Hello and welcome to the double pivot the world's most agreeable soccer analyst podcast I am Michael Kaylee come to the howler radio network and this week. We're talking about injuries There's a lot of really interesting situations that come up because of injuries how you do analysis around injuries So some really tea injuries in the Premier League. There is there's a right that situation at Liverpool full-back situation at Manchester City and no other teams So that's gonna be what we cover this week Is that that's our rundown you may have forgotten one small little tiny injury that we may have to discuss A little a little known striker Harry Kanye, I think his name is something like that I'm not overly familiar with him But he seems to have played some minutes for spurs and we should at least briefly touch on the the situation without him None of those words made any sense to me The music you heard on the way in is the wellers We have Max with us on the other side of the virtual glass Please download subscribe make as happy as podcasters subscribe to us at patreon.com slash double pivot for an extra podcast a week Where we do even more soccer nerdiness and bad jokes Yeah, so we're gonna talk about injuries and maybe some other Premier League stuff time dependent We had a managerial firing which we should at least you know look in on I'll go from there. That's where I stand.
So all right all right all right raise yourself Hurricane to start. Yep, and you got an ankle crunch. That is ankle crunch It's a different angle than the one that was like I injured twice in the last year But nonetheless he is reportedly out until he's going to restart training in in a month So all right, so the first place I want to start two months in two months The first place I want to start is giving your recent hurricane experience How do you feel about the aggressiveness with which he should come back from this injury? Do you want to see him pushing the timetable if I told you right now that's seven weeks from today, you know Patrick you know saying can't is rejoin the first team and we're hopeful he can make you know Finalist I mean the thing that that could come up that you're gonna break out about are you gonna say yes great?
Or are you gonna say don't do it don't do it? I mean I have I have fully sort of accepted that Harry Kane When he's not doing anything that involves scoring goals It's unhappy and thus whenever he's given the opportunity to do something that does involve scoring goals He becomes happy and the way that spurs the structure their whole team even reach a butcher You know who like I mean he demands like these people work But fundamentally he's just not in the business of telling Harry Kane that he can't score goals and so it's just gonna happen I don't see any possible way around Harry Kane coming back from this injury too early and Other times he's come back from injury early and being fine Like this him coming back from injury early this last time, but it was super not fine wasn't the first time that had happened He's done that a bunch and he's been fine. So maybe this time he will be but it's gonna happen. Yeah Like on the one hand it doesn't seem like this in like there are a lot worse times that this could have hit spurs Spurs are pretty comfortable in our top four race right now They may not be by the time he comes back, but like if it wasn't for the fact that Sun was going overseas to play For for South Korea now, I would say look I mean you never it's never a good time for an injury But like it's not the end of the world, but losing Kane and Sun at the same time.
It really is sort of a struggle to see How spurs are going to approach matches in in their in his absence like they don't someone's the back of striker Lorenta has barely played any minutes at this point and is You know at this point fully enveloped by the piano he's carrying around on his back And after that it's like okay, how are we being created is deli alley starting up top is Lucas starting up How are we doing this is the question right yeah, and during the during the injury period last year Eric LaMella played some Up top, I think he's probably the most likely player to end up there could be Lucas could be could be the two of them That's not a lot of shots there. No, like Eric LaMella's shots went up significantly when he got to play as an attacking midfielder a forward but Lucas's have not and They are and that is and they also just can't rotate anyone into that squad the one player that they could see rotating in his Lorentae Who is there were probably apparently not now they were thinking about selling him now They're probably not going to because they just need a body which is true That's basically all that he is at this point. I would point out that Jenson has now started twice for the answer 23 So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's somewhat someone tweeted that like the Jenson started with them 23 he's came off at halftime Spurs scored shortly after halftime sure these two things are unrelated Basically the what so Tottenham schedule is it's pretty light. I've got a wattford map otherwise its Newcastle and Palace winnable games in there and then and then there's the international break the real problem for Spurs I think where this sort of gets interesting is that they've got the lead cup semi-final and Because this team and then Sun should be back after the international break So it's four games without Sun and then you know Sun is striker is basically manageable for this team But four games without Sun is a real problem and one of those games is a really important game for the Tottenham team That's like well over 80% for top four and should be trying to get to a final Right, yeah, I mean you're fairly lucky, you know, so it's a fairly lucky that they've got Fulham Then Watford with Watford at home, which is a tough match and a new castle at home So I'm followed by Lester at home and so, you know, especially for the next month Watford is a bit of a match Lester is a bit of a match But the you know the Fulham is about as good a draws you could as you could hope for this coming weekend to sort of like test out The Kane and Sunless theory, right?
