Music – David Bowie
I wish you could swim, Black dolphins, Black dolphins can swim Though nothing, nothing will keep us together, You can be them Forever and ever Oh, we can be heroes
Just for one day…………………..
Paul: Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, depending upon where in the world you are, at what time of the day you’re listening to this episode, the survival special episode of Talking the Blues. George and Andy, hello to you both, champagne cork still popping in the background, I can hear that, George.
George: Let’s pour a little glass of whisky, Paul. Single malt whisky, it’s very nice.
Paul: single malt. Oh, okay. It can’t be a peaty one, no.
George: What does peaty mean?
Paul: Peaty, you know, as in peaty as in like the west coast of Scotland.
George: Um, my taste buds are not that sophisticated. It’s nice and hot, which is why it’s not outside. It’s absolutely horrible. And yes, it is a kind of razor glass and celebration to
Paul: And what are you celebrating with, Andy?
Andy: I’ve just had a cup of tea.
Paul: But you are celebrating?.
Andy: Well, you’ve got to be happy, haven’t you? You’ve got to be happy. I mean, you know, they’ve almost pulled off the impossible this season, and I think we should. We should take a few minutes, if not a day or so, to sit back and enjoy it before we have to look else, you know, look into what the future holds for the club.
But certainly, I mean, a momentous week, really. And a terrific month, really. Take out the Chelsea result. April has been very good to have at the football club in terms of performances and results, more so results than performances.
But at the end of the day, you know, they knew what they had to do. And they’ve gone out and done it.
Paul: Dyche could end up being manager of the month.
Andy: I think there’s actually a case you know, I mean this is probably going to sound a bit a bit wacky, but there’s actually a case for him to be managed at a season because we had a disastrous start to the season, then we lost 10 points, then we had a purple patch, then everything went pear shaped again and he’s turned it round, we’ve got four points back and lost another two and we’ve survived with three games in hand, which is significantly better than last year and better than the year before and give us the eight points back that we’ve had taken away.
We’ve been mid -table and much better off than we’ve been in the last two scenes. I think there’s a case for him to be managed for another season. I mean let’s be honest, take any of the other top managers, how many of the other managers do you seriously think could have caught with all the crap that he’s had to cope with and with the shortcomings of the squad that he’s had to deal with and that’s not having to pop at the players who perform well this month, but we’ve got to be honest, it’s not the best squad in the league and throughout the season performances have, shall we say, dipped at times and I think he’s done a remarkable job in holding things together.
It’s not been pretty at times, we know that, it’s not been school of science football, but it’s been effective and at the end of the day it’s a results business and he’s got the results. I just wonder if you’d swapped for any of the other managers in the top six into Everton after the opening three or four games of this season where we were pointless, how many of them would have managed to do what he’s done with the paucity of resources and the quality of the squad that he’s had to deal with.
George: Aye.
Andy: That’s it, aye.
Paul: Can you expand on that, George?
George: Not really, I think. It’s a lovely, gushy thing to say and I hope he’s listened to it, but he’s not the manager for the season by any means, but he has done really, really well and all power and all respect to him and his character and his team and his players and everybody else at Everton Football Club on the shop floor.
You know, as Andy says, done well. Personally, I would like to hold my hands up to Ashley Young. On the back of yesterday’s performance, he was flawless at 38 years of age and the other person who interested me yesterday was Chemitti, who’s half his age, who had an extraordinary game.
Started off going, you know, he started off with him thinking, he looked to be thinking, oh my God, what am I? I’m just chasing these things out of the snowy air, am I? And against, you know, big centre halves.
This is not my game. But he grew into it and eventually he started to win the ball and he started to bring the other players in. And although we didn’t get any chance to see whether, you know, there’s a sharpshooter or a goal scorer or a sniffer in there, given that he’s not even played a complete premiership match, I imagine none of the lurking sharks will be coming in to take him off as for any great profit.
So that was very, very positive from yesterday and the way the players played in the second half where they clearly just took the tempo and dealt with Brentford. That was encouraging too. You know, if we were in a fiscal situation where you weren’t dreading the cherry picking that’s going to go on, that would have been a very, very, very happy day indeed, given that survival is where we’re at.
As Andy says, if we hadn’t had points taken off us, we would have finished 12th. Well, my mind went back to the first TTP of the season where you always say to us, Paul, where do you think we’ll finish? Well, if you’d said 12th, we would have gone, oh, wow.
In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I think you did say 12th. But, you know, that’s who we are and what we are at the minute. The real hard work starts now, I suppose, as you try and keep hold of, he’s got the bones of a team there, but will he be able to hold on to it?
And which bits won’t he be able to hold on to?
Paul: Yeah, I think all of that is true.
George: Mmm
Paul: Neither he nor the team are obviously perfect, and the team has become stronger in the last few weeks, stronger than the sum of its parts anyway. The Chelsea game was probably a bit of an anomaly, but our performances aside from the point where we drew with Newcastle after that, we’ve done really, really well.
And I think it is to, well, it’s the credits of all of the team, and it’s certainly to the credits of Sean Dyche that they’ve managed to, as he said on many occasions, block out all the noise and just focus on the task at hand and the task at hand was to make sure that we’ve finished at least 17th, if not higher, which we’re now going to comfortably do.
And I think despite the fact that, you know, for weeks on end, we’ve not necessarily enjoyed the football, and at times being critical of individual players, and at times being critical of Dyche and Dyche’s selections, his in -game management, his tactics from time to time, and, you know, you could go back through the season if you were so minded, and you could pull together probably a couple of hours worth of comments to that effect from each of us.
But the fact is, he’s done exactly what was needed from him, and he’s kept us in the Premier League. Now, as a result of that, obviously, there’s a whole load of questions to ask about, well, is it really appropriate or is it really what we want that Everton’s sole ambition is to stay in the Premier League?
And of course, from a historical context, no, it’s not. And from an individual point of view, the three of us and many people our age and many that’s not where everything needs to be. Everything needs to be competing at the other end of the table, not just, you know, the minimum requirement in order to stay in the Premier League.
But, you know, that’s where we are for reasons often given on here and elsewhere, and we’ll continue to talk about those reasons, no doubt. But there’s no doubt about it that when it came to it and it probably the realisation of what needed to be done probably came after the Chelsea game, the sort of clear, clear away what happened in the season up to that point.
And, you know, we’ve got these home games coming up and these home games are the games that actually are going to determine whether we stay in the Premier League or not. And that’s a focus. It’s like a mini league within a league.
It’s a very short period of time, a very intense period of time. And I just think he’s done a fantastic job in this very I mean, he’s done a good job overall, but in this very short period, he’s just done a fantastic job and he needs to be congratulated on that.
George: I’m sure he’ll be manager of the month for me.
Andy: You would think he’s certainly him with a shot of it.
