Ballon d’Or glitz, Carabao Cup drama and an EFL roundup: Football Weekly

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Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly. We've got an EFL Carabao ballon d'Or pod for you today.
We'll begin with some Carabao, another late winner for Liverpool.

League One Cardiff win at Burnley. Lincoln Scare, Chelsea, and Cambridge are robbed at Fulham.
Six games into the championship. Let's draw some big conclusions.

An unlikely top three, Middlesbrough, Stoke, and Bristol City. Leicester just behind them.
The only relegated side showing any sort of form. At the bottom, Chris Wilde has returned to Bramwell Lane.

Sheffield United still have nought points. One place higher, Sheffield Wednesday finally get their first win.
Also, there's talk of more teams in the playoffs. That sounds fun, I think.

A surprise top three and an unsurprising bottom eight in league one.

While Gareth Ainsworth's Gillingham are the only unbeaten side in the bottom two divisions, Cheltenham and Shrewsbury propping everyone else up.

Osmana Dembele, not normally after Cheltenham and Shrewsbury in any running order, wins the men's ballon d'Or. Eitana Bonmati won the women's again.
We'll do all that, answer your questions.

And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Barry Glendenning. Hello.
Hi, Max. From Not the Top 20.
Ali Maxwell. All right, mate.
Hello, Max. And good morning, Sanny Ridravadula.
Bongiano, Max.

Let's do the Carabao pretty quickly. Lots of teams making lots of changes.
A few interesting things. Liverpool, another late winner for them, beating Southampton 2-1.

Southampton did have a few chances, hit the bar, missed the rebound, and Isaac scored his first goal for the club a minute later.

Saints equalised, and then Hugo Ekatike scored, Sanny, after a brilliant touch from Chiesa.

Ekatike gets sent off for taking his shirt off after his first yellow being throwing the ball away and is now suspended for the palace game. Yeah, just brilliant.

Great to see players just completely forget stuff like that. Also, that he's very skinny, isn't he, Ekatike? As is Alexander Isak.
And it's quite, quite noticeable when they've got the underarm.

I'm kind of needed. They've got like no body fat at all.
Yeah, really silly. I did like Arna Slot saying like, you know, if he'd have dribbled past three players and smashed it in, great.

But actually, Kiesa done all the work. He just taps it in from a yard.
You can't take your shirt off if you get an assist, can you? Like Kiesa wheels off the other way. Remember the name.

Remember the crosser.

Yeah, that was great. Frimpong's reaction as well: like, what are you doing?

And just to call out our colleagues on ITV, the fact that they mentioned that he's now going to be suspended from fantasy football and get you transfers in quickly so quickly, horrible, horrible.

Don't need to talk about that. Why are we doing that? It's, you know, let's not talk, let's talk about real football.
Not fantasy football. Oh,

I totally agree with you. Dan Bordell, Dan Bardell.
Dan Bordello, that's a different fantasy name.

Dan Bardell, he did bring this pod into the sewer by talking about his dad's fantasy football team.

We'll get into the championship in a bit, but it is worth saying, Ali, Southampton are not at the races in the championship at the moment, are they? No, not at all. They've,

as teams often do when they come down, they did a lot of transfer business very late,

ended up selling some players for a lot of money, buying some players for slightly less amount of money, and they have lots of big names for the level.

So far, Will still has not got them to click really. And it's not even like they've been sort of dominating games and just losing due to a few basic errors or not kind of being warmed up yet.

They just haven't looked that good. Defensively, really poor numbers giving up a lot of chances.

And players like Harwood Bellis looking like a shadow of the players that we've seen at this level before.

And at the top of the pitch, just loads of eye-catching individuals that so far haven't been playing as part of a kind of coherent attacking team.

So, you know, I'm still probably of the opinion that these teams like them and Ipswich and Leicester will probably get better and probably look stronger in a few months time.

But it's definitely exciting for the rest of the championship that it's not just a classic slow start from these guys. They actually don't look that good.
And that's good for the league.

Elsewhere in the Carabao, Chelsea won 2-1 at Lincoln, but Lincoln taking the lead, Sanny, is probably, you want that. I've said it before, but as a lower league club, you know, you want the moment.

And Rob Street putting Lincoln ahead probably deservedly so felt like the most exciting moment of last night.

Yeah, big, big Rob Street and a nice moment for him as well because last season he was out on loan at Doncaster and did really well and a lot of Lincoln fans were like okay he's been at us and not done it but you know he he's just won he just won promotion with Donnie if he won the lead didn't he um so yeah great moment for him it was proper like old school kind of atmosphere you know it was a it was a it was packed as you'd imagine at Sinclair Bank and Chelsea's players didn't like it up him at all nobody were the Lincoln hit the post inside 70 seconds and we're all at sea and then by all accounts Emma's and Mareska just put a rocket up them.

And they got the business done and scored two goals right at the start of the second half as well. Like really just killed it.
And you're okay.

And I was watching like three different matches at once, like Matrix architect style. So I was like, okay,

I'm going to switch my Bluetooth speakers over now. Bluetooth headphones, it's over.
It's game over. But yeah, a good spirited performance.
They're doing really well in the league as well, Lincoln.

And I think in the Carabao Cup, we've seen Grimsby. They're already in the last 16, having one last week.

Strong start to the the season in the league, good start in the cup.

I think it's really good to see teams like Grimsby and Lincoln be rewarded on a sort of, well, in the minds of the wider football fandom in this country with games like this and performances like this.

They're definitely in the sensibly run bracket, Lincoln. And there aren't that many clubs across the EFL now that you'd put in that bucket.

And I think those are the clubs that you always want to see do well because they're generally patient, seemingly quite thoughtful with the way they do things.

They don't just buy 15 new players every summer. They made some money in the transfer window over the summer and lost some key players, but haven't really missed a beat.

And I think they're second or third right now in League One. So they're doing really, really well.

Whereas, I mean, Chelsea, I don't know if there's been any strong Chelsea takes on the pod recently, but I think the next few weeks could potentially see things unravel a bit for Mareska.