Like if you want 90 minutes of soccer to ease your newly strikerless team into you couldn't really do worse than Ful I don't know, like on the course of their season It's a major issue for the League Cup final and like nobody is gonna want to hear as the Paccaccino like never won a cup You know never won a thing stupid narrative rolls. Oh, well Kane was hurt in this one and it's a major difference, but like You know, like you can't magically pretend that that didn't happen But for the League, I don't know, maybe it makes it more sweaty down the stretch But it doesn't seem to me like it's gonna have a major impact on Spurs being a top 14 Yeah, like it's it's certainly possible that Spurs could go out and like lose three of these four games and like you know They get footballed once or twice they have a bad game. They don't have a shot from the side I think so wrong and then suddenly they're right in the think of a top four race and maybe it all falls apart Like that's all possible But losing Harry Kane in this specific timeline with these weak teams to play and with Sun coming back after four matches It seems manageable for now I think that like they're the odds that they are going to be able to really put their best team on the field against Dortmund in the Champions League Seemed somewhat lower, but like it's a prioritization question rather than like the other than like a sky is falling tight It's kind of a question and the other part of this is though that like if it doesn't go well before the international break Things get tough in a hurry as some comes back after the international break You've got burn even in the lead you've got Burnley and then all of a sudden you go to Chelsea host Arsenal Plus League of final plus Champions League in that stretch and it's like oh Like that's heavy-duty stuff And you know if you were gonna pink the scenario where the wheels come off this first season It's they muddled through the next four Sun comes back, but it's not enough And then you drop a whole bunch of points crash out of the Champions League don't win the League of final and are now in a real top four race pretty much I mean I'm probably that the amazing thing is that like they had the nightmare scenario happen Like the team didn't have the team didn't buy a central midfielder for reasons that are still fully inexplicable My theory is that like Daniel Levy doesn't delegate and so Even so the team like came up with a couple of targets and then you leave you try to sign them And then we couldn't they didn't have anyone else working on anything else because he doesn't delegate That's my best guess is how this happened and so they end up with and then all of their central midfielders get hurt and reach your coach You know managed to like you know tape and bailing wire his way to a winning streak that like it didn't come off against man United They're also better than any United this this last weekend And that's now coming back and you have a problem for which spurs in theory are much more suited to handle They have in humans on they've just got a good premier League striker and they've got enough attackers to around him But now with Sun out and you're still very thin in midfield It's very easy to see how like this could eventually fall apart It's a sort of weird thing really because it didn't fall apart when it should have like a month ago Does that like make it more likely to fall apart now because it's just sort of barely holding together or does it mean that like Oh, she knows gonna like magic something up again. I don't know yeah, I do have tactical questions here, right because this the attack and the sort of you know Extreme directness and removing the midfield from attack You know the the the Bundesliga have three years ago style that they've sort of adopted depends pretty heavily on Kane and Sun And so if now for the next month being without the two of them Do we think they're going to try to do the same thing or all of a sudden are we gonna be like?
Relying on Harry wing stepping up into the final third putting more responsibility on his shoulders Are we gonna sort of like see maybe alley move move more consistently into a traditional attacking role and Erickson's How are we how are you gonna deal with this tactically because this is a major shift to your talent? Yeah, I think that I mean Eric Dyer is likely to be back pretty soon He is recovered from his appendix surgery because that happened So with Dyer in midfield gives you more of a base. You can they can actually try to like Hold possession and play through midfield somewhat more They don't have to go direct all the time freeze Erickson and winks to be a little bit more to move a little bit more forward But they're passing but like to me I think that this team more likely would sort of focus on pressing That's what they've got in the squad that's left That's what you bring when you have to bring in lamella and Lucas You might as well just try to take the ball for everybody up top and like lamella and Lucas and deli as a kind of pressing three With Erickson and behind them to me I think that's what we're the team sort of like really and then you have actually Dyer as a base to like you have a second line of defense That you didn't have before so I kind of I kind of see that's in many ways like that The air raid attack has function because the players in the front do so much defending that they also protect the midfield But here I think you could try to leverage that press to create attack more that that to me Is I think that the best way to try to find some more shots in this team because you're not gonna find shots in the players You might find a bit deli I mean, he's the one guy who like you look at his career and he has shown the ability that his The way he plays as reflected by his stats changes dramatically role to role. Um, so if you were to say, hey guess what?
