute of a game.

Yeah, it was a very clumsy challenge and it was a definite penalty, even though at first I thought Mateta dived on the first view because he did go down quite theatrically, but it was absolutely a penalty.

And,

you know, his through ball,

his perfectly weighted pass around the corner to Jack Grealish for the

opening goal, in contrast, was wonderful.

And it,

you know, up until that point and beyond that point, Palace had defended really, really well in preventing City from unlocking their defense in that manner.

But Foden found a way.

I mean, if this was a one-off result, you'd go fair enough, Grand.

But

City have only taken seven points from the past 18 available.

In their last six games, the only team they've beaten is Luton.

And if memory serves, they make quite heavy weather of that.

And

I do think there is a complacency there that people suggested might be there this season after they won the treble last

time around.

And that's, I think, totally understandable.

It's complete human nature.

We have achieved, reached the top of the mountain and

we have no more worlds left to conquer.

They may well go on that winning run people are predicting, but

I think they're given recent results, I think they're quite lucky.

They're still as in touch as they are, and there's no need to panic yet.

I'm just loving imagining, can you imagine Pep's response to being told he was being complacent?

It would be that thing where he just goes, wow, and just goes quiet and probably mutters something to someone next to him.

And like, it'll be a Jamie Jackson type reaction.

I mean, that's his ultimate, the idea that he's complacent would just, wow, well, he's lucky.

It would be the fury would be something to behold.

He would sarcastically applaud you.

He'd be like, yes, yes, we are complacent.

That's right.

He'd smile and agree.

But his anger, his incandescent rage would be a sight to behold.

But Crystal Palace, one of the reasons I think the Premier League is a good league, I really like them as a team because they really have hopes of achieving much beyond finishing 10th, but they're really full of vigor and they will punish you if you are below your level like they have some really good play i mean it's a really good league this year i think there's a really high level teams and the fact that if you are slightly below your levels palace will take absolute joy in ripping into you and killing a two-goal lead is it's one of the reasons why the league is a good product which is the best kind of product there is yeah and they did it without eze and like fair play aliso's coolness uh when he the way he took that penalty was great and like the just doing it with the you know the way they where city put the away fans fans, it was like the perfect.

He was like, I'll put the penalty there because then I can run that way and celebrate with my people.

And I thought it was brilliant.

City dropped points.

Then Villa didn't drop points.

Looked like they might.

The thing about champions, Johnny, is they find a way because Brentford will feel like they should have got something from this game.

But at the end, a big sort of it all, it sort of became this sort of, someone else tweeted, I think, you know, the battle of the G-Tech doesn't quite sound, it doesn't really have a ring to it, does it?

But like, this ended in like an absolutely sort of brilliant, rage-filled uh finale yeah i mean if if if they're doing the kind of the the behind the scenes documentary uh this is kind of the this is the game where they you know they start to believe they've been they've been dragged through the mill you know it's tetchy it's ill-tempered it's it's you know a little bit pantomime to be honest but they you know there was a real kind of um like a real alpha energy coming from them.

You know, you see how Watkins celebrates that winning goal.

And obviously there's been some, apparently there was some Brentford fan making like some personal comments about his family or something like that.

But, you know, and they use that and they, you know,

they've played,

you know, really like they played really scintillating football to beat Manchester City.

And then they've kind of really dug in against Arsenal and they've won this one in a kind of

different way again, you know, coming back from behind and showing real kind of resilience.

Yeah,

because they haven't been that great on the road this season.

They've obviously picked up all of their points at home.

And, they've ground out some results away from home.

And this is what they've done again.

They had, I guess, a little bit of luck with the red card and they, yeah, they just sort of ground it out.

And that is,

yeah, like you say, I mean, I'm not saying it's what champions do, but it's definitely a team that has more layers and keys and tones than maybe we thought even like a month ago.

Neil says, after adjusting very well to the bright lights of London, has Ben Mee now finally been distracted by the Christmas lights that have been added on top of the bright lights?

I mean, it was a red card.

Thomas Frank didn't think it was, Barry, but it was, and it did totally change the game because up until that point, Brentford had been so organized.

They had the three centre-backs there, so me obviously got sent off.

I thought it was quite strange, actually, that the ref David Coote even needed to go to his monitor because he had a great sort of ringside seat for that challenge.

But it was unquestionably a red card and was duly ungraded.

And then it all started to go prayer-shaped for Brentford, who had probably done enough to win the game by that point because

they missed some decent chances.

And

Emi Martinez made a couple of good saves.

But that

totally switched the momentum of the game.

And

Villa duly came back to win.

Bought a goal from a corner, and

yeah moreno's header he's stealing in and unmarked to the back post

and and in the end it is a very good win they have ground out uh but i suspect brentford will be

they will see that as points silly points dropped yeah um i mean leon bailey almost scored an absolutely sensationalized goal which which began barney the sort of neil mopay versus emmy martinez uh panto which was totally ridiculous and yet quite mesmerizing.

