Latest / Let's Kick It Off! / Ep 30: 24/25 Season Wrapped!

Transcript

Ep 30: 24/25 Season Wrapped! · Let's Kick It Off!

• 0:00
  Why do we have to have a capitalist model?
• 0:01
  That's the bit I don't get. And why?
• 0:03
  And The thing is, I it's it's one thing saying, OK, you know
• 0:08
  what? This is just the way it is.
• 0:09
  And therefore, but it's another thing getting excited about.
• 0:12
  Oh please, Sheikh Jaseem, come. Fuck you shake Jessie.
• 0:15
  Fuck you Steve in your obsession with this Qatari guy that's.
• 0:19
  Not excitement mate, that's desperation.
• 0:22
  That is desperation, my friend. What we don't need to be
• 0:25
  desperate is my point. We just finished 15th in the
• 0:27
  league and lost the European final to Spurs.
• 0:45
  Let's kick it off. I'm Steve and I'm joined by Ash
• 0:49
  and us and we have cabs back on and we're going to do an end of
• 0:53
  season review looking back at the 2425 season, which clearly
• 0:58
  as a Manchester United supporter could not have gone any worse.
• 1:02
  Liverpool won the title, we finished 15th in the league and
• 1:07
  we lost the European final to Spurs.
• 1:10
  But not to make it all about Manchester United because
• 1:12
  there's another big club that done some good stuff and I'm of
• 1:15
  course talking about PSG when in the Champions League final five
• 1:19
  nil. So we'll come to us on that
• 1:21
  first since I think on the last pod of the pod before you came
• 1:25
  up with possibly the worst prediction of the season and
• 1:28
  predicted into Milan to win the final.
• 1:30
  So, us, were you pleasantly surprised by that spectacle?
• 1:34
  I. Don't know if I was, I wasn't
• 1:37
  surprised. And PSG with the favourites,
• 1:39
  that team. So I mean, I thought it was a
• 1:43
  bit of a boring final though it was a bit of a disappointment to
• 1:45
  be honest, because you won a bit of a contest into really was
• 1:49
  just useless. Didn't get into the game.
• 1:53
  The experience that you think would be a, you know, a factor
• 1:57
  in it was the other way around. They seem to like freeze under
• 2:00
  the pressure of it all. PSG played probably the best
• 2:04
  game that I've seen them play. Yeah, kudos to them.
• 2:10
  Really good team, good young players showing that, you know,
• 2:15
  the model that, you know, I would prefer or they should have
• 2:19
  gone down a long, you know, down the route that they should have
• 2:22
  done a long time ago is is the better route, which is
• 2:24
  investing, you know, the best young players, high energy.
• 2:29
  I'm really happy for Louis. Enrique, obviously, you know,
• 2:33
  the weird thing I've discussed before about, you know, nation
• 2:36
  states using this as a kind of, you know, marketing essentially
• 2:40
  tool. So, you know, Nasser, Al Khalifi
• 2:42
  and all this lot, you know, nothing good to say about them.
• 2:46
  But I think the, the, the the individuals themselves played
• 2:49
  really well. And they, yeah, thoroughly
• 2:52
  deserved to win. But it really wasn't much of A
• 2:54
  game, to be honest. The the semi, if you could think
• 2:57
  about what we watched in the semi finals, which was just
• 3:00
  backed spectacular, amazing games.
• 3:02
  So almost like what we lost in this final was the final I
• 3:06
  wanted is, you know, PSG cluster.
• 3:08
  And it's a shame Zintel just went up for it.
• 3:11
  They weren't up for it, they weren't up to it.
• 3:12
  It was an old team and it was one game too far for them, I
• 3:15
  think. Biggest ever Champions League
• 3:17
  final win. I mean, that's some going right
• 3:20
  caps. Yeah, absolutely.
• 3:23
  And it was. And it was very much deserved as
• 3:25
  well, to be honest. I mean, I think the gap was so
• 3:28
  stark between the two teams also.
• 3:30
  I think it was one of those, it was almost, it felt like the
• 3:36
  emergence of a new tactical setup for European football or
• 3:41
  the default. I think a lot of people are
• 3:43
  going to try to imitate this rotation, midfield this because,
• 3:46
  you know, like Pep Guardiola, Guardiola's inverted fullback
• 3:50
  thing has basically been the framework of every modern
• 3:54
  football team going for the last 5-6 years.
• 3:57
  It looks like it's a reversion back to a flying wingers
• 4:01
  rotation midfield with a really very dynamic front 3.
• 4:04
  So I think it's I think it's I think it's really good for the
• 4:07
  game. And I think it's also really
• 4:08
  good for the game that it's outside of the clock.
• 4:11
  Guardiola discourse of football tactics, because the last 10
• 4:15
  years has essentially been a football, you know, a dialogue
• 4:19
  between Pep Guardiola football and and clubs football and
• 4:23
  everything after that has basically almost been a reaction
• 4:27
  to those two. And here we've got something and
• 4:30
  I think Enrique is doing something that's actually
• 4:32
  starkly different to that and he's not directly responding to
• 4:36
  that. And I think that's pretty.
• 4:38
  I think that's quite good for football.
• 4:40
  Is it starkly, don't you think that we were watching a little
• 4:44
  bit early Liverpool club in that performance?
• 4:47
  The only difference I would say in that, when I say that, I mean
• 4:51
  like there's a tight front, 3A, tight midfield, 32 wing backs
• 4:56
  essentially get, you know, Nuno Mendez and Hikimi Hikimi, the
• 4:59
  first goal showing, you know how unbelievable he is just covering
• 5:03
  the whole pitch, just ridiculous player.
• 5:06
  The only difference I would say with that and maybe early club
• 5:10
  is PSG don't play the offside trap and that's the difference
• 5:13
  between PSG and Barsa. But in terms of their high
• 5:16
  press, high energy, strong in the centre of the pitch, the
• 5:21
  kind of Dembele was kind of doing the Roberto Firmino thing
• 5:24
  of dropping deeper, right? And then you had the two guys
• 5:27
  either side coming and attacking.
• 5:29
  And then you had the, you know, like Trent and Robertson you
• 5:31
  have in Mendez and Hakimi with them.
• 5:35
  I know you're saying rotational midfield.
• 5:36
  I think they're probably a bit more possession emphasis, but
• 5:39
  what was different to you? Like what's so different with
• 5:41
  this? Because I think, I think there's
• 5:44
  a fundamental difference, because I think Klopp's football
• 5:46
  was essentially underdog football to counteract inability
• 5:50
  of technical ability. I think that's entire set up of
• 5:53
  Klopp's evolution of Klopp's football and actually from where
• 5:57
  he gets it from, right from his. Building and press, but don't
• 6:01
  you think at Liverpool they upped the.
• 6:02
  Liverpool was no, no, no, no, I mean like they did, but that was
• 6:06
  that was that was late Liverpool trying to trying to adapt.
• 6:10
  But I think Liverpool in its core, if you look at like the
• 6:13
  great Liverpool team, it was a functional midfield.
• 6:16
  By functional, I mean somebody, all the midfielders were tasked
• 6:21
  to cover space and defensive responsibility.
• 6:23
  It wasn't to hold, hold the ball.
• 6:25
  It was because a sense of the, the aim was quick transition,
• 6:31
  the beauty of that exactly as soon as as soon as you can.
• 6:34
  So you can basically break what what I like about, sorry, what I
• 6:38
  think is historically different here is I think the midfield is
• 6:41
  actually the hub of the team in the whole in a very Pep
• 6:44
  Guardiola systemic way. But it's not slow.
• 6:48
  They're not trying to slow the game down and just play
• 6:50
  possession because Pep Guardiola's entire framework of
• 6:53
  football is based on, well, as it's developed as is now, based
• 6:57
  on negating negative transition, right?
• 7:00
  I mean like and and. So yeah, this is nothing like it
• 7:02
  has almost basically. Taken that to the NTH degree.
• 7:04
  Yeah, this is nothing like PEP, I agree on that.
• 7:06
  But I'm just wondering, is this an evolution of clock?
• 7:09
  But that puts but yes. But I think in a sense, the
• 7:14
  evolution of clock is almost this this synthesis of what the.
• 7:18
  Isn't this, isn't this Clop if he had the more money?
• 7:20
  Like if Clop had more money to buy better midfield?
• 7:23
  No, I. Disagree with that?
• 7:24
  Well. Why did he buy Tiago Alcantara
• 7:27
  then? Why did he?
• 7:28
  Because he tried. Yeah, but that's what I mean.
• 7:30
  Like because he tried if he had money and he could, it didn't.
• 7:32
  Work though, right? No, no, no, because I don't
• 7:34
  think he he wants the framework, he wants to, he wants the rigid
• 7:37
  setup. This isn't a rigid setup in any
• 7:39
  way. I think if you look at even with
• 7:41
  the the Tiago framework you had, you had the Fabinho setting to
• 7:45
  make sure you completely negate that, essentially negating in
• 7:48
  negative transition because the whole basis of Liverpool's game
• 7:52
  is you take risky passes upfront at the risk of losing
• 7:58
  possession, which you'll just regain.
• 7:59
  This is, I don't think that's the philosophy here for PSGI.
• 8:02
  Think PSU wants to keep possession and hold it.
• 8:05
  I think it's much more technically.
• 8:06
  It's much so if there's this thing in tactical discourse
• 8:10
  where you've got like 4 ratings that a coach uses, right?
• 8:14
  It's technical, tactical, physical, mental.
• 8:18
  It's like the Football Manager categories.
• 8:20
  I mean, it's just a standard. This is a, this is just like a
• 8:23
  coach thing, but it's quite generic, right?
• 8:26
  But I think in the crop model, I think physical is very high up,
• 8:32
  physical and tactical. And I think in Enrique,
• 8:36
  technical is by far still the highest, which is where it kind
• 8:40
  of resonates with Pep Guardiola's football.
• 8:42
  I would agree, but what I would say is the thing that was stuck
• 8:44
  about this performance was how physical they were.
• 8:48
  They were running like absolute nutters and Inter couldn't deal
• 8:51
  with it like the first. No, no, I agree.
• 8:53
  From the kick off I was like, wait a minute, is this rugby?
• 8:55
  They kicked it into touch and then started pressing them.
• 8:58
  It was just. But they did this exactly the
• 9:00
  same thing with us. This was an anomaly.
• 9:02
  They did the same thing against us, exactly the same thing.
• 9:05
  And the way Dembele was pressing was like insane, like
• 9:07
  unbelievable. I've never seen him pressed like
• 9:09
  that. So like I was like the
• 9:11
  rotational midfield. I think maybe if we go back to
• 9:14
  another legendary manager, I think if he had money he would
• 9:17
  want to do this. It reminded me of like mid post,
• 9:21
  post peak Arsene Wenger when he wanted to have the kind of
• 9:24
  Wilshire Fabregas that's a very small like, yeah, a small Med,
• 9:28
  absolutely. That's kind of like what he
• 9:30
  never. Got yeah, absolutely because.