You're the striker now. I have confidence he would find two more shots again Like I think that that's the kind of thing that I that's the kind of thing that his flexible skill set does like this Here, you know all of a sudden he's playing sort of more of a shuttle or midfielder slash I don't know man about town and his the tackling interception numbers just went up like So like he's the guy that I would look to and be like yeah You should change how you play you should be more focused on being center forwardy And I would think that he has it in him to change his game to reflect that Yeah, I think that's fair I think the question is like how much are you losing if you don't have deli in midfield? Yeah, that's a fair question I mean like to some degree what you're saying is okay Is the best way to go about this to put Lucas up top and keep deli doing what he's doing or is it to move Deli up top and have Eric LaMella be more midfieldery And which way is better for the team? I don't know either way.
Yeah, obviously it's a significant like drop But I think those are two ways that you could feel than 11 that is certainly a competitive 11 for the stretch of time Yeah, yeah, and I think that we very well may see Spurs take a pretty defensive approach to the lead cup They've got a they've got a 1-0 lead yeah, and We're not really gonna talk about Chelsea this week But Chelsea are having their own sort of like technical stylistic struggles is too strong word But they're not they have not progressed the way you might have hoped so it might be reasonable to be like okay come break us down Yeah, yeah, and if you've got enough players who like kicking and you've got you can and they still like pretty easily so All right, so move on to The tale of a couple of missing fullbacks. Yeah, I think we shall Seems that are really just as deep in the thick of it as time. I'm suffering just as much in their injury crisis So Liverpool loan down within the client who had barely played for them for the last year And like days later it comes out that the TAs are So Doesn't matter like are we worried about this? So the thing that's really really maddening about Liverpool is that they did this really smart thing where they signed a couple of players Who can play at like five different positions?
So like it's really it's incredibly valued who got someone who is a solid to his solid to good at one position And then could just go play three others and both of you know and James Miller are that guy and one of their three others is right full back So I want to point out that like we assume Milner can play right full back like and I'm confident that he can but like he Hasn't really other than like one game or the chunk of one game Liverpool this year Like given that he's played everything from left back versus in to midfield for a season to striker for a while for city When they needed him to win an emergency, I think like we feel confident he can but We haven't quite seen it. If you've been on the other hand absolutely play right back right back before shifting to midfield Monaco before Liverpool acquired him played right back for Brazil Where's the two? Yeah, does that play center back last weekend thanks to the sort of the ness of the back line It's a little bit interesting because what it is doing is taking away from Liverpool's overall depth to solve a right back problem Mm-hmm because the actual right backs now for the players that would play at right back Our kids with no experience and so I think Clearly the players that would be preferred are being you know our Milner would have been Joe Gomez if he was not also hurts And what that does is it does like remove your flexibility to some degree in midfield Doesn't matter. I don't know Like Liverpool's So two things here is one You know if Liverpool had more other injuries right now This could be a problem because they would be getting pretty thin in midfield if they were having to deputize a midfielder at right back every match And and also had a midfielder as a backup center back like that could be a problem except that all of their midfielders are playing right now Like Henderson could get hurt that happens a lot But if he did like that that's that you're looking at like multiple There's multiple further dominoes that have to fall for this to be a problem and their schedule as we discussed talking about the The title race Liverpool's schedule is tough leader This month is when they should be able to push to like these are not the easiest games in the world You know West Ham just just beat Arsenal and Leicester City aren't bad and Crystal Palace if they ever bought a striker Why don't they buy a striker by the way?
Are they like these are not like completely on? Like these are games that they should be fine But like the marginal effect of not having the full deck that they want and having to stretch their midfielders just a little bit It's very hard to see that having a fact in the next like month of games that they've got I mean it may be an issue against Bayern But like they can just play you have they can come back from the from from international break and just like play good players against Bayern like so I mean I think Gomez is supposed to be back by that Yeah, and don't as a sort of your primary back up it right back even though he's not you know He's more center, you know He's more of this sort of like hybrid center back right back than the like hybrid right back right winger as we as we as we've moved into a like full blending of back threes and back fours by a lot of teams this sort of hybrid center back full back is back in vogue because You can have them do the whole like possession full back thing And not that get up and down the wing thing and that that I think is you know where Gomez's career is headed But like yeah, I mean as soon as he's back Liverpool are sort of fine and it it You know it speaks to how well Liverpool managed their depth this this summer I mean again, they just you know kid hasn't hit full flight yet, but he's been absolutely fine as a midfielder And there are two other purchases are for being you and Shakiri who are both really good for this team like they are on a run of Extremely effective purchases in the transfer market Like to the degree that you don't even expect great like if you were to say that the transfer department is great And firing on all cylinders and knows exactly what it needs You would not you would still not expect this level of success and what that brings is it brings not only success at the top But it it filters down to your depth right like every time you go and get a van dyke and he works out perfectly Then like all the other centerbacks get bumped down around and so you have like Dromatip who's playing behind for beanie. Oh, it's better back at this point And so like if you have to move a beanie would play right back and you could play mind it even with love and being hurt and Gomez being out like That's a tremendous amount of depth Yeah, they hit on each of their key signings that they need for depth this summer like that's you go you go with three for three You're doing pretty well. Yeah What do we think about kid?