Like, the vibes are really bad at the moment. The energy's really bad

from kind of top to bottom.

The four away games in a row probably hasn't helped, but they haven't gone well either with Brentford draw, buy and loss, United loss, and then this poor performance last night, which won't have left anyone feeling very excited.

They've obviously got Brighton at home on the weekend and then another Champions League game.

And then I think it's Liverpool at home. So I feel like, yeah, just trying to get in front of any potential unravelling there because, yeah, it doesn't smell right for me at the moment.

Just on my rescue, go and find David Squire's last cartoon.

It's so good, especially the bit about his dad being a fisherman. Actually, the whole thing, it's a brilliant cartoon.

Good to hear with Lincoln and grimsby that lincolnshire football has never been so good worth mentioning tarek george's uh equalizer as well the commentator said he may never hit one better than that as long as he plays the game a bit rough to to basically end tarik george's career with an equalizer at sincil bank but there we go barry wolves first win of the season against everton yeah and i suppose it's a good win for them tolo arocadore they're they're

signing recent signing playing up front he got off the mark for them and i was a bit disappointed with David Moy's approach to this game.

I think if I was an Everton fan, I wouldn't be happy with that. He played quite a lot of reserves, they didn't really make a huge amount of effort.

They were only 1-0 down when he brought on Dewsbury Hall, Grealish in Jai,

but it wasn't enough. And

Wolves were able to

score another and go through to the next round. Upset of the night, Ali at Burnley with Cardiff, who were doing well in League One under Brian Barry Murphy.
We've mentioned them before.

Get him a good win. Yeah, for sure.
Two quick goals in the first half. Joel Colwell, who is part of a brotherly duo with his brother Ruben, who is a very, very exciting attacking midfielder.

And Joel, a couple of years younger, really good

physical central midfielder, scored a good goal.

And then Callum Robinson,

who has had a pretty decent career in the championship, flirted with the Premier League and is now in League One with Cardiff and probably struggling to get too motivated.

But Brian Barry Murphy's done a very good job of getting players like him and Callum Chambers onside here.

They lost at home to Bradford over the weekend and lost their spot at the top of the table, but this is a hell of a way to bounce back beating Premier League opposition.

So, yeah, I've mentioned it already on the pod this season, but Brian Barry Murphy and Cardiff are a really interesting team to follow for any neutrals this season.

And thankfully, the Cardiff fans having a pretty good time after a fairly bleak and tedious five years or so circling the championship drain. And Baz,

two other games we'll get to cambridge's heroic defeat in a second but brighton scoring six and diego gomez scoring the first four and what was i mean what was sad was like the the first second and third the goals just got better and better after the fourth going this is going to be wild right his third goal was unbelievable yeah two his second and third were just wonderful strikes of a football um

That's Brighton's second consecutive 6-0 win away from home in this competition. I think Oxford were on the receiving end first time out.
Now Barnsley. Brighton played a lot of their reserves.

Tommy Watson, I think it was the first time I've seen him in action since he fired Sunderland into the Premier League in the late stages of the play-off final.

So he played a role in a couple of the goals. But

yeah,

the Gomez's first one was a tap in. The fourth one was meh.
But second and third were beauties, absolute beauties.

Yeah, yeah, he'd probably have like, if he's going to go the way of Tyreek George, he'd probably like to have gone out on that third one. Yeah, it sort of

was on the volley, wasn't it? It bounced and it bounced up, and then he struck this ball, absolutely swerve and dip, and just flew into the net. So good.
Cambridge took 5,000 to Craven Cottage.

Robbed 1-0.

But that's the way football is sometimes. Man City go to Huddersfield.
Newcastle play Bradford Spurs, Doncaster, Arsenal go to Port Vale tonight.

So there could be some upsets, which we'll cover on tomorrow's pod. Let's talk about the championship.
Middlesbrough top, Stoke second, Bristol City third.

Then come Leicester, Preston, Coventry, Westboro and Birmingham QPR. Does feel, as you mentioned there, Ali, that, you know, that is not a top three that anyone was expecting.

No, I think if you go back and look at the championship table six games in any season you could choose, that it would look a bit weird and it probably wouldn't look much like the final table.

So, you know, that's worth pointing out. But yeah, it's been really exciting because the results have been unpredictable.

A few teams such as Stoke, who've had a really poor few seasons, probably stretching out to half a dozen seasons now at this level, look like a new side, a really vibrant, good attacking front three.

Mark Robbins doing a good job there. And Mark Robbins, obviously having done an incredible job with Coventry,

now is potentially promotion rival with Frank Lampard's Coventry. And another nice wrinkle is that Mark Robbins had a very tight partnership with his former assistant, A.D.
Viviash, with Coventry.

And their sort of demise, if you like, at Coventry was basically put down to the breakdown in their relationship and Robbins basically parting ways with Viviash and not replacing him very well, and things weren't quite right.

And Viviash is now the assistant manager of Rob Edwards, who is top of the league at Middlesbrough. So there's quite a nice little love triangle of sorts.

And there's no argument that Burrough, who are four points clear after six games, have been the standout team in the league. Really strong defensively.

They've got some fantastic technical midfield players like Hackney, the US midfielder Morris, and the Wonder Kid, Norwegian Wonder Kid on loan from Man City, Svera Nipan,

and quite a lot of new attackers as well. So defensively, it's where they've been standout so far.
Sort of, you know, in flashes, they've scored some great goals.

Their second at West Brom on Friday night was a beautiful move. And I think they might improve going forward as well.
So right now, to me, very clearly, Borough,

the team to beat. Preston, we should mention as well, because they're in fifth spot.

And they've beaten Leicester, they've beaten Ipswich, they conceded a last-minute equaliser to Middlesbrough, and they beat Derby away on the weekend.

So, PNE under Paul Heckingbottom, I think it's very underrated manager at this level, just has bad PR basically, but has a promotion to the Premier League under his belt, which not many do.

Who's Paul Heckingbottom's PR? You know, what a gig that is.