• 9:31
  Of injuries as well and funds and yeah, so maybe Wenger's
• 9:36
  football's back and he's and it was a French team running the
• 9:38
  Champions League as well, so. I'm interested to know what
• 9:41
  Ashley you made of it because I know you've been a big champion
• 9:43
  of Enrique, right? You think you've wanted him
• 9:45
  united over the years, So what do you make of his football?
• 9:49
  Yeah, I can't disagree too much with what Kabir said about him
• 9:54
  in terms of the way he wants to play football.
• 9:57
  Obviously it's, you know, technical high ceiling.
• 10:00
  So I think what's interesting about the discussion on the
• 10:04
  midfield is with Clark, I think I discussed this in terms of
• 10:11
  Reuben, like sometimes you have to play football in order to
• 10:15
  make it a fight. And that's what Klopp did a lot
• 10:18
  more so Dortmund days and then early days of Liverpool.
• 10:21
  And then once Liverpool started getting better, better players
• 10:24
  in central midfield, like even a Fabinho, he's still like a world
• 10:28
  class defensive midfielder. So like when that happens, then
• 10:32
  Klopp was able to like, you know, invert Trent and, you
• 10:35
  know, do some other tactical tweaks, whereas before he would
• 10:39
  have to play quite limited in the way they would play.
• 10:43
  And then obviously with with Enrique, what's so impressive of
• 10:47
  the I thought the Champions League campaign in the knock in
• 10:50
  the knockout stages was that midfield, because they're very
• 10:53
  they're very good footballers, all of them.
• 10:55
  But you know, this goes back to what we talk about where the
• 10:59
  managers improve the baseline ability of these players.
• 11:02
  And I think that's where Enrique's taken these three guys
• 11:05
  to another level. Who knows if it's going to be
• 11:07
  sustainable, you know, without them free in midfield, the way
• 11:11
  they press, the way they kept the ball, vertical passes,
• 11:15
  particularly in this Champions League final.
• 11:17
  So that's where the difference is again, against the Pep,
• 11:20
  whereas Pep would probably try to recycle the ball more in that
• 11:23
  final and to as this point, like they were just at running around
• 11:28
  like absolute, you know, Duracell bunnies.
• 11:32
  Obviously there's motivation beyond just, you know, they're
• 11:35
  pressing. It's the final.
• 11:36
  They probably were super confident as well.
• 11:39
  They're playing fantastic football.
• 11:41
  They've beaten some great teams along the way into the Champions
• 11:43
  League final. So they were probably like
• 11:46
  really, you know, buzzing ready for this.
• 11:48
  And yeah, like, I think probably the biggest, it was an
• 11:51
  astonishment, I think in terms of the score line and the manner
• 11:54
  of the performance as well. Like, what did you think is I
• 11:57
  know you were fairly like neutral about like both teams.
• 12:01
  So like, how surprised were you by that performance by PSG?
• 12:05
  I'm massively surprised. I just think like if you look at
• 12:08
  the run of PSG in the campaign, they beat Liverpool obviously.
• 12:13
  Is that the group stages they beat you in or was it?
• 12:15
  No, it's not quarterfinals was that?
• 12:18
  Yeah, on penalties. Quarterfinals, of course.
• 12:20
  Yeah, quarterfinals. Liverpool beat Arsenal in the
• 12:24
  semis. Semis.
• 12:26
  Yeah, semis. Villa before that.
• 12:27
  Villa before that, so is, I thought.
• 12:29
  English teams. On calling the French league,
• 12:32
  the Farmers League was brilliant.
• 12:33
  He's got a bit of humour, Tim, hasn't he?
• 12:34
  As. Well, but I like.
• 12:36
  Throughout this Champions League campaign.
• 12:38
  So yeah, that was funny when he he said, like, you know, that
• 12:41
  was brilliant. Farmers league.
• 12:42
  Yeah, yeah. Done that and then to win five
• 12:44
  nil in the final, you know, record win.
• 12:46
  I mean, that's amazing. And, you know, PSGS first ever
• 12:49
  Champions League, right? Yeah.
• 12:50
  And the Manor. Yeah.
• 12:52
  You know, that's a huge hurdle. So I just, yeah, really, really
• 12:56
  impressed by what Enrique did. You're going to, you're going to
• 13:00
  be be on the whole young player thing now, Steve.
• 13:03
  I've always believed in young players.
• 13:04
  Oh really? Yes, it's a balance.
• 13:07
  Here's a bit. Here's I'm just looking this up
• 13:08
  now. Europe's top five leagues, age
• 13:13
  profile of squad. Yeah, it's 96 teams in Europe's
• 13:17
  top five leagues. Where do you think PSG rank in
• 13:20
  terms of? Age in terms of age 70 round
• 13:24
  that mark. As in 70, as in the the yeah,
• 13:28
  what is the youngest? Yeah, if one's the youngest top
• 13:30
  top 20, let's say, Or top ten, I'm guessing.
• 13:33
  They're #2 they're the 2nd and so Strasbourg the youngest and
• 13:38
  it's on FB ref so PSG 23.6 years old.
• 13:42
  And where does Inter rank in in this?
• 13:45
  90. The last 96, the last the oldest
• 13:48
  team. Wow, really?
• 13:50
  29.4 and it's just you could good stats like these these guys
• 13:55
  once the first goal. The problem was that this was
• 13:57
  always game state dependent. Once PSG scores the first goal
• 14:01
  to just collapsed. I mean they were awful, but they
• 14:04
  just collapsed. They were run over.
• 14:05
  They were run over as well though.
• 14:06
  I think it was a PSG. You know, you mentioned the
• 14:09
  rugby at the start. Kids, I think it's worth
• 14:11
  touching on Inter for a second because like, I'm going to be
• 14:14
  honest, I don't follow Syria as closely as I did.
• 14:16
  But you know, one thing that was discussed after the final was
• 14:20
  the momentum that Inter had going into that final wasn't
• 14:23
  great. They they were stuttering in the
• 14:25
  league. They obviously lost the league
• 14:26
  to Scott Mctominy. So again, it it's almost like
• 14:30
  the opposite of PSGPSG went buzzing into that final.
• 14:33
  And this is the thing, right narrative of of a final.
• 14:36
  As mentioned there. I've heard other people like
• 14:38
  Gary Neville say it's one game too far if they win it.
• 14:41
  It's like, you know, dog, you know, old dog's Dad's Army, you
• 14:45
  know, got the experience, the stuff that you like, Steve.
• 14:49
  Yeah, just just to clarify, just to clarify on that, I don't, I
• 14:52
  don't love old because I suggested by Modrich like five
• 14:55
  years ago. No, you always talk about
• 14:57
  experience first. Of course, always talk.
• 14:59
  No, no, you always talk. About Henderson in the in the
• 15:01
  England squad, right, A bit of experience.
• 15:03
  I don't mind that. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
• 15:05
  And then the second thing is whenever I suggest a player,
• 15:08
  right, you're like, I've never heard of this guy.
• 15:10
  So, you know, they bought Gel Nevege de Gerry Duet, for
• 15:13
  example. They spend big money on these
• 15:15
  guys, of course. And he would start gel.
• 15:17
  Nevez United would never have worked.
• 15:19
  So he he went to the right club, he went to the right club.
• 15:22
  If, if he won't work at our club, no one will work at our
• 15:25
  club. He's a really.
• 15:26
  No, but child never I think wouldn't wouldn't work at
• 15:28
  United. There's any chance you'd
• 15:29
  basically ruin him. He'd be playing in playing at
• 15:31
  the Championship now. Yeah.
• 15:33
  But this is the thing that therefore no one will work at
• 15:35
  our club, no? No, you just need big, big, big
• 15:38
  lads. I thought I were him.
• 15:40
  He doesn't want like 6 foot three players.
• 15:42
  No, he's the thing that I like about this team.
• 15:45
  Again, that's underrated is the physicality.
• 15:47
  Like he really he's he's got excellent speed.
• 15:51
  He's actually better in the air than his height would make out.
• 15:55
  He's strong in the tackle. So I think the defensive quality
• 15:58
  of Hekimi is another one like for me, just the best.
• 16:03
  I mean, we're going to maybe do a best 11 at some point of the
• 16:07
  Premier League, but if it was world football, you know, I'd
• 16:10
  go. Hakimi's got a chance for the
• 16:11
  Balandor right. He's scored in the semis, the
• 16:13
  quarters, the final, wins the treble.
• 16:18
  Yeah, I mean for me he's just amazing.
• 16:20
  He's such, I love him. He's like just so good.
• 16:22
  So yeah, like they under up such defensive like qualities in yeah
• 16:29
  in their team that that is now people forget that that that
• 16:32
  yeah, OK, the attacks. Flowing, but I think they really
• 16:35
  work hard. Really good team.
• 16:37
  I think that pressing is more impressive like than their
• 16:39
  actual pressing is defending, right?
• 16:42
  Pressing is defending. No, but it's offensive defence.
• 16:44
  It's a sorry offensive defence. But I mean, when I say
• 16:47
  defending, I mean the pressing. It's not.
• 16:49
  But I think, I think there's an element here, the Farmers League
• 16:51
  comment as as much as it's tongue in cheek.
• 16:55
  I think there is an element where the fact that they're able
• 16:57
  to rest players means that they can bring to the fore when
• 17:00
  they're playing, which this is the classic argument about
• 17:02
  English teams in the Champions League, right?
• 17:04
  Playing the 16th best team in the Premier League is a lot more
• 17:07
  difficult than playing the 16th best team in the league, right?
• 17:11
  And on that basis, on that basis, don't you think which I
• 17:15
  don't understand? Are you going to argue that?
• 17:17
  Are you going to argue that? United should have been second
• 17:19
  in the No. What I don't understand is
• 17:22
  because it just seems that it's seems to be bypassed everyone.
• 17:26
  You mentioned the Balon door. The Balon door should be most
• 17:29
  saller and why everyone's going on about these PSG players who
• 17:32
  played in a shit league turn up for one game against a bunch of
• 17:36
  other farmers who are old very old farmers, old Italian
• 17:40
  farmers. Exactly the semi final Arteta
• 17:45
  will tell the Arsenal with the better team right?
• 17:47
  They had to beat Liverpool on penalties and Marcus Rashford
• 17:50
  shat on them. Let's be honest in the in the
• 17:52
  Villa game. So like why?
• 17:54
  Why is the PSG player winning the balloon door?
• 17:57
  It's a joke. Mosala is by far by far the
• 18:00
  second player I would say. You know you can argue this
• 18:03
  season is Ruffina at Barcelona. None of the PSG players should
• 18:07
  be winning the balloon door. It's just, it's disgraceful that
• 18:10
  people are going on about it. Just shows how shit the balloon
• 18:13
  door is. It should be.
• 18:14
  It's. Narrative.
• 18:15
  It's narrative, right? It's.
• 18:16
  Like bullshit though, it's right, it's absolutely not news.
• 18:19
  How is it not Salah? Why is everyone just got Salah's
• 18:22
  a lockdown? He's in the property, he's
• 18:23
  played in the top league, he's smashed the numbers of
• 18:26
  everything. OK.
• 18:27
  They went out on penalties, so in one competition.