I still have some sort of opinion. He's gonna be fine Yeah, like he's definitely like he has come in and out of injury like my one question the question I have with him is is he failing to get past people because his legs aren't working quite right? Because he's just not dribbling people. Yeah, and that's what he did all the time in the Bundesliga It's not like there's a room for that and clap system.
He's just not and I'm a little bit confused by it There's lots of different possible explanations for a player being a little bit of slop player adjusting but like his game was like The he's like you know his skill and his athleticism were key to that game and if he's lost a little bit of the athleticism He might not be the like dominant player that we saw in the Bundesliga On the other hand, he might just like take a summer off and come back and have it the other thing I'd say is I think that he is more suited to the four three three than the four two three one And they sort of how they chosen to use him in that four two three one has been a little bit weird and interesting He's oftentimes actually played on the left side of the attacking band Not as part and I don't think he's really played at all as part of the two with the base Which is what he did at Lipstick, right? And and so I don't know I mean I think it makes sense that they've made this tactical adjustment, right? Especially because Shaqiri has become such a such a like contributor on this team, but it does seem to me that that They have sacrificed the positive some of the possibility of really having Kada fit seamlessly into a system where like at the moment They're shoehorning him in a little bit and that's fine It works he becomes more of like a good added center You know center midfielder depth piece that they can use for stuff and start sometimes and that's a little disappointing for the price That's all he ever becomes but like I don't think that there's no pressure to get more than that out of him out Give him half a team spot, right? And this is one of the reasons it's a good idea to sign stars because when they don't work out you've got a good rotation player Yeah, it's a fair point.
It is a very fair point Spending market value on a rotation player you mean, you know if a beanie doesn't work out as well like that That's a lot of money. It didn't come through it did so Their purchase all hit but like you know getting Kada who had a much more impressive profile and higher upside for a pretty Extremely reasonable fee You know you pay like something in between Squad player and and star money and you get a squad player this season There's still every chance he's better than that next season, right? I mean, this is it's a little bit like the ariclamela signing years ago for spurs were like they thought maybe they were getting a star and They ginked but he turned into an incredibly effective Squad player like very useful does a lot of things well not necessarily things they thought they were getting when they bought him But like you shouldn't discount that that's a thing that happens All right, so the next full-back situation Manchester City who like this is that a new injury, but the reason that it caught my eye This is Benjamin Mendy a left back is that in the wake of Mendy's injury as they've sort of been like figuring out how to do this Goryola has not started four different left backs in the course of four games He went from Delph to Zanchenko to the port against Liverpool to then Danila Which is like we're remarkable in a number of ways including how different all those players are from each other And how they were all sort of doing the same Liverpool role so like I don't really know What the same Manchester City left back role as I don't really know what to make of that Yeah, they He basically is just sort of like seems to just point at people and be like you're a midfielder now, but you play full-back Like I'm neither of those things. I don't care.
Yes Yeah, I mean of the lot. I think a little pork is the best at it, but he's also like you're center back I Think it's a bad idea place to check it out I just do and it cost them when they started him there The thing where you just want to stick a random attacking player at midfielder It's just you'd like it's managers of great teams fall into this trap, and it's like you have to be so superior in talent To make it work and like even city are not that superior in talent as far as I'm concerned like I don't know and then Delph has been in and out of the lineup with like injuries and stuff and Maybe they just wouldn't play Danilo if they hadn't decided that Kyle Walker needed a month off for some reason But Walker just like nobody said it was hurt It was like he was rotated one game and Danilo started nobody said I think it's drug whatever and like the next two games he also just didn't start with no explanation and Nobody really said boo and now he's back and whatever, but it was like he was on the bench He wasn't dropped for it. It's like he couldn't play, but he got like three games off in a row it was odd Yeah, I mean maybe he just needed a breather and I have absolutely no idea But I will say when you have like both the stature and reputation of Guardiola It gives you space to do these things without anybody sort of like clamoring for answers, but it was weird Yeah, so like I think one of the key things here is that because they have reasonable centerback depth because like they've been able to continue to squeeze games out of company They've brought stones back in out amenities around that they can move the port out there as they need and because they I wouldn't say that they have midfield depth But because for an endenio is now not injured and thus will play every single game until that changes They can use maybe and delve over there and like that's not I would say that I would say they have midfield that Especially now that the brain is back and kick back the lineup. Yeah, and you've still got going to get there like The problem right is that they're all just not as good as for an endenio when somebody needs to like play one for an Indian can't but like it's not an issue of not having players to play in midfield right like so Yes, they also seem fine at this point I mean like these are these are problems that the team has dealt with in very different ways kind of interesting like Liverpool have some very specific players that provide them with depth at multiple positions and Manchester City Just every player provides them with that multiple positions because they feel like Yeah, it's true Yeah, it is a little bit weird where like Gwardiola leaves leaves himself having to figure out solutions and the Liverpool squad has constructed a lot more I don't know carefully is the right word Traditionally, maybe we're like you have like players who's like part of the purpose of why you bring them in is their ability to play multiple positions I think that I'm arguing for here, right?