George: Yeah, if it matters.
Andy: I can probably name you two managers who won’t be in for manager of the year. Seems you play in red.
George: To you, Gilder. Let’s not talk about them, but…
Paul: What interested me yesterday, and bearing in mind, this is the third year in the run where we’ve had a game at Goodison, whereby a win guaranteed survival. And each of the games have been very different, obviously, and the circumstances surrounding the games have been very, very different.
It turned out that the palace game that everybody thought was the determiner. Ultimately, it wasn’t the determiner, but nobody really knew that on the day. And the fact that we came back from being too little down, a magnificent goal, a winning goal by DCL, and all of the celebrations that followed thereafter, including, obviously, with Frank.
We sort of probably symbolized the state that the club was in at the time. Strong sense of denial, and almost a sense of a lot of people smoking something. Such was the occasion against Crystal Palace.
And then, obviously, last year, the Bournemouth game, which I was looking to attend, and I know, Andy, you attended all of these games. Yeah, yeah. Where there was, obviously, joy and satisfaction at us beating Bournemouth as we needed to do on the day.
And up to the point where Doucoure scored, we were still going down. The relief that followed from that. But the unity of that day, and the noise, and the passion, and no real consideration that we were ever not going to survive, to then what happened yesterday against Brentford, where I thought it was a very, obviously, I wasn’t there, but I thought it was a very different atmosphere yesterday to the previous two occasions, as I’ve just described.
And it was almost, sorry, Andy.
Andy: No, I was going to say, well, that’s because it wasn’t the 11th hour and 59th minute. You know, had we not got the result yesterday, we still had three games to save ourselves. I think that was the difference.
The Palace game was ground stuff or bust and so was Bournemouth. You know, yesterday we did have, if you like, an uncomfortable cushion of knowing that had we not got the result yesterday, we still had three more games to try and get the result we needed.
Paul: Yeah, I buy that but I also think it was just slightly different again. I think the fans’ view of it, I mean this is obviously viewing it from a distance, was slightly different. Fantastic again by the 1878s and the way that they’ve not only changed the appearance but changed the way that the Lower Gwladys Street behaves before games and during games.
I just felt it was slightly different, it wasn’t, I’m not being critical, it just felt slightly different yesterday. I think it was a degree of flatness but I think that was possibly just a reaction to, was that not just a reaction to the Derby match?
Andy: Yeah, we know no disrespect to Brent, you know, there was obviously, you know, Wednesday was Wednesday was a massive high. So unfortunately, it’s always going to be a little bit downhill after a result like that.
George: But they’re really interesting things.
Paul: The really interesting thing is that the player’s reaction wasn’t necessarily different, certainly from my perspective, and although the first half was a pretty awful game of football, wasn’t it, in the first half, neither side was hitting a shot on target, we just stuck at it.
I think we’ve seen it in the last week, the Forest game, the Liverpool game and the Brentford game, a different mental attitude.
George:
Mm -hmm.
Paul: amongst the players. And maybe it is because Dyche did adopt a different approach after the Chelsea game. He spoke in the media during the week of having a look at himself and deciding to do things slightly differently.
And I’m not just talking about the fact that he wore a tracksuit against an lounge suit, but he did seem to indicate that he changed his approach to sending the last three home games.
George: Yeah.
Andy: Well, that’s kind of laid bare the fact that he’s not open to change. He obviously looked at himself and looked at the performance at Chelsea and thought we’ve got to change something and however he went about doing it, it worked and if ditching the suit in favour of a tracksuit, it’s not any effect whatsoever on the play, it’s a play of thinking.
George: Rituals about what you wear on match day what all do you wear in we’re all susceptible to that i thought it was great yeah i think you’re right i think you did think right sack that that didn’t work get something else
Andy: Well, the other thing, maybe the players, seeing the manager in the tracksuit think he is generally one of us. So we need to work harder for him. If you like, he was on the shop floor with the players.
I mean, I know he’s on the touch line every week, but he’s ditched his suit and tie and gone out as though he’s one of them, which, you know, if he’s the 12th man, then so be it. I mean, at the end of the day, we don’t really give a, don’t really give a monk his what he’s changed as long as whatever he did changed, and he did.
George: I don’t mind what I wear so long as we win.
Paul: Of all the things I’ve ever thought about in terms of how we’re going to win a game of football, not once in my life have I ever thought, what do I need to wear in order to achieve it?
George: Really?
Andy: Really?
George: Gosh, okay.
Andy: Yeah.
Paul: Sorry, am I the odd one out here?
George: Yeah, I got rituals galore when I went, you know, in the days when I used to go and watch my God, I was covered in rituals, I was a walking ritual. And the excuses you invent as to why we lost at Fulham when I did wear all my rubber bands with paper clips on them were fantastic, you know, just part of the sort of wonder of football, really.
George: Would you not?
Paul: Step on the cracks.
George: It’s kind of like that. I mean, it’s just because, you know, I mean, I always say to Jules, which shirt should I wear? And she goes, it doesn’t make any difference.
Andy: Have a seat.
Paul: I have to say, I think I’m with Jules on that one.
George: Yeah, well, I probably am as well, but I like to, you kind of want to believe that in some way you are actually involved. That theory about a butterfly beats its wings in China and it affects you. It kind of works for football, I think.
Paul: which we shared to you yesterday, good.
George: Uh, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t.
Andy: You went with the Dyche’s tactics.
George: I did. I was wearing the pyjamas and they will be washed and ironed before every match next season.
Paul: I thought for a second you were going to say that you wore a suit.
George: Yeah, well, you know, it doesn’t come in. Of course, he’s going to make any difference. It’s just part of a match day ritual, isn’t it? Because, you know, even when you went to the match, Paul, didn’t you sort of, you know, Andy and I and Andy and his daughter used to walk around goodness and twice or three times just because that worked once, I suppose.
George: Didn’t you have any of those rituals at all?
Paul: The only ritual I had, and this was in the days before the street end became all -seater, so when there was terracing on the lower part, I used to stand in exactly the same place.
George: There you go. That’s exactly the same thing.
Paul: It probably is actually, and I used to stand there because it was where my grandfather stood.
George: All right.
And he told me that I was where he stood when Dixie Dean scored his 60th goal and it was where I stood when Bob Latchford scored his 30th goal and it was where I stood.
Andy: You were not a million miles away from me and our kid that day then.
Paul: No, no, I think we’ve had this discussion possibly offline before on the right hand side of the Gwladys Street in line with the edge of the 18 yard box. Yeah, about three or four, I think it was four crash barriers back from the front.
George: Yeah, maybe we’re going to start selling Guinness.
Paul: Somebody sent me a whole list of drinks that they’re now selling me, that is sweet.
George: Oh, well, it’s on it.