• 18:31
  I'm sorry, but it's it's a disgrace, this Balandor
• 18:34
  competition. It's corrupt though as well,
• 18:36
  right? Like it's been like that for
• 18:38
  years. I remember Tierra Marine 2004.
• 18:41
  He was, he was the best player on the planet.
• 18:43
  By far. By far, yeah, But he.
• 18:45
  He couldn't get, he couldn't get near that award because Arsenal
• 18:48
  didn't really win the Champions League.
• 18:51
  Yeah, yeah. It's so heavily weighted towards
• 18:53
  the Champions League unfortunately.
• 18:55
  Yeah, or, or just the international tournament in in
• 18:57
  that year. It sucks.
• 19:00
  Yeah, he's not going to win it because of it.
• 19:01
  I don't think so. Yeah.
• 19:02
  The only, the only way I can see he winning it, and this is kind
• 19:06
  of clutching, but is where there's a split vote on the PSG
• 19:10
  players, there's a split vote on Barcelona players.
• 19:12
  And therefore somehow he basically wins it because if
• 19:15
  you're voting for in English, somebody from the Premier
• 19:18
  League, he votes a lot. I don't mind the the the
• 19:21
  Balandor doesn't go to him because it's corrupt, But why is
• 19:24
  why in all the discourse around the Balandor, people are no,
• 19:27
  they're talking like that smart. It's not just going Oh, it
• 19:29
  should be salad, but the Balandor's corrupt.
• 19:31
  No one's saying that they're going, Oh, you know that, you
• 19:33
  know, the Balandor will go to Den Belly or we, we did,
• 19:36
  actually. Yeah, I was going to say who?
• 19:40
  Who are you assuming is going to win it?
• 19:43
  A PSG player. Who are you?
• 19:44
  Who are you thinking, Dembele? Someone from PSG?
• 19:47
  What you recognise as. Dembele, there was a point
• 19:51
  where, but it's it's the highest level of Dembele this season is
• 19:56
  as good as the highest level of Salah, but it's nowhere near as
• 19:59
  consistent. Firstly, he didn't play a bit in
• 20:01
  the early stages. Enrique disciplined him and then
• 20:04
  he was he got to that level again, but he's playing in the
• 20:08
  farmers league. So if we've discussed this whole
• 20:10
  thing right, what's So what if you're beating up French teams?
• 20:14
  Which is what is it the fifth league maybe in Europe?
• 20:17
  So you're, you're, you know, you, you've scored a lot of
• 20:19
  goals in the championship basically.
• 20:22
  Why should you win the balloon door?
• 20:25
  So question for you, as about two years ago we had some very
• 20:29
  heated debates on Qatar because obviously Qatar, whether you
• 20:33
  believe it was state Qatar or Sheikh Jaseem, private
• 20:37
  individual Qatar, Qatar were obviously in the hunt to buy
• 20:40
  United and we had some heated arguments.
• 20:43
  And you would say in that if you're getting Qatar, you're
• 20:45
  going to get superstar players. You know, this is the playbook
• 20:49
  essentially. So how do you feel now about the
• 20:51
  way PSG have won the Champions League with, as you point out,
• 20:54
  the second youngest team in Europe?
• 20:55
  Yeah, they lucked into it, right?
• 20:57
  They they beat their head against the brick wall
• 20:59
  continuously ended up with Lewis Enrique, an actual class manager
• 21:03
  who's strong enough to stand up to the likes of a Khalifi and
• 21:06
  go, right. No, this is you.
• 21:08
  If you failed, you flopped for so many years.
• 21:10
  This is what you're going to do. And you know what?
• 21:12
  When Enrique leaves and the next guy comes in, they'll probably
• 21:15
  go back to the old ways. That's what I predict should be
• 21:19
  some credit to Lewis Campos as well.
• 21:20
  The sporting director at PSG. Well, he's, he's going as well,
• 21:24
  isn't he, Campos? Isn't he off.
• 21:26
  Yeah, but the the project to get them to the Champions League
• 21:29
  final, he's been there the whole time.
• 21:31
  But can we, can we stop this whole youth team players, all of
• 21:35
  these players basically they've bought, they've just went out
• 21:37
  and bought the best young players, the best young players.
• 21:39
  They've spent, I think they've got the one of the highest net
• 21:42
  spends. They've got one of the highest
• 21:44
  wage bill in in the highest. Yeah.
• 21:46
  I mean, let's, let's not, let's not pretend it's a miracle here,
• 21:49
  right? They've they've spent a lot,
• 21:50
  they've spent a lot of money. They've.
• 21:51
  Spent a lot of money. On these, they spend a lot of
• 21:54
  money. I don't my my point is cabs, you
• 21:57
  can comment on this. In my opinion, if Louis Enrique
• 21:59
  is not in charge, they don't win this.
• 22:01
  He's the well. That that course that that goes
• 22:03
  with any football club, That's like saying, no, it's not Pep
• 22:05
  wouldn't have won. No, it doesn't.
• 22:06
  City wouldn't have won. All this without Pep.
• 22:09
  I agree of. Course, of course you need a top
• 22:12
  manager. You need a top manager and you
• 22:14
  need a top director of football. That's a given.
• 22:17
  Yeah. But the strategy has come from
• 22:19
  Louis Enrique. That's fine.
• 22:21
  I wasn't expecting Sheikh Jaseem to fucking tell me how to play
• 22:23
  football. Like you can just hire someone
• 22:25
  for that. No, that's the thing, that
• 22:27
  that's where. I'll Well, Jim Ratcliffe's done
• 22:29
  that well, yeah. Clearly.
• 22:30
  And he has to do that more than anything, right?
• 22:33
  So it's taken, it's taken them, it's taken them far too long to
• 22:36
  get there. And also at the end of the day,
• 22:38
  it's it's tainted, right? And this is the thing, my
• 22:40
  argument, OK, OK. And my argument is a club like
• 22:43
  Manchester United doesn't need sovereign wealth fund money.
• 22:46
  We, we generate enough revenue ourselves.
• 22:48
  Why, why we, why are we, you know, taking blood money?
• 22:51
  It just makes. Sense but we'll we'll sack
• 22:53
  Catholic reception instead, because that's a lot higher
• 22:55
  moral high ground to stand on, right?
• 22:58
  Yeah, but Kat's passed. A retirement age, you know.
• 23:02
  Says the socialist here, Steve. No cabs, I don't know.
• 23:05
  Where do you stand on on state funded football clubs?
• 23:11
  Like, I don't like it. It's not it's definitely not the
• 23:13
  top of my list. But then I think this is this is
• 23:15
  endemic of like the you can't stand here and basically
• 23:17
  complain about it when the entire history of the Premier
• 23:19
  League is basically about how to extract as much wealth as
• 23:22
  possible from the capitalist state.
• 23:23
  Right? When you open the market up so
• 23:25
  much where you've got essentially what should be a
• 23:28
  community based organisations, if you open them up to basically
• 23:31
  a capitalist, this model, then the person who has the most
• 23:33
  money should be able to invest in it.
• 23:35
  You can't complain about that. After that you can't basically
• 23:37
  say, well, we're OK for the multi billionaire to buy it, but
• 23:40
  not these people over here who I was.
• 23:43
  Yeah, I mean, that's just that's just then racism, right.
• 23:45
  It's just you know, I think, you know, we we went down this path
• 23:50
  25 sorry 30 whatever it is years ago when the Premier League
• 23:53
  Walker exactly right. And, and it was consciously
• 23:56
  chosen at that point in time, nobody constructed this idea
• 23:59
  that it might. This is where it ends up.
• 24:01
  But then, you know, this is the capitalist model.
• 24:02
  You have to then eke out every single penny you can.
• 24:05
  If the valuation of these football clubs is getting up to
• 24:07
  5 billions, who the Hell's affording that?
• 24:09
  Well, you've got, you've got a handful of like a handful of
• 24:12
  individuals and states, right? And if, and you know, and again,
• 24:16
  it kind of irks me to a certain extent where people start
• 24:18
  talking about this idea of in a sense this washing sports,
• 24:23
  washing narrative, right? Completely agree.
• 24:26
  But a lot of the reason why why European clubs have got to where
• 24:29
  they are have in if you kind of retrace their genealogy is
• 24:33
  basically they've done in the same way as colonialism.
• 24:35
  You've done a lot of shit to get to this point and now you want
• 24:38
  to close the door so nobody else does and basically hide the fact
• 24:41
  that you had to do all of this shit to get here.
• 24:43
  Now, if you want to acknowledge that this is what's happened and
• 24:46
  then basically have that have that transparent conversation,
• 24:49
  happy to do it completely. And like I said, that's why I
• 24:51
  don't like the state funded model.
• 24:54
  And I don't, I say that say that as somebody who was against
• 24:56
  Liverpool being bought by a state even when we were in the
• 25:00
  we were in the in the gutter, because I don't want that.
• 25:03
  Like, again, going back to the Azar Azar comment, I think maybe
• 25:07
  in a sense we're privileged because we support clubs who
• 25:10
  don't need that model to basically be successful, right?
• 25:13
  So I'm not going to stand here and basically kind of critique
• 25:15
  all those Newcastle fans who basically because they had to
• 25:19
  live through the previous owner, right?
• 25:22
  And that is essentially a flaw of the Premier League system or
• 25:26
  like the way that the Premier League is run now.
• 25:29
  If you're saying to them, well, no, no, you should accept having
• 25:32
  shitty managers that take everything.
• 25:34
  Sorry, owners who take everything out of the club, who
• 25:37
  basically use the club as a advertising hub for your, for
• 25:43
  their own private companies. If you want to tell them, that's
• 25:46
  fine. But you know, you can't have
• 25:47
  these people who want to put money into the club and make you
• 25:49
  happy. I think that's a bit too faced,
• 25:51
  to be honest. I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure I
• 25:52
  have any. I'm not going to stand here and
• 25:54
  condemn those people. Right.
• 25:55
  Here's a question for you guys then and a follow up from
• 25:59
  Steve's point in terms of like sovereign wealth or like you
• 26:02
  know, you know. The question is, can I, can I
• 26:05
  just come back on this? Sorry, can I just come back on
• 26:07
  you? Would you have an issue if it's
• 26:08
  Norway's? Because they've got shit loads
• 26:10
  of money right? The Norway's sovereign fund is
• 26:12
  massive. Would people have an issue if
• 26:13
  it's Norway's sovereign fund not?
• 26:15
  As much, not as much. So then I mean there is some but
• 26:18
  the. Point is, we don't need any of
• 26:19
  these people. No, no, no, no, no, no.
• 26:21
  I agree with that. I guess my question is that
• 26:23
  there is, there is. What I'm going to point out is
• 26:25
  basically, I think there's a degree of racism embedded within
• 26:28
  this discourse. It's not, it's not right.
• 26:30
  There's a degree of racism, but the human rights record of
• 26:34
  Norway and Qatar are slightly different.
