Hello, and welcome to the Double Piffle, the world's most agreeable, Sockrel, it's podcast. I am Michael Caley, and I've got a funny story about this intro. So, I've done this intro once before, because we were talking about how we do this podcast. Okay, we'll do a recap of the games in the Premier League, and it was like, well, we've got two interesting games at the top, Born Me Forest, and Chelsea City.
And Chelsea City also gives us an in-to-talk about something that's happening in the Champions League. And then it's not Tottenham, which kind of gives us an in-to-talk about the Europa League a little bit, and sort of a separate story. And so we got to the start of the podcast, and I was talking about Tottenham. And then, somehow, I don't know who did this.
Somehow, Emperor Palpatine returned. Someone of this podcast had a lot to say about Tottenham, and it just turned into a Tottenham podcast. So that is now turned into the Musa. It's now a Musa without it with an intro, because we didn't know it was a Musa.
So that Musa can have an intro. Okay, I need everybody to know, as we go through our intro here, blah, blah, blah, intro stuff, whatever. I was planning on making a joke about how everybody was going to yell at me for doing an intro on the Musa, but I didn't know any better. Without talking to you, but this was what you're introducing, was kind of a piece.
I was just rambling. Sorry about that. All right, let's do a podcast here about Manchester City, Chelsea, and Barnard, and Nottingham Forest. Yeah, so I thought that the City Chelsea game was fascinating.
Yeah, I did too. Before we break down the match, I want to ask you a question. How much of the tactical stuff in this match was we found interesting? Do you think stems from the fact that Maresco was a Pep Guardiola assistant?
That's an interesting question, in the sense that... I'm two things in mind. Okay. On the one hand, I have questions about whether Maresco's investment in the development of what Pep Guardiola wants to do might make it harder for him to see the potential leads to attack, right?
And then two, I have questions about whether his former professional working relationship with Pep Guardiola might make him more wary of Manchester City's strength than his warranted. Because one of the things we've been talking about with respect to Manchester City over the last few weeks is they have a glass jaw, and people are figuring out that they have a glass jaw. And like, is it possible that Maresco would be less likely to figure out that Pep Guardiola has a glass jaw right now than somebody else would be? Because very understandably, his professional experience with Guardiola would be, why would he think Guardiola has glass jaw?
Mm-hmm, yeah. And one thing that is very striking in the numbers to me and is that over the first 15 minutes of this match or so, Chelsea scored a goal, you know, well done there. And they were up three shots to one. They had a number of good chances that didn't turn into shots.
There's a moment where cold halber of all people missed places of pass to create a 0.5 plus XG chance. And he over hits it just slightly, and it turns into nothing. And during that period, City also had only like 85%, past completion, like they were being pressed. Those chances were coming off of turnovers in the middle of the pitch.
And then that just stopped. Basically, what's Chelsea went up a goal? Yep. Maybe a little bit thereafter.
The goal is like three minutes. There's still another like 10 minutes of. Yeah, it's like, yeah. It's three of one shots for Chelsea in the first 15 minutes and then 10 to two shots for City in the next half hour.
And past completion for City goes from 85, goes from like 83% to 92%. I don't know. It's a mystery. I don't have a good answer for this.
There's just, I mean, mainly some of it is like, right? I mean, I think we talked about this team like not really rotating through a busy schedule and, you know, having some of their injuries. And unlike during the conference, the group stage where they were playing all the kids so nobody was playing more than once a week, then it stopped happening. So maybe it's just legs.
But I'm finding that to be somewhat unreliable as an answer here because I think that like, it felt to be watching it at the very least that it was a tactical game plan. And in these sort of, in two ways, kind of a typical tactical game that you don't press a team, you don't press Manchester City, Manchester City, Manchester City, press the review. And then here's the interesting part. You don't press a team generally that's just trying to play the ball over you because they'll just play the ball over you and then you press for no reason.
And Manchester City in this match, pretty clearly we're just trying to counter-attack over us, which was really interesting to me. Yeah, and this was like, this line up from City. Now this line up would not be possible without the signing of Omar Marmoush. But Marmoush and Foden are very similar players.