Paul: Yeah, including wine.
Andy: Cool. Yeah, I see. They’ve taken a lead from Sunderland. Yeah.
Paul: So just don’t do the hog roast yet, but never mind, maybe they will do. Anyway, this is where we’re rabbiting a bit here. Back to the game and in individual performances, Jordan Pickford, let’s start with Jordan.
Andy: Brilliant.
Paul: He was, I thought he was superb yesterday.
Andy: Yeah, and I gave him my man of the match vote. Yeah, even though so certainly on the grand old team pole at this moment in time, he just again again is considerably out in front in the polling. I thought Pickford yesterday was outstanding.
I thought Young did a job and I thought Tarkovski played well. I thought Branthwaite was a little bit off in the first half, but he has set himself such high levels now. And I don’t think I don’t think anybody I don’t think anybody had a mare yesterday.
It just, you know, there was obviously the come down after the Derby. It was a little bit after the Lord Mayor’s show of a performance. But they stuck at it and got it done. And they all played well.
Harrison worked hard and didn’t have a great deal of joy, but he worked his socks off.
George: I thought Doucoure had a poor gamer, he looked tired to me. I’m kind of interested now as we’ve got three games left to play, whether he will rest people, whether he will give people like Gomes one last show because they’re probably leaving, or more interestingly, whether any of these kids on the bench that I’ve never seen sight of the sound of might get a game.
George: I’m kind of intrigued as to how that’s going to be presumably that a committee will stay on the pitch against Luton. But Doucoure was the only person yesterday. I just thought he looked done. He could do with a week at a beach.
Um, but he didn’t have any kind of replacement in that role that, you know, we’ve been playing basically all season four, four on one.
Paul: Yeah, I mean, the reasoning, and I think it’s a reasonable reasoning for him not playing the younger players throughout the season has been, yes, he’s the ultimate pragmatist. He needs the points he can’t afford to give a game away or allow a young player to make a mistake that leads to a goal that then makes a loss of points, etc.
Because every goal that we score, every goal that we can see, because relatively speaking, there’s so few of them is even more important to us than it is to anybody else. And the number of points that need to get in all of this sort of stuff, that it wasn’t a dislike of playing young players, it was just an example of pragmatism.
That was the theory that supported his selections throughout the season. Yes, his constant selection, certain players as against others. You’re absolutely right. And it’s an interesting thought. With the three games that are now left, does he say, thanks, lads, you’ve, you know, you’ve done more, more than you needed to do the season in doing what you’ve done, have a rest, maybe come back for the Arsenal game, who knows, I’m going to play some of the younger kids, it’s going to be really interesting, A, to see if he does it, and B, if he doesn’t do it, if he gives a reason for not doing it.
George: Well, starting at, I presume, that ridiculous card that Tarkovski got yesterday means he can’t play it alone.
Andy: No, no, no. And he’s eligible to play all that card nonsense. It doesn’t count now. Oh, why not? I don’t know. There’s some point in this easy way. It doesn’t where your slate’s white clean and…
George: like a jail free card.
Paul: there’s a cut-off point beyond which, and I can’t recall now when it was, but we’ve reached that.
George: Oh, OK. That’s cool.
Paul: So he is going to be free.
Andy: In terms of what Dyche does in the next three games, and I understand where you’re coming from, our kid, will he rest players and maybe give a couple of the young ones a chance, you know, Lewis Warrington or whoever, or will he give the likes of Michael Kean and Andre Gomes a swan song appearance or whatever?
I think possibly he won’t do any of that. He’ll continue to play what he feels is his strongest side, because as the table sits at the minute, we are four points behind Palace.
George: Right.
Andy: right and with three games to play so that’s nine points to play for and if we were to I mean we’re currently 15th in the table if we could leapfrog over palace and finish 40 correct me if I’m wrong Paul that’s an extra couple of million yeah two and a half a bigger picture he’s thinking if we could overtake palace that’s an extra two and a half million that might just go some way to easing a little bit of the pressure on having to sell I mean two and a half million is not a great deal of money but every penny counts with the state we’re in at the minute
George: Yep, no question that the original.
Paul: argument for him to say to the players that have played the majority of the games. Look, you’ve done everything that almost everything I’ve asked you to do this year, you’ve restricted yourselves in terms of the way that you’ve played, because that’s what I’ve asked of you.
You know, like the direct play, the long ball forward, all the various sorts of like sub -tactics that involve individual players doing individual things. You can put that to one side, just go out and play the way you want to play.
This is your, this is your opportunity, obviously we’re going to decide, we’re not going to like beat school kids and play 1 -1 -9 or 1 -1 -8, you know, there’s going to be some structure to this, but let’s go out and you guys go out and just enjoy yourselves, express yourselves in the way that you’ve not been able to express yourselves all season because I’ve asked you not to.
George: Well, I was thinking that, too, about James Garner yesterday, who, as Andy was saying, he had a good match, too, and if you look at him really carefully, I think he’s had a terrific season. I’ve got nothing but respect for the way he’s played all season.
George: He’s become a presence in a midfield. His tackling has improved. His closing down has improved. And the one thing that I would suggest to him is that, and this might be a perfect follow on from what you just said, Paul, is that in these last three games, because his instant control is really pretty good, as good as anybody else on that team, his first thought needs to be just one step more positive, turn towards their goal, not towards ours.
But I think that the mentality of the team has been don’t lose it, keep it safe. If you need to go sideways, go sideways. Don’t worry about it. Never mind the crowd yelling at you. Just kick the ball.
Don’t lose the ball. He particularly, I think, because he is a creative player and a good passer, I think he just needs to go, you know, you’ve got three games to do it, you know, exactly what you just said, Paul, have fun.
Don’t don’t bother about what we’ve been bothered about, which is not losing. Let’s go out and win. Really play it. I mean, you know, that has always said we find a way of winning, la, la, la, la, la, well, what we know, you know, we know that that means it’s not going to be pretty, but it will be effective.
And as we, you know, we said for the last half an hour, thank God it has been. But there is a chance here for a little bit more freedom. It will be interesting if he exercises it. I hope he does.
Paul: If Dyche has got an expressive side about him and given his intellect and his understanding of the game, you suspect that there’s an awful lot more to what he could do with the football team than what he couldn’t really does because he’s never really had the opportunity to manage a, a very good team and b, a team that could afford to take risks.
If there was one characteristic about the way that he plays football, it’s to minimize risk and it was like that, barely anything like that. It’d be very interesting.
George: tired, I’m sure.
Paul: Yeah, absolutely. What I’m going to say is it’d be very interesting if he’s sitting there at home with his slippers on this afternoon thinking about things. You might think, you know what, I’d quite like to show the Everton crowd.