That could be the problem, Max. He doesn't have one.
Well, Preston are going very well under Heckey. So, there you go.
I mean, Max, you say it's a top three that none of us could could have predicted.

But with the benefit of the 2020 hindsight, we now have, Rob Edwards obviously has good championship pedigree. Mark Robbins

performed heroics at Coventry with one arm often tied behind his back. So it isn't a massive surprise that they are doing well.
Who do you think will stay the course, Sanny, if you had to predict?

For the reasons Ali's kind of outlined, Middlesbrough actually do look like the real deal.

And at the end of last last season I did say and you know Ali's kind of said it as well it is a very kind of middling league right they are quite samey so it is kind of open so I do think Middlesbrough will stay the course I'm actually at Stoke City Norwich this weekend so I can have a bit of a closer look albeit you know they're second but the form at the moment isn't isn't great they've lost i think three and four or five include in all comps but yeah i mean yeah as as barry said mark robbins has the pedigree doesn't he it's funny it's funny like you know you stick with a a good manager, and eventually they can come good, or you trust them with a bit of experience and knowledge, and they do well.

Um, Gerhard Struber at Bristol City, they're third at the moment. I'm surprised at that with Liam Manning going, and actually, Manning's having a bit of an issue at Norwich City as well.

Um, so those two around, I mean, Leicester are there, and Leicester have all that money, but then also these looming deductions. And I'm more telling you who I'm surprised by.

Press the North End, who I also felt very surprised by, who are up there. But the team I picked for the start of the season to win the league would be Coventry City, actually.

And I think they've got all the

four draws out of the season.

Yeah, 15 goals in six games, basically, because Frank Lampard and Jack Radoni have got such a good relationship, and basically basing it mostly on that and all their attacking options.

So I think Coventry will be up there and Middlesbrough as well. And the rest are kind of we'll see.

What do you put, Ali, down the fact, you know, Leicester are what they're Leicester a joint with Bristol City in Preston, so they're doing okay, aren't they?

But the fact that the relegated sides aren't instantly right at the top where you'd expect them. Difficult to say, really.
I mean, the

style of play

of the current championship season seems to be incredibly,

and it's quite entertaining as a neutral.

Like, if you switch on a Friday night championship game, even one including West Brom, who seem to be on every single Friday night and have been for about five seasons.

And normally there's one goal in it either way.

But your general championship game right now is pretty entertaining to watch because most teams seem to have, there's been a rejection of the sort of any sort of possession-based style of play, more or less, in favour of athleticism, 1v1 skill, and sort of counter-attacking, just trading transition attacks.

So quite fun to watch, but quite volatile. And I think that's probably where Ipswich and Southampton...
they have the best attacking players.

And in Ipswich's case, the one game they won was when Philogene scored a glorious hat-trick against Sheffield United. But I just think that they're not really at the races yet.

So that's onto the coaches, really, to sort that out. And a couple of teams are just further ahead than them, I think, right now.

And you do sometimes watch games early on in the season and you can probably say, well, actually, one of these teams is just a bit more settled than the other. So it could be that.

It could be deeper issues. I mean, Southampton has a club.

If they have another poor three or four games, things are going to turn pretty toxic because they're absolutely fed up by how they've gone in the Premier League the last two times they were there.

Um, and not very happy with the owners. With Ipswich, I think they're a bit more patient because they just adore Kieran McKenna, and it'd be hard to accept that he wouldn't be the right man for them.

But equally, they really have been unimpressive. They're on six points from five games, and it would be six from six,

most likely, had they not had their game abandoned due to a waterlogged pitch on Saturday at Blackburn when they were 1-0 down with 10 men. It was wet, though.
Oh, yeah. It was really.
That was.

It was amazing. With a ref rolling the ball.
It was one of those drop the ball, it stays. It's a great.
I mean, it feels very football league, that, doesn't it?

Speaking of managers that fans love, I mean, it's funny, Barry, to see Chris Wilder back so soon at Brammel Lane, isn't it? Yeah, I suppose it is.

And I guess the owners deserve credit for realising they'd made a mistake in appointing Ruben Selez and very much going back to square one

because

the theory was that Sheffield United wanted a change in direction. I don't think the direction was necessarily straight down to League One, but that's the direction they're going at the minute

and they were talking about this ai recruitment that i don't particularly understand a combination of artificial intelligence and metrics and whatnot and uh one imagines uh chris wilder wouldn't be hugely enthused by that approach to recruitment i do think chris wilder has a reputation as a dinosaur and a proper football man that he doesn't necessarily deserve, it's still not too late for him to put things right and make a charge for the playoffs.

I think I remember the one good season Roy Keene had as a manager. He took over Sunderland.

They were bottom of the championship, I think, after about six or seven games, and he marched them out of it as champions. So it can be done.

But whether Chris Wilder is the man to do it at Sheffield United remains to be seen. Sonny, do you think he will...
I mean,

we don't expect him to go down, surely, but I don't know. I mean, naught points from six games is not the best start.

No, not the best. But, you know, given what Chris Warrel did last season, where would you expect Sheffield United to get to? I think they'll get in the playoffs.

I've just started a new job at the University of Salford, and I was teaching them about Vox Pops, which I know Barry on the group said was the lowest form of journalism ever. I've done many.

Oh, I've done thousands on local radio. Well, I would say the lowest form of journalism, it's neck and neck with the open letter to somebody somebody or something.

Well, a week last Monday, I was at Sheffield United awaiting the announcement around Chris Wilder and then afterwards was tasked with doing Vox pops, which on a Monday afternoon, like four o'clock when it's absolutely hammering it down, was a tricky task,

including going in a pub full of Sheffield Wednesday fans, which I did survive at least. But not a single Sheffield United fan I spoke to was at all like, again, really? Another one?

Like everyone was pro wilder and I actually think he'll he'll get them in the playoffs.

Yes, he knows the club and all that side of things, but he also knows all the players and he knows how to get them to play and he got 92 points last season for a reason and that was with a two-point deduction here.

We're starting with what a 13 or so point deduction.

