Latest / Minnows Football / Matchweek 5 & 6: Burnley struggles, Saints fire up, and Nathan Jones crashes out (again)

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Matchweek 5 & 6: Burnley struggles, Saints fire up, and Nathan Jones crashes out (again) · Minnows Football

• Sam: Welcome along to the Minnows Football Podcast. It's Thursday, September 10. I'm Sam Martin, host of Minnows Football. School's back. Leaves are sort of starting to turn. Summer's moving to the rearview mirror. And that can only mean one thing. And that's right, there was more midweek football this week. It is that time of the year. Things are starting to change. They're going back to normal for many of us, or what feels like a lovely normal. We're really getting into the swing of things here as as September kicks off. One of the things that a lot of people were talking about this week was Champions League. Now, what do we care about in terms of Champions League? We certainly don't care too much about the big clubs that are probably going to go and win at all. But there are a few clubs that I did want to call out that we're going to start following a little more closely as as the Champions League kicks off here and we start doing a little bit of coverage into some of the cups in Europe. And there are some obvious ones here that we'd be interested in. Como, for example. You could be cynical if you want about Como, but it's kind of an insane setting there on the lake. It's this cherished underdog story that has been kind of bastardized and taken over by billionaires now. and to see people running around with the beautiful kits, but with the Uber or whoever the the sponsor is this year, but Uber last year on the front of the chest. There's reasons to feel cynical about Como, but it's hard to get over that setting. It's hard to get over that the fact that those guys are in the Serie R and now competing in Champions League and are probably going to take it to a couple of these teams. Bodo glimped it back. They had the terrible pain of the loss last year when they were up by so many. and but they're back and and kind of poised potentially for a run. You got French underdogs like Lil in the competition, David Ancelotti in charge, son of Carlo, of course, Olivier Giroux leading the line at age 39. There's a lot of great stories this year in the Champions League. And and that's not even taking into account some of the true underdogs, guys like Saba FK, who if I just check here, at least when I was starting to record this, they were losing 3-0 to Man United. They still are, but you know, Saba FK. A club from the Azerbaijan League, not even 10 years old, founded in 2018, managed by Valda Dambruskus. Dan Bruskus. I'm I hope I pronounced that correctly. Who quite famously, as all the stories are going around now, was on a Lithuanian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, won 3,000 whatever's, I think it's Euros, but won some money from that competition, put that into getting his Coaching credentials and then has since gone from there and managed across Europe and is now managing in the Champions League. Just incredible stories. Lsk had their amazing comeback against Celtic last or last month, coming back from 3-0 down. They're in there. You got clubs like Viking FK, this incredible redemption story out of the Norwegian League where they were almost broke broken. And on the verge of administration less than a decade ago and relegation, they came back and had a really dramatic win in not just to win the Norwegian league last year, but then went through the playoff bracket, beat Dynamo Zagreb. So there's so many amazing stories at the lower ends of that champion the Champions League. And this is the time of year to dig into those stories and and pay attention to some of the results. So we're gonna be talking a little bit about that as it goes along. Hopefully we'll have some better results. For the underdogs than we've got going on at Old Trafford right now. But I wanted to, of course, today turn our attention to the championship, where there's just been a continuation of of great football being played, a lot of football being played between two games a week, and then also some cup ties for a couple of of different clubs. If you go check out midnowsfootball.com, you'll see the latest table up there. You'll see a couple of teams haven't changed week over week because there's a few games being held out. some of the match week or match day six games get played next Tuesday and one even gets played in October. Things getting pushed around for cups and different reasons. But go check out those results. Today I just really wanted to dig into three rises and fallers on both sides. So three clubs that that are feeling like they're, you know, starting to to go into ma if not free fall, maybe something more closely approaching free fall. It's hard to be in free fall in August, but as you move into September and we get a few more games under the belt, we're starting to say, are these things blips or are they trends? And so we're pulling apart three fallers that we feel like they might be starting to be trends against three rising clubs that are that are starting to put it all together. So let's do it. Let's start with a club that was