I’d quite like to show the TV pundits and everybody else. Actually, there’s a different side to me. And I can actually play a different style of football. Because there’s probably not been many times in his career when he’s had the luxury of having three games at the end of the season whereby it doesn’t really matter.
I understand what you’re saying, Andy, about the higher up the league, we are the better. But it doesn’t really matter at the end of the day what happens in those three games.
Andy: Well, we’ll soon find out when we’re on Friday.
George: Yeah. Who’s the last home match against? Sheffield United. Oh, right. Now, fair enough. I got two things from yesterday’s game. Let’s deal with the nasty one first. The crowd yesterday, there were two, there were only two sort of stops for VAR.
George: Was the offside? Is it going to be a pen? La la la la la la la. And I know we’ve covered this before, but just as the crowd got angry yesterday, they got angry because information was being withheld from them.
There are big screens at every Premier League football ground and most of the first division ones I’ve seen as well, even though they don’t even have a first division championship. Even though they don’t have the AR, there’s no excuse for not showing what I’m watching on telly to 37,000 paying customers who just get ratty.
And they’re getting ratty because whoever makes these rules about referees and VAR and why and how is insulting them. We can’t show it to you. The question could not be simpler. Why?
Paul: It’s a very good point, George and Andy, there’s three levels to this. There’s what the crowd can see, so what the people of the match can see, what the people who are watching on TV can see, and what the people in the studios of the TV companies, i.e. the commentators, the producers and everybody else, what they can hear, because they get the audio feedback. So they get to hear what the VAR people are discussing when they’re endlessly drawing lines and moving back a frame, moving forward a frame.
Why not just give it to everybody?
George: I have no answer to that question. It happens in every other sport that uses the technology. If I was a paying customer and I had to sit there looking at a blank screen while the referee goes, just hang on, hang on, hang on, listen to me, please, hang on, hang on, hang on.
I’d go potty. It’s just an insult and the crowd got angry yesterday. And he thought, why are you doing something that makes a paying customer angry? This is just ludicrous. All you have to do is show us the bollocks of the lines and things, then we can understand, then we can judge, then we can go, he does look off actually.
I’m lost to understand why that information is being withheld from the football paying public and withheld from the cricket public and withheld from the rugby public. We’ve been through this a million times.
It’s just something, you could get paranoid about it and go, there’s something sinister here. I don’t know.
Paul: The original logic when the system first came in, and the explanation that was given as to why that level of communication doesn’t exist, was the fear of it creating a crowd response. Well, if you get a crowd response.
Exactly. What they’ve actually achieved is by not doing it, an even greater crowd response.
George: Yeah, a negative one, guaranteed negative.
Paul: Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
George: It is crazy. And my other little tiny thing, which I noticed the other day watching another game, Shinichi went down and the camera closed in on him, so he got a close -up of it. Why have they got holes in their socks?
Paul: You asked me this.
George: I’m going to ask this before, sorry.
Paul: No, no, no, you asked me, yes, like, and I generally have got no idea.
George: Is it fashion? We’re poor, really. I mean, I may have cost six million quid, but my socks are rubbish, and my mum walked down, and I just don’t know. It’s just really odd and very silly, and not very stylish.
George: I can’t work it out what’s going on with it.
Paul: I have a feeling that whether you believe it or not, there is a logical explanation for it, although that reason isn’t coming to mind. I’m pretty sure I heard one time in the course of the game, an explanation as to why, particularly the backs of the socks are cut.
George: Okay.
Andy: I can’t wait to hear that.
Paul: I’ll have to go back and really dig out the old memory cells and see if I can find it.
Andy: Why are you at it then? Can you try and find out why so many players yesterday, in any number of games, wearing short -sleeved shirts had to wear gloves? I mean, what’s that about? I mean, I know it wasn’t, you know, Mediterranean weather anywhere in the UK yesterday, but these players are running around so they should be getting warm.
And if they’re wearing a short -sleeved shirt, why on earth do they need to wear gloves? I mean, I think it was the Wolves’ looting game, there was at least six, maybe seven players on that pitch, in short -sleeved shirts wearing gloves, and I thought, behave yourselves.
What’s all that about, as Peter Kay would say? Garlic bread? Gloves in short sleeves!
Paul: No, I have no idea.
Andy: Well it’s just, I don’t know, it’s potty. I mean I agree with our kid that holding socks it makes him look scruffy.
George: I don’t mind him looking scruffy, I’d just like an explanation for him is, you know, I mean, you know, fashion has taken over a huge, huge part of football, hasn’t it? You look at Jackson’s haircut or, you know, I mean, each match has got a candidate for silliest haircut.
Andy: pogger wins that hands down every year.
George: Anyway, it’s just part of it, and just like an explanation, that’s why it’s not important.
Paul: Just to get back to the match for a second. A little shout out, I think, for Gana Gueye.
George: Thanks for watching.
Paul: And I thought…
George: I hear that he’s not going to be offered a contract next year. His bonkers, isn’t it? I mean, this man’s not losing anything of his game. Thank you.
Paul: I, well, I certainly don’t think he is, I think yesterday he demonstrated why he fits perfectly into Dyche’s tactics.
George: Mm -hmm.
Paul: the way he can break up play in front of the back four. And of course scoring two goals in a week, he’s adding a whole new dimension to his game.
Andy: you should surely be worth it, worth it at least a year.
Paul: You’d think so. And I get the impression, and it may only be an impression, be interested in your views on it, is that he’s really he’s really he has really enjoyed the responsibility of the last few weeks.
George: Yes, it looks like it.
Paul: Mmm.
Andy: that rather than his game, his game is pixel puncher.
Paul: Yeah and you know this may be in a strange way sort of consistent with you know the fact that he’s played football at a much higher level than Everson but the idea that come the end of the season where these games really matter just brings a little bit more out of his game than rather than a humdrum and I don’t know Everson versus Bournemouth like the 26th game of the season when it doesn’t matter.
George: Well, there’s also the possibility of what you were talking about last week, which I didn’t know about, was that the Dyche Onana situation, that for one reason or another, he’s been given the responsibility to lead the midfield and he’s reacted to it.
Andy: Possibly, yeah.
George: Yeah, who knows? I wouldn’t know, but it’s possible.
Paul: Well, I mean, he looked, actually he should, I mean, he looked absolutely delighted yesterday, didn’t he?
George: It was lovely to see how the other players were with him too, how fun they are of him. That’s always nice to see when you get a glimpse of them all hugging him like mad when he’d scored and things. A bit of a dude isn’t.
Paul: I don’t know if I his own doubts earlier in the conversation, but I don’t think we really talked about him. Other than Andy, I think you talked pretty briefly about him. I thought show missy showed showed a lot of promise yesterday, even though
George: He displayed a fantastic trick that he got better as the game went on. Wow, that’s a good idea. You know, I’m looking forward to seeing him on Friday.