Yes, the the the last minute goal to producer Joel's uh Charlton uh with uh tanto lafe with that 90th minute uh winner was was uh not a great start again in the rain.

But yeah, I think he's got all the kind of tools there. He's got the buy-in straight away and that time that you need managers to bed in, he doesn't really need that, does he?

And like, he's got, he's got all the stock. And I suppose fair play to the owners for, yeah, as Barry's kind of mentioned, turning around going, yeah, yeah, we messed that up.

I did notice because Chris Wilder, in the time where he wasn't managing, he was doing appearances on Five Live Sport on a Saturday afternoon.

And they managed to get him up like before kickoff with Mark Chapman. Okay.
And he did actually mention, oh, yeah, great to be back.

You know, there's this call for laptop managers, but you know, we're seeing a bit of a change. And it's sort of, it's funny, isn't it?

Because Ali and George have both said on this pod, like how Chris Wilder is seen as this dinosaur, but actually he's the one who did the underlapping defenders and all that sort of thing.

I think he leans into this dinosaur bit as well. He actually does really play up to it, even though it's not quite his style anyway.

But all it means is, so essentially, you've got maybe the nouse of a laptop manager, but also like, he will punch you in the face if he really has to. You better play for him.

And those two things combined, I think, will work. Surely Chris Wilder has a laptop.
I mean, he wields a desk computer. He's a mole skill manager.
He's got a drink to the dugout. Can you imagine?

Let's talk about the playoffs and the pay-up expansion. The FL board is discussing the possibility of expanding it to clubs who finish seventh and eighth.

Is that similar, Ali, to the National League, isn't it? So, you know, eighth and seventh would play each other for the right to play the winner of fifth and sixth or something like that.

Feels fun to me.

Am I missing something? Well, it depends how deeply you want to look into this match, because I agree it does sound quite fun on a surface level. And I'm sure that if it does happen,

there'll be loads and loads of chat about it and hand-ringing about it. And what does it mean about the modern football?

And then the games will happen, and we'll be buzzing that there's some really exciting playoff games. However,

on a technical note, it would be slightly different to the National League playoffs.

There are no two-legged affairs in the National League, whereas this would be essentially two more matches, two eliminator matches, as you say.

What would it be? Eighth versus fifth and seventh versus sixth, and then you'd go into a normal playoff semi-final, two-legged situation.

So, just two more matches involving the seventh team and the eighth team, which don't already exist, and then as normal.

My stance on this, and maybe the conversation is more about what does it mean and is it fair, is that I don't think this is going to happen. Right, okay.

This has been floated by Peter Risdale, who's on the who's on the sort of EFL board, I think,

represents represents championship clubs. And the reporting is that the championship clubs are in favour.
So that's good stuff. That makes it seem quite likely to happen.

The kicker is any final proposal would need to be approved by both the FA and the Premier League.

And if there's one thing that I think we know about football governance and changing things like this, is that in order to get everyone to agree and push it through, you need a majority.

And there is so much self-interest when it comes to voting that I don't really know why Premier League clubs would vote this through or the Premier League, particularly know why the FA would vote this through.

I think there's basically some quite good PRing, unlike Paul Heckingbottom's PR.

I think Peter Risdale's championship playoff revamp has got some quite good PRing in the press that makes it seem maybe more likely and popular than it is. I'd be pretty surprised if it happens.

And even if you look a tiny bit closer,

the reasons that they say it's popular, I'm not sure they really stack up either, right?

So it says like, oh, there's a feeling that the championship is currently unfair on non-parachute payment teams. Objectively true.

But this feels like an odd solution to that because it just gives two teams one more match to maybe win promotion. But

there still probably won't be very many non-parachute payment teams that win promotion. This doesn't feel like an obvious solution to that, if you ask me.

And then the other thing that people keep mentioning is that there'd be fewer dead rubbers at the end of the season because teams in 10th and 11th would still be gunning for that that seventh spot or eighth spot again i'm not sure this is a big issue i i we don't we sometimes talk about dead rubbers at the end of a season on on not the top 20 but generally we're not that worried because there's still loads going on that's really exciting so i that's big news for preston right i know they're doing all right but it's big news for preston who are is 11 yeah who peter ridgedale is the director of

by the way yeah

i mean mean, Millwall, I think Millwall have finished eighth, three of the last four or five seasons. So they would have had a real tilt at the Premier League in this scenario.

You've got to think, right? So last season it was Blackburn and Millwall seventh and eighth. Is it in the Premier League's interest for Millwall to be in the Premier League?

That's what you've got to ask yourself. And I would say, no.
I would say they really wouldn't want them in there. I don't know if the Premier League would ever agree to that.

If you look at the National League last season, so Barnett went up as champions. York finished second and had to go into the playoffs.
And Oldham and Southend ended up in the playoff final.

Oldham finished 23 points behind York. And South End finished 28 points behind them.
Oldham ended up going up. And they're currently 11th

after nine games with 13 points. So they're doing fine in league two.
I think a lot of people who are criticising this idea.

I don't think it's a terrible idea. I don't think it's fine as it is as well.

They're saying, oh, you could have a team that finishes eighth going into the Premier League and making a show of themselves. But that wouldn't necessarily be the case.

And also, lots of teams that come fourth, yeah, can show themselves up, don't they? Also, before we end part one, just say, I think, Sat, just to protect you, Sami, you were saying the Premier League

wouldn't want Millwall in the Premier League. You weren't saying you yourself wouldn't want Millwall in the Premier League.
Oh, no, I think it'd be great if Millwall went up.

It'd be brilliant, you know.

Just to keep a mealy-mouthed apology, just keep cropping uh you know look at the teams that have strong fan bases they are what make the premier league exciting you know crystal palace is a great example sorry millwall to compare to them make it worse uh but you know you've got a great set of fans there so millwall in the premier league from a from a colour and uh that side of things would be great i just think the opposition the other clubs are self-serving and it's not in their interest for millwall to go in and just by the way just as a competition I think you're devaluing the competition.

And I don't think Barry's point quite works because, yeah, as you said, the disparity between championship and Premier League is massive compared to the disparity between National League and League Two.