Yeah,

it was like

really quite well-acted professional wrestling when they fought an incredible forearm smash and they kind of somersault to the floor.

Yeah, I mean, that was...

I heard Emery talking about that this morning and he was very, I felt okay about it having heard him talking about it, mainly because he said the word behavior.

And it just sounds fine when you describe it.

Abhavier has been okay.

And I think he,

the thing is that his team do play with incredible intensity.

It's the perfect club for him.

He's such a good manager and he's so obsessed with it.

And he's got a group of players there.

Players always act out of self-interest.

And at Villa, he has a group of players who know he is probably slightly...

at their level or above and if they just follow what he says he'll make them better and they'll win and it'll be the best season of their careers so they will do whatever he says and he meticulously kind of he's one of those managers who drills every movement in every starting position, everything he wants them to do.

And I loved watching his excitement as well in this game.

I've been trying to work out with him what it is he reminds me of.

And there's like we know there's definitely a bit of partridge, there's a bit of Nosferratu.

But this time, as he was jumping up and down after Villa scored, I realized there's Barrymore too.

There's a Barrymore element there.

If you were to fuse Partridge, Dracula, Barrymore, you'd pretty much end up with a kind of Emery

physical type.

But he's great.

I love him as a manager.

I loved him ever since the

Europa League final in Basel, where Sevilla played Liverpool and he went out on the pitch at half-time and did his big kind of like telling everyone off.

And they came out and scored five minutes later and just totally dominated the second half.

And I thought all the stuff about him not being able to inspire

players at Arsenal was, you know, clearly misguided.

And yeah, it's great for him.

I think he's a kind of magnetic presence.

I mean, absolutely.

I'm there for bringing back Strike It Lucky, but hosted by Unai Emery.

I would thoroughly

enjoy that.

The sending off of camera, right, Barry, is he's the guy who's trying to politely help Neil Mope up to begin with, right?

After Martinez has sort of slightly nudged him and then tried to pull his shirt over his head.

And it's all Martinez's fault, but everybody just falls for this.

I fall for it, it, like all of it.

You know what he's doing.

He's just trying to play the clock down.

He does it brilliantly.

And he sort of walks away with this fire behind him, going, Well, nothing to do with me.

Yeah, so sort of like Michelle Moan, but he gets away with it.

So he nudges Mope in the back.

Mope

flings himself to the ground.

And then Martinez, it in trying to remove or to pick Mope up, it was like watching a copper try to remove a just stop oil

protester who's like lying in the middle of the road and just makes their body completely limp so you're trying to lift a dead weight um i thought boomacar camera was extremely hard done but i appreciate he did raise a hand to someone's face but he sort of gently caressed their chin and when you compare that to say the elbow vladimir sufal smashed into 100% bellagarde's face in the the West Ham Wolves game, you know.

Or even La Salle's, right?

Even La Salle's on him.

Yeah, right.

You sort of go.

One's a red card and the other two aren't.

That

doesn't really tot up, does it?

But

no, I'm there for it.

It's a silly red card for Camera to get, and he'll be missed when he's serving that band.

Arsenal 2 Brighton, Neil Barney, you were at this game.

Arteta said it was an incredible performance.

Do you agree?

No.

I was surprised at how pleased everyone was at the end.

But then, on the other hand, Arsenal had, he said, six players who were suffering with illness.

Um,

and they've now got a relatively easy, not easy, there's not that many games over the festive period.

I think they've got three in the next month.

Um, and obviously, Brighton beat them 3-0 in April, and that was a really traumatic game at the same stadium.

Actually, Roberto Deserve was very complimentary of how Arsenal played afterwards and said they were brilliant.

We lost every duel, uh, we couldn't play our game, they were much, much better than in April.

And

I did sort of start to believe in Arsenal

by the end of this game.

They seem to me the most controlled, organized, non-flaky, not on a big adrenal wave.

They're just playing really well.

They're a weird team because there's always a lot of stuff about

we're supposed to say they're too emotional.

They were quite emotional at the end.

People were smiling, there were hugs, and that made me feel bad.

But

when they're playing, they're actually quite a robotic team.

It's as though by being so controlled, they really play this system-based way, you know, to the extent that at one point, Brighton's fullbacks were James Milner and Hinshelwood, who's a midfielder.

Because they have so many injuries, they've had another one now.

They're really struggling with the squad, and deserve didn't make any excuses about it, but it's a problem for them because they're playing a lot of games.

And Arsenal didn't do that thing, the sort of Harry Rednat thing of go, go and sit on that fullback, go and kill him, you know, get the ball to Boccaio.

It was just they just kept playing the same patterns they have a way they play and i wonder um obviously there's no nothing to base this on but whether the kind of leaping around at the end and seeming incredibly pleased with every victory is because it's a real act of will to play that way for professional footballers and that's how they want to win the league this year the defense is much better I've had an interesting stat that teams, you basically have to concede less than a goal a game to win the league.

That's just the numbers over the last 25 years.

