You're listening to the Footglitch Podcast.
Love football, learn English.
How on earth did Arsenal manage to get a point against Manchester City
despite being down to 10 men for the majority of the game?
Was Strasart's red card a good refereeing decision?
What sort of shithousey was Erling Haaland involved in at the very end of the game?
And what is the meaning of the phrase to have the upper hand?
Hello and welcome to the Footglitch Podcast where we combine football and learning English.
I'm Zdenek, your host for today and I'm not alone as you can see if you are watching me on YouTube.
If you are listening to me on the podcast you probably can't see him.
It's a he and it's someone that has been here before.
Karl, welcome back to the podcast.
Zdenek, great to be back.
Hopefully better circumstances next time but definitely positive circumstances anyway.
Yeah, it's fantastic to have you back to talk about Arsenal.
We can see if you are watching this on YouTube that your team is indeed Arsenal.
And my listeners know that it is exactly the same with me.
But Karl, you know what? Let's go through the results quickly.
I'm just going to say the results and maybe you can think about which of these results was the most surprising one for you.
Sure.
Starting with Saturday, West Ham, nil, Chelsea 3, Arsenal 3, Wolves 1, Fulham 3, Newcastle 1, Leicester 1, Everton 1, Liverpool 3, Bournemouth nil, Southampton 1, Ipswich 1,
Spurs 3, Brentford 1, Crystal Palace nil, Manchester United nil, and then Sunday, Brighton 2, Nottingham Forest 2, and then finally Man City 2, Arsenal 2.
So what do you think?
Yeah, it was my god, super eventful game week.
And I don't know for any of your viewers and listeners who are also involved in the fantasy football side of things, it was certainly an up and down week.
You either had everybody or you had nobody scoring.
There was a lot of people that missed on certain players and others that kind of got lucky with their selections or as they like to put it, a master stroke with their selections.
I suppose in terms of the actual results themselves, United at Crystal Palace kind of did surprise me a bit.
I thought United might have gotten a better result out of that.
They've got a goal. They certainly looked a lot more likely to score a goal, especially in the opening exchanges.
Apart from that, I think maybe Fulham surprised me a bit that they put three past Newcastle.
I know Newcastle have been struggling lately, but certainly didn't see them putting three past the Newcastle defense, especially how well Nick Pope has been doing in goal.
And yeah, the big one, I suppose, will come on to it in a bit, Sunday night's one.
But outside of that, I think every other fixture kind of went according to the script of what was expected.
Chelsea had another clean sheet, which was...
Chelsea are unstoppable.
Yeah, at the moment I saw a stat thrown up there recently that Nicholas Jackson has scored the same amount of goals as Mo Salah in like the last, I think it's a year or calendar year possibly.
It's not like the last season and a half or so, but they threw it up anyway.
It must have been a Chelsea supporters club site.
Of course. Anyway, this is the Arsenal supporters club.
It really isn't, but let's talk about the Arsenal game, because I think that's the main reason we are here.
So let me start by asking you this question.
If someone before the game offered you a 2-2 draw, would you have taken it?
100%, 1000%.
I think most Arsenal fans would have taken your arm off you if you'd offered them that.
Especially missing Odegaard, our key creative player.
Our captain.
Our captain, exactly.
Just the fact that we could have scored two goals at the Etihad without him would have, I think, surprised a lot of people.
So yeah, definitely would have taken the one-point draw beforehand.
Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with you.
But, well, I thought we started quite slowly.
Perhaps it was due to the fact that we have fewer days to recover after the Champions League game.
I think City had one more game.
And on top of that, they played at home.
We played away from home.
So that wasn't exactly ideal circumstances.
So I thought that kind of reflected the start of the game.
Would you agree?
Definitely.
And I think that as well as that, it's a new back-forward.
Those defenders across our back line hadn't played as a unit in that way before.
Timber on the right and Calafiore on the left.
And Calafiore, although he made up for it with his spectacular goal, you could see that there was the kind of willingness to get stuck in and try and get close to his man.
But unfortunately, if there was somebody to put blame on for the first one, you kind of would have said he was the one that might have started the tumbling of the rocks, I suppose, in terms of the defensive mistakes.
But they performed so well across the whole game.
It's hard to fault them.
But definitely you saw it.
It was a surprise for me as well.
I wasn't sure. I don't know how I missed it that Ben White had picked something up during the days preceding the Atalanta game.
But I was surprised to see him out.
But also not as kind of worried, I suppose, given the business that we've done getting Calafiore in and having Timbers back up.
To be honest, Calafiore is a really, really good player.
I wouldn't have even minded if you just replaced Ben White.
I like Ben White, but Calafiore seems to be an upgrade.
At least that's how I feel about this.
But we have to say that Manchester City started off in an unsurprising fashion.
They scored the first goal.
It was an excellent Savino's pass and Haaland just found his pocket.
Whenever he's alone on keeper, it's like one 1000% chance that he scores a goal.
It's like, can anyone stop this guy?
Yeah. And like you think about other goal scorers down through the years, you know, like your mind immediately goes to Ronaldo or even in the Premier League.
You think Henry or Aguero, like those kind of quintessential goal scorers down through the years.
Haaland doesn't really have like a kind of beautiful style of scoring, really.
He just kind of he has whatever way he needs to get it into the back of the net.
But at the same time, it seems to be the most effective way or the best sort of decision or the best solution to that situation.