So I'm not so sure. All right, that'll do for part one.
Part two, we'll do League One and League Two.

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welcome to part two of the guardian football weekly ali is bradford stevenage lincoln a surprise top three at the summit it's a it's a great top three at the summit max and good definitely a surprise i mean we do our preseason full league table predictions we had stevenage and lincoln something like eighth ninth or ninth tenth and and said these feel like the sort of teams that could be dark horses but we weren't brave enough to actually put them in the top six and the reason they both feel felt like and have been so far dark horses is

they are as i mentioned with lincoln earlier um they go for kind of continuity and consistency they've got really smart people uh running the club in the right way both teams stevenage and lincoln um they've got young managers michael scubala of lincoln and alex revell of stevenage who are improving the longer that they manage the clubs right so instead of sacking them after their first poor run, they've been backed instead, and the club have come out the other side stronger for it with a manager that has real authority and has feet under the table.

These are all things that are quite unusual and therefore notable

in the EFL. And probably

it helps you start well because everyone's kind of ready to go. Everyone knows their jobs and what's going on.

Whereas a team that maybe has a new manager and seven new starters and that sort of thing probably is more likely to start slow.

So they're both built on really strong defences, Stevenage and Lincoln, not sparkling attacking teams, but effective, shall we say, and absolutely, you know, good for it.

Both of them have had relatively kind fixture lists to start the season and things will get tougher. Whereas Bradford at the top have just been so exciting to watch.
I mean, look at their scores.

Their last three games have been 3-1,

which I think really kind of sums them up. They've lost one of those and won the other two against Huddersfield and Cardiff.
They've played Stockport and beaten them.

They've played Luton and beaten them. So they've already beaten some of the leading lights.
Four out of four at home. It's just an incredible atmosphere at the moment.

And the team has loads of different threats, plays with great intensity, real confidence on the ball, and they attack with speed.

Defensively, they're not that good, but you know, they're scoring two in every game so far. So it doesn't seem to matter that much right now.

And yeah, they've just been absolutely magnificent. On Lincoln, Ben Fisher wrote a piece about them before the Chelsea game.

They have a growth and innovation officer, and he said, there are always ideas bubbling away at the surface, one centering on using plant-based energy gels, another adjusting dressing room lighting to heighten performance.

Producer Joel did notice that this article about Lincoln using AI was next to a Martin O'Neill interview with the headline, Expected Goals is a clueless development. So, you know,

you can take your pick. Cardiff, we've mentioned already as well, Sanny, the highest place side from relegated from the championship.

It's quite interesting, actually, last season's playoff sides are struggling a little bit, aren't they? Yeah, they are. Just on Cardiff,

one of my friends played with and played under uh Brian Barry Murphy, described him as the smiling assassin because he's very good with the media, he's very good with uh, the players, and really, yeah, like overly friendly with you.

When you want, you know, he's like, I remember the second time I interviewed him, and he remembered, he remembered my name, and I was like, oh, you've just spoken to a press office.

And then he killed your family. Yeah, exactly.
I've never forgiven him since. But yeah, he's pretty ruthless when he wants to be.
And it is funny his trajectory.

That's a textbook cork man, by the way. Yeah, that's where he's from.

Well, yeah, and

his dad and all that, famously GAA and all the rest of it. But sorry,

don't you have to be ruthless as a book manager and you can be nice at the same time? Isn't that proving that? Or, you know, isn't that a good...

You're saying people from that's a good sign, people from cork? Or are you saying that the cork type is friendly to your face and not elsewhere? I'm saying nothing, Max.

I've said all I want to say on the matter.

Irish people will know exactly what I'm saying without me having to say it.

I feel you have said enough. Sorry, Sally, I interrupted you.
He can be ruthless when he wants to.

And actually, he got hounded out of Rochdale and has kind of like landed on his feet, if you like, through his rehabilitation at Manchester City, working with the youngsters.

And yeah, it's coming all together. I guess it's the right mix.
Whereas at somewhere like Rochdale, he was playing maybe too many kids and with no resource.

And at at Cardiff, he's got kind of the right balance of kids and some resource.

You mentioned the playoffs. Yeah, Stockport 8th, Orient a 14th, Wickham are 18th.
Yeah, I mean, Stockport, I think, will still come good.

I mean, Orient always, you know, I suppose it's always a team that have

the playoff hangover and all that. Yeah, it is very early to see, what, nine games in? So some of those will come good.

Wickham had a bit of a weird end to the season because by that point, Richard Koenet wanted to leave, right? And he had a series of injuries that may or may not have been injuries.

We don't quite know. I never really warmed to

Mike Dodds, really. You know, going back to the laptop manager, he very much sounded like that.
It just seemed like the wrong appointment at the wrong time.

And it's kind of come to fruition because at the time, they were doing really well. And Matt Bloomfield then left to Luton.
And you didn't really need someone to change the style rate.

You just needed to kind of carry on. But it didn't quite come together.
He didn't really seem to win everyone over.

I think if they'd have got someone in with a bit of a reputation rather than somebody just starting out, things might have gone a bit better for them. But he's out the door.

And Michael Duff, who certainly does have a reputation, is in. And of course, don't have to change any of the lettering on any of the training kit or anything like that.

So that's saved a little bit of money as well. So we'll see if that turns him around.

I think

Michael Duff knows what he's doing, doesn't he? I think he'll be all right. I think Mike Duxbury gutted not to get this.
Mike Dean, also upset.

Look, at the bottom, Ali, as I said in the start, quite predictable. Burton, who are always sort of circling the drain, aren't they

quite often come good late in the season at cambridge's expense peterbury have had a shocking start actually you know won a couple on the bounce blackpool rotherham reading who perhaps we would have expected to do slightly better i don't know portvelle wickham and plymouth so i suppose we didn't expect plymouth to be down there but what's your take on the how the bottom of the table is shaping up i think my take is that in league one over the last four or five years there's been a group of quite small clubs for the level off the top of my head forest green burton Burton, you've mentioned still there, Acke, Morecambe,

Cheltenham,

Cambridge United. No, come on.
No, it's okay. No, no, I don't disagree with you.