And last season, they were 1.2 goals a game, I think.

Whereas this season, they're less than a goal a game.

I literally do think that Arteta would look at that and think

this is how we win the league.

You know, it may be a causation and correlation thing, but the defence is really good now.

Saliba and

Gabrielle, obviously really good.

But the whole team defends really manically, which is probably why they're less expansive and so happy at the end, which is bad.

And yeah, I'm convinced.

Obviously, you see the shape of the play much better when you're in the ground.

Watching Rice and Erdoga, right?

Because I just think

they're such different players, but to have them both in the same midfield, there was that one pass with the outside of Erdegaard's left foot that was just totally ridiculous.

I was right behind that.

There was a gasp.

Yeah.

Because it's sort of like this backspin, there's everything on that.

And I think Martinelli put it over.

But then the way Rice carries.

It's like crown green bowls, you know, when they bend the ball in at the last second and it kind of rolls, it kind of goes over and leans on the jack.

It reminded me very much of that.

And Rice as well is perfect.

Rice is really a good player.

I was a bit of a Rice unbeliever for a while just because there was so much talk about him and his stride.

He's got an elegant stride, and sports writers love elegant stride.

I think about his stride a lot.

But that is a really good midfield.

It's interesting you say that, actually, because yesterday was definitely the day I stopped being a Rice sceptic.

He was superb.

Yeah.

Lewis Dunk had a fun minute where he made one brilliant block and then he made another brilliant block with his undercarriage.

and then when most men would have been still absolutely prone on the ground he he cleared one off the line about a minute later and it's just such a great i mean because he's he's more than that like i always had him as that kind of player but he's also like a really brilliant ball playing centre back as well but i enjoyed he's a really good player i don't understand why he doesn't just start for england every game why there's a problem um maybe that will change And you'd play him with Stones?

Were they both right side?

I mean, I'm just trying to...

I'm trying to...

Oh, not the old...

I don't really buy all that right-sided left-side.

I mean, come on.

I mean, play, you know, Trent Alexander Arnold can play in midfield.

Yeah.

Switch Kirin Trippier.

I mean, he's very two-footed, but I think good players can probably manage that.

Worth mentioning Brighton's, you know, they'd come off that win over Marseille, which, you know, Diao Pedro scoring really late on, and brilliant scenes at the Amex.

I think they're probably still playing Freed from Desire, and the crowd are still there, just celebrating.

It's been wonderful, their European, first ever European adventure so far.

Arteta was on the touchline, Johnny.

He escaped a ban

after he said the referee during the Newcastle game was embarrassing and a disgrace.

An independent regulatory commission dismissed the charges as not proven.

In its written reasons, it was revealed that Arteta's evidence claimed the word disgrace has a very similar spelling and pronunciation to the Spanish descracia.

The Spanish word has connotations of misfortune, tragedy, or bad luck rather than the connotations.

No, it actually means thank you

in Spanish.

It's just a cultural difference,

Yes, it means players make mistakes, rests make mistakes.

That's just the way, that's just the way life goes.

While the English meaning may lead to interpretations of abuse or insult, this was not the intended meaning.

Do you...

Arteta's been living in England for like 20 years.

And he didn't say disgracier.

He said disgrace.

I thought that was a very inventive, you know,

an inventiveness and

problem solving that I thought was actually redolent of Arteta's teams.

Didn't Arteta himself say that?

No, I didn't mean disgracier, I meant disgrace.

Just, you know, he was clarifying.

He said, I've been in England long enough, I know what I'm saying, and I'm saying disgrace.

Do you think he used the

Lorraine Kelly kind of, I'm not Mikel Arteta, I'm someone playing the role of Mikel Arteta in the in when I'm doing those post-match interviews.

So that's it's not actually Mikel Arteta there.

It's just that's what people expect Mikel a Mikel Arteta to do.

And so that's why, anyway, he got away with it.

So, you know, fair enough.

And that'll do for part one.

Part two,

Johnny gets to wax lyrical about Liverpool Nil, Manchester United Nil.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Baz says, remember when there was an early Saturday kickoff for Liverpool Man United, it was so bad the pod completely forgot to mention it.

Can you do it deliberately this time?

Damien says Liverpool Man United, a great advert for literally any other sport.

Johnny, you were there.

How was it?

Sorry,

before

Johnny cuts loose, could I just...

I think the game we completely forgot to mention was between Spurs and Manchester United, not

Liverpool Manchester United.

It was before my time, of course.

We wouldn't make such mistakes.

It didn't happen on a number of levels.

I'm with you.

Anyway, Johnny, that saved you another 20 seconds about having to talk about this game, but now your moment has come.

Yeah,

it can't be swerved any longer.

Well, you know, United did a job on them, basically, right?

They came to Anfield.

They'd been beaten 7-0

last season.

They didn't want that to happen again.

And they basically approached it like a...

like a League One side in the FA Cup that trying to

sit tight and get a money-spinning replay.

They really want to get their name in the hat for Monday's draw.