Paul: Yeah, because Andy, I think, unless I’m imagining things you said earlier, that to begin with, he sort of didn’t really look that effective, and then he sort of grew into the game a bit. I thought, he’s 19, isn’t he?
George: Thank you.
Paul: I thought he showed a huge amount of promise yesterday, and obviously a very, very different player from DCL, but no, I thought given the circumstances and given the responsibility that was placed upon him, he gave his all and he can only have enhanced his reputation.
Andy: I think the good thing about him was that, as I said earlier, the first half when the ball was being lumped up to him, that’s clearly not his game. But he seemed to adapt to things in the second half and he kept going.
I mean, he played more minutes than he’s played collectively all season. So that also indicates that he’s kept himself in good nick because it would have been very easy for a player who’s hardly played to have run out of gas.
And he didn’t run out of gas at all. And I think it was only for the fact that they were bringing Michael Keane on to give him the opportunity to reap the applause from the crowd. I mean, but he still signs there from the boy.
Hopefully he’ll grow with it.
Paul: I mean, his confidence definitely grew as the game went on. But I think also, and this may be just the other players playing around him, or it may have been Dyche as an intervention. He wasn’t as isolated in the second half as he was in the first.
And I think in the first half, possibly, you know, he was a little bit unsure of what exactly his role was. But he wasn’t helped necessarily by the fact that almost on no occasion did anybody get close enough to help him.
So, up there by himself, not really quite physically dominant as say DCL, for example. He didn’t really have the opportunity to lay the ball off or to have somebody alongside him to occupy the second central defender.
Whereas in the second half, A, his confidence had grown a little bit, maybe different, slightly different instructions from Dyche, you know. But he seemed more involved and more integrated with the rest of the team.
George: Yeah, I agree with all of that.
Paul: which allowed him to demonstrate some of the qualities that he’s got. I think the kids got a future ahead of him, which was great.
George: Yeah. Yeah, big deal.
Paul: Yeah. And George, at long last, one of your, one of the things that you’ve talked about previously, Michael Keane coming on the centre forward.
George: in those interviews, but always said this is a really good shooter.
Paul: Well Andy, you’ve always said he’s the best finisher in the club.
George: Yeah, it’s not the worst idea.
Andy: I mean, I’m not advocating that he starts, well, I suppose I have in the past advocated that he’d be giving the start up front, but certainly in the closing minutes, if you like, last five or 10 minutes, if we’re chasing a game and we need a goal, there’s an opportunity there as he proved against Tottenham a couple of years ago, when he smacked that one in from about 25 yards to give us that vital point.
And he scored in the game against Palace as well, he got the first goal against Palace. And that was a smart finish as well. The boy can shoot, you know, it’s when he’s, if you like, overloaded with responsibility at the back that sometimes, you know, he makes mistakes.
Paul: It’s when he has to do his day job, Andy.
Andy: Yeah, it’s when he has to do his day job for 90 minutes.
Yeah but you know I mean is he out of contract at the end of this season? No. No Michael so he’s here for another year then unless they sell him unless somebody comes in for him.
George: Well they must be trying to, they must be hoping to keep you Mandy because can we turn to the nasty part of the conversation? What’s going to happen to Branthwaite?
Andy: Well, I mean, with the number of players we’ve got coming out of contract, obviously we won’t get fees for them, but there’ll be a marked reduction in the wage bill with the players leaving without a contract.
Andy: Mike, that gives us some leeway to retain Branthwaite if one or two others who were not out of contract and moved on. And, you know, in terms of the centre out there, and then you’re thinking, well, you keep Tarkovski alongside Branthwaite if you can, who’s surplus to requirements?
Maybe it’s Michael Keene. And if he could get a half decent price for Michael Keene, he moves on and maybe gets regular football, he’s not going to get Goodison now with the emergence of Branthwaite and the solidity of Tarkovski.
If he could get a fee and lose his Branthwaite maybe that would give some more opportunity for his retention. Nobody wants to see Branthwaite go, even though we might get a humongous price for him.
George: That’s where I was hoping the conversation would go. Because you’ve been involved in this at ice hockey level. I know it’s not exactly the same thing as the premiership. But given that we are helpless in the face of Man United or all the rest of them coming for him, and they are going to come for him, we mustn’t be silly and go, oh, maybe they won’t notice.
George: Whatever. What do you consider to be a price where you would go, fair enough? OK.
Andy: And.
George: That was the video.
Andy: very high, very high. I don’t think, I mean, we settled on circa 50 for Richard Allison because we had to, because we were time constrained, whereas Richard Allison at the time was, in my opinion, worth considerably more than that to have a football club.
And, you know, the other clubs know that we’re stuck for cash, so they’ll try and bid us in the ghoulish. They’ll try and get Branthwaite, or they’ll hope to get Branthwaite for a knockdown price.
I think, for once, actually need to stand absolutely firm and say, A, is not the sale, but B, if, you know, if you really, really want to force Iran, then you’re going to have to talk stupid money.
George: That’s not been evident in twenty years, we came in and how much did we get for John Stone’s?
Andy: I can’t remember. Oh, no.
Paul: off the top of my head there was less than 50
George: Yeah, quite a bit less than 50, I think, Paul.
Andy: Yeah. We didn’t get market value for Lukaku. We didn’t get market value for Rooney. We didn’t get market value for Richarlison. I know the circumstances were different, but we didn’t get full market value at the time for Ross Barkley.
It’s time that somebody drew a line in the sand and said no. There’s the price. If you want him, you know, stump it all. If not, bugger off. He wants to play. He doesn’t look unhappy at Everton. I suggest.
George: And you can suggest what you like, but he loves, I mean, I don’t know, Andy, I hope not, of course not, you know, like I said last week, if he was listening to me, I’d be going, No, son, just stick around, you know, you got no years on the clock, stay with our company and learn everything there is to learn from him.
But, you know, ever not in that position. Paul would be chapter and verse on how much money we need, and how somebody come and go and we’ll give you 60 million quid that’s two and a half months of the way you run this Mickey Mouse club for nothing.
For that football player. Who are we to go? Oh, no.
Andy: Well, you asked the question, what price would you put on him? And I just refer you to Alan Shearer’s comment last night about Alexander Isak at Newcastle, when he said there isn’t enough money to buy him.
Andy: That’s the stance that Everton should take over Branthwaite. None of you can afford him. Not even you, man, you, not even you, Real Madrid. None of you can afford him.
George: But Andy, we’re not in that situation. No, no.
Andy: I know, sadly, I did say that’s the position we should take, but will we be able to? Probably not. But that’s no reason why we should cave in early and take what you’ve just said 60 million. I would reject that out of hand.
Andy: I would think it’s got to be considerably more than that, if we have to let him go.