And generally what happens is, because particularly because there are four relegation spots, there's really nowhere to hide.

Mostly those clubs hang around for two or three seasons max, maybe four, and then get relegated back to League Two.

But there's been quite a consistent group of clubs that have kind of not necessarily propped up the table, but you're expecting to see them in the bottom six, bottom eight, like what you said about Burton.

But now you look at the league and it suddenly looks quite a lot stronger.

And I think that's a problem for teams like Peterborough and Blackpool and Rotherham and Reading, who have no designs whatsoever on being part of a relegation battle in League One, consider themselves way above that, but are actually in a league where unless they buck up their ideas, they absolutely will be.

And therefore, I think it's a really interesting league. So, you know, Exeter are 16th, but they've lost six out of nine.
And I do think they will likely be battling relegation.

Northampton started poorly, but rattled off three wins in a row and are now 15th. So the league table is still shaking up a bit.
And maybe Northampton and Exeter will drop.

And that'll be better news for the clubs down below. But yeah, for Posh, for Blackpool, there's been sort of slight panic stations to start the season.

Both have former, well, one literal son of Sir Alex Ferguson in Darren and one

sort of figurative son in Steve Bruce, who's manager of Blackpool.

Whereas Rotherham have got a first-time manager in Matt Hamshaw, who's kind of lifelong fan of the club, been a coach at the club, and he's really struggling at the moment, a lot of that down to injuries.

So Noel Hunt is the Reading manager. I think he needs a win or two very quickly.
I mean, they've won two out of the last three, which I think has been a bit of a stay of execution for him.

But I don't think the fans, a bit like what Sandy said about Mike Dodds, don't think the fans are particularly convinced, although he's a club legend, that he's the sort of man to take them up towards the top of league one.

So yeah, it needs a big few weeks. Ali, why do you think that's happening?

Like, is that just because the sort of Birmingham Wrexham effect that if you get Birmingham not so much, but you know, Wrexham are a team, you know, I'm trying to think why suddenly there wouldn't be those clubs that you'd expect to be sort of bouncing between league one and league two because they've got to have gone somewhere.

Like who's who's above them now? Is it just takes two or three other sides, right, to push their way up for bigger clubs to start sort of slipping into that bracket, I guess?

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I mean,

it's always so hard to really like drill down on this. It's a big pyramid, lots of clubs,

lots of different sort of factors at any given time. But we were speaking on a pod the other day.

One of the listeners pointed out that if you map out the top four tiers by average attendance, which is, you know, obviously owners can change the financial reality of a club, but you know, a team's like organic size and revenues is generally best tied to average attendance, right?

And size of the fan base. If you map out the 92 by average attendance, it has become very neat in the last few years.

There's been a bit of a sort of rejigging and rebalancing in some ways, a bit like what I said about a lot of the smaller clubs that have dropped out of league one.

It's happened across most of the leagues now, and it is quite noticeable. The main outliers are Premier League clubs, right?

So Bournemouth, if they were in the championship, would have the second-lowest attendance. Brentford would be a bottom-half attendance in the championship.

but otherwise across all four leagues there aren't very many like extreme outliers who are by that measure like miles away from where they they would sort of naturally land if that makes sense yeah i only look at those average attendances when i'm trying to see how many tickets we're selling for a live show and see that actually more people go and watch altering them and then you go is that is that is that good is that bad for us you know or does that just show the power of football you know we're one of the we're one of the top ones and we we we can't do better than authoring them.

Can I just shout up on Luton, by the way, who are mid-table. And I think if you are on Sack Race Watch, I think Matt Bloomfield is on a very short leash now.

Performance is not good. Capitulated at home to Plymouth Argar, lost 3-2.

Lost away at Lincoln. And we've mentioned how well Lincoln are playing.
But remember, they've got the parachute money, albeit a lot of that's been absorbed into... stadium and all the rest of it.

But Matt Bloomfield's had quite a lot of time to kind of have things in place. I think think Luton fans were expecting something big.
It's not coming together at all.

And just looking at the fixtures, well, they've got Doncaster at home, Blackpool away after that, which is, you know, a winnable one, Blackpool right in the bottom.

But then, I think what could really be terminal is Stevenage away. Given where Stevenage are in the league, it's not a Derby, but it's become a Derby, you know.

And if they were to lose to Stevenage, when you think where those two clubs have been historically and are now, I think that could be really, really the writing on the wall for him.

So it's just not working at all. I'm not quite sure exactly why.
I don't know.

You know, there's a thing about, you know, players used to losing and clubs used to losing and that sort of side of things, but it's just not coming together for him.

And yeah, I'd be very worried for Matt Bloomfield. In league two, Gillingham, top, unbeaten, 21 points from nine games.
Salford and Walsall, two points behind.

Then comes Swindon, Groomsby, Chesterfield, and then a clutch of sides on 14 points, including the mighty Cambridge United. Gareth Ainsworth Alley doing the business for Gillingham.

Yeah, really, really is.

I mean, they've conceded six goals in their nine games. They are incredibly strong defensively.
They play exactly as you would expect if you watched Gareth Ainsworth's Wickham side.

That was a style of play and a style of man management that worked incredibly well at Wickham,

taking them all the way to the championship, and then did not work at QPR, did not work. particularly at Shrewsbury, albeit he jumped ship for this opportunity in the league below.

And everything's lined up perfectly. Gills needed this, Ainsworth needed Gilles, and it all looks pretty perfect right now.
They are not a side that are blowing teams away.

It's generally pretty tight margin stuff. They've had a lot of fortune,

one large bit of fortune in particular, against Bromley a couple of weeks ago, where they were second best, 2-0 down, and they equalized with a 96-minute penalty, which was scored.

And Gareth McCleary was then banned by the FA for simulation or FA or EFL and missed a game. So an obvious admission that that penalty shouldn't have stood.
They would have a loss in that column.