And

they had a couple of

counter-attacks near the end,

and Jason Mohammed's on, you know, on the BBC Red button going, like, they're still dreaming, Manchester United, that, you know, they're still dreaming of this of a famous victory.

And, you know, and that is kind of what they needed to do.

I thought Liverpool were really, really

not bad

in the sense that Liverpool are never really like truly bad.

They just they were just slightly lacking in ideas.

They just weren't quite cute enough.

They had 34 shots, and I can't remember more than about three of them.

A lot of headers, a lot of shots from distance, very, very few like good chances.

And that I think is a testament to how United just,

you know, about 20 minutes in, they're like, well, we're not going to press you anymore.

We're just going to sit here and watch you try and try and break us down.

And because United are, you know,

you know, beyond all appearances, actually quite a decent football team when they want to be, and quite well coached, you know, that they managed to hold out.

Liverpool couldn't break them down.

And so, you know, there was this huge torrent of noise at the start when Liverpool sort of go at them, and there's this huge torrent of noise at the end when Liverpool are going at them.

But in between, there's actually

not a huge amount happening.

There's lots of, you know, fouls.

There were lots and lots of throw-ins.

I feel like this game was about 38% throw-in.

I did see you write that in a way it showed a kind of humility for Manchester United to accept where they currently are and go, well, this is what we need to do.

And anybody

keeping a clean sheet at Anfield and coming away with a point will be pretty happy, really.

This kind of applies more to things like losing to Bournemouth.

It needs to stop being

a disgracier for

United to be losing to teams like Bournemouth or Crystal Palace

or struggling to beat Fulham because this is kind of where they are.

This is where they've been at for most of the last seven or eight years and this whole idea that this is this is manchester united and you know they they this is one of the the legendary clubs of england and they should be sweating everyone aside and playing you know sparkling football and whenever they lose to somebody who they perceive as as lesser to them that it's it's it's some massive crisis that requires immediate vengeance and and bloodletting uh i think that that that's the part they need to get themselves over they are a

flawed, you know, maybe improving side that just needs a little bit of time.

And

that's kind of what I'm trying to get at.

You know,

they are a limited side, you know, in the throes of a massive injury crisis as well.

And not everything needs to be some disaster or some catastrophe every week.

Barry, what did you make of Diogo Dallot's red card?

That double dissent.

At what point does dissent end and then dissent begin again?

You know, was there enough of a pause of dissenting Dallo

between the first thrust of the arm and the second one.

Yeah, I thought it was pretty ridiculous.

If we are at the point where we're discussing phases of dissent,

I suppose it speaks volumes about

when it's that late in the game, speaks volumes of what we've just seen unfold.

Yeah,

I presume he's supposed to

complain about the throwing not going his way

when it should have

and

then

announce that he has finished complaining and then get booked and then start complaining again.

There definitely needs to be a moment of serenity between the initial dissent and the follow-up dissent, in my opinion, for it to qualify as double dissent.

Yeah, I mean, we can't spend a lot of time making serious earnest points about, you know, respecting referees and then say, oh, come on, Michael Oliver, just tell him to calm down.

And I wonder if there should be mitigating circumstances if

clearly you have been wronged, right?

Like it's sort of the Decanio and all cock moment, isn't it?

It's like, I can't remember actually if that was the throw for Decanio, but like he's definitely in the right, even if he's wrong.

Well, it was also late in the game.

He'd sprinted back.

He'd done really quite a good bit of defending.

And, you know, at that point,

legs are aching and burning with acid, and you're just desperate to.

And that's when it really hurts for someone to say, No, you didn't do that.

But I think one of the problems is the default gesture now for unhappy footballers has become the violent punch of the air, that kind of haymaker, which is a really upsetting gesture and seems to be the kind of thing people go.

I think it would be nice to reintroduce the small Italian eight-begging gesture back there

because that that's not offensive

but it's it says you're an idiot I did you're wrong it says plea it's imploring and it also says it's quite threatening it says I might kill you but without really saying it and you don't you wouldn't get booked for doing the small begging gesture with two hands together no and actually you're more likely to just it to be one continuous act so then there wouldn't be the double it would just be a single well i think that the punctuation in that situation is the booking isn't it i mean that's what michael oliver would say If you carried on doing a small begging gesture after you'd been booked, that might count as two acts, a second phase of dissent.

But it is ridiculous.

If it goes to a tribunal, if you've done the small begging gesture, you could argue that in Thailand, it's very mannerly.

Say if you're handing over a credit card,

you hand it with both hands, you hold it and hand it.

And then

you could see

it's been completely misinterpreted.

You were actually being incredibly mannerly, not dissenting at all.

But

yeah, it was definitely worth it for

the argument between Mike Dean and Gary Neville and Jamie Carringer.

Over I missed that.

Sadly, SC says who would win in a 100-metre race, Barry or Sophian Amrabat.

It's an interesting player, Amrabat.