We're like Gwardiola will be like I will teach somebody to play a new position to provide Be covered so like I just want good players It feels like if you made a spreadsheet before the season for Liverpool You would be able to say here's who the cover of these positions is for like four to five players deep exactly and using multiple players at Different positions like but spread them out in ways that fit with their past usage with their skills It would all sort of like be doable You would not have before he started doing it They'll tell me that like Zinchenko is gonna be part of the full-back solution like yeah Well, I mean he played that a little bit last year, but like that would have been that would have been the argument last season for sure, right? Right, right. He played that last year and he's still not like a loser And then the port moving over there was also not something that was like obviously going to make sense And like the thing about Delph is that we all forget this now because Delph played there and was great for an entire season at left back Is that Gwardiola's first season he had crappy left back so it was like Gail Kleshi was getting minutes like it was a bad situation and Delph didn't play a minute at left back. It was it was It was Colerov and Kleshi and Delph didn't crack the rotation in any capacity Even though like I think people thought that the the Guadilla might because he sort of does the whole midfield full-back like shifts And then the next year Mandy gets hurt and now all of a sudden you go to death and so it is Watching Guadilla like create solutions is both fascinating and frustrating in a way where you're like you could do this more normally Like without it being a problem But again, they're fine and they're scheduled also, you know, even if this were a huge problem their schedule is also quite manageable here Huddersfield Newcastle They've got they've got home actually on Arsenal and Chelsea coming up those are those are those are beginning of February I'm not sure how long there's gonna be any should out forever, right?
They just you don't count on having many fry those right? I just think the question is like are they gonna settle on one option or they're gonna keep cycling through players And like in terms of like schedule strength like the thing the city is they just they can't afford Hey cups if they're gonna catch Liverpool, so I don't know like I am like so like If I felt like there was a real rhyme or reason that I could identify from which left-back he was choosing I would be like Oh, okay, but given that like I like Four and four matches without for me having like a firm grasp on how he is making that decision is What overwhelming for me and it's very hard for me to be like, oh, yeah, that's how you should approach the situation Yeah, I don't know what that part of the only is thinking. Um, it mostly works. Yes All right, should we should we jump to weigh the other end of the table?
Yeah, so hunters field town they that they released a statement that they were that they and David Wagner David Wagner we were discussing before and like I got Nothing um had had chosen to a part company about mutual consent that the club did not want to sack Wagner But that he was going to but that he requested to he said he was burned out I don't know what if any of all of this is like truth fact But the situation basically is that hunters field are in a utterly disastrous position the table Hudders field are not particularly close to having a talent level that would project that they could bounce back from being like, you know A solid handful of points out of safety and so Wagner's not going to be there when they get relegated basically the story Yeah, and There's a lot of credit given to him for getting Hudders field up and keeping them up for a year And that's a tremendous achievement for this team especially like I want to say the promotion even more than surviving But like they survived on a pretty shoestring budget last year. I spent a whole bunch of money. It's been a poorly this this Certainly that this this before this season, but I just Like the year they got promoted they had a negative two gold difference You know, they scored 56 goals and they conceded 58 and that's like not I mean To put to find a point on it like that's not good, right? like that's not good over the course of the season and they finished fifth and they won the promotion and that's that's great and He's gotten a lot of credit for that But I don't know.