Instead, they're 21 unbeaten. Ainsworth hasn't lost a league game since joining in March and things are going very, very well indeed.

It is worth noting that Gareth McCleary is about 40 years old, is he?

And

was outraged at being retrospectively banned for simulation.

He insists that he, while he may have fallen over, it was not a die. It was just age.
They just said, Yeah, he had a fall. Did he? He just said, Yeah,

he's of an age now where he don't fall. You have a fall.
Yeah, he's that. He's 38.

But yeah, anyone, anyone over 40 knows, you know, you don't want to go to ground if you can help it because it's hard to get up, isn't it? Salford in second, uh, Ali, could this be their time?

Whenever I focus on League Two, I, whenever Cambridge Rinnett, Salford, you know, you sort of think, well, they should be.

And I remember them hammering us once a a few years ago and thinking, wow, they're pretty good, but they never make it.

Yeah, no, I mean, that is, that is literally the story of their life in League Two so far. I think they've been favorites for the title.

They were like the first three seasons at this level and didn't get close.

Now they've sort of, they're not necessarily the sort of hot topic of the league because of that. And I mean, Sandy's on the ground a bit more in that region than me.

I mean, it's kind of a funny one because

The Class of 92, the documentary, all that stuff is like still very much going on. Like, Neville's heavily involved.

They are now creating their own in-house documentary because I think whoever was hosting it before was like, yeah, no, I think we've probably done this now.

And they had a very, very rich owner in Peter Lim who kind of helped Neville and the lads run the club as they wanted it. And then

very clearly, that was starting to not go very well. And they managed to find some new incredibly rich people to fund this club.

So, you know, they're doing very well on the funding front, slightly less well on the football football front, given the amount of money that they spend.

And they have built for Carl Robinson a squad with lots of strong names all over the park, bought a couple of premium centre-backs, which has made them look much more solid defensively.

And at the top of the pitch, you know, they bought

Tesco Solidarity.

They bought Daniel Udo, for example, who was starting for Wickham in league one. And Solford were like, yeah, we'll have you.
And he's dropped down and looks very, very sharp.

So I kind of, you know, at the moment in League Two, Two, I'm not, I'm not really hanging my hat on any of these teams. You know, League Two is a real movable feast.

The reason that the top teams in League Two almost always get way fewer points than the teams in the championship in League One is because it's a much more equitable division.

And because I guess players at this level find it harder to be consistent for a full season. And so, you know, you do get teams who start well and fall away and vice versa.

It's bloody entertaining, I tell you that. You had Cambridge 18th, Ali, I think, and we're 9th.
So

that's not really a humble pie, is it? That's just sort of, what is it? I don't know.

It's something. No, I mean,

very good defensively, Max, which I imagine you've enjoyed watching. Oh, I mean,

you know, it's football

of a sort. No, I think we're doing quite well.
I have high hopes. Sanny, Cheltenham and Shrewsbury at the bottom.
Both two sides that were in League One pretty recently. So what's happening with them?

Yeah,

a bit like that thing on getting used to losing.

I mean, Shrewsbury, had that takeover proposed and it didn't quite come together and that's kind of left them in a bit of limbo, so not much investment there.

Cheltenham sacked Michael Flynn and in his last post-match interview, he was like, these are the results that get you sacked. Like he previewed his own sacking as if he knew it was coming.

How many games did Cheltenham go without winning or scoring last season? Like, you know,

that was them, wasn't it? Was it last year? God, it feels like a long time ago. It was two years ago.
Two years ago.

We were the team that got one point in nine last year. Yeah, God, it's all kind of blowing together, isn't it?

The funny thing, just quickly about that Flynn interview that you referenced, San, is I'm pretty sure he knew he was about to get sacked, and it's quite a yeah, that's quite a fun scenario because he said, This is the worst group of players I've ever had.

So he really went out swinging.

Fair enough. Yeah, and I guess that sums up exactly why they're there when you've got the worst group of players ever had.

One win at home, four defeats, nothing away. It's very, very bleak reading.
And

I think we see this in League Two. There's always at least one club that are kind of like fundamentally things are just not run, not being ran in the right way.

And they just end up falling down there. Like it's quite, it's quite hard to get relegated from League Two.
Like there's only two spots and there's a lot of kind of middling sides.

And as Ali mentioned, you know, the points totals are lower because, yeah, anyone can beat anyone. You've got to really kind of go out of your way to get relegated.

I mean, the amount of times I saw Berry be absolutely abysmal. And we somehow survived every time.

But so, yeah, I think fundamentally, there's things off the pitch not working there, and that's kind of bearing fruit.

And worryingly, for them, there's not too many around them who are in that sort of situation.

I mean, Newport have got a new manager as well, who's a former Man United coach, and he's kind of finding his feet. So, he's got issues there.

But around them, you know, it seems to be better-placed clubs, really. So, yeah, a bit of a worry.
All right, that'll do for part two, part three. We'll begin with the ballon d'Or.

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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly. Paul writes, Am I the only person who couldn't care less about this?

An individual trophy in a team sport decided by a group of people whose combined opinion, when we have actual facts and numbers to determine success, a waste of everybody's time.

Small Cathy says, My son sat down and watched the ballon d'Or ceremony in full. Should we worry about the younger generation? He's 12.

I mean, maybe we're wrong, Barry, for not having this right at the top. Usmana Dembele winning the men's award, Aitana Bomati winning the women's.
Yeah, insert Principal Skinner from the Simpsons

gif here.

You know, am I out of touch?

I'm on the side of Paul. I don't really care who wins the ballon d'Or.
I struggle to have an opinion on it beyond total apathy.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody ever used to care who won the ballon d'Or.

Then you'd suddenly hear, oh, Michael Owen won the ballon d'Or. Oh, well done, Michael.
You know, whatever.

So I think

kids are way more invested in it than us old-timers because a lot of children, I think, seem to be more invested in individual players than actual football teams. So they're,

I have a nephew in Canada. He is obsessed with Lionel Messi.
He doesn't really like football, but he's obsessed with Lionel Messi. Pretty good taste, to be fair.
Yeah, yeah.