a real sensation in August, but all of a sudden has hit a little bit of a road bump here to start September. And that's Charlton and our beloved manager of Charlton, Nathan Jones. So just to set the scene, obviously they had a great start to the year. He's pumped. Charlton are firing. They beat Derby, West Ham, Preston. They drew 1 1 at West Brom. And then the last two, since we last spoke, went down four nothing at Stoke to a Stoke side that was really struggling and at the bottom of the table, and I think winless up until that point. They put four past him, three in the first half. It was a comprehensive kind of demolition job of Charlton. And then they had a fairly very kind of midweeky game last night or two nights ago against QPR. and nil-nil drew that at in Charlton, at Charlton at London Derby. and after the game, Nathan Jones was not happy. And it got me thinking about what are the top five Nathan Jones crash out moments because he's he's had a couple in the last two or one or two weeks, and it's crazy to go from flying so high to then all of a sudden crashing out after games. But I went back and I had a look and I tried to rank what his top five crash outs were. And so I've got him here that the one this week, the one that just happened against Stoke, when they went down four-nil last week. I'm putting that at number five. that was more of like a passive aggressive rant, but it's something that Jones often does. He like digs back into his own personal history and brings it forward. He says the unspoken things, which just makes him so fantastic from like an entertainment and content perspective. and so troubling for him, I think, to to kind of live that way. this is what he said about Stoke. He said, I don't want to speak about Stoke fans too much. They've had it tough. They've come out of the Premier League, they've spent probably three hundred million pounds, and it hasn't quite worked for some reason. What they've got to pray for is that I come back every week. They seem to be more vocal and their team plays a little bit better when I come back. But I won't be back for a year, so they're gonna have to find their own way. I mean, just amazing. Like there on one hand you'd say there's just real kind of main character energy with Nathan Jones. He is the center of his universe very, very clearly. Also maybe true. Like it did it take Nathan Jones returning for Stoke to get pushed out of their slumber this season. They've certainly looked better since since he came along. the next four crash outs that he's that I I have here in the top five, it was really hard to work out the order of these. They're all great in their own ways. There are two moments from the same Southampton press conference that need to be pulled apart a little bit. The first one that I've got here at number four. it was when he was talking this is when he had that ninety day stint as manager of Southampton that was that went so poorly. and he mentioned that he went back to his Luton experience and said when he was managing Luton, they were one of the best teams in Europe when it came to XG, which was kind of a wild thing to say. But then in the same press conference, and this was after a came after a three nil thrashing from Brentford, he made the following statement Which I think will will you guys will remember. I could have stayed in the mining community, been a PE teacher and had a nice life, married a nice Welsh girl. Beautiful. I didn't. And then in sort of a David Brentian way afterwards, then says, and that's nothing against Welsh women. phenomenal stuff. the second best for me has got to be after the game last night. So th they played QPR or two nights ago now, and it was a It was a tough tough draw, but it wasn't th no one really played and looked like they should have won that game. Like it wasn't like Charlton dominated the game and got super unlucky. Charlton did score and then the goal was ruled off sides. and it probably it sh looked like it should have been not ruled off sides. And in actually I think the the refereeing was pretty bad in that game. And it was could be summed up in in like the dying minutes. There was a Charlton player clearly held not just outside the box but within range of the Charlton goal, the QPR goal, and it was just completely missed. And so there was bad refereeing all night. Nathan Jones was going off at the fourth official the entire time. And then after the game, he goes to the media and says, The goal is a great goal from a great counterattack. It's onside. And the decision has cost us three points once again. I think the arrogance of the linesman is mental because he's looking at me as if I've just volleyed his cat. He's looking at me as if I could have done something and going, nah. He's made the biggest error of the night and he's cost us the game and that is the championship because the championship is brutal. Phenomenal. Great. Like so quotable. So much in there. The championship is brutal. Life is pain. Existence is doom. You know? Life sucks, then you die. Also, he th he was right about the refereeing being bad, but the way that he talked about it is just this way of just the heart is on the sleeve at all times. And this turn of phrase, volley the cat. I mean, what makes