I feel like in other situations. We are perfectly happy to look at say Manchester United finishing second while having bad stats and saying oh look Marina didn't do a good job, but David DeHea had a great season and hanging that on DeHea and I like I'm not this is not to say that that Wagner didn't do a great job or doesn't deserve it This is sort of like a chance maybe going forward for a for a I don't know like a like a lesser city job to have last summer or or you know Watford when they go through another one manager one year cycle or whatever, but it's not like super abundantly clear to me that we should like That the fact that he got really good results despite never having an impressive sort of gold difference or underlying numbers situation Is something that we should reflexively credit to him And I think that part of the story with wagner is that the team has in the premier league at least played a very distinctive tactical Style and a distinctive and adaptable tactile style You see you see them doing different things in different in different individual matches And in general they play a style which involves a much higher press than you see from most kind clubs in the relations So this year they're actually as of this last week They're actually breaking up the highest percentage of opposition attacks in midfield in the league They've got a highest pressing rate in the league maybe a little too high one might suggest but they were also up in the top five last season and This is because the way that the team plays is they sort of try to muddy up the game stop attacks with that press They don't create that much out of that press They don't have any creators to create attacks out of that press and they and then after pressing they can drop back and sit deep And so they sort of defend in two points in this way that we saw a bunch of teams in the in the Bundesliga developer last few years Which is like distinctive? The question is whether tactically distinctive and sort of subjectively adaptable That's that's cool. You can write a blog about that But it's ended up with a team that just has bad numbers and it's gonna get relegated So I mean there's a major problem here where like all of the interesting stuff you said there was defensive stuff This team doesn't attack at all and and last year They made a lot of hay because they won like four or five games early in the season Basically and then we're able to scrape enough points that they were sort of always you know It's like a team that runs out to a big lead at the top of the league and then can like you know Clay from a position I'm not having to win games and that gives them an advantage like those early wins let how to spill really play to their very very very Defensive strings, but like at some point Like you gotta try to win games if you're gonna say up like not all the games not all the time You can like try to scrape road draws every chance you get you can try to scrape home draws against good teams But like at some point you gotta like host full of and like go get three points somehow I go get yourself in a position to get three points and there's just like no matches have they done that There's no gear that is anything other than extraordinarily and intermittently effective defensively And I think like you can reasonably argue That that's because of the players right that like they just don't have good enough players to do it any other way and that's fine But I feel like the fact that maybe you can't solve that problem doesn't mean you don't have to try to solve that problem Like that's the thing and the solution to that problem is basically always been Aaron Moy Yeah, and and they've you know, it's just somehow like got this Aaron Moy shape kneel and he's gotta hit it with Aaron Moy hammer Like he plays it He plays him it feel they they they design a bunch of their midfield tactics around moist limitations as a runner and a defender In order to get him near the box making a pass to the striker like that That's what their attack is sometimes they try out pressure in that role But it doesn't seem to work as well, which isn't great for not pressured but like That's the one idea that I see and occasionally there's a full back trying to try to cross to Munier or that other big strikers also bad I see money is not bad like crossing to Munier would be another idea that they could try a bunch a bit more I think Yeah, and he's I mean his numbers are better than his output this year.
Yes a little a little one They're in like they're dead in the water. They're not this bad To be fair like I think that like I'm being a little harsh on their performance this year because while they are clearly 18 That should be probably relegated the fact that they are definitely relegated is Somewhat I think unfair to them, right? I don't think that they've played worse than full of this year, right? Yeah, no, nor do I Really say it's on the bevel I don't know so like if you were Righting would you consider David Beggar?
Like I think that I think in these situations like I don't think that you would I think that winger has done enough and Clearly has enough of sort of a pedigree that you could interview him I don't think that like you are targeting this guy for a job, but there's enough there that I would like I want to talk to him Yeah Well interview managers is really hard is the thing And I am very confident that a major sort of like challenge for swaths is that the ability to come in and do a good interview? And the ability to manage a club are very much not the same thing But you're right like that that puts him in this weird sort of like like to me What what this does is it like says that a prospective employer needs to spend a lot of time trying to figure out like if you're gonna hire him How much of what he did especially the championships? That's the one I'm really interested in that championship season where they were not favored to come up They were not considered one of the most talented teams in that league and they didn't have very impressive statistics Is it something that he was doing is that the kind of thing that if you plopped him on a Premier League team or a Bundesliga team that had Below average talent instead of terrible talent that he could replicate And like after three years, I don't really know the answer I don't like I'm not saying you're saying he couldn't but I'm saying that we don't to me. I really don't know Yeah, I think these are questions that are sort of comparable in size and scope to the sorts of questions that you have to ask about Most of the managers are thinking of hiring if you're writing Yeah, like you're not gonna get someone castle or whatever.
Yeah, right. Everybody has like their their their flaws or their question marks I suppose like hobby is worked out really well for Watford Watford should consider not firing him His record was like, you know, their expected goals were better than their other other numbers But it wasn't it wasn't like yeah, this guy's got it. They also played slower. It's it's and that's just all kind of weird to me.