George: But again, putting the pragmatic hat on, you know, I read on the BBC gossip column that Varane, the French international United Centre of, is leaving on a free. Well, you know, you can clearly see what will give you Varane and talk down the price for.
Andy: I don’t want any more dealings with Man United, thank you very much, we’ve had quite enough to in and throw in the players between Goodison and Old Trafford, it has to stop. We’re not their farm club.
Paul: I think from my perspective, we have to sell him. We have to sell him for two reasons. One, we need the cash too.
Andy: Just qualify from your perspective as being purely looking at it from a financial aspect, not a footballing aspect.
Paul: Yeah, purely books. Yeah, thanks for that qualification. And I’m not saying this is an Evertonian, because I would like him to be.
Andy: it’s important that you make that statement.
Paul: Okay, I would like him to become club captain and play 450 Premier League games for Everton and be, you know, effectively a one team player. Obviously, you played for Carlisle beforehand, but you know the points I’m making.
But I don’t think that’s going to happen. One, because it doesn’t normally happen in the game these days. And two, because of Everton’s specific circumstances. And three, him purely looking at it from the perspective of his own career.
Yes, you can learn a lot by playing another season alongside Tarkey. But, you know, if Pep Guardiola gets on the phone to him and says, look, you’d be, I’ll be training you every week. So, and you’d be playing alongside John Stones.
And I can triple you, I can triple your wages for you. And I can pretty much guarantee that you have a trophy cabinet. Well, if there’s nothing in it yet, there’ll be something in it by the end of next season.
What do you think?
George: Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s exactly the scenario. So my question remains, given all that for what do you consider from an evidence point of view, what would you consider the amount of money which would make you go with all that perspective go all right, fair enough, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s not a bad price.
I’m just curious.
Paul: I don’t think there’s ever a price where you think you’ve got enough, but I think if we’ve got north of 60 million for him, given where we’re at, that would probably be a very good deal. It wouldn’t be a good deal for Everton, obviously, but it would be as good a deal as we could get.
The other interesting thing about all of this, and I think a lot of people tend to forget this, is that it’s not in the player’s interest to be sold for as much as possible. The only people that are interested in the player being sold for as much as possible is the selling club.
The agent doesn’t really mind because the agent will get it one way or the other. The lower the transfer fee, the higher the player’s wages are because the buying club looks at it in totality. It says, how much are we going to pay for this player and how much are we going to pay him when we’ve got him?
If we can pay less to acquire him, that means we can give him a little bit more in his wages, and that’s how it works. So for Branthwaite, he’s got to think, first of all, what am I likely to achieve at Everton next year?
Paul: Good question. Secondly, what am I likely to achieve if I go to, for argument’s sake, Manchester City? Well, just sort of describe what Pep Guardiola would say to him. And yeah, I’m going to end maybe three times as much.
It’s very, very difficult to find a logical reason as to why he wouldn’t do that.
George: Yeah, I don’t think there is one. Not in terms of such a short career, no. You could only mount a sentimental argument to the boy, and there’s absolutely no reason in the modern game why he should fall for that at all.
Paul: I mean, he’s not a local lad. I think he seems to come across as a very honourable, decent human being. But he’s 21. He’s gonna be playing for England over the summer. Naturally, his profile is gonna rise as a result of that.
There are gonna be people who get the opportunity to speak to him, or wouldn’t normally get the opportunity to speak to him because he’s away with an England camp for three, four, maybe five weeks. It would be extraordinary if we were able, and I would love us to do so, it would be extraordinary if we were able to keep him.
George: Yeah.
Paul: The only one possible reason that we could argue with him to keep him is that, and we tried this with Lukaku, if you give us another year, you’ve only got one year left on your contract in a year’s time, and then you’re in a much stronger position to negotiate somewhere else.
George: but he signed a five -year contract with me.
Paul: But his contract expires 2027. Sorry, yeah. Yeah. So cancel that. He’s got two years left at the end of next year. So even that doesn’t apply. So I was thinking he only had 12 months left, he’s got two years left at the end of next year.
So that even that doesn’t apply. So what, you know, logically, there is no reason for him to stay. Because he will be adored as much by the fans of whichever club he goes to as he currently is by everything fans.
George: Of course.
Paul: So that’s not a reason to stay.
George: No, no.
Paul: like to think it would be as Evertonians.
George: Yeah, no, I mean, I raised the subject because I sort of, you know, it’s the biggest dread, isn’t it? And it’s going to happen. And the
Andy: become a perennial dread. Yes, absolutely.
George: It’s the death of it.
Paul: Yeah, but there’s no point in denying it. There’s no point in dreaming up some half -assed reasons as to why he’s gonna stay when the reality is.
Andy: Paul, I accept the reality of the situation is that, you know, is a player who many, many other clubs will set their eyes on and many other clubs can afford and they can pay the fee and pay the wages and whatever.
Andy: It’s just depressing that it’s every year.
George: Hmm
Andy: or every other year that you know we have someone who we could build a team around and for whatever reason we keep letting them go.
George: It’s the same reason I’m big.
Yeah.
It’s definitely the same reason for Rooney as it was for Lukaku, for Stones, for Richarlison, all of them. Financial incompetence. We don’t have the clout to go, excuse me, no, we don’t need you Money Booger off.
George: Mm hmm.
Paul: It’s financial incompetence, it’s career progression, it is a look around the dressing room, could I sit in a dressing room with better players, could I be managed by a better manager?
George: Yeah.
Paul: Could I earn more money? That has to be considered. And unfortunately all of the answers to those questions go against staying at our football club. And it will always be the case until we create a football club in Everton that can compete on all of these different points with the best in the Premier League.
George: hundred percent. No question about that.
Paul: And then it gets back to the question, the question which we tried to pose and tried to provide answers for on many occasions. Oh, why is it that we’re in this condition? And as Sean Dyche said, you know, this is not the job I signed up for.
Paul: Well, that wasn’t his exact quote, was it? I just wrote an article on it, I should be able to remember what I said. Not the job that was pitched to me.
Andy: Yeah.
George: Um,
Paul: Well, and ultimately, there’s only one person, well, sorry, that’s bad English. There’s only one person, ultimately, that is responsible, responsible for all of these things. And that’s why I’m sharing.
Yes, there have been other other players, you know, one can argue about Bill Kenwright role in in bringing the shower machinery into the club, David Dean’s role about, you know, being the matchmaker between between the two, the role of the board, the role of the executive in telling, not telling the sheriff, but out of the very strange transfer decisions that he made, very strange management decisions that he’s made over the years, and ultimately, the decision to try and sell the club to triple seven, all of those factors.
That’s why we’re in the position that we’re in. We only lost two PSR cases this year, because of the decisions that fired me sharing that.
George: Yeah.