He feels very limited to me, Johnny, but maybe I'm doing him a disservice.

You know, it's early in his Premier League career.

It takes time for people to get used to the pace of the league and other cliches.

There may be some good caveats there.

He doesn't look quick enough.

I mean, and pace is not something that that's not a killer.

You know, lots of players in his position succeed without lightning pace.

It's also a kind of lack of sharpness.

He seems to be a player who's always

reacting to things.

You know, they say about the great midfielders that they can anticipate where the ball is going to be or where they need to be.

Amrabat seems like a guy who's constantly, there's a little voice in his head going, oh shit, I need to be over there now.

And so we'll scurry off and try and win a throw or put a tackle in.

And it's just this series of constant alarm bells.

And then he doesn't have the pace.

United have been after him for a long time.

They've clearly seen things in Amrabat that they like.

And I think when United have a slightly more settled side and a slightly more settled setup,

he might look better in it.

But at the moment, I think you know, he was

at the Chelsea game, he was basically a one-man midfield because McTominay was basically gallivanting off up with a front four, and I thought he played really well as a one-man midfield.

Um, but yeah, he is trying to put out fires at the moment, and he's not, he doesn't really have any water.

He has the in that situation, he has the bald premium in that he's very visible.

It's like a blonde player, you see, his head sort of you see him, you notice him.

Uh, I'm thinking Graveson, sure, you know, Steve Steve Agnew, Lombardo,

Pate.

Speaking of blonde players, I mean, Rasmus Hoyland is blonde and quite noticeable.

And Ian Wright and Alan Shearer on the day, Barney were saying that he has to score that chance.

You know, that is the whole point of these type of games.

You have a striker, you get one moment, and you've spent the whole time holding the ball up and winning free kicks and having a tough old time.

He's yet to score in the Premier League.

Yeah, I mean, that's true.

I remember watching Ian Wright and Alan Shearer, and they were both absolutely brilliant players.

I love them both, but they didn't score every single chance, and nobody does.

But I don't know, I think Hoyland is a classic player from this phase of Man United.

I actually think he's got loads of promise.

I mean, do you remember the finish in the Champions League where he sprinted 40 yards and then was really calm and just dinked it over the goalie?

I mean, obviously, he's just really young.

He shouldn't be playing every game.

He's played millions of games.

If he was at Man City and he was back up to Haaland,

we'd be saying, wow, what a brilliant signing, and he's going to be great.

I'm worried that they're going to break him because there's just too many, the demands are too big.

It's a weird signing for too much money to be your only striker.

I also worry about Kobe Maynu, who I think is really good, but he's just going to play too many games now.

There's going to be too much expectation.

There are going to be a lot of games like that where you're kind of playing alongside Amrabat and fighting.

It's just, it's kind of this the meat grinder, isn't it?

You throw these humans into it and they get pulped.

And I kind of feel like Hoyland should have gone somewhere else.

Which you probably could say for quite a lot of players who have ended up at Manchester United.

Let's go to Burnley.

They lost 2-0 at home to Everton.

Jan Hoppy says, Is Sean Dice rated?

Simon R.

Everton back in the race for the Everton Cup.

Seven points clear of the relegation zone now, Baz.

They won their fourth consecutive Premier League game.

Without the deduction, they'd be level with Brighton.

Four clean sheets in a row.

They haven't done that since David Moyes was in charge 20 odd years ago.

It is incredibly impressive.

Yeah, it is impressive.

I'm not sure how incredible beating Burnley is.

I'll take it up.

No, that's

not a good question.

As a collective,

not specifically this moment, but just like since the deduction, then they lost to Man United 3-0, didn't they?

Even though they played quite well, then to go on this run, I would say is I'm sticking with incredibly impressive, but you can, you, you know, you can accuse me of hyperbole, if you will.

It is incredibly impressive by the standards we have come to expect from Everton, I suppose.

Yeah, that's true.

But I am going to stick firm on my

view that beating Burnley is quite

a straightforward job for most teams,

whether it's Turf Moore or not.

Obviously, Sean Deish.

Turf Moore is a place he knows well.

He was welcomed back by the crowd and then proceeded to do a kind of a Sean Dysch's Burnley on Burnley, on Vincent Company's Burnley.

The two goals were very dicey, one from a corner,

one from a free kick

taken from deep by Jordan Pickford.

And

Everton have now put this 10-point deduction firmly behind them.

They're two points up.

A lot of people thought they would, you know, getting this deduction would galvanise them, and it appears to have done so.

Well, no, yeah, can I suggest that the worst thing that could possibly happen to Everton now is that they appeal the 10 points and get them back because I think they'd then be relegated.

The sheer rage power of losing those 10 points, they would finish lower in the league if they got those 10 points back.

Without that, they now have a point, they have a purpose, they have a story, they have a mission, they have energy.

Take another 10 away, and they're going to finish in the Champions League spots.

Weird thing is, off that terrible start, like Everton's squad actually is

set up perfectly for a Daish team.