If I'm thinking of how to score a goal from that angle, when I'm considering the distance between the keeper and the striker and the angle and the options and whether the player is right footed, left footed, it seems like Haaland always picks the best solution.
I don't know how he does it.
If it's the fact that he practices yoga and he's always so calm or I don't know.
Well, I kind of I suppose because he scored so many goals, he's been in so many situations before in front of goal that he's kind of gained that experience already at such a young age that like he just knows like angles and like keeper timing and all that.
So it's just it's crazy. But one thing that struck me was the first time in a long time, really, that especially with Arsenal's defense, that you'd seen Haaland or a Haaland-esque striker kind of running at full speed through our defense in that sort of way.
You're so used to, especially with City in the way they play, kind of a brilliant pass from the likes of the Bernardo Silva or Gundogan or De Bruyne who was missing. But, you know, he was just in full flight.
The Savino pass was really good and got straight in, stuck it away.
Exactly. And it was Haaland's 100th goal as well in the Premier League, as far as I understand it.
Yes. In the Premier League or was it across all competitions for City? I'm not sure.
So it was his 100th goal for Manchester City in 105 matches, which I saw equaled Ronaldo's record for most or for like the quickest 200 goals for a single club.
So it's almost one goal per game, basically.
Yeah. It's just so alarming. It's crazy. It's insane. It's absolutely insane.
And for some reason, though, we equalized pretty quickly as well. And something interesting happened there.
One of our players was fouled and we took the free kick very quickly and it surprised Kyle Walker and Martinelli ran with the ball on the left flank and then Kyle Walker wasn't ready for that.
And then Martinelli set up, of all people, this new signing, Califiori, the ex-Bologna player, the Italian. And what a finish by him, right?
Yeah. I mean, it's funny. It kind of reminded me of Saliba's goal against Crystal Palace when it just came to him on the edge of the box.
And very similarly, Saliba just struck it with the left foot and it curled from like the center of the goal out towards the post and just nestled in the corner really nicely.
But yeah, it was one of those ones where I was unsure whether when they got the first goal, you kind of thought, oh no, this is going to be a really long day at the office for us.
But obviously with football, ebbs and flows, momentum changes, and we kind of had the upper hand just for enough time to get that free kick.
And yeah, as I said, Kyle Walker wasn't in position because I think the referee wanted to kind of clarify with Saka and Walker. I mean, like, lads, this is getting out of hand a little bit.
Tell your players, calm it down. We don't want to be giving out yellow cards willy nilly, I suppose.
Which then Kyle Walker, when he was...the thing is, when people complained, and I've heard so many City fans complain, well, he wasn't allowed to get back into position.
There's a clear amount of time between when Michael Oliver dismisses them and then he kind of Walker just kind of walks back on his job.
His name is Walker. Maybe he didn't get back into position.
Exactly.
I think he was just distracted. It was his mistake, obviously. In the modern football, you can take free kicks fast as long as the referee allows it.
Some referees don't like it, right? This fast restart of play. Some referees demand a whistle to be blown first, but then other referees just prefer this fast flowing restart of the game.
And that's exactly what happened. And a brilliant finish by Cali Fury. It will be one of the highlights of the season, for sure.
Also his first goal for Arsenal, if I'm not mistaken. Honestly, I think he's in our hearts already.
Oh, definitely. And you can see with every touch of the ball or every minute that he plays now, he's just kind of growing in confidence.
Not that he needs it because he's clearly a very confident player anyway. Just on the ball.
And it's one thing that I got a call from my brother, literally as Cali Fury scored. So I think my stream that I was watching the match on was a little bit behind his.
He calls me and he's going, Oh my God, I can't believe he's just done that.
And then he started telling me all about how, you know, Sinchenko wouldn't have done that.
Spoiler alert.
I was like, Oh, that's what you're talking about. Yeah, that has happened to me before.
Yeah, it's it's it always ruins my experience of watching football, to be honest.
But at the same time, if it's a if it's a positive message or positive call, then you will take it. Absolutely. Absolutely.
And there was more to come for Arsenal. Nobody saw that coming. And another quite amusing situation, in my opinion, it was twice in in a short period of time that we had a corner.
And each time that was Gabriel was kind of waiting in the middle of the six 18 yard box. And in the first case, he missed the header in the in the second case, though he didn't.
He slotted his home. Yeah. Carbon copy, though, like literally exactly the same move and City just couldn't pick him up.
And it's funny that, like, those were the only two corners that we had throughout the entire game. Oh, really? I didn't. Yeah.
We like we could have literally scored from both corners like he was so close.
It just shows you that this is it's almost like a fear now that the that the the opposition teams have for the set pieces.
And clearly, Joe Ver the set piece coaches is working his magic again.
It was our signature. It was we could say it was a signature goal by Arsenal. And there was another funny moment which we should point out as was as Gabriel was waiting in the middle of the 18 yard box.
It was Kyle Walker again, this player who was supposed to be marking him. And he tried he was trying to do some shithouse area. He was trying to poke him with his finger. I don't know if you saw that, but he did like 15 times at least like trying to poke him.
It was nothing to like the referee like couldn't, you know, give a penalty for that or anything like that. It was just one of those things, you know, sometimes in in the box, what players do is that they pinch each other or I don't know, just any sort of way of gaining the upper hand.
He was distracting your opponent, but he didn't seem to face Gabriel at all. And then the goal he scored it, it made, in my opinion, because of what Kyle Walker was trying to do, it