someone a pure natural in these kind of situations, these circumstances with reporters, someone so quotable, is being able to kind of come up with this unique turn of phrase, which doesn't make s it doesn't come from anywhere, doesn't seem to make sense. But then when you think about it, it's like, well, it kind of does, I guess, make sense. But you know, you could put me in a room for 30 days, in a writer's room, and and not come up with anything like that. it's just vintage Nathan Jones. And then the number one crash out of Nathan Jones for me is pretty clear. and it's when he accused Philip Clement in March of this year. this is after they played Norwich, of shaking everyone else's hand before his. And then he just goes, if you go and look at the the clip, he goes on this 30 second rant about how many hands Clement has shaken before his. And it's just a really petulant outburst. again, maybe some accuracy there. Maybe you should go and shake the manager's hand first. But it's the kind of thing you might think when you're frustrated, as a frustrated adult at least, and but we'll usually be able to stop. yourself saying out loud, especially in front of reporters. Most people have, if not a filter, but just a part of their brain which is gonna say, Okay, let's lock this up. As I sit down here in this moment, let's lock that up. It's it's nothing that just does not happen with Nathan Jones. He sits down and he's still the the red mist is still fully descended on him when he sits down and talks to reporters. And it's something that is just becoming more and more of a lost art form. not just in in football, but in in all sports, the ability to sit down and and be authentic and be your authentic self. It's so much great color. and it's something that's kind of lost from the game. That's the romantic read of it. The serious kind of read of it is can you go how far can you go with a guy that has that kind of maturity level? Like how how can his teams fly or can they fly too close to the sun with someone like that? How long can they go for? I think that's a little too serious right now. It's like these are people that bring immense character and color to things that we like watching and what we like watching is entertainment. And so, anyway, it's it's great. It's just great. It's great when he it's not great when Charlton loses, but like it's great when he comes and gives us these quotes. Charlton in general, like is this a blip or a or a trend? I think th it's still very early, it's way too early to tell. We can just say they've had two very flat games, after a really good start to the season. And so more to come there, but Nathan Jones, keep on doing you. The next club I want to talk about, that in this falling category, or this subcategory as I've called it, falling, but maybe Jamie Vardy can save us, is Burnley. their results over the last two games in the last week here. Burnley one, Bristol City two. Kind of a devastating loss because it was Burnley won Bristol City zip until the 82nd minute. And then midweek this week, Wrexham won, Burnley won. And I want to kick off this section about Burnley from reading from the Burnley Reddit thread. This is from Fearless AD seven three seven nine. It's quite a long ish entry, but I do want to read it in its entirety because I think it it sums up. a fair bit of of what's going on in the fan base mindset of the of Burnley. And it's actually called The People of Burnley is the name of the post. I remember watching a documentary of company's first season a few years ago, and right at the beginning was a scene of Alan Pace, it's the owner of Burnley, and his mates playing football in a posh house and talking about his plans for Burnley. At the time I remember thinking, but does he actually know the people? I'm from Burnley and I know the people. We are nobody's mugs. We give it to you straight. And we aren't afraid of having an alternative view and expressing it loudly. I think Pace and L A L K, which is the company that Alan Pace controls and and that owns Burnley, thought that the fans wouldn't be a factor, that we would just turn up no matter what while they extracted money from us. That we would just buy their minimum effort bullshit without question and suffer in silence as they ransacked the club and the local fan base directly. I live in Spain and I had to pay 180 quid to get the season ticket for the live matches on Clarets Plus. Days in is only 150. And that is every football match in the universe. I can only imagine what prices are like in the ground. That is crazy. Some of these that there is such a disconnect. This is an aside now from me. There is such a disconnect when you're living globally to watching games f through a streamer to watching games just of of the club that you're trying to follow. and there's just there's just this massive chasm in those costs, which those things just haven't really worked themselves out yet. Pace and Powell should understand that being Burnley isn't something you can just slip into like a jacket from the gus shop. Finally, the blame and the singing and the chance of landing in the right spot. No lessons were learned from company's time. Parker should have been let go before Christmas in the Premier League. The writing was on the wall very early. Managers should have a ten losses in a row and out rule, no matter who they are. However, they should be allowed to bring their own team. You can imagine they have trusted defensive coaches or trainers who know their methods to not be able to try and use their own resources to help the first team is bizarre to say the least. This time, though, there's no point blaming the manager even if he isn't very good. He's been hamstrung by the owners. We've got a YTS trainee keeper who can't save anything. I think that's a bit unfair. a midfield of headless chickens and no good striker. This is written before Jamie Vardy joined. Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's four days ago. Maybe he's including Vardy in that. The team is so poor this year that if I was Alan Pace, I wouldn't know where to put my face. Who even turns up expecting us to win anymore? It's very sad that it has come to this. When ALK bought the club, I thought we would be on the up, but the decision making is terrible. He famously called us toddlers. the reality is that the club is being no worse than if toddlers ran it. To all the chan fans chanting. F U C K well, fuck A L K. Well done. Keep it up. If they want to take our money, they have to give us the football. Burnley is and always has been a hard working town. The least the people expect is not to be taken for fools. I think there's more in this than just a typical Reddit rant, and a big thanks to Fearless AD seven three seven nine for bearing their soul there. there's so many different threads to pull apart here. there's the foreign investment and private investment piece in local football clubs. And the complexity of that is there's many complexities in that. One of them is that in order for the club to make the next step, it appears in a globalized world that you need to access capital from outside of your local world. But as soon as you access capital from outside of your local world, how do you keep the club being authentic? you know, how can you how can you take the dollar take the dollars in one sense and that's even that's even that's kind of complex because you're taking these dollars theoretically, but you're not having any control over where that money's going. And in fact, in a lot of cases with bad owners, they're taking the money or they're taking the asset from you. So that's really complicated. but how do you how do these local clubs exist in a globalized world and What do you do when an American comes to Burnley with no real ties to the location, apart from the fact that they want a sporting asset and does a really bespoke, strange, well, not strange, it's that was done at clubs like Manchester United, but like a leverage buyout style structure of the club, which puts a club like Burnley, which is a yo-yo club and can't count on every single year having Premier League. broadcast revenues, which is the number one revenue stream for any EFL club is what's coming through through broadcast rights. And the magnitude of difference between the difference between the Premier League and championship is immense. How can you have that kind of leverage buyout structure, which is super risky, on a revenue base which can go with a club like Burnley that goes up and down, up and down, up and down, that that revenue base goes up and down with it. And Even with things like parachute payments, how do you get to a point where you can have any trust in the club? And as an owner, you're obviously going to be concerned when you get relegated and you're going to get cold feet. And those things are very natural when you're talking about the kind of money that is going into to paying these players and and running these clubs. But there's so much here that that could be solved. Like there's there's the first part where he talks about Alan Pace and his mates. playing football at a posh house. There's a big difference between going in and talking a big game about what you're going to do at the club and then going and calling the fan base toddlers and showing up and being completely oblivious by looking rich and and looking like you're above everyone, above the roots of the club and the town of the asset that you bought. There that's just such an own goal to to go out and have that kind of press and that kind of PR. And so many times across this league and other leagues like it, you see these owners who are just completely oblivious. And that's that's not limited to sports. Like I've met a lot of people in business who have been really oblivious and cannot understand the the way they live is very different to the way that employees at the company that they own. live and and don't have a sense of of that, but that's part of the asset. If they're to speak in their language, that's part of the asset. And that just comes across as being completely naive and not authentic. Like when I read this, the the the sentence that really stood out in this post to me is this last one where he says Burnley and I'm a sorry assuming it's him they say Burnley is and always has been a hard working town. At least the people expect, the least the people expect is not to be taken for fools. And that's tells you everything you need to know in terms of how they want these owners to show