Yeah Yeah, I'm like Marko Silva still has the same nagging questions that he's had for like three years where at this point You can say okay, this is just like probably a hole in what silver does and he might be worth it anyway, whereas like To me, I think a lot of managers you can say okay. These are the strengths. These are the weaknesses given our squad Does it line up correctly and should we like it are the strengths worth the weaknesses for us With Wagner, I'm not sure How to assess the strengths is what I'm is where I get sort of a little bit hung off I certainly wouldn't like I certainly don't feel like there's anybody out there who should go fire their manager in order to hire him At least at a premier league level But you know this summer when they're openings if he is unburnt out or if perhaps the prospect of better players makes him less burnt out He certainly should get a look Yeah, and like, you know, why would you hire him? I mean he managed it's not like this.
He was full of defensive talent either That's that that is actually a really fair point. Um, I don't know why they built this midfield this way Yeah, you know that that is actually a really, you know Yeah They part of the problem here though is that they kind of promoted and like These they just didn't spend well to augment this team. They didn't do what Cardiff did where they didn't spend at all Um, but they didn't do what Um, and they didn't do what Fulham did where they spent a lot and it really didn't work And they didn't do it right and they spent well and they didn't use any of the players Really like breaking new ground right there I don't know man. Like maybe it's it's hard to spend well when you come up from the championship Like this is perhaps something we should consider Um, because this is like four different ways that we just described that we were like snarky about and like It's hard to guard with examples of teams that did it I mean wolves but like wolves don't count right like wolves are wolves are you know The exception that proves the rule doesn't really mean this but it's come to mean this specific thing Which is that wolves are an exception for the precise reason that wolves are really unlike other team coming up from the championship Because they're incredibly corrupt Right, like unusually for the championship for football And I'll use it on a totally new way that gives them a real advantage over other clubs at this level Yes, um All right, that's good.
There's a lot from really there's a lot from really hodgepodge, but I think it was good Um You get some non soccer stuff? Uh, I'll see here. I don't have a lot of non soccer stuff I can I can I can A little bit of shut down theater if we want Government shutdown has been my life because my wife works as a federal government so um She is pottering around the house these days Um, thankfully we did not decide to watch Marie koto and the netflix show So she is not like spending her hours trying to get me to throw things out. They don't give me joy Um But she's I don't know like this is it's I work from home.
So we're just like both around um which is it is I guess you know what let me go into two minutes on what government shutdown is for people who are not american because this is a very weird concept um The basics of how it works Is that the government the legislature congress authorizes spending Um authorizes the budget they agree on they pass a law that says this is what the budget is going to be um Then that law gets signed and and that is the budget Sometimes they cannot come to an agreement on a budget frequently actually I would end up having is you get something called continuing resolution Which is that instead of trying to reassess what they should be spending on they pass the law saying We will just continue to spend at the levels that we have been spending it and we're not going to try to do anything And those could be for variable amounts of time Sometimes they are short in order to like give the government like runway to finish negotiating a new budget Sometimes there's like an imp and like a legitimate impasse and so they just pass long continuing resolutions to like take the issue off the table uh what has happened currently is that uh Despite seeming like everybody agreeing to the continuing resolution The president at the last minute decided he would not sign that bill So now we do not have a continuing resolution and given that he will not sign it now his party in the legislature will not vote on it um It's slightly more complicated than that because there were One congress left and the new congress started in the middle of this But that that is the long and short of it which means that for three weeks now um What happens is many of them gets sent home to not work Some of whom some of them are considered Too integral to the running of the country to allow to stay home So they work without getting paid Workers like this are frequently people like tsa agents who do security and airports um Law enforcement type people lots of people throughout the government get get exempted and have to go to work without getting paid um When the government reopens the workers will tend to get paid their back pay although contractors do not But this is this is this is what happens sort of when the wheels of government grind to a halt Uh, and that is where we are and as my wife's today. I am running out of projects to do a romance Yeah, that seems like I think there's there's there's a big problem whereby you know There are tons of important government functions that people don't think about that then don't get done and and like massively You know screw up the working of like the economy and people not getting paid screws up everybody's lives The real issue here I think is that like your wife needs a hobby I mean, it's not not an issue Um to be fair she was doing like a very cool family history project for a while Where like she was scanning old family pictures and and like old news clippings about like generations ago to like preserve them digitally So she finished it. I'm like classic mistake with hobby like beginner stuff I've always been I'm very good at hobbying. I mean, you know Many of the things that turned into like is this a job started out as a hobby and my wife never hobbies and like she said doctor So she's kind of busy and stuff.