You know, you've got these direct wingers who are actually very talented in McNeil and Harrison, a really good centre-forward when he's fit.

As Baz mentioned, a goalkeeper that can ping a really good free kick from 70 yards.

Like,

it really fits with what Sean Dice wants to do to a football team.

Yeah, no, no,

I think it's true.

And I think that the results in the first five or six games didn't really do justice to

the way they were played.

They looked terrible.

No, sorry,

the results were terrible, but they looked actually okay.

And you know, you have to remember that

they've got to this position basically without a regular fit striker.

I mean, Calvert Lewin is the kind of guy who plays six games.

You know, they've been easing him back in.

He's not been playing 90 minutes.

And

they've basically been

playing without a reliable guy up top, which is what Sean Dice teams are pretty much based on.

And so they've been relying on Decoure in

this flying, marauding number 10 role, which is very different to the midfield roles he was playing earlier in his career.

And

that's Daish innovating.

That's a great idea.

Because Everton don't, they don't have a great squad.

They've got like a

51-year-old Ashley Young.

And they have

they have some decent players in defence, but this is not a team brimming in adventure, not a classic Everton everton squad you're not going to look at this in in 10 years time go what a team that was by the way you know mikalinka what a player he was by the way james garner what a player he was by the way uh they are you know to a large extent they are yeoman players and they're playing you know kind of yeoman football at the moment but uh it's working this is what daish does like he is he is underrated because he he gets you know he creates teams he does you know we talk about coaches like making players better or you know but and he does make players better but he ultimately creates really good functioning collectives that work like 11 guys working as one.

And I think that's kind of, yeah, that is an underrated skill.

Newcastle 3, Fulham-nil.

Ted says, could Barry have done that header?

By header, I mean being on the receiving end of a flying ass to the face.

Brian, is there a Schumacher scale to go with the Sinclair Spectrum?

What score does Raoul Jimenez tackle get?

It was a silly thing to do, Barry, and a bit of a shame because it would have been really interesting to see how on-fire goal happy Fulham would have done against this weary Newcastle team but we didn't really get the chance to see it.

Yeah I mean Newcastle came into this game on the back of three consecutive defeats against Everton Spurs Milan.

Fulham came in on the back of two extremely unlikely five nil wins and yet I was fairly certain Newcastle would win.

Obviously the sending off hugely increased their

made the job a lot easier for them and we we can only speculate as to what would happen if an inform Raul Jimenez hadn't lost his mind after he was clearly still

upset about seeing La Salle's elbow into his face go unpunished and and took it out on Sean Longstaff absolute red card and

Fulham ended up well beaten

and for Marco Silva to go on a big long rant about the refereeing performance after the game I thought was really poor from him.

Yeah, and also tricky.

I'm not sure if there are any words in Marco Silva's furious rant that could be mistranslated,

which might be an issue for him.

But yeah, it was a slightly ludicrous rant at the time.

Jamie says, seeing as you almost forgot to sing Lewis Miley's praises after the last part, how old does it make you feel that Miley was born two weeks after Alan Shearer scored his final goal for Newcastle, born on the 1st of May 2006.

Yeah, and it sort of does look like he, someone else tweeted me saying it looks like he needs a chaperone for the interviews.

Bruno Gimeresh was sort of next to him.

I know, Barney, you've spoken before about

the sort of difficulty of young players and when do you play them and when is too young and when is a child a child?

I think it's quite an interesting point that I don't really hear anyone else bring up.

I'm sort of thinking about that with, you know, Barcelona, I think, had a 16-year-old playing very well in midweek.

That thing about Alan Shira was that to me, that doesn't, i i don't really get that it it feels like an absolute lifetime ago that alan shearer was playing football to me i can't i can't even it feels exactly 17 years ago yeah it feels like a really long time ago and i can't even remember what happened last season so that's fine lewis miley is a really good player um clearly um and it's nice that uh he's a local kid and all that kind of stuff and clearly they're producing a lot of players there.

We're all very critical of elements of Newcastle's ownership, which we have to pretend is owned by a fund when in fact it's essentially been nationalised by an overseas state.

But the sort of paradox of football is that it will keep producing beautiful things, like a 17-year-old who's clearly a very nice lad, who's brilliant footballer, coming through, playing for his home team.

That's really good.

And they have quite a few local players now.

He's an interesting young player because he's basically a really sort of elegant, classy midfielder who makes really good, intelligent runs rather than some physical prodigy who's really quick or strong or whatever.

He seems to be prodigiously intelligent in a football sense.

He's a waif, isn't he?

He's quite a sort of waify.

Well, he's actually facially very young, but he's quite tall and he's quite physically quite powerful.

The face is misleading.

I mean, I have this myself.

He's a wafy face.

People look and think

so young, but actually, no, incredibly young.

They think, what a waify face, but actually.

Yes, they think you're too young.

You need a chaperone.