up. And so Burnley fans are really feeling it right now. It's been a terrible start to their season. Like you couldn't have written a worse start to the season. It actually all started in the off season with how slow they were to replace a manager. That didn't just have the kind of knock on effects that we're seeing on the pitch in terms of not looking very cohesive, not having a clear scheme, not having the players that match that scheme. But it just makes them look slow in terms of really being confident and saying that they back this club and they support where they're going. You compare the way that Burnley has acted this off season and the start of this season to the way someone like Ipswich Town acted last year, where they made smart decisions around the roster, worked out what's the roster that we need to go straight back up. No guys more, no guys less, you know, you move on from DeLap, etc. Free up a bit of money, but get a club a team that you know is going to go back up. That confidence flew through f flowed through the entirety of Ipswich Town last year and then back up they go. It's the opposite of what we're seeing here. This is much more akin to what we saw, I think, with in terms of the performance on the pitch at least with Luton a couple of years ago, where they got relegated twice in a row. Is that going to play out? I'm not sure. But like that's the kind of vibe that's coming off them right now. And so that brings us to Jamie Vardy. And is Jamie Vardy gonna come in and fix things for Burnley? Well, a couple of things I'd say. First of all, on the pitch, did they change, did things start to turn at Wrexham? I think there's an argument that you could make. They looked dreadful against Bristol City. They were they were up one nil, they didn't look very good, and then they lost two one. But against Wrexham a couple of days ago, they looked a little more in control. they played with a little more confidence. This is still a squad that you believe if not if it's not gonna win the league, you know, it should at least stay up and it should at least, I would say, with the the some of the quality they have, be pushing for the middle to upper half of of a league and potentially the playoff race. And that's still something very much within the realm of possibility from a numbers perspective with so many games still to go. But you bring in a Jamie Vardy, he didn't play against Wrexham. But the club, what the club really needs right now is some confidence and then also s a distraction of sorts, like and a good distraction, not the kind of distraction that comes from, you know, a poor off the field behavior or the owner saying something stupid. You need is something for the fan base to really get their mind around and start thinking about well, how's Vardy going to fit in this setup and can he recapture some of that form from a couple of years ago, et cetera, et cetera? I don't know the answers to those questions. I don't think he's gonna be necessarily. just a a complete saving grace for these guys. but that's what they that's what they need right now. Burnley has to have some time to figure out, you know, how do they want to play? What is Nikki Haynes' vision? How is that reflected in the players and what you see on the field? And then how does that match the vision of what Pace and ALK have for this club? Because that right now that's super murky. And without that being cleared up, it's going to become Really difficult for Burnley fans to feel really good about this club anytime soon. So that's Burnley. That's that is a good theme, though, to follow on to our our last club in these Fallers for this week, which is Sheffield United. because they've got I'm not I'm not gonna say they've got it even worse, but they've got a very similar problem with ownership, which I think we see right now spilling over onto the pitch. Their results across the the week. They beat Blackburn Rovers two one at Ewood Park, but then they went down at home to Norwich 3-1 midweek. Wanna start here by reading this is the list of topics on s24su.com, the preeminent Sheffield United forum site. This is the list of of just this is just titles. Of of comment threads that are in the forum called boardroom ownership and off the pitch. And all these have been updated recently. So this is the list. Prince Abdullah and COH Sports. COH boycott time yet. For sale. Ownership lawsuit. Why are all our owners so effing useless? Reason why there's likely to be no action from the EFL and no points deduction. If you knew what we know now, legal action against EFL. Is anyone actually in favor of these owners? Are the EFL doing their job properly, fitting proper, the next chapter, dot dot dot? And it goes on and on and on, and the titles get worse and worse. This is a bleak situation. the bleakness off the field, which is complicated. the ownership situation is complicated, but it's it's got a lot of similarities to other ownership situations. now in the league and in the past in across the league in different leagues. But the bleakness of the field is extending on the field in ways that are both physical and mental right now. It's fans feel bleak about the ownership situation. They feel bleak about Chris Wilder, but it's not as it's not as