Paul: It’s not because of, you know, what we can argue about the Premier League and everything else and about the inequity of us being penalized twice, nothing in the forest being penalized and Chelsea and Manchester City not even yet brought a book.
Paul: But you’ve got to go back and say, well, why did we get ourselves into the position where we became the victims of the Premier League’s behaviour? Well, had we conducted ourselves in a proper manner and had we stayed within the rules, as unfair as you may see the rules, had we stayed within the rules then this would never have been an issue.
George: and you
Paul: So, why did we get to that point? Well, we got to that point because five years here, he owns a football club.
George: Not for very much longer.
Paul: I think I’ve said, I’ve told this story before. After the 2018 annual general meeting, I stayed in Liverpool overnight and on the train coming back to London from Lime Street, I bumped into Keith Harris and Sasha Ryazantsev and they very kindly said, where are you sitting?
And I said, I was sitting in another car and they said, oh, come and sit with us. I was in first, they were in standard. No, sorry, it was the other way around. And I went and sat with them and we just chatted for the two hours or so that it takes to get down to London.
And in the course of the conversation, I won’t say which of the two said it, but they said, and I asked them the question, how come we spent so much money and how come we bought so many number 10s and everything else?
And I won’t say which of the two said it, one of the two said “it’s because we took our eyes off the ball because on many occasions, not everybody knew what everybody else was doing.”
Andy: utter chaos.
Paul: So, you know, it’s a statement of fact that there were times when Farhad Moshiri was negotiating for a player, Bill Kenwright was negotiating for another player, Steve Walsh was negotiating for a player, sometimes all in the same area of the pitch, yet none of them knowing that what each other was doing and what decisions each other was making and what commitments each was making on behalf of Everton Football Club.
George: It’s just unbelievable bollocks. If it was happening in Coronation Street, you’d sit there going as if.
Andy: Yeah.
George: A just astonishing twaddle. Well, we’re reaping the, you know, this is we’re reaping the benefits of wrong, wrong word. But you know what I mean? Of that time now, as we have a conversation about the fact that we cannot hold on to our best player and we can’t.
And therefore, Dyche cannot build a defensive team around him. Again, you know, it’s just a farce, it’s just got to stop. And whoever gets control of our football club. It’s just, I don’t know how you write it.
How, you know, how do you guarantee that anyone will behave any better? You know, how do you guarantee that it won’t be sold to somebody like the Glazers? When the club has no bargaining power of any kind.
Paul: Well, this is one of the things that not so much the independent regulator, but the fan led review was supposed to create a mechanism by which it became much more difficult for clubs to be sold to potentially rogue owners.
George: Right.
Paul: And yet the reality of that, it just is just not true. Okay, we’ve not got to the point yet where we’ve got the independent regulator. But the fan led review has happened. The idea that fan engagement takes place has happened.
The idea that football clubs are seen as community assets, cultural assets. And I have a value to the local people, fans, communities, cities, etc., in which they operate. All of that is readily accepted and is spoken about.
Yet, potentially, we have people like Triple Seven e777 entering the game and buying a club like Everton. I say potentially, it’s not going to happen. But the point is that they’ve been able to get this far into the process.
And the fact that they haven’t succeeded, whilst in one sense, is good, because it means that they haven’t succeeded. But it also means that the club has been held in complete limbo.
George: months and running up debts they can’t pay
Paul: It’s running up debts. Nobody will commit from a commercial perspective. Nobody will commit new resources to the club. So new commercial contracts can’t be signed because they wouldn’t know who the new owner is.
Players possibly coming to the club might worry about who the new owner is. Players thinking, I’ve got two years left on my contract, might be thinking, actually, this might not be a bad time to get out of the club because I’m not sure about these new owners.
All of these different factors, all ultimately.
Andy: Yep.
Paul: And it’s ridiculous, it’s taken me eight years to say that, well say it as directly as I’m saying it now. I think I’ve hinted at it in the past and I think I should have been stronger in saying it earlier.
George: I’ve heard you say that a fair bit. I don’t think you should bash yourself up for that, Paul. You’re not in a position to buy them all. You’re just a concerned observer of the chaos that’s descended upon an object, Everton Football Club, that you love and we all love.
Paul: Yeah, but the results of all of this is that whilst no doubt some of the fans will feel a great amount of relief as a result of yesterday, and you know, we’ll take the view that, you know, everything’s fine.
And the reality of the situation is that not everything is fine. The only thing that’s fine is the fact that we’re not going out of the Premier League this season. That was just the one issue that was resolved yesterday.
And whilst many people would argue that that’s the most important issue. And from a historical context, just as a football fan, probably right to say that, but the reality of it is that it’s just that’s just one element.
It’s just one element of evidence in the future.
Andy: Meanwhile we’re still in the lack of the lack of Moshiri and what on earth he’s prepared to do yeah or not prepared to do more to the point yeah because he doesn’t appear to be prepared to call time on 777 even though they clearly haven’t got a pot of piss in
Paul: Or not a big enough pot anyway.
George: Yeah.
Paul: I mean, the question for all Evertonians, and I don’t mind being challenged on this because people, you know, you said Andy, your reaction to how you thought people would react to the way I asked questions after the Liverpool game, and I’ve asked questions immediately after getting survival in this season in terms of the Premier League.
I don’t think there should ever be a time when you can’t ask those questions. I understand how it upsets some people. I understand how some people would prefer not to know the answers, or even not to know what the problems are.
I get that totally. We’ve talked about this. Football should be a means of escape, a means of enjoyment, a means of relaxation. But the fact is that it doesn’t just operate on that level anymore because what the owners actually do when they own a football club impacts how a football club performs far more so than how Sean Dyche can influence the club.
Sean Dyche just deals with what he’s given. The owners are the people who create the situation in which Sean Dyche operates. And, you know, my big fear is that we go from Bill Kenwright to Fahad Moshiri to Josh Wanda, and that’s a path that’s only heading in one direction.
Now, I don’t think, thankfully, we’ll get to the Josh Wanda 777 bit of it because I don’t think they will ever be in the position to buy the football club. But that doesn’t mean that we’re out of the woods.
It just means we’ve got a different problem. And we all as Everton, I think, I can’t speak obviously on behalf of other Evertonians, I can only express my own opinions. I think the owner of the GC has Evertonians to ask these questions in a respectful manner.
But forcibly, these are not minor issues in most football fans’ lives. These are significant issues. We spend an extraordinary amount of time thinking about our football club, talking to each other, talking to our friends, talking to our family, talking to our wives, etc. about the football club that we love. It takes a disproportionate amount of our lives. There’s no other area of our life that is so important that we would just allow it to be run with us having some influence on it, especially if we saw there was a problem with it.
If you saw one of your children constantly making a mistake, you wouldn’t say, I’m not going to bring that up with them because they might get upset about it. You’d go and deal with the situation because you have a concern, you have a love for that child.