Marmoush is more of a basically a striker winger and Foden is more subtly, a basically a striker winger. Yes. And a more sort of complete striker, maybe, rather than like Marmoush who just loves running behind the back line and sometimes is offside, but he's just gonna keep running behind the back line. But the two of them running off of Holland is a, it's interesting to me because if Erling Holland were a ball playing midfielder, you would call it a false nine.
This I never actually really thought about before, exactly. But the idea of like a big man, small man partnership, where one of them comes deep to receive the ball and the other one runs on is like not that different from the concept of the false nine where an unexpected player fills the attacking lanes. And so here, Holland, they're kicking it long to him. He's matching up against the center back and beating them for the ball more often than not.
And then there is someone running on behind. That's the Foden goal that seals the game. Happens very explicitly this way, but a whole bunch of their ball progression happened this way. It is like merging the false nine with like the most stodgy English football possible in an interesting way.
Yeah, the other thing here about city's tactics and the pressing is that there are two, there are kind of like two reasons to press, right? One reason is like, hey, this team, we're gonna stop, we're gonna take the ball from this team as they try to pass through us. We're gonna like guard the guys they wanna pass into. We're gonna like constrain them and we're gonna like collar them and they're gonna have to end up keep going backwards and eventually they'll keep it.
They'll have to keep kicking long in disadvantage situations. And then the other reason is like, oh, well, we're gonna press because this guy's gonna make a mistake and then we'll take a ball back. And obviously with a rookie center back, a big 20-year-old Uzbek center back that you bought for France, there's a pretty appealing theory of the case for why you might wanna press and that theory of the case came good very early on. I would also say like parenthetically like city starting him and Marushi was like clearly we're focused on Champions League.
Like I wouldn't, like this is not like, oh, Pep Guardiola, it's just, they're saving the people that can play the Champions League for Champions League and it was a very like, we're rotating our squad decision. But I do wonder like part of what happened is like as he settles into the game and stop making mistakes, Chelsea stop pressing because the point of the press was to make you make mistakes. Yeah, but it's not just him, like a congee back there is one of their weaker position center backs. And Mateus Nudas is just bad.
Apparently an okay attacker from full back, I guess, I don't know. Yeah, he's like, Pep has figured out that he's kind of like a solid traditional wing who can play full back sort of if you're going to have the ball most of the time. Sure. And like Chelsea just letting them have the ball until it was one one.
Yeah. They just were not putting together the kind of opportunities that I think they could have if they had been more aggressive in that face of the play. I mean, I think that's correct because like despite the fact that city or basically the city relatively deep themselves are looking to counter. They do not have good defensive personnel on the field but Chelsea are not built to sort of take advantage of that necessarily.
Yeah, I thought that this, the game plan from Pep here and I think you're right that we should not necessarily see this as like this is the plan. This was a rotated squad because beating Broga is the most important thing. But the plan here in a number of ways seems optimized to face the new meta. Yeah.
That if the other team is not, is going to try to have the ball and go slow, you're going to kick it long quickly. And if the other team is not going to press, you are going to build up slow. And you get, and you take what you need to do is prevent yourself from giving the ball away in the middle of the pitch. And Chelsea really do against the team as good as city.
For the most part, they need to press in order to get those giveaways in the middle of the pitch because what city would do is they would build up slow and when the press came to go low. Yep. And so they didn't put themselves as best as they could in positions where the sort of late springing mid block press that Chelsea used to create their best opportunities could beat them. And otherwise they would just like, and they really, really would sit deep when they were building out from those long balls.
I don't think this is a lot. I mean, this is a lot about the city from a, like, this is where city are in perspective. But I don't think it says a lot about them from like, hey, look, this is a big picture solution, right? I don't think it is true that this set of tactical ideas is kind of optimized for the meta, but it's reactive.
And it does not seem to me, and I do think it's a particularly pinpoint to Chelsea and Mareska and his extraordinarily slow approach. But I don't think this is what we're going to see from city eventually every week. This feels to me like, you know, I'll patch to get them through, you know what I mean? Right.
And we're praising this team for being better than Chelsea, not for being anything like a team that can compete with Liverpool and Arsenal for the title. Like, this is a top four race situation. And PAP is adjusting to put a team out in the field. They're now in fourth place.