You shouldn't be on this show with people like Barry like uh gnarled old podcast hands but actually I'm I'm quite old and it's fine but you're like groundskeeper Willie aren't you and you rip your shirt off in a rage and there's the bulging abs of Barley Rollers correct yes Fabian Cher Joel Linton both pulled up injured

so you know they have lots and lots of injuries I don't know if at any point Eddie House should make them run less at training or it's just a fact that footballers are playing too much football.

I don't know.

And that'll do for part two.

Part three, I'll begin at Stamford Bridge.

HiPod fans of America.

Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

Tomorrow we're doing our annual Christmas QA episode.

Please send in any questions or just loving Christmas messages to Football Weekly at theguardian.com.

Me, Barry Wilson, Robin Cowan, and hopefully a part one Sid Lowe cameo for your Christmas podcast.

Chelsea 2, Sheffield United nil.

Frontal Loeb says, are Chelsea back?

Incredibly impressive, Barry, to be to beat Shepherd United.

When you're in Chelsea's position, I think any win's a good win.

But this was very, very, very unconvincing.

and just

served only to show that I think Chelsea signing Cole Palmer in the window, which was a transfer, I think, had a lot of us scratching our heads, going, hmm, that's a weird one.

What a signing he's turning out to be.

He wasn't very effective in the first half.

He was playing in the centre as kind of number 10.

They moved him out right in the second half.

That made all the difference.

Yeah, I mean,

it's a decent win for Chelsea.

They possibly could have won by more if Nicholas Jackson was able to stay on side.

Was fathering him out of saved a Cole Palmer free kick.

And

Brosia

missed an absolute sitter from two or three yards out, where he had two-thirds of the goal to aim at, and somehow

put it over the bar.

But yeah, Sheffield United had no answers for them really in the second half once Cole

Palmer went outright and

a hugely unconvincing win for Chelsea, but a welcome one nonetheless, I would say.

West Ham 3, Wolves 0.

We did mention the Sufal elbow on Bellegarde.

I mean, it looked like a red to me, but then at the time we didn't mention Gary O'Neill was the opposing manager.

So, of course, VAR

wasn't going to help him out with that.

And I think Sufal got booked for not quite as bad challenge shortly afterwards.

And Gary O'Neill got booked for looking as mild-mannered as he's generally sort of dourly disappointed.

I think he got a yellow card for that to add to his troubles.

but as he said look wolves had more things to worry about today and and mainly barney it was mohamed kudas who scored two brilliant goals and actually i i said this the other day west ham sort of remind me a bit now of of a big sam bolton where you're not sure if they played great football but you look at the side and they've got all these really lovely players like paketar kudas bowen sort of feels like akin to that kind of a cocha campo hiero type jorkaev type time yeah it's that sort of nice spectacle of a

kind of what you would think of as a fairly stodgy traditionalist British manager having fun with his young progressive nephews who've introduced him to drill music or whatever.

You know, it's kind of a nice, a nice thing to see that.

It's like when Rock...

Have your kids introduced you to drill music, Barney?

Yeah, I mean, you know, not for me.

No, it's a bit, it's not for me either.

So it's a bit noisy.

No, yeah, but no, it was

only Gary O'Neill and Varr is one of the great.

He's,

as we said before, he's basically getting divorced from VAR.

And they're having a lot of very serious discussions, long chats where they're hoping to meet.

And that divorce sadly carries on.

This game, West Ham went 2-0 up.

I mean, Piquetta was brilliant.

Kudas brilliant.

But

in the second half, for about...

10 minutes, well,

until

Serabia's tap-in was ruled out for offside, correctly ruled out, but there wasn't much in it.

Wolves were really getting back in the game.

And I think if that goal had stood, that game could have finished a lot differently.

But it didn't.

Then Bowen played the give and goal with Piquet has scored, and that was it.

Yeah.

And look, West Ham, after that 5-0 defeat of Fulham, you know, they beat Freiburg on Thursday, done really well in Europe.

And another good win for them.

Finally, on Friday night, Tottenham won 2-0 at Nottingham Forest.

Dajjan Kudosevsky is one of the talking points of this game, Johnny, and quite interesting player because he played in the 10 here.

And then when Brynn Johnson got injured, he moved wide.

And he's quite big and he's 6'3 ⁇ .

You know, he's not a Lewis Miley waif.

You know, this is a sort of big unit.

And there aren't really that many players like that who play in those positions.

I love the way he runs, actually.

And I think because of his size, he has,

you know,

what we see with a lot of left-footers on the right wing is that they are going to come inside at some point, and the deception is when they're going to do it.

Whereas Kuniski, he has the strength.

He can muscle off a big defender and go around the outside.

You see it time and again.

He goes

around the outside to the byline and just about manages to

keep the ball in play.

And he does that again and again.

So as a defender, you have that kind of, you know,

you can't show him onto his stronger foot because obviously it'll go there.

You can't show him onto onto the outside either because he can do you down that side.

I think he's a really underrated player, Kulassevsky.

He has been, I mean, this season, he's been at least as influential as Son or Rasharlison or Brennan Johnson.