Different, I know, different from being a football footballer. But in a sense, it’s the same with a football club. You see an issue, why shouldn’t you be able to ask the questions? Why shouldn’t you be able to influence…?
George: Of course.
Andy: Yeah, sure.
George: that’s what pubs and guineas are for and it is to prompt the debate you know people talk about this game so much because they love it and they care for it you know there should be no apology for that
Paul: No, but sometimes it needs explaining because people possibly don’t appreciate the motivation behind asking the questions at the time when the questions are asked.
George: Um.
Paul: Yeah, I know it’s not possible to. And I’m not asking to be accepted by everybody. I’m asking to be accepted by anybody. I’m just trying to explain the reason for asking the questions, even at the time when people would rather those questions not be asked.
Paul: And particularly at this moment in time, when actually, we don’t have, we don’t have the luxury of giving ourselves a couple of weeks to sort of take a breather. I remember after the Bournemouth game, sorry after the Palace game in particular, the people who were running the 27 campaign were so exhausted by the activities, you know, the things that they’d done prior to the Crystal Palace game, that they just wanted some time off.
They just, they couldn’t, they couldn’t maintain the levels of activity, the pressure that they put on themselves, that alone, the pressure that they put, they just couldn’t maintain that. So they understandably took a period of time away from those things and did the normal things that football fans do in the closed season.
And we don’t, we don’t have that luxury. We can’t come back in July and say, let’s pick up what’s happening at Everton Football Club because things are going to move between now and July.
George: Yeah, huge things.
Paul: Yeah, yeah. And Moshiri doesn’t seem able or willing to do much about it. So…
Andy: Is he actually communicating with anybody or is he just leaving it entirely to some non -descript PR company to front for him?
Paul: Well, certainly in terms of outside people, almost all everything is coming through his PR company. I’m not aware of any journalist who are in regular contact with him at this moment in time.
George: All right.
Paul: I think some of the stakeholders, some of the people who are owed money, have irregular contact with him. Right, but nothing like they did.
George: Do you mean going, where’s my money?
Andy: what you’re doing yeah yeah
Paul: Where are we up to? What’s plan B? What’s going to happen when inevitably 777 can’t conclude on the deal? What’s going to happen when 777 pick up the phone one day and say that 30 million quid that we promised you last week isn’t coming?
George: Um, so Branthwaite.
Paul:
I mean, in a sense, we’re almost at that point now, aren’t we? The window doesn’t open for another six, five, six weeks. But the season finishes in just less than four weeks, three weeks, four weeks.
So we’re almost at that point. And maybe that’s what the end game is here, just to get to the end of the season, just to get to the point where the transfer windows open and we can sell a couple of players.
And we relieve the requirement to be funded on a monthly basis, albeit only for a couple of months. But if time is the only thing you’ve got to trade, then that’s probably a trade that Moshiri would think is worthwhile.
But then you’d expect him to be talking to other people about what to do as a plan B. And to my knowledge, that’s not happening, even though there are people who are prepared to put a plan B forward.
Anyway.
George: You know, you get to this point, you personally get to this point with us, me and Andy, quite a lot. And I just don’t know. I have run out of words because I think, well, how on earth can I force Farhad Moshiri’s hand?
And of course, the answer is you can’t. You know, I always get a bit lost at this point, Paul, as to what you kind of expect any of those proles to do, really, or even yourself.
Paul: I’m in the same shoes as you, George. I genuinely am. I’m just asking the questions. I think if I had an answer, I’d be trying to put it in play, but I don’t, and it’s not, I mean, it’s not, it isn’t.
There are dozens of people who do this as a living, not just somebody who some people call a hobby accountant doing this. There are people whose livelihoods depend upon this, and they don’t have answers either
So none of this is easy. And none of it’s obvious as to what their answer is other than Moshiri behaving responsibly. But the evidence of the last eight years is that increasingly he’s behaved more and more irresponsibly, not more responsibly.
Andy: The same has been precious little evidence of responsible behaviour.
George: Yeah.
Andy: from day one.
Paul: So all we can do is ask the questions and highlight the issues. And thankfully, by highlighting the issues over time, what starts out as maybe some theories put together by some internet cranks become questions that, first of all, sports journalists ask.
And then increasingly because the stakes get bigger and bigger and because there are perhaps other parties that get implicated in this, you get to the point where financial journalists start asking questions.
So when we started Talking the Blues, would you ever really imagine that the Washington Post and New York Times, the Financial Times, would be acting on issues that are brought up in this podcast? And I’m not saying that’s a big, up -to -this podcast.
I’m just saying it as a matter of fact.
I’m just saying it as a matter of fact. And it’s not just us. There are other people who talk about these things, but that’s where it’s got to. And it only got there because of one person Farhad Moshiri
George: Right.
Paul: This could be like a three hour podcast because I could keep on on this for as long as you want.
George: Well, I could tell you that Arsenal are 3 -1 up at Tottenham and cruising.
Andy: Bournemouth are too little up over Brighton, who believe it or not if results went our way we could overtake Brighton and reach 12th and that had significantly more money to the kitty.
George: That means we have to beat Arsenal at Highbury. Yeah. Oh, that’ll be fun.
Paul:
I don’t think we’re going to play them at Highbury, George.
Andy: Oh, never.
George: Sorry, it’s changed my shit.
Paul: as nice as it would be. All right, should we wrap up there? Because we’ve been talking for
George: Yeah man, that’s me again after the Luton match.
Andy: Yeah.
George: Very interesting to see his selection for that, looking forward to that. Yeah, that’s interesting. It certainly matters. All guns blazing, weren’t they? They’ve got to. They’ve got to, yeah.
Paul: This is Friday, isn’t it?
Andy: They’ve got no choice. They must be praying that City are going to thump Forest this afternoon.
Paul: I think there’s a fair chance of that happening, isn’t there? Yeah.
Andy: Probably.
Paul: No -one. No -one. See you in a week. All right, guys, thank you very much. Excuse me. Thank you. Don’t worry. Excuse me. And then maybe you can have the summer off.
Andy: We’ve never had the summer off.
Paul: We could start a trend and say, see you in September or something like that.
Andy: We could do, yeah. Let’s get to the Emirates and see what else has happened in the meantime.
Paul: Yeah, I was going to say, with George outside, I wearing one of his suits.
George: Be really, really quiet.
Andy: We should meet in the El Commandante bar just round the corner from the Emirates.
George: I’m drunk there with a couple of Arsenal mates. Nice bar there.
Andy: So have I. It’s a good bar.
Paul: Okay, guys, thank you so much. Thank you to everybody for listening. And yeah, we’ll talk after our visit to Kenilworth Road. Thank you all.
George: All the best. Cheers.