simple as just saying we don't want Wilder here. We want him out. They kind of know that in a way he's what Sheffield United needs right now because he's got this Proof of being able to get things done in ways that other managers have not been able to get things done at at Sheffield United. They feel bleak that they sold all of their good guys. they sold all of their creators in the midfield in particular. but then they you also kind of know that you had to do that. You had to do that because those were the guys with value and you're in this incredibly precarious financial situation right now, which no fans wanted, but is the reality of of what happened. y people feel fans feel bleak that Chris Wilder brought in a lot of experienced guys a few years ago at the expense of younger guys. They're still holding that against him. But that at the time was kind of a valiant attempt and it was an effort of having an identity and having a plan, which yes, didn't pay off in the way that they thought it would pay off, but you're now paying the price for having that effort. I think that the bleakest part of all of this is that it's really unclear in terms of where this is gonna go and it's not a black and white situation. You know, it's not a situation even like Sheffield Wednesday last year, where you just had a really bad owner and the bad owner had to get out, and we've got to get this guy out, and then we're gonna get someone new in and we can sort of draw a line underneath it and start the slate clean. This is like when an ex comes back and has already taken the kids. But they come back and they're like, and now I want the dog in the house as well. It's like you think that you're through some of the badness, but it's coming back and the implications, the ramifications of this are gonna play out in ways that are pretty unpredictable right now. You know, even if you compare this to Spygate and Southampton, that that sucked. That really sucked for for Southampton fans that they should have probably gone up last year. They were the best team, objectively the best team. Now, will they have beaten Hull? Don't know. Hull's flying in the Premier League right now. So I'm not going to say they're better than Hull or Hull or they're more deserving on the pitch than Hull, but they looked really great. And they looked, you know, they looked like the third best team in the championship, at least, especially for the last few months. But they got hammered with Spygate. They got the four point deduction. There's still a little something hanging over the head of of Tonda Eckert. But like apart from that, they're able to draw a line underneath that. And you look at how they're playing on the pitch now, they look like a team that has moved on. We don't know when blades are gonna be able to move on. They're in this purgatory right now. So really feeling for Blades fans, I feel like it's it's a really tough position that they're in with not a lot of transparency. This is one of the things that really comes through for me in in observing the league. And you see it in other leagues around the world as well. you just saw it most recently in the NBA in in the US, for example, where there was a really big thing hanging over a legal issue hanging over the Los Angeles Clippers for for almost a year. and no one knew it was gonna happen and there was nothing from League Office. And then after twelve months they come down with this huge, huge sanction. In that time, it's very difficult to move forward or to have, you know, four trajectories. So really feeling for Sheffield United fans right now, hoping for some some progress there and some movement in the right direction. so they can go back to trying to working out what is that identity and what are we trying to build here. So they're the three clubs falling. I want to hit three clubs that are on the up pretty quickly. And and I want to start here with with Southampton, which we were just talking about, and Tonda Eckett. I if you're looking for how for a Halloween costume out there this year, I think if you're tall and you've got slightly hunched shoulders, Tonda Eckett is a great option for a Halloween costume. He's just got this like lurch-ish vibe on on the sidelines. Which is really creepy when they cut to him, to me at least. But all that said, he's also doing phenomenal things at Southampton. They've had a couple of great results. they went one one at Lincoln. Imp's playing phenomenally in that game. They had about three times the XG, which of course doesn't result in in wins and losses, but still a good sign. But went one one there. And then had a this big game against Swansea midweek when they just i I fair to say, maybe not demolish Swansea, but they certainly were a class better than them. And they're starting to to hit their stride. And the place they're starting to hit their stride the most is up front. Leo Sienza is is so good. He reminds me of a guy I had in my grade at high school. who actually went on to play for the Socceros and play a little bit in Europe. but he he was at at the high school level, he was first of all this this guy was he was in the f the first eleven when he was, you know, thirteen, fourteen years old. but he was just so much classier than everyone