Um and So I never started like how we get to find them for you Work out and she went and bought a piano. Um and this was because that's a pretty big jump Yeah, so it was not for her. It was for the kid The idea was that he would learn to play piano like we were trying to figure out like it's not like a real piano It's a it's a small digital. It's like nicer than like a keyboard It like it looks nice as part of your house, but it's much much smaller than a real piano.
It's all digital and stuff Which means it's got a volume uh not which is very useful. Um, but it turns out. I had no idea She had played piano for years when I got into high school and she's like kind of good at it And so now her hobby is playing piano. She's a fantastic hobby So I'm sitting there like working and she's playing you know, she's been working on if you're at least it's lovely piece of music So I recommend having having your partner start playing piano as a hobby and being good at it Really works out.
I would like to raise one potential problem with hobbying during the shutdown Which is that hobbying costs money of some variety almost always And the government shutdown means that we Which is like open-ended It's really bad. Yes I do I do want to like give one like sort of like example of like concretely how this sort of like flows out So our daughter's in daycare. Um, there's a daycare that is housed within the government building where or next to where my life works And this building is open during the shutdown and therefore the daycare is open because it's it's not a service provided by the government We pay for it everybody goes there pays for it. Um, but it is like sort of like primarily directed at You know, the people who work in the agency all the agencies happen.
They all run that way Um, that all of them are open to some of the buildings in which they are housed are in fact just totally closed for the duration of shutdown. Um, but uh, one of the things that happens here is that like None of the people with their kids enrolled there are getting paid. We're lucky. I don't work for the government as well So like my income still exists lots of these families both parents government works Um, and so one thing that happens is like they're not monsters at aka you get an email saying like look if you can't afford to pay Your for daycare freaking expensive during the shutdown.
We will work on payment plans with you We are committed to making sure this is not disruptive for your children that you don't lose your spots always great But what happens like eventually if it goes on long enough the daycare either can't operate or can't pay It's worked and like these are now people who are not they are not government employees They are at best contractors, but they're not even like and and and now like it doesn't take very long until all of a sudden Gotta make up decisions about whether they get paid and it spirals out from there very quickly in all sorts of walks of life so It's good times. It's nearly a million people who are employed and then a huge number of other people who depend on that employment in some fashion It's either from like goods and services the way i'm talking about or like, you know, you gotta call up your mortgage provider and be like look We need to you know work on payments for the next month because there's just no money coming And if you thought about doing odd jobs around the house like asking if someone needs to need needs like a fence painted As you said right There were there were in northern Virginia several um substitute teacher sort of like sign up events for federal workers They just got totally sold out Sure, there will be tons of new stories in the in the immediate future about um, you know, government workers doing uber for to make ends meet during interim You know or or what have you um The other thing I will say just sort of like more specifically to our experience is that lots of my life's go workers work overseas And there you really can't go out and work on the local economy But it's not like they ship you home even if you're furloughed you just sort of stay there and don't get paid Yeah, just with you know with no money in a foreign country. It's a really really good times Everybody the good thing is that we know that it's being done for a good reason by people who believe in what they're accomplishing I thought I thought I bent over backwards to keep my sort of like explanation of the facts on the ground pretty apolitical Um Which I would also point out that like many federal workers have to buy like Definition do if they're gonna if they're gonna talk at all about it publicly like it is incumbent upon them both for like Not being an idiot professionally because you have to serve under you know administrations of authorities But also in some in some jobs by like it is part of the agreement of your employment That you just cannot talk publicly politically So yeah, so you're just you're you're you're a pawn of politics. You cannot respond to politics It's uh, I mean like that's why part of it makes sense as a system like it's about having a skilled and professional Uh, you know public service.
It's just civil service. It's just that like that's why you shouldn't screw those people over for no reason Right and it's but it's also why like traditionally and this is like, you know Internationally from all stripes of politicians their civil services are an easy target Specifically because of the fact that they can't or won't or sure believe that they should not be public be political entities So A little bit of shutdown theater. That's that that is what I am dealing with that is not soccer for the for the uh foreseeable future Yep, and on that note Uh, we are doing for $10 subscribers on our patreon side, uh previews of international games So you should also now that be some exciting you should definitely subscribe patreon.com and there are really interesting games in the In the Bundesliga and sir, yeah, this again, which we might get a chance to talk to talk about both on the description side and on the uh $10 description side, which are both sides now like a three-sided thing. I guess so Whatever cone.
I don't know. Yes. Yes, the double pivot cone the double pivot cone of giving us money Uh, we should definitely just keep recording. All right.
All right, and on that note folks We will see you later this week on the subscription side. Thanks so much as always. You actually did your recording guys. Thank you