• 26:37
  So if Norway are trying to invest, it's always sovereign
• 26:40
  wealth funds invest. They've divested for example
• 26:42
  from Israel, which is great. They have a lot of environmental
• 26:47
  investments that I know, right. So they have a different
• 26:49
  philosophy versus, oh, you know what we are, We want to cloud
• 26:55
  the kind of shit that we're up to, right, which is what the
• 26:58
  Saudis are doing, for example. Because you know what, we're
• 27:00
  going to oppress our people. We're going to send an extreme
• 27:03
  version of Islam around the world, but we're going to be in
• 27:06
  in cahoots with the the supreme powers and basically, you know,
• 27:10
  Philtre money back. Take it away from the wealth of
• 27:13
  the normal people of Saudi Arabia and just throw it into
• 27:16
  the West. Which you think you think, Jim?
• 27:19
  Ratcliff's much better. And what about Britain?
• 27:21
  We don't. Need Jim Ratcliff.
• 27:22
  We don't. This is the point is that what
• 27:24
  I'm saying is Manchester United and Liverpool generate enough
• 27:27
  revenues by themselves through our fan base.
• 27:30
  Yeah, but there's no power of these.
• 27:31
  There's no like cabs you're not really happy with, you know, a
• 27:34
  US. Well, I was, I was going to say
• 27:36
  jump on this Steve, because FSG and the Glazers, you know,
• 27:40
  they've funded, you know, Trump and all sorts over the years,
• 27:44
  right. So even though ownership models,
• 27:47
  even Liverpool have got. I mean we.
• 27:49
  We. Would can't be super
• 27:50
  comfortable, we would always. Support fan owned clubs right?
• 27:52
  100% I bet most football fans would support that.
• 27:55
  But. That's exactly it.
• 27:56
  That's exactly it. And that's all I'm saying.
• 27:58
  So The thing is like with FSG that they, they are somewhat a,
• 28:04
  you know, they somewhat a custodian of the club, but even
• 28:07
  they don't need to be there. And if they disappeared, let's
• 28:10
  say I'll give you a hypothetical.
• 28:12
  I'm in charge of the world and I just go, you know what, just
• 28:15
  like with Chelsea and Bramovich, you've all got to sell up and
• 28:18
  you're going to sell up for £10. And that's the law.
• 28:21
  And that's just the way it is, and it's going to the to the
• 28:23
  fan, the regular, the regulators.
• 28:25
  Put that through. The regulator comes in and goes
• 28:27
  sorry, like just like somehow with a Bramovich, it was OK to
• 28:30
  to basically take Chelsea off in for nothing.
• 28:33
  Let's take all the football clubs of all of these people and
• 28:36
  just say you just need to run sustainably using a nice
• 28:39
  financial. The Premier League itself
• 28:41
  generates enough TV revenue. Let's just do that.
• 28:44
  And Germany has a somewhat of that model with a 50 + 1.
• 28:48
  The two biggest clubs in the world around Madrid and
• 28:50
  Barcelona aren't owned by states or billionaires.
• 28:53
  They're run by, you know, themselves and they have a
• 28:55
  members model. Why do we have to have a
• 28:57
  capitalist model? That's the bit I don't get and
• 29:00
  why The thing is I it's it's one thing saying, OK, you know what?
• 29:05
  This is just the way it is. And therefore, but it's another
• 29:07
  thing getting excited about. Oh please, Sheikh Jaseem, come.
• 29:11
  Oh no. Yeah, can.
• 29:11
  You Sheikh Jaseem, fuck you Steve.
• 29:14
  In your obsession with this Qatari guy, that's not.
• 29:16
  Excitement, mate, That's desperation.
• 29:18
  That is desperation, my friend. I.
• 29:20
  Think we don't need to be desperate is my point.
• 29:23
  We just finished 15th in the league and lost the European.
• 29:25
  Violence. Can I just?
• 29:27
  Come back, we have money. You can't slate.
• 29:30
  So the point is principally you can't then kind of critique that
• 29:32
  because you're in a privileged position for Man United to have
• 29:35
  money, you can't have to have a go like Newcastle.
• 29:38
  I'm not having a go at Newcastle.
• 29:39
  Newcastle's another club. Their fan base can want what
• 29:42
  they want and if they want the Saudis, they can have the
• 29:45
  Saudis. I'm saying why does Steve want
• 29:47
  the Saudis? What is wrong with you?
• 29:49
  Because Steve. Because it's better than Jim
• 29:51
  Ratcliffe. It's better than Jim Ratcliffe.
• 29:53
  It's the money. It's the money.
• 29:54
  Of course it's the money. I want to win.
• 29:55
  I'm not. I'm not ashamed to say that.
• 29:57
  We've been starved of, that's all I'm saying.
• 29:59
  Just admit you have no morals. I've admitted that plenty of
• 30:02
  times. I've admitted that plenty of
• 30:04
  time. I love Jose.
• 30:05
  I love Jose. I'll fuck someone over to win.
• 30:08
  I'm all about winning exactly what I'm here for.
• 30:12
  I'm here to win. And, and you know, like on the
• 30:14
  past history, it's true. Manchester is a city that
• 30:17
  benefited from colonialism, from basically ripping the heart out
• 30:21
  of India and its cotton industry.
• 30:23
  So what's your, what's your stance then?
• 30:26
  I'm a bit confused, to be honest.
• 30:28
  You're going with this like high moral ground.
• 30:30
  So like, what is your state? What's your stance then on the
• 30:32
  club? What do you want for the club?
• 30:34
  Like, because ultimately that's what we're here to.
• 30:36
  Talk about I want it to be a a fan owned club.
• 30:39
  I want the government to take the glazes and basically say
• 30:42
  right, shouldn't have owned this club.
• 30:44
  You have to sell it back at what you pay. 200 million, here's
• 30:46
  your 200 million. Piss off and Man United can run
• 30:49
  itself. We don't, we all.
• 30:51
  That's impossible, right? Why is it?
• 30:52
  Yeah, if I was Prime Minister, I would re.
• 30:55
  National you're not going to be Prime Minister because you can't
• 30:57
  be public opinion anyway, so let's get.
• 30:59
  Regular shit about the public right?
• 31:01
  Yeah, but you're supposed to be a Prime Minister.
• 31:04
  You're not literally fucking your campaigner.
• 31:07
  You do not understand. No, because I don't have a
• 31:09
  democracy, right? So if I'm in charge, I'm going
• 31:12
  to re national. Thames Water, for example.
• 31:15
  I don't get what the you're not going to get voted because you
• 31:17
  don't know how to like to charm the public.
• 31:20
  I'm in charge. I'm a dictator.
• 31:23
  You certainly sound like 1. Right.
• 31:24
  So if I was, if I was given the power, right.
• 31:27
  So do you know in the Roman Empire when the democracy
• 31:30
  failed, right, that it was this emergency?
• 31:34
  No, they go and find some random guy, find one guy and go right,
• 31:37
  You're in charge. You could be a.
• 31:38
  Random. Farmer So this is the scenario,
• 31:41
  right? Lewis, Enrique has failed, and
• 31:43
  I'm telling you now, what would I do?
• 31:45
  I'd come up with a regulation, just like Germany, of a 50 + 1
• 31:49
  rule. Why?
• 31:49
  If it's good enough. Great, That's great, that's
• 31:51
  great. But in the real world, what you?
• 31:53
  Want talk about the real world? Like, why is it at the moment,
• 31:56
  right now? Because.
• 31:57
  Because it can't be done at the moment.
• 32:00
  Well, no, because it can't be done.
• 32:01
  I mean, look, OK so far we're in like.
• 32:03
  OK, but what's the OK the closest thing?
• 32:06
  The club has just finished 15 further.
• 32:08
  Down in terms of like stages than Arteta is in his reign of
• 32:14
  capitalism. Right.
• 32:15
  Trust the process. In my opinion, the the way
• 32:18
  Liverpool are run, you can say what you want about US hedge
• 32:21
  fund or whatever, but it's basically a sustainable model.
• 32:24
  It is right where they don't take money out of the club, they
• 32:27
  don't. They don't owe money to Trump.
• 32:30
  OK, but they that's that's your political opinions, right?
• 32:33
  That's fine. But they Liverpool.
• 32:34
  But that's your political opinion as well.
• 32:37
  No, it's not. It's not.
• 32:38
  I think he's point here simply that Liverpool the way that.
• 32:42
  No, I get I'm being facetious, Caps.
• 32:44
  I'm being facetious, right? Like we know Liverpool's model,
• 32:48
  like in terms of like within the real world, the Liverpool model
• 32:51
  is a very good model. We know that.
• 32:54
  Which is essentially what the FFP, not whatever PSR is trying
• 32:58
  to inculcate. Into a system right now.
• 33:00
  You agree with me. Great.
• 33:01
  So in the real world, OK, we agree.
• 33:03
  Great. Brilliant.
• 33:04
  OK. So, yeah, you're fine.
• 33:05
  You want sustainability, you want sustainability and that and
• 33:08
  that's the argument you made with any us and we'll see how
• 33:11
  that where that goes, right, Because the first couple of
• 33:14
  years ago, the first couple of years aren't going well.
• 33:17
  And I think that's a good segue to move on very quickly.
• 33:19
  Cabs, just do us a favour and keep it brief and let's hear
• 33:22
  your two pence on the Europa League final because us three
• 33:25
  have talked about it. Was bad.
• 33:28
  It was Oh my God, it was bad. You know, like you know how you
• 33:30
  had like the and it was stark because you had the inter Barser
• 33:34
  game the week before and then you had yours and basically all
• 33:38
  the all the euphoria that we all as football fans felt there died
• 33:43
  in your game. My God, it was so bad.
• 33:46
  It's just like headless like you was.
• 33:48
  You could tell that it was a second year competition that
• 33:50
  nobody dropped down it as well. No, no, no, no, it was.
• 33:54
  Worse than that, you know, you know when you know, you know
• 33:57
  when we were at school and you played the, you know, when you
• 34:00
  were in year 12, right, That was this type of football.
• 34:03
  It was. We probably played better
• 34:04
  football in year. I was going to say, I think we
• 34:06
  kept the ball better. Honestly.
• 34:08
  It was. It was not a second rate
• 34:09
  competition. It was a fifth rate competition,
• 34:12
  Conference league. It was awful.
• 34:14
  It was worse than the Conference League final.
• 34:16
  But The thing is like to be honest with you watch that game
• 34:19
  and every single thing I believed about your manager was
• 34:22
  kind of manifested there, right? He has no idea how to break down
• 34:25
  the law AD block. He has no idea how to construct
• 34:28
  penetrating an attacks. His default position in ended up
• 34:31
  being let's take McGuire, and he's used, it's not like this is
• 34:35
  a final. This is a final.
• 34:37
  Like this is a strategy for the final because everything else
• 34:40
  does not work. He's basically used this as his
• 34:41
  blueprint for like. Half the season.
• 34:44
  Essentially, when shit goes wrong, we're going to stick
• 34:47
  McGuire up top. I think that's, I think if
• 34:50
  you're talking about process managers, I especially because
• 34:53
  he because like, honestly, if I was Man United, I'd be so, so
• 34:57
  concerned here, right? Firstly, right, he's embedded to
• 35:00
  some system. Secondly, he wants to go away
• 35:02
  from this system and this is how he decides to go away from the
• 35:05
  process by having a, you know, 6 foot 5 centre back playing up
• 35:10
  top like that's your that's your break glass moment.