There seems to be a lot of debate over whether Usman Edembello was a worthy winner or not. I guess he probably was.
I wouldn't have been upset if Lamine Yamal got it instead.

That seems to be, you know, why didn't Lamin Yamal get it? Maybe it's because he's very, very young and people think, well, he'll win it further down the line.

But I personally could not care less who wins the ballon d'Or.

De Bella was in tears on stage collecting the award at the same time PSG were losing one nil away at Marseille in the league, but he was injured, to be fair. So he wouldn't have played in that game.

It was actually a lovely video of his first ever club and them all, you know, and them all celebrating. That was lovely moment um

i guess if you have the rights to cover this sort of thing then you big it up to be a huge thing and

um yes it doesn't it doesn't bother me but you can you know i guess if i was a player i'd quite like to be the best one in the whole world i always found it striking when when trent alexander arnold that interview came out that he said his dream was to win the ballon d'oor and that that was when it kind of first really dawned on me that the younger generation have this completely different way of thinking about football compared to us.

It's really strange. On the top floor of the National Football Museum in Manchester is George Best's Ballon d'Or trophy.
And we took our new

sports journalism students there at Salford Uni. On Freshers Weeks, they all turned up, like, not even that hungover, which is amazing.
And they went all around the museum and saw it all.

And then on the final floor, and I just kind of like noticed it and I pointed it out to them. And they all like rushed over with the same like alacrity, if you like, as seeing

the George Remay trophy on the middle floor. I just was quite struck by that.

It's quite a smaller, kind of more, you know, less

austere kind of trophy. But yeah, I don't know.

I don't know if it's the age of the individual and all that side of things, or whether it is actually in a social media age where we like debate and controversy and, you know, sports media is everywhere and we like that debate and conversation.

You know, you get so many extra news lines from the ballon d'Or than maybe you used to. You know, how much debate has there been on, well, Salah should have won it? How was she not up there?

Why did Alessia Russo not win the women's ballon d'Or when she won the Champions League and WSL top scorer and won the Euros with England? And it gives us more copy, right?

So maybe it's a bit of both. So maybe it isn't quite a younger generation thing.
Maybe we're all just feeding into it. But I did find it quite striking.
And yeah, and I am with Barry.

I really, I don't really care. But I suppose it's interesting.
And, you know, I work in sports news as well. So maybe I should care more.

Sunny, can I ask, when you take your undergraduates out on a field trip, do you make them walk two by two while wearing high-vis jackets? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let's get them like, yeah, holding hands and stuff. They've only just met, but I paired them up immediately, and then one just vomits all over the other.

I was going to say, more importantly, their freshness, did they all then do shots of WKD

out of George Best's ballon d'Or? If, if, if that is possible, I don't know, the I don't know the trophy.

One of them did get quite queasy at one point, needed to sit down, and that person got my absolute respect. They were like, you know, cling on to the old ways, and they will get a first.

Out of interest,

if we could hear more correspondence from the

person that wrote in about this, who suggested that

we could just pick the winner based on a number. I think we've got numbers these days, I think, was what was said.

Which number? Yeah, no, that's a good point. Yeah, which but which metrics and stats you still have to choose the metrics and stats that you think are most important.

Is that goals or is it goals and assists or is it trophies or is it team wins? Is it expected threats? Expected assists. assistance.

I'm a data guy.

I would say expect being the leader in Europe in expected threat probably suggests that you've been the most effective player on the continent. But I don't think many people would agree with that.

So there you go. Like, you know, you have to decide.
The key decision here is...

do you have to pick someone that won the champions league because that's our continental competition that means the most to us and generally the answer is yes and so once you go from that point it is it is all a bit ridiculous but but honestly like it's actually not easy to decide who the best player is.

When we had Messi and Ronaldo, it was easier because you just had to pick one of those two.

But when there's not that absolute superstar, clearly best player in the world, which has been the case for the last few years, it's not easy at all to select who the best one is.

Some great players just make other players look better. You know, Cece Federico Chies.
It's very hard.

The way it's voted at the moment, it's quite apparent that a lot of people who have a vote for the ballon or don't take it seriously or else are completely stupid so that's a kind of a flaw but

it's a thing yeah lots of people take it seriously uh louis enrique was named coach of the year psg team of the year lamina mal young player of the year bomber tea the women serena viegman got coach of the year at hannah hampton uh got the goalkeeper award the yashin trophy uh an update finally from our u.s teen soccer sensation listener spencer herdad writes hi max and barry here's an update from i-95 to philadelphia aka uh he's written Barry's, but it was my mistake of the motorways of the United States.

Max is I-35. Keely may have a bit of the Diego Costa or Sergio Ramos.
What team does he play for, Barry? That's somewhere in Mexico, isn't it?

Given that she bodied this poor opponent, there is a photo of her next to someone lying on the floor and didn't stop to check for a pulse. Everyone was fine, by the way, he says.

Max is someone who spends much of his current life. in a car with teen children.
I might trade a 24-hour flight to Australia with two small children. At least you can drink on the plane.

i can't drink in the car uh we still haven't established if she's playing for the united states yet so we'll get that but anyway still the best footballer who listens to the pod aside from harrogate's goalkeeper uh but that'll do for today thanks everybody thank you barry um our our pal in

slovakia may want a word uh

oh yes

guram

That is true. Guram Kashir, yes.
With all due respect to Keeley and the Harrogate goalkeeper. That is true.
Whose name I don't even know.

He's called James, I think. Yes.

James Balshaw. Yeah.
Kashir did play at the Euros, didn't he? So look, we should give him at least a nod

for that. Thank you, Barry.
Thanks, Ali. Thank you, Max.
Thanks, Sanny. Thank you.

And by the way, if Carell Prince, the HMRC of podcast, is listening, everything I've said is fact, but please check the tapes on Barry's header. That's what we want next on this.
Right. Yeah, no, no.

I'm quite enjoying his stuff. Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.
Our executive producer is Danielle Stevens.

This is The Guardian.

Hi, folks. It's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman.

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