And that is looking like, you know, a solid Champions League team and able to get a whole win against another solid Champions League team. This is still a big level below what they are supposed to be. Yeah, absolutely. I don't know what you do with all of that, Ollie, and say, hey, like, they're not very sure.
They're not very good. And also, they are rightly big favorites to make the Champions League next season. Sorry, I mean, they're playing club Ruger, like, you know. Oh, not to call for that.
You make the top four race. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Five or five, I guess. Barring, you know, other things.
Yes. Yes. And then there's Chelsea. They are one point behind Newcastle and City, basically even on goal difference.
They are ahead of Bournemouth on goal scored. So we have a very real top seven right now in the table. And I would say we have a real top six in the XG table, more or less. Yeah.
And we're going to have more likely than not five teams. It would take a reasonably big collapse from English teams and a reasonably huge knockout phase for Spanish teams for that change, but it is not impossible. So top, probably top five, maybe top four. Like, that's a real race right now.
Yeah, and so I guess, I mean, I guess, like, I'm about to talk about why, like, not even if ours is probably the team I think, even though they have the point advantage that gets that ends up getting with that, but I guess that we should talk about adding parts versus the first one within the context. It's, I think that the game, while obviously, you know, five-nil is sort of funny. And one of those things where you say, ha ha, look at the XG, but then if you look at the XG before it was three-nil, it was really not that much of a blowout. But it was, I thought, despite the fact that it was not nearly an actual five-nil stomping in the sense of one of these teams is just dominating the other, it really did get at why, I think, Bournemouth are just clearly the better teams here.
Oh, absolutely. Although, I find this funny. Bournemouth are very good at attacking. We've talked about how weird they are at attacking.
And they're a very competent defensive team as well. Not even if ours are a bad attacking team that has run hot, but very good defensive. Bournemouth go ahead in this match because they attack fairly quickly, and not even if ours do what they do, which is they contain the attack by dropping off. And so, Clover has space about 20 yards out, and it's a very, very nice strike into the side, perfectly placed into the side of the goal score.
Unlike a quasi counter attack. And what you see there, and really, I think a lot of this game hinges on that first goal because not even if ours bad attacking team, good defensive team, not very good when they have to die from the hot. And I think if you dig into the numbers a little bit, part of what's going on with that, if ours is seriously, there have been fewer times when you would expect that they got unlucky and had to go come back, which is by far the weakest part of their game. But that moment is basically like, not even far as getting what they want out of that situation, but conceded.
And when you talk about how luck works and how running against XG works, and all of these kinds of things, that's just a situation which is not happening very much for notting of ours there. And when it happens, you know, all of a sudden, now they're in trouble. And like, to be fair, it's not the kind of shot born with things, a ton, either. Born with a pretty good about working for good shots, building good shots.
So it's a little bit of an anomaly, but then like, from that point on born with, then I think do something that speaks very well of them, which is they play a lot of defensive possession, which is not something they've done most of the season. Yeah, they've had many more passes in their own final third than they usually do. And this is a style, like when I remember us talking about Yereola in those first few weeks at Bournemouth when they were really struggling and they were one of the worst defensive teams in the league, and they were trying to play a slower build out style focused in the midfield. And they kept turning it over and giving up big chances.
And so he changed. And we have hardly seen that, but in this game, we saw a modified version. There were still like a few passes and tried to go along a lot of the time, but they showed an ability and a willingness to hold possession like 55, 45 possession despite having a lead against Forrest for the first half, and not try to do that much with possession because they knew that that would stifle what Forrest wanted to do. And that's like a tactical switch that they can make.
And there's been a lot of, I hear this in the media regularly that Nuno has shown something different with Nottingham Forest and they can really take a game by the scruff of the neck when they need to. And yeah, no, no, they can't. This game showed it. They do not have that year.
Nuno teams do not have that year. That hasn't changed. Yeah. Yeah.
I think that, as far as I've done that on the outside of the end, I think that it's going to be very cool to born with, can they talk about it? I don't know if they will, but I think that they certainly seem to be competitive enough. Like there's not, I think there are real questions medium term about whether or not they can keep up what they're doing here. They have very little revenue.