• 35:13
  Like not the fact that. Desperation, right?
• 35:16
  You know, the fact that you have your playmaker essentially the
• 35:19
  in the last 20 minutes, your playmaker seemed to be the 20
• 35:22
  year old centre back. What the like who, who thought
• 35:27
  of that as like a strategy to basically have him as a free man
• 35:30
  to dictate play. Like why?
• 35:32
  Like it was almost one of those Like again, it was one of those
• 35:35
  like things I was watching this thinking if I had come up with
• 35:38
  this in Championship Manager when I was 16, I would laugh at
• 35:42
  myself, right? Because essentially it looked
• 35:44
  like you were like, let's just stick loads of people up front
• 35:46
  and they'll score. Hopefully at some point we'll
• 35:49
  just lub the ball up and hopefully something will happen
• 35:52
  and like football's moved on so far and you know it.
• 35:54
  Did come close a couple of times.
• 35:56
  But that's it. But like all.
• 35:57
  You did was basically on on the on the basis of like numerical
• 36:00
  advantage, right? We'll have big guys in the box
• 36:03
  log balls in and hopefully something comes up right.
• 36:06
  And that I get. But I think again, going back to
• 36:08
  this, this, this conversation we've had for them as a ash and
• 36:11
  I guess yourself as well as as as a have had this conversation
• 36:14
  about process managers, right? If you're trying to kind of
• 36:17
  bring like backup manager, the one thing you want to see is the
• 36:20
  process. He's he's he's completely he's
• 36:23
  aligned to the process here. You what I see with him is he's
• 36:26
  aligned to some sort of he's fundamentally tied to certain
• 36:29
  things. But then I'm not sure why he
• 36:33
  then departs from those things at the most ridiculous with the
• 36:37
  most ridiculous options. Like he's, he's completely
• 36:41
  locked into his 343535, 325352. Yeah, 352, Yeah.
• 36:50
  But then the departure from that isn't what you'd expect a
• 36:55
  sensible tactician to do, which is basically, I don't have the
• 36:58
  players. I can come back to this.
• 36:59
  I'm gonna, I'm gonna evolve this in such a way that basically
• 37:03
  allows that framework to kind of take shape, but will buy me
• 37:07
  time. My question is, why?
• 37:09
  Where are you being pragmatic and where are you being Prince
• 37:12
  like philosophical? And he seems to be doing it the
• 37:14
  wrong way. He's philosophical on the wrong
• 37:16
  things and he's pragmatic in the wrong parts.
• 37:19
  That basically kind of to me just tells me that the whole
• 37:23
  structural process thing is just out of whack.
• 37:26
  That's how I mean, like, and that's what my concern would be
• 37:28
  where you've got a manager in Ang who doesn't really know how
• 37:32
  to set up a defence, was able to keep a, you know, I didn't keep
• 37:36
  you relatively quiet. I mean, you can't.
• 37:38
  I think overall what was your your X year was less than one,
• 37:42
  right? Yeah, in the finals, which was
• 37:44
  just under one, Yeah, I think. Exactly right.
• 37:46
  I mean, that's not you basically creating lots of chances and you
• 37:49
  know, he had most of his midfield missing.
• 37:51
  And also he made a point after the finals saying that was what
• 37:55
  he decided to do because he he was probably confident in that.
• 38:00
  If we don't give too many spaces to United, then they're probably
• 38:04
  not going to create chances or or certainly not score goals.
• 38:07
  And interestingly enough, I've basically like spoken to, spoken
• 38:11
  to and actually heard lots of analysts and coaches talking
• 38:15
  and, and have said this for the last like 3 months, like every,
• 38:18
  every time. All you have to do with United
• 38:20
  is basically sit back because they're just not going to be
• 38:22
  able to break you back, break you down and then just wait for
• 38:24
  them to make a mistake and you'll basically score.
• 38:27
  That's that's how you play United.
• 38:28
  And as a manager who was kind of meant to be front foot modern
• 38:33
  like, which is basically what you want as a Man United
• 38:36
  manager. I just don't see how that works,
• 38:37
  right. If you're not able to embed that
• 38:38
  in place, given that we can have a conversation about you not
• 38:41
  having great players, but you have enough footballers.
• 38:43
  Let's be completely honest, you've got enough footballers to
• 38:45
  be able to create some sort of structure to allow that like we
• 38:48
  had we had when Klopp took over, we had Adam Lallana as the best
• 38:53
  offensive player in the in the squad at that point.
• 38:56
  That was fair. And he was still trying to, he
• 38:58
  was still we what he went, what we did is basically said, oh,
• 39:01
  we're going to, we're going to structure it around this and
• 39:03
  kind of embed these principles. And then everybody was like, oh,
• 39:06
  but he's a 4231 manager and he never played that club, never
• 39:08
  played A4231 at Liverpool until the year before he left.
• 39:12
  And everybody and their dog told us that he'd only ever played
• 39:15
  4231 in his entire career. So that's my point.
• 39:18
  You've got to be pragmatic, you. Think Ruben should be, yeah,
• 39:20
  more pragmatic with the squad he has at the moment and more
• 39:23
  flexible essentially. Yeah, absolutely.
• 39:26
  And I think going back to AS, AS has made a really, really valid
• 39:28
  point here, right, is that you can have a structure, these
• 39:31
  numbers, these 4231, you know, 352 isn't really anything set in
• 39:35
  stone. So why is he wedded to it?
• 39:38
  You know, you can just have your players doing what they're
• 39:41
  comfortable with, but kind of construct the structure that
• 39:44
  resembles what you want to do in terms of like the build up.
• 39:48
  Do you agree with that? As in, you know he can structure
• 39:50
  it in that way. Yeah, you have seen some
• 39:53
  variations. I think you will should see this
• 39:56
  a bit more next season. I think he's yeah, he's clearly
• 40:01
  not Mr Pragmatic. And that was the thing that
• 40:03
  disappointed me in the final. Like nothing changed.
• 40:05
  The system was the same that the profiles of the players on the
• 40:08
  pitch. He didn't bring on more
• 40:10
  attackers. He put McGuire up front, but he
• 40:13
  didn't put two players that like for like was all that bit like
• 40:16
  for like. I explained this in previous
• 40:18
  mods. It was like him, He still had
• 40:20
  Diego Dallow, you know, when I was like, what?
• 40:22
  Why? If you're trying to break a low
• 40:24
  block, you got Ericsson on the bench, bring him on.
• 40:26
  Yeah, Ahmad to wing back. I think one thing I would say
• 40:30
  is, and I said this after the game, is, you know, Bruno didn't
• 40:33
  show up and he's the most important player.
• 40:35
  He's everything to our team and. As a as a part, part of the
• 40:38
  managerial thing is basically you have to get your best
• 40:41
  players to like, you have to maximise your best players.
• 40:43
  You can't just let them play. If you're seeing if you can, if
• 40:46
  you can see that there's there's a tactical structure that Spurs
• 40:49
  have implemented that doesn't free him up, then you basically
• 40:53
  move Peace Ponds around to basically free him up.
• 40:55
  Yeah, yeah, he's no look, look, Amaran mismanaged the game.
• 40:58
  It was shit. If if, if that's the template
• 41:01
  for what you know, he will be fired after three matches next
• 41:03
  season. That was the worst performance
• 41:05
  of our season. It was appalling.
• 41:06
  But Spurs were even worse. And that makes it even more
• 41:09
  galling. But.
• 41:10
  Yeah, they were shit. They were awful.
• 41:12
  You know I. Mean they had the goal, they had
• 41:13
  the goal. They had the goal, yeah.
• 41:15
  So it's. Game state again.
• 41:16
  Second-half was game. State, game state.
• 41:18
  We didn't do enough to change the game.
• 41:21
  But that's, that's my point, right?
• 41:22
  So that's exactly where my concern is, is that if you're
• 41:25
  playing one half, one goal behind an entire house, you have
• 41:28
  45 minutes one goal behind against a team that was pretty
• 41:31
  much rubbish, right? Without very good defensive
• 41:35
  structure, you created less than one XG.
• 41:39
  Yeah, it's interesting. We've we've generally, even when
• 41:43
  we had I think much better players always struggled against
• 41:47
  low block teams because even like, you know, Rashford, for
• 41:49
  example, was never, he's never good against in those
• 41:52
  situations, which is why we, you know, when we signed, for
• 41:55
  example, a Sancho, I was hoping that would solve it.
• 41:57
  We don't have, you know, I think Liverpool as well, like you can
• 42:01
  talk about vert like for me that's one of their sort of not
• 42:05
  biggest strengths. I don't want to call it
• 42:07
  weakness, and having that creative spark is something
• 42:11
  that, yeah, we do lack. Hopefully with this Cunha coming
• 42:16
  in, he can add a bit more creativity.
• 42:18
  But maybe you can talk, you know, like I look at Liverpool
• 42:20
  and think I would sit back against them and Liverpool
• 42:23
  struggle a bit even with top players.
• 42:25
  And isn't that why you're getting verts, for example, to
• 42:28
  to unlock a team? We just don't have that type of
• 42:30
  player. But yeah, but we just won the
• 42:33
  league without that. We've just won the league with
• 42:35
  Dominic Sabesai, who just basically runs.
• 42:37
  Yeah, but why? This is the thing, but why are
• 42:39
  you signing first? Don't you think that that's he
• 42:41
  will improve that aspect like players as much as coaching can
• 42:44
  players can also improve, right? No.
• 42:46
  No, absolutely. Off profile then absolutely.
• 42:48
  But the question, I guess Mike ultimately, like the slot
• 42:52
  comparison is here is that slots Max Sox walked into a club
• 42:56
  without touching the player base, IE he's got the players
• 42:59
  he's he's had and he has taken. I would say there's not a player
• 43:03
  in the Liverpool squad that's not been better than he was, or
• 43:06
  at least as good as he was last year.
• 43:07
  I mean, you can talk about the players that haven't played.
• 43:10
  Trent, Trent was better last season.
• 43:12
  He's he shut down Trent a little bit.
• 43:14
  But I agree with you, he shut down Trent a little bit.
• 43:17
  I did compensated by the fact that he was defensively probably
• 43:19
  better. Yeah, interestingly enough,
• 43:22
  interestingly enough, if you look at the Optus starts, he's
• 43:24
  offensive games. Actually he was still I think
• 43:27
  technically had as much chance creation as he did last year
• 43:31
  like per 90. It's just he missed.
• 43:33
  It's been brilliant and it's really interesting to see and
• 43:36
  you're right, like I think, but for me, the real judge of Ameren
• 43:39
  will come early in the next season because.
• 43:42
  No, but sorry, just some more of a.
• 43:43
  Squad in place, right? Because.