else. And that's the vibe that you get from Sienza. I I think for me, he's the best player in the championship right now. through the first six games. He just has a a class to his touch and a class to his finishes. And he just pops up in these kind of interesting places. Like he's was dominating Swansea on the left as he's been doing throughout the first month and a half of the season on on down the left hand side. And then all of a sudden he pops up on the right wing, gets a ball in, they almost score a goal. Like they they have this flowing nature to the way they play Southampton, especially through the middle and and front that is just beautiful to watch. They've got the people to actually execute on the strategy from Eckett. And the maybe the scary thing is that they've that there's still a lot that they could probably improve. And if you listen to Eckett, that's what he w wants to talk about, especially playing out from the back where they've looked a little loosey goosey at times. so we'll see we'll see where they go, but they've They moved from the negative to the positive on the belief index this week. And I thought that was a really accurate representation for fans who I think at this stage would be able to feel like, okay, we're moving past this spy gate and we're moving into this positive part of the game of the season. If they keep playing this way, you know, you have to see them as overcoming those four points taken away from them and really challenging for one of those automatic promotion spots. Second club I wanted to talk about that was on the rise, was Bristol City, Bristol City two, Burnley one. We talked a little bit about this when we were discussing Burnley. The first half was pretty uninspiring from both sides. but towards the end of the game, Bristol City just looked really willing and really up for it in a way that Burnley didn't. It was away at Turf Moor. Burnley crowd was in full flight because they were up one nothing. And they went about their business Bristol in this way that was just kind of no nonsense and sticking to their plan. And their plan is really, you know, be aggressive, but attack, attack, attack, and press high and get this ball back. And know that just with a couple of of of bits of good luck, or in the case of this game, like some set pieces or the aftermath of some set pieces, things can change very quickly. And for a squad to really believe in itself like that at this stage of the season, I think is is kind of impactful. Skubala has a squad in front of him that has some really good depth. you had Harakawa coming off the bench to score the winner. He's got a few emerging, I don't want to say stars right now, but a few emerging really strong players, Rio Cardiners, Lauren Telage, guys that can that look like they really belong at this level. And then he's got this experienced Spine with Jason Knight and Joe Williams. that that group, those two, those kind of three groups of types of players that we've got coming in here, that's a really strong structure that Skubala, I think, can build around. And he's he's his vision for this team is to be patient, and to be aggressive. And that's what played out against Burnley. So that was really exciting to see. They go to Southampton. this week to take them on this weekend, which I think is gonna be a great game. And then they pick up their match day six game next Tuesday against Lincoln City. So couple of of big games coming up for them there, but but things starting to trend in the right direction for Bristol City after a a slowish start to the season. And then the last club that I have on the up and up is a really fascinating one so far this season, which is Norwich, Norwich City. Their results over this week They beat Sheffield United 3-1 away. They beat Birmingham 2-1 at home, which handed Birmingham their first loss of the season. You know, you gotta remember Philip Clement shook 25 other people's hands before shaking Nathan Jones' hand in March 2026. Never forget that. and never forget that they hired this guy because they wanted to play a certain way. They wanted to kind of shock the team, the shock the club out of playing. In a negative way. And the first month, this season was a real roller coaster for Norwich. They looked fantastic in parts and they looked absolutely atrocious. You know, are we turning things around here with two wins back to back? It's hard to say. They they bef the game against Birmingham City, they looked quite flat actually before Schwartau's goal, which was an absolute screamer, which kind of came out of nowhere, it's hit with strength and power from fifteen yards outside the box, one of a couple of absolute worldie goals over the weekend. But there was a moment in the first half that was really interesting where the Norwich keeper got gets it and he does this incredibly dramatic kick upfield really f really quickly. He's sort of surrounded by guys. He's slipping as he kicks it. He kicks it upfield. They look like they're about to break away in like a one on one, but then Birmingham gets the ball back, then Birmingham turns it over again. They go hard and vertical again really fast. And then Birmingham gets back. And then it goes into this kind of build-up play. And Andre Brooks kind of