They have exceedingly little, you know, the stadium needs this tiny, all of these things. Things that have to go very right to get the collection of players that they have in the manner that they have to make this happen. But I don't think there's like a ton of question about this season, right? Like it doesn't seem to me like there's a lot of question about whether they keep up this level of the rest of the season.
It seems to me that clearly the cat. Right. And one of the other teams, like, you know, we'll see how many points forest can keep squeaking out at a certain point, like the points start to matter. Right now, being three points up on fifth with a much worse goal difference doesn't seem like that much safety, but there's also a new castle in here who have been about that good.
And then as we were saying about Chelsea and City, these are teams playing solid, make the Champions League kind of football with now like a lot of European games likely on their schedules. It's, I feel like there's a lot of pick them there in those four teams. It's five teams for three spots, four teams for two spots, pick whichever you want of the four, five, two, three. But right now I think it's, you know, too tight.
Yeah, I don't have any insight to who's gonna come out ahead of this. I think the only thing I really wanted to say is that like, I'm not gonna, we said this recently, like, I want to place that in the bar so I can't reason for it this much, you know what I mean? Right, now I am forest. If they end this season by qualifying for the Europa League or the Conference League, they'll be a good result.
They'll be really good. There's tons of credit. They were supposed to be in the relegation chase and they weren't. And you know, did this miraculous turnaround where he came in mid-season and got them playing this way right away and then it's kept going.
It's great. Just stop saying they know how to attack. They don't. Also like, I love Chris Wood as much as the next guy, but Chris Wood is like benefiting from some otherworldly goals going on right now.
We, I thought when Chris Wood came to forest that he was pretty much cooked, he looked entirely cooked in that run he had a new castle. And he has, like, back in a system that is demanding he do just one thing, the way he did at Burnley. He's been very, very good at still doing that one thing, which is impressive at his age, which is like his career arc and recovery from what looked like the end of his career arc is very impressive. But he hasn't stopped being Chris Wood.
What's impressive is that he's maintained being Chris Wood. Hey man, that's really, I don't have much else to say about it. I think we've been through so many cycles this year of like, there's a race, there's a race, there's not a race. And I think that that's a reflection that there's been a lot of luck type stuff that has kept pulling these things back together in very real ways.
That's just like the bounces of the season have accordion this thing in a way that I think you don't see all that often, which I think has been fun. And Aston Villa are still, Aston Villa have not played any level that would suggest they should be in the top five race and they are several points behind Bournemouth and Chelsea, but they're just one or two bounces from being in this as well. It's taking a while to like sort itself out, in part because a bunch of these teams are just at similar level. City are just so much worse than we thought they'd be.
Chelsea have, as we talked about on our Chelsea pod earlier, I take Chelsea's like, XG level right now, their table level right now is a pretty good indicator of what they are. And it's just significantly worse than it looked two months ago. And I take the average of that. I think that's the simplest thing to do.
That puts them as solid favorites to make the Champions League within this group, especially if it is three spots for four teams. But the open question with them is exactly how much of their recent struggles is what they are likely to be. Similar question to say. It's a unique season, right?
Like it's just a very unique season. And part, I think cities sort of travails over shadow, maybe a little bit like why some of these other, like we haven't even mentioned a new castle, for example. Like who are going through like a very similar to Chelsea, like like pattern this year in a lot of ways, not temporarily, temporarily, it's kind of like, like what is up with the others now. But like they're going through periods where they're like, well, really, really good.
And periods are just so much difficult to distinguish where they don't. And you know, it's just very interesting. Like how do you, how do you, how do you weigh Newcastle's strong periods and week periods versus Chelsea's strong periods and week periods? It's like a very germane question for this season that I don't have a good answer to.
Yeah. So we'll be coming back around all this. I think a lot of it also is going to depend on these teams. Newcastle is not going to have extra games and are what, how many extra games are villa and city and Chelsea going to have?
How are they going to be managing those things? Yeah, we'll be back talking about the Champions League because that's going to happen real soon. And as I mentioned at the top, you can check out at patreon.com so that don't pivot. The podcast on top of it as well.
Cheers y'all. Cheers.