• 43:45
  Sorry, my point, my point there, sorry, was almost that the
• 43:48
  compensation for that is you alter your system to compensate
• 43:51
  for that missing for that missing kind of creativity,
• 43:54
  right. So what what he did, he
• 43:55
  basically said the classic. I mean, I I can speak about
• 43:58
  Liverpool in detail because it's like I watch every single minute
• 44:00
  of their games. What Sot's done is basically I
• 44:02
  don't have a creative 10. So what I'm going to do is
• 44:05
  Salah's very good at that shit. So what I'm going to do is I'm
• 44:08
  going to get Dominic Salvati to carry his water so he doesn't
• 44:12
  get tired, so he can then focus on being the creative hub
• 44:16
  because I don't have a 10. He's more flexible as he's more
• 44:19
  flexible as a manager though, right?
• 44:20
  That's his make up as a manager, right?
• 44:22
  Yes, interesting. And The thing is, I think the
• 44:24
  other thing that is underestimate would happen in
• 44:27
  that final. All of us would have, we were
• 44:30
  talking about how important Garnacho was to us, but there's
• 44:32
  clearly a breakdown where he didn't want to play him because
• 44:35
  he's going to sell him. And that would that's what
• 44:38
  happened. I think if looking looking at
• 44:40
  what's happened post this game, he basically there's been some
• 44:42
  kind of it's been announced, I think by Fabrizio, he's gone
• 44:46
  right. And yeah, he he, he clear, you
• 44:49
  know, by being too honest in a press conference could have
• 44:52
  probably started that game, if not come on at half time.
• 44:55
  But he only gave him 20 minutes and then, you know, yeah, that
• 44:58
  to me, I'm like, what are you doing?
• 44:59
  You're crazy. But then maybe there's some
• 45:01
  maybe there's a lot of this stubbornness and thing.
• 45:03
  It's like I'm I'm I'm almost caring more about next season
• 45:07
  and sacrificing. And you got to think about the
• 45:09
  job he was asked to do right when he came in, he was, he was
• 45:11
  basically, you guess right. He was probably told that he
• 45:14
  needs to reset the culture. He needs to get his philosophy
• 45:17
  and he wasn't expected to come in and start being a Sam
• 45:21
  Allardyce manager. That wasn't the expectation of
• 45:23
  him, but that's all I would say in his defence.
• 45:26
  No, and I agree with that. I agree with that completely.
• 45:28
  But you're, you're managing Man United is the, is the counter
• 45:32
  argument, right? You have if you were managing
• 45:36
  like if you were managing Bournemouth, that's fine.
• 45:38
  You can lose the first eight games, right?
• 45:40
  Because you'll have that you, that's your that's your
• 45:43
  strategic goal that you've basically been set.
• 45:45
  There's not pressure from everywhere.
• 45:46
  Now again, going and I've mentioned this before, is that
• 45:49
  you're Man United, he loses 2 games out of the first 3 next
• 45:52
  season. He's got all of that, all of
• 45:54
  that hard work he's put into place to kind of embed a
• 45:57
  structure has gone gone to crap because he doesn't have, he
• 46:00
  doesn't have the, the, the that he doesn't have that kind of
• 46:05
  grace. Credit, Credit in the bank,
• 46:06
  right? Yeah.
• 46:06
  Credit in the bank? Exactly that, right?
• 46:08
  Before we before we go into like next season and the free game
• 46:12
  thing and also the transfers that United are looking at just
• 46:14
  out of interest. Probably save that for another
• 46:16
  pod by the way, but yeah. Yeah, fine.
• 46:19
  Just out of interest Cubs as as the neutral and actually you
• 46:22
  know about Reuben the most given Liverpool were linked with him.
• 46:25
  So you watch quite a bit of him. We've had him for, we've had him
• 46:29
  for 50 games, so we probably know Ruby.
• 46:31
  Yeah, you'll probably know a lot more than me.
• 46:34
  Well, I I don't I don't trust your opinion.
• 46:36
  Yeah, well, he did a he can Caps, you must know the most.
• 46:40
  Well, he's watched more Lisbon games than you have and me, but
• 46:43
  would you have kept him based on everything that's happened?
• 46:46
  Look, I, I, I wouldn't have kept him, but I wouldn't have kept
• 46:48
  him not because I don't think he's got the opportunity to be
• 46:51
  better. And I think that the issue here
• 46:53
  is that he's he's he's got such bad record now that he has to be
• 46:57
  phenomenal to shed that background.
• 47:00
  And I don't think you, I don't think this team allows you to be
• 47:03
  phenomenal. I think you're, I think next
• 47:04
  season you'll probably be 8th, right.
• 47:07
  And the question is that is eighth good enough for my united
• 47:10
  discourse will be then will still be there, right?
• 47:13
  You lose 2-3 games in a. A better question, if you were
• 47:15
  the owner and you didn't have to listen to the Ferrari that's
• 47:19
  coming through social media and stuff, that's a bit like in a
• 47:23
  cold, calculated world. I'd suck him.
• 47:25
  You would suck him. That's more interesting, right?
• 47:27
  And then if you were to move him on, because if Tottenham
• 47:32
  obviously won the trophy and have moved and John and moving
• 47:34
  on to Thomas Frank as an example, who would you, would
• 47:37
  you go for the top? Would you go and get Thomas
• 47:39
  Frank before they come and get him Look.
• 47:41
  I wouldn't, I would have gone with as ashes choice.
• 47:46
  Fred, Eriola or how? Eriola.
• 47:48
  Eriola, yeah, I would have, I would have thrown money out
• 47:51
  Eriola because I think Eriola is just, he's basically how I would
• 47:55
  like this new breed of managers coming through.
• 47:57
  I think he's basically an elite manager.
• 47:59
  And every analyst I've ever spoken to has said that.
• 48:02
  Every analyst, every coach I've ever spoken to seems to seems to
• 48:05
  think that. And people were saying that pre
• 48:08
  Bournemouth, right. So it's not just the fact that.
• 48:11
  Yeah, given he's going to sounds like he's staying at Bournemouth
• 48:14
  if. I'm it does sound like him.
• 48:16
  It does sound like. Therefore, he's still available.
• 48:19
  What is the harm then my question to you be so I look at
• 48:22
  this and go right, we're going to buy a kunia sounds like boron
• 48:27
  and boomo. Is that how you say it, Steve?
• 48:29
  Because I know you've been researching.
• 48:30
  I'm going with the Carl Anker pronunciation of Brian.
• 48:34
  No, that's mitten, mitten and boom.
• 48:36
  But. Apparently it's not in Boomo
• 48:38
  either, it's in Bramu and Bramore.
• 48:40
  No, no. But he, Carl anchored did it
• 48:42
  based on what Brian and what he called himself.
• 48:45
  Premier League, he called himself, and Boomu.
• 48:47
  Now you're making this. And Boomu.
• 48:48
  Yeah, he's in Boomu. Player.
• 48:53
  Now my question is in terms of we're looking to improve the
• 48:55
  technical, physical aspect of this team in in key positions.
• 49:00
  Do you think those players or the players being linked who I
• 49:04
  think will improve our squad for Reuben?
• 49:06
  Would they not work anyway with let's say Iriola in three to six
• 49:10
  or 12 or whenever the? It'll be 12.
• 49:12
  It'll have to be 12, right? It's not going to be 3 or 6
• 49:14
  because he's not. He's like Ariel is the kind of
• 49:16
  manager who will not jump ship mid season.
• 49:18
  Doesn't. Matter what jumping she's
• 49:20
  apparently he's staying anyway, right this summer.
• 49:22
  Oh, that's my point. No, my point is, you know,
• 49:23
  you're saying, oh, you could, I mean Mani, Mani could have got
• 49:28
  areola if you, if you pushed really hard at the beginning of
• 49:31
  this transfer. At the beginning of this win,
• 49:33
  he's not going for Areola. Oh, because he doesn't want to
• 49:35
  go Spurs, because Spurs has other issues, right?
• 49:40
  It's. Man United, apparently, so we
• 49:42
  can. No, no, look, Spurs, I think
• 49:43
  Spurs. I think the issue with Spurs is
• 49:45
  that everybody is concerned about working with a certain
• 49:50
  director of football, right? As opposed to here, he'll have
• 49:53
  court Blanche to a certain extent of at least being able to
• 49:56
  put in place structure, structure, a structural thing.
• 49:59
  Right now. The reason why I say that, it's
• 50:01
  like, I think the quest, the problem you've Man United have
• 50:04
  now got is that I think those people who are very good
• 50:07
  coaches, there's going to be a lot of those at the top end of
• 50:11
  that who are just not going to want to move.
• 50:13
  So if you, you, you, if you decide to sack camera in halfway
• 50:15
  through the season, you're going to be quite limited in who you
• 50:17
  can get. Cabs question for you then just
• 50:21
  to switch gears a little bit to Liverpool, right.
• 50:22
  So obviously you're in for what seems like you'll get the deal
• 50:26
  done at some point, but I think we had some heated conversations
• 50:29
  about Frim Frim Pong in build. How did how did you not sign
• 50:34
  frame pong? Because Liverpool wanted to sign
• 50:35
  him. That's.
• 50:36
  Why? No, that's fair.
• 50:37
  But did you try? No.
• 50:38
  Tell me you tried at. Least are you moving to three at
• 50:40
  the back or can you play? Can you play right back?
• 50:42
  He's playing right back. And just out of interest caps
• 50:45
  what type of wingback with Reuben one as an architect right
• 50:51
  wing back? Look, it seemed to me like that
• 50:52
  he's he's ready made for a for a Ruben system because then he
• 50:55
  goes, he's up and down. Exactly what as has been saying
• 50:58
  about the one he's you've got, you know, runs all days quick,
• 51:02
  gives you penetration, but also has is quick enough to come
• 51:05
  back. It just seems like he's such an
• 51:06
  archetypal. But also if if we'd have signed
• 51:09
  him right and he would have been a good right wing back for
• 51:11
  Reuben if Rube and then got sacked, Frim Pong would would
• 51:14
  still be good in a in a back four.
• 51:16
  Do you think? Well.
• 51:16
  Again, depends, depends on who you bring, right.
• 51:18
  I mean, like that this is ultimately I think so, yeah.
• 51:22
  Because he's got. He did with them.
• 51:23
  He's got great bundles of energy, Yeah.
• 51:24
  But also exactly because he's just he's, he's got.
• 51:27
  He's technically really good on the ball.
• 51:28
  The left, the left back that we're we're trying to sign as
• 51:31
  well. The the Hungarian kid Kurt Case,
• 51:33
  he's very kind of similar right up and down, but essentially
• 51:36
  used to be a winger in his younger in his use use use days.
• 51:40
  So essentially, if you played, if you take Kirka's out and said
• 51:44
  he's a wingback, you'd say probably that's probably the
• 51:46
  right position. And we bought him to play as a
• 51:48
  fullback. But again, I mean, again, this
• 51:50
  is interesting about Liverpool at the moment.
• 51:52
  It looks like slot somehow after we played them is completely
• 51:56
  obsessed with Paris and German. So the model seems to be like,
• 51:58
  let's, let's see, let's imitate Paris to a certain extent.
• 52:03
  So OK, I want to answer Steve's question is if we sign Frimpong,
• 52:06
  he's asking if we then move to a back 4.
• 52:09
  Liverpool are set up because they've had Trent Alexander
• 52:12
  Arnold for so long to compensate for a defensively weaker
• 52:18
  fullback, right? You're already set up in this
• 52:20
  model of the midfield and the centre backs covering to an
• 52:25
  extent and and that's Kanate and Van Dyke can cover huge amounts
• 52:29
  of ground. So you've profiled your team
• 52:31
  around this wingback player, right?
• 52:35
  But again, this is what you're right, you're completely right
• 52:38
  as are, but I guess this is again one of my issues with like
• 52:41
  the Amarin system, right? Because to me, if I look at all
• 52:46
  of the progressive managers in world football at the moment,
• 52:49
  that's sort of what he, what they task their defensive
• 52:52
  structure to do, right? You've your, your front 656,
• 52:56
  whichever way, however you want to want to classify that kind of
• 53:01
  disconnect and basically goes hunting.
• 53:03
  Then you have your centre backs covering swathes of ground,
• 53:06
  right? And you just kind of allow that.
• 53:08
  That's how you play proactive football in this kind of model,
• 53:12
  right? You've got the Barcelona manager
• 53:14
  doing that. You've got the PSU manager doing
• 53:15
  that. You've got, you know, Man City
• 53:17
  to a certain extent doing that, right?
• 53:19
  You've obviously done Abar Tete because he's obsessed with
• 53:21
  negative transition. But let's not let's cancel.
• 53:23
  Let's but like my point is, like so many of the very, very
• 53:26
  progressive managers are doing this, this model.
• 53:29
  Now you've got Amory who doesn't do that right, because he's
• 53:31
  cautious. Now the question, I guess my, my
• 53:33
  question again going back to you is that is that not a flaw in
• 53:37
  the way you're providing your centre backs, right?
• 53:39
  That you've bought centre backs who just you haven't bought
• 53:42
  centre backs who were able to cover swathes of crap.
• 53:45
  Lenny Euro is the is the hope right?
• 53:46
  Yeah, that's the thing. Like we're talking about
• 53:48
  recruitment that happened five years ago, and this was a
• 53:50
  mistake Under 10 Hug. And you know we're paying Ollie.
• 53:55
  Yeah, it's an interesting one. When you look back at Ollie's
• 53:59
  recruitment, Sancho McGuire like.
• 54:02
  I think you know. Ronaldo.
• 54:03
  Again, I'm going to be boring and defend McGuire.
• 54:07
  I think he's he's a good player, but it's that interesting thing
• 54:11
  of yeah, do you need the the ground coverage monsters, right.
• 54:18
  And I think for for the way the back three allows you to do that
• 54:21
  because the wide centre backs are kind of trying to do that
• 54:24
  and therefore. The Let's Ground cover in
• 54:26
  Monsters, isn't that what it's meant to be?
• 54:28
  No, that's it. So this is what Amarim does,
• 54:30
  right? The central guy can kind of be a
• 54:32
  bit more immobile and he's had Delict and Euro kind of trying
• 54:37
  to cover the the wide spaces and that's where you get the wing
• 54:40
  backs pushing up so it can work. We'll see if it works next
• 54:44
  season. Yeah, we Euro, like I said, I
• 54:46
  think he has started to get better and start showing
• 54:49
  himself. I think Delict as well start
• 54:52
  playing well, got injured, which is a shame that we lost him for
• 54:55
  the final, but we'll see. He's quite injury prone though,
• 54:58
  so like this is the thing next season, even if he's starting
• 55:02
  and playing well and then he gets injured, that can't be the
• 55:05
  excuse our deluxe injured because.
• 55:07
  Yeah, we've got enough centre backs.
• 55:09
  I think Mazrawi, Mazrawi did really well as I think Mazrawi
• 55:12
  outstripped my personal expectations.
• 55:14
  I've always liked him. I didn't think he was this good.
• 55:16
  He was really good and the right centre back.
• 55:18
  I don't know why they kept playing in wing back because I
• 55:21
  don't think that's his game. That's ridiculous because
• 55:23
  Reuben's conservative. That's.
• 55:25
  Fine. Yeah.
• 55:25
  Well, yeah, this is. A game I'm thinking that we're
• 55:27
  he's going to sign. Is it Embuermo, Steve Embuermo
• 55:31
  to play? Wait to play a wing back.
• 55:33
  No, to play at the right 10 and therefore we'd assume Ahmad
• 55:36
  right is going to play that and he played in the last game of
• 55:39
  the season. Ahmad played a little bit in
• 55:41
  that right and he's played it, but went back some pieces of
• 55:43
  wing back this year and he's done really.
• 55:44
  Well. Because when you've lost, when
• 55:46
  you've gone and also when you've gone behind, right?
• 55:48
  So I think he did that in the Southampton game when you were
• 55:52
  behind. Yeah.
• 55:53
  So we'll start in January, we'll see if, if, if Reuben has more
• 55:57
  attacking pieces at his disposal, does he still revert
• 56:01
  to type and still bench them basically or does he play them
• 56:05
  all? Because there is talk that we're
• 56:07
  going to sign in Boemo, we're going to have, we've got Cunha
• 56:10
  in the door. There is we've talked about
• 56:12
  Kyocheres. Therefore, there is talk that
• 56:14
  Bruno Fernandez now slips back one into the central midfield to
• 56:17
  essentially closer to the kind of him being more a 10 stroke
• 56:22
  central box to box player. And then talk of Ahmad playing
• 56:26
  in that right wing back. And then suddenly you're kind of
• 56:28
  close to, you know, the the, the balance of attack and defence
• 56:31
  that most other teams have. And then it comes down to can
• 56:34
  you execute? That's it exactly.
• 56:36
  No excuses, right? I mean, we've talked about the
• 56:38
  league now. We've talked about United and
• 56:40
  Liverpool briefly. Cavs looks like you're going to
• 56:42
  have a pretty good summer, right?
• 56:43
  So we don't want to. Well, let's see, when is, when
• 56:46
  is, when are we going to get the Here we go on Bert.
• 56:49
  I am so bored of this. No idea.
• 56:51
  Yeah. So am I.
• 56:52
  Like, you're bored. I mean, like, honestly, we've
• 56:53
  got like, he's really close. He's really, really.
• 56:55
  Close. How many times have personal
• 56:56
  terms been agreed? I mean, honestly, it's not it's.
• 57:00
  Not don't get me started on personal terms transfer.
• 57:02
  We haven't even yeah, transfer fee, it's basically it's that
• 57:05
  and we haven't even got the same.
• 57:07
  Great idea to agree the fee of the club before you talk to the
• 57:10
  player. But anyway, let's let's let's
• 57:12
  wrap up by talking about something I think we all
• 57:14
  enjoyed. No.
• 57:16
  I know we've run out of time for Liverpool cabs.
• 57:18
  Unfortunately no, I think we can.
• 57:21
  We can brush over the Conference League because it's a made-up
• 57:24
  competition and we don't want to talk about Chelsea completing
• 57:27
  the set. Apparently.
• 57:28
  We can also skip talking about Newcastle winning the Caribou
• 57:31
  Cup against Liverpool. I know you hate Eddie Howe, but
• 57:35
  I mean, come. On No, no, I just think that,
• 57:37
  you know, we, I think we spoke about it during the season,
• 57:39
  right, because it was in, you know, February or March, but I
• 57:41
  think the the big one is Bristol Palace, right when in the FA
• 57:44
  Cup. I mean, what a huge result.
• 57:47
  Was it the first trophy ever? Ever.
• 57:50
  Yeah, trophy. Ever.
• 57:51
  Yeah, amazing. I mean, that's the cup wins this
• 57:54
  this year have been pretty spectacular, right?
• 57:56
  Phenomenal. Crystal Palace, Newcastle.
• 57:58
  I was actually going. To mention them early when cabs
• 58:00
  were saying about you know, you've had a champions, oh sorry
• 58:04
  there's Champions League semi finals.
• 58:06
  Got to give a shout out for the FA Cup final like Palace were
• 58:09
  immense. Yeah, it was really fitting that
• 58:12
  as is got the goal as well. And with a back three system, I
• 58:16
  was going to say the reactive manager playing a 3421, well
• 58:21
  coached, well coached came through mid season as well.
• 58:26
  Players plays offensive football, actually has forwards
• 58:29
  on the pitch that allowed to kick the ball forward.
• 58:32
  That's not very good. By that he's been great, right?
• 58:35
  Probably like top three managers of the year.
• 58:40
  Very good, especially given the quality of players he's got.
• 58:44
  And again. Highest, Yeah.
• 58:46
  Highest point total. Exactly.
• 58:47
  Highest, highest point total ever for Palace in the Premier
• 58:50
  League, I think, ever. And winning a trophy.
• 58:53
  That's some kind of could Kim Morgan, I think.
• 58:55
  Morgan, Alan. Pardi, I mean, to be fair, Alan
• 58:57
  Pardi was the head in the FA Cup final as well, so.
• 59:03
  He could have won. He did the dance and then went.
• 59:06
  He had to scored. We were there.
• 59:08
  That was a good day. Yeah.
• 59:09
  Having a look at Palace, I mean, like 53 points is decent.
• 59:12
  Zero goal difference is OK. I think their squad's really
• 59:15
  like I like Henderson, obviously X Man United gay.
• 59:17
  He's really good. I love Adam Watson.
• 59:19
  I think as a is superb and I take Matetra United.
• 59:23
  We've been linked with Mateta. I want to do the Kuna Mateta
• 59:27
  song because it'll be it'll be great.
• 59:30
  I think he's he's potentially, I think they're talking about a
• 59:33
  new contract and I think Palace, yeah, really good and really
• 59:37
  happy they they beat City. So just before we wrap up, I'm
• 59:43
  going to catch you guys off guard and just quickly ask you
• 59:46
  moment of the season. So cabs, out of courtesy, since
• 59:51
  you won the league, tell us your moment of the season.
• 59:53
  Please don't tell us there was that selfie that Salah did.
• 59:56
  Like pick, pick something better than that.
• 59:59
  To me it was, I think it wasn't that it was basically the same
• 1:00:01
  game. It was Mcallister's Thunder
• 1:00:03
  bastard, basically that what won us the league.
• 1:00:06
  Essentially like I think that was the one that basically
• 1:00:08
  defined we. It was 1.
• 1:00:10
  All he scores, we only need a draw.
• 1:00:12
  We'd go 21 up and then the whole kind of.
• 1:00:14
  That's the moment I know you were there at the game as well,
• 1:00:17
  right? Yeah, it was phenomenal, Yeah, I
• 1:00:19
  was there. I was basically understand and
• 1:00:20
  it was just the whole Anfield was never seen anthem like that
• 1:00:23
  and I've been to Champions League finals and semi finals
• 1:00:26
  with Yeah. That's easy for you.
• 1:00:27
  It was phenomenal. It's going to be harder for us
• 1:00:30
  guys. No, come on, we've got loads.
• 1:00:33
  Oh yeah, that's true. That's true.
• 1:00:35
  No, come on. One thing you'd say is whatever
• 1:00:38
  happened, whatever, whatever's happened in the last 10 years,
• 1:00:42
  we are privileged to have had moments like we haven't had
• 1:00:45
  consistency. How many even even Jesse Lingard
• 1:00:49
  like the Alan Pardew dance and and the one matter equalised and
• 1:00:52
  the Jesse Lingard? Kobe Mayno last summer.
• 1:00:55
  FA Cup. Final we've had moment, I'm
• 1:00:59
  sorry, but Kat is any better moment in in Liverpool season?
• 1:01:02
  Anything better than Harry Mcguire's winning goal against
• 1:01:05
  Leon? That was no, no, that was an
• 1:01:06
  amazing. From 4/2 with with 5 or 10
• 1:01:09
  minutes to go. Yeah, but we lost five Spurs in
• 1:01:11
  the final, so that's taking the gloss off it.
• 1:01:13
  Yeah, in that moment. Yeah, anything better than Harry
• 1:01:15
  Mcguire's? Knees like no no.
• 1:01:18
  Nothing. So you know, and, and, and, come
• 1:01:21
  on. Even though we lost two spurs in
• 1:01:22
  the final, how good was it standing outside in the middle
• 1:01:27
  of wherever in the Basque region in that hilly, wonderful
• 1:01:31
  retreat, setting up our laptop to record that video pod?
• 1:01:35
  How beautiful was it? How?
• 1:01:36
  That was just wonderful. That cabs wanted to be there it.
• 1:01:39
  Was a wonderful time, guys. Like honestly, like life is
• 1:01:42
  great. We have to be like, as bad as
• 1:01:45
  it's been in its ups and downs, you know, we, we've, we, we, we
• 1:01:49
  got that trip to Bilbao, as as shit as it was at the football
• 1:01:54
  during the game. We got to go to a final, you
• 1:01:57
  know, we got to go to a final for me, obviously.
• 1:01:59
  Yeah, it was, it was, it was. It was Leon.
• 1:02:02
  Leon in the quarters. Fair.
• 1:02:04
  Fair. Yeah, I mean, that was just, I
• 1:02:05
  just, I just just couldn't understand it.
• 1:02:08
  Like, honestly, you know, you put so much heart and soul into
• 1:02:12
  the football club and then put backing the manager.
• 1:02:15
  And I just just knew that, yeah, Ash would be there with his
• 1:02:19
  Eddie Howe posters and, you know, telling me how shit we
• 1:02:22
  are. And then bloody Bruno, Casimiro,
• 1:02:25
  Cobby McGuire, my main man Harry Maguire leaping like an absolute
• 1:02:31
  salmon at the bar post. Remember this when he says I
• 1:02:34
  didn't rate him that highly. Oh mate, it's just a shame.
• 1:02:37
  It's just a shame. Oh man, it didn't come with a
• 1:02:39
  trophy. But yeah, as a moment, I'm
• 1:02:41
  unbelievable. Yeah, just insane.
• 1:02:43
  Like, absolutely. This is the thing.
• 1:02:46
  I think it's hard to separate like the McGuire moment with
• 1:02:50
  just that madness of that 5 minutes, yeah.
• 1:02:53
  There was even even like I can't believe how nervous it was on
• 1:02:56
  Bruno taking a penalty and I was like, wow, if Bruno scores this
• 1:03:00
  we we which aren't even the decision to get it because it
• 1:03:04
  was a vehicle. Remember to be honest, the the
• 1:03:06
  the level of excitement that I had the highest level actually
• 1:03:10
  was when mainly scored because I hadn't recovered.
• 1:03:13
  I hadn't recovered by the time McGuire I was just gone.
• 1:03:16
  I was just on the floor. I was just it was just insane.
• 1:03:18
  I didn't know what was happening.
• 1:03:19
  I was confused. It was ridiculous and we've had
• 1:03:21
  these moments. Like even we talked to Faisal
• 1:03:24
  Islam, that was a great moment. We talked to him about how this
• 1:03:27
  started with Anthony's equaliser against Liverpool and coming
• 1:03:31
  back to one in that game last season.
• 1:03:33
  We've had these moments. Craziness.
• 1:03:35
  Was it 4, three that game Rashford nearly scores I think
• 1:03:38
  before then it goes to extra time.
• 1:03:40
  Then last minute Ahmed goal. So even last season, which was
• 1:03:43
  awful, 10 hug, like awful, terrible stuff.
• 1:03:46
  We've got to another final and we even won that final say so we
• 1:03:50
  had Coventry and then madness and this season you wrote for
• 1:03:53
  Leeds. I think you've nicked the
• 1:03:56
  obvious one in terms of Leon. So, Ash, it's going to make it a
• 1:03:59
  bit harder for you to pick a moment.
• 1:04:02
  Oh, there's a really easy one, given that McGuire has been
• 1:04:05
  picked already. That Manchester City, so this
• 1:04:08
  was the early days of Reuben football, so there was way more
• 1:04:12
  optimism. He believed like there was
• 1:04:15
  something in the mix. And yeah, Ahmad showed
• 1:04:18
  everything, I think in the was it the two goals he scored?
• 1:04:22
  Like, because I think did he get the equaliser as well?
• 1:04:24
  And it was the way Ahmad just demonstrated what it is to be a
• 1:04:28
  Man United footballer. Like just tenacity, work great,
• 1:04:33
  never given up, quality finishes.
• 1:04:35
  The second one, I mean, the, you know, the the actual winning
• 1:04:38
  goal at the Etihad, like, yeah. And you really believed.
• 1:04:41
  It's like, oh, this could be a turning point.
• 1:04:43
  Look at the smirk on Cavs face. Yeah, that's what I mean.
• 1:04:49
  Outside of the Basque cheesecake, sure.
• 1:04:52
  If you don't mention this one, I'm going to be disgusted.
• 1:04:55
  Go on well. If you're going to say pure
• 1:04:56
  moments, just one moment. Yeah.
• 1:04:59
  Go on, tell me what? Go on, say it.
• 1:05:01
  So the one I was going to go with, and I'm probably
• 1:05:03
  forgetting something, I'm going to go with the three nil first
• 1:05:06
  leg away win against Bilbao in the semi when we basically knew
• 1:05:11
  we were going to the final and that was that was beautiful.
• 1:05:14
  I mean, my first European final, the pre the pre talk in that
• 1:05:17
  match was, oh, athletic, athletic are a really good, good
• 1:05:20
  team. And you know, all of this and
• 1:05:22
  we're three nil up at half time. I'm thinking, shit, we're going
• 1:05:24
  to have to start looking at flights and hotels.
• 1:05:27
  So I'll go with that. But what?
• 1:05:28
  What am I forgetting? I was, I was going to say like
• 1:05:31
  on a serious note, you know, when we got the e-mail that we
• 1:05:34
  got the final tickets, that was incredible.
• 1:05:37
  Like all the planning that went into that trip that.
• 1:05:40
  And it was the IT was the night, it was the night of the second
• 1:05:42
  leg. It literally the game finished.
• 1:05:44
  Second leg because we had to finish 100% the efficiency of
• 1:05:48
  Ineos there with the application that you've got to give them
• 1:05:50
  credit for that. You know, I was going to say, I
• 1:05:53
  thought with cabs on you would have said that.
• 1:05:55
  You know that when Martinez scored that goal.
• 1:05:57
  Yeah, that's a good one. But if, if, if McGuire had got
• 1:06:01
  the winner, that that was it. That was.
• 1:06:04
  Just and to beat Liverpool, and this is the thing with as much
• 1:06:07
  as Reuben, I agree. You're going to say if McGuire
• 1:06:10
  scored that we would have we would have had a better season.
• 1:06:13
  We would have won the we would have won the league.
• 1:06:15
  No, I agree with caps. We've we've suffered and
• 1:06:19
  struggled in in these low blocks, but I've actually
• 1:06:22
  thought in the big games, Arsenal, Liverpool, etcetera.
• 1:06:25
  Even the final game against Villa like possessions been 5050
• 1:06:29
  and we've been there like it can say reactive manager, but this
• 1:06:32
  has not been that game wasn't 70 percent, 30%, you know, Jose
• 1:06:36
  Mourinho style. We went toe to toe with
• 1:06:38
  Liverpool, took him on and McGuire nearly wins the game.
• 1:06:42
  I don't know the position on that that's on that game, but I
• 1:06:44
  remember it being close and like gave the best team in Europe
• 1:06:48
  possibly, you know, with PSG on penalties, etcetera, a really
• 1:06:51
  good game. And that's why I have some level
• 1:06:53
  of optimism that there's fight there, there's something there
• 1:06:57
  that that if we can get a few better players to flat track,
• 1:07:00
  bully some of these lower teams in the big games, maybe against
• 1:07:03
  Arsenal, I thought, you know, like we we were able to be
• 1:07:06
  competitive just yeah, like a bit cutting edge.
• 1:07:08
  But that Martinez goal again, showing that a wide centre back
• 1:07:12
  can go all the way up to the other end of the pitch and
• 1:07:15
  score, which is the other, you know, different way the system
• 1:07:17
  works. It was it was a lovely finish
• 1:07:19
  and Bruno as well played set. I think Bruno played central
• 1:07:22
  midfield that day and everyone's.
• 1:07:23
  I can't play in the middle, Liverpool central midfield out,
• 1:07:26
  but I Bruno, Bruno bust that game.
• 1:07:28
  I think that was a good, that was a good, that was a good
• 1:07:30
  episode of the pod actually, because I think we all came into
• 1:07:32
  that episode quite riled up, you know, because it was like a bit
• 1:07:35
  of a bit of an old school United game that no one really
• 1:07:38
  expected. It was good.
• 1:07:40
  Well, the Caps didn't enjoy it. Well, no, because I mean, I
• 1:07:43
  think, I think you've got basically the rest of the season
• 1:07:45
  was endemic of basically what what happened that game you as I
• 1:07:49
  wanted you to kick people and become Everton and you became
• 1:07:51
  Everton. What more you want with it?
• 1:07:54
  You literally became everything for the rest.
• 1:07:55
  Of the season and finished Everton.
• 1:07:58
  And on that bombshell, I think we're going to have to say not
• 1:08:01
  just thanks for tuning into this episode, but thanks for tuning
• 1:08:04
  into the series. I think we'll be back next
• 1:08:06
  season. And I actually disagree with
• 1:08:08
  what Ange said. And he said Season 3 of TV
• 1:08:11
  series are the best. I think Season 2, Season 2
• 1:08:14
  normally is the best of TV series.
• 1:08:16
  So yeah, stay tuned. Yeah, I think season 1 always
• 1:08:20
  ends on a bit of a bombshell, right?
• 1:08:21
  So I think that was the night in Bilbao.
• 1:08:23
  So I think Season 2, if it's going to be the best season
• 1:08:26
  ever, they're going to come back and win the league, right?
• 1:08:28
  100% don't forget season 3 is always better than season 2
• 1:08:32
  mate. Exactly.
• 1:08:33
  Except I got. Five, mate.
• 1:08:34
  So you're you're out of here. Clown, after all, wreck.
• 1:08:37
  Off mate. Fuck off mate.
• 1:08:40
  McCloud. Thanks for tuning in and we'll
• 1:08:43
  catch you on the next series.