fabricates a goal out of pure build up play 30 seconds to a minute later, as opposed to the kind of frantic freneticness that we saw in the lead up. I think that's Norwich's season in a nutshell right now. Like they I I was watching that game thinking, are these guys trying to find a tempo of which they want to play the game? Or is this their tempo? Is their tempo that they're gonna go back and forth between really strong and methodical build up and then just absolute mental verticalness? and the answer I think is is just yes. I think Clemente's principles are be vertical, press high, keep pressing. Like they're not a club that that i you know, presses once and then falls back. They they really want to keep pressing high and then get it to guys like Motore didn't play in this last game, but but get it to guys like him and he's either gonna turn around and shoot or lay it off to one of these strong flamboyant midfielders coming through and see what happens. And so far these games have just been absolute roller coasters. It's been awesome to watch as a neutral. I think they're tough to play for for opposing teams because there's this there's that kind of unpredictability and real aggressiveness to the way they're set up. Is it a blip, is it a trend, we'll see. But exciting to see them string two together, and and kind of see where they go from here. So let's look ahead then to this weekend. And what are we looking forward to? There's few great games going on. We've got West Ham up against Wrexham. West Ham, of course, top of the table. I could have put them in in my climbers, but decided to wait another week and and see a little bit more from them. I've talked about them in other weeks that they're showing they're definitely showing a level of class that that we're not necessarily seeing elsewhere in the championship apart apart from maybe Southampton, spots of it Middlesbrough, spots of it Millwall. There's this really interesting thing happening to me right now. I I thought two things in watching the games over the last week. I thought, on one hand, there's such parody across the league. And you really do feel going into these games that there are very few games that you go in and say, I know who's gonna win this. So there's there's a really great leveling potentially happening. That was my first thought. But then as I reflected on it, I thought, but at the same time, like You've got some of the same names that are just coming up and over and over again over the years. The kind of predictable names that are starting to potentially separate themselves at the top. And those are names like West Ham, Middlesbrough, Southampton, et cetera. And so I th where I landed on that was that it's a slight contradiction. I'm not quite sure where it is, but there maybe there's a raising of the floor. Maybe this year the the worst is not the worst, and that any of these clubs can come out and win, but there's still clubs that are obviously superior in terms of talent and class. But anyway, that's a it's an interesting question. It'll play out a little bit here in this game, West Ham versus Wrexham at West Ham. another couple of games I'm excited about, West Brom versus QPR. I've been watching a lot of QPR recently and was felt like they kind of I know Nathan Jones came out and said that they dropped the points at up against QPR this week, but I felt like QPR probably should have won that game. And they also had a lot of moments against Middlesbrough on the weekend where they went down one nil, which showed some class. The they still have some guys in that squad who you just don't really fully trust them to get the job done. And I don't want to call out Paul Smith, but I will. Like that he's a great example of a really great workmanlike player of the QPR sides of a few years ago, who was phenomenal in keeping them up over many, many seasons or a few seasons, but like he had a couple of chances in front of goal. One chance I can think of in particular this week, against I think it was the game against Middlesbrough, where you just expect him to finish and He didn't. It was really lackluster and there's still this vibe with QPR that they're still trying to figure out some of those bits, even amongst guys like Burrell who are looking fantastic and and looking like they're gonna take them into a kind of new evolution, new new thing for the squad. So maybe we'll talk a bit bit more about them next week. But excited to see them up against West Brom. Preston versus Lincoln City. That is the test for the imps. I think if they if they can win there, if they can win against Preston away. I'm going all in on them this season and we'll do a little bit of a deep dive on them maybe next week, but we'll see what happens there. And then we're just talking about Norwich, they're away to Middlesbrough, and that's going to be a fantastic game as well. The the kind of discipline discipline borough up against Norwich City. And then next Tuesday we have a makeup day for match day six. We've got borough versus Melwall and Bristol City versus Lincoln City. So a couple of delicious matchups there. So lots to look forward to. Great games. Enjoy the cooling weather. Get ready for those leaves to fall. And we'll see you next week on Minnows Football.