And yeah, they have options now, Spurs.

So they have options in those positions.

You know,

Son obviously can play on the left, he can play at the center.

Kulasevsky playing more and more in the centre.

They have, you know, these

marauding fullbacks who pop up in you know weird places around you know the edge of the box or whatever.

Um, and and yeah, I mean, I think Spurs, you know, they had a little bit of a wobble, they had a bit of a few injuries, they had some, you know, they had some haters, I think.

You know, there were some, there were some bitch-ass haters out there who were going in for Spurs.

Yeah, on that, on that topic, um, how how did they manage to develop these interesting fullbacks who go into interesting positions and the use of

because whenever now

whenever I'm tagged on a tweet which you're tagged on on

the the platform known as X formerly known as the platform known as X formerly known as Twitter formerly known as Twitter people say does Johnny Lou still hate Ange what's wrong with him so what happened there exactly was that were you joking well I mean yeah should I should I clarify this there was I did a bit on the the the live show

which uh was

it was a bit you know I was like what basically right I take my writing, I take my

job, my full-time job as a sports writer for the guy, I take that incredibly seriously.

I take my talking, like not, not at all seriously, like the very opposite of seriously.

So, you know, I did a bit for the live show, and then Max thought, oh, you know what?

That went down really well in front of actual people, you know,

in a room last night.

Why do you say to millions of people who will then cut and snip it and take it out of context

and then post it in bad faith on the internet?

It's not my fault, is it?

This is what Max does.

This is what Max does.

Oh, hang on.

Okay.

No, it's a Max thing.

He stitches up the rest of us to make him.

Well, I don't know if it's just to stitch us up because he finds it amusing or if it's to make himself look better.

Yes.

He's devious.

Yeah.

Machiavellian.

I mean, let's talk about the interview he did in The Guardian.

What interview did I do?

So in terms of promoting our book, which is available in all good bookshops, probably still get it in time for Christmas if you get your order in quickly from the Guardian bookshop.

Excellent stocking filler.

But we have to promote that.

Max and I did this sort of Q ⁇ A thing for the Guardian newspaper, one of the Saturday supplements in that massive Saturday Guardian.

you need a wheelbarrow to get home from the news agents.

And Max was asked, or the question was asked, I didn't get to answer this one, but the question was asked, like, if you and Barry changed lives,

which of you would

quit, raise the white flag and want to go back to your own life first?

And then Max said, what was it?

I think I'm quoting verbatim here.

If I lived as Barry for a week, I would die.

And I'm just thinking, like, what?

What?

I said, I'd be dead within a week.

What is this?

Doing the Fiverr, having a coffee, like going,

watching a place in the country or a place in the sunshine, and then maybe going for a couple of pints before dinner.

I mean, I'm not sid fish.

I don't quite see.

I don't see how me asking Johnny on the pod his thoughts of Ange

has turned around into I'm the evil.

I am the devil incarnate.

No, but you portray me as some sort of drink-sodden, degenerate junkie.

That I really could not be further from the truth.

I understand that it's your job, Max, to create

and to create this kind of identity.

But there are times, there are times when you can go too far.

And Barry is a person.

He is the avatar Barry Glendenning, which is feelings and spirit kind of placed into that form, but he is also a person.

Always need to remember that.

Just to append this, like a friend of mine

said

about

Ange, you know, he kind of sees into my soul.

He said,

this is about cricket, isn't it?

Yes, that's what I was going to say exactly that.

This is about cricket.

And I spent, and I said, no, it's not, obviously, it's not about cricket.

I thought about it for about an hour.

I thought, yeah,

this is about cricket.

This is about cricket.

I know exactly what part of cricket it's about as well.

And I even know this, I know the names.

I know the incidents.

That's what I just assumed.

And I haven't even heard what you said, but I know.

Yes, it's true.

So, Johnny, to placate all the Australians who have

in quite large number approached me recently to say, what's Johnny?

You know, how does he feel about Ange?

You are like the rest of us and you love him with every fibre of your soul.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, not,

you're not stitching me up again.

I'm not saying it, I'm not saying anything else about Ange Postacoglu.

It's already made my life about one percent worse.

Like, you think about it, think about the quality, you think about all the things that encompass a life and how

you know, making that actually one percent is quite a lot.

Um, so so you know, I'm zipping it, and and I'd suggest everyone else do the same.

Well, that'll do for today.

Uh, thank you, Barney.

Thanks, everyone.

Bye, thanks, Barry.

Thank you.

I think it is worth pointing out, by the way, that today, for the first time ever, Barney actually recorded a podcast in his mum's basement.

Yes, well, it's an act of empathy with our listeners.

I feel I'm finally going to be respected, and I'm one of them.

Um, I forgot to say, Barry, um, uh, thank you for accepting the Football Sports Association Award for Podcast of the Year, and thank you for once again forgetting to mention my existence.

I had other issues to do with.

Thanks, Johnny.

See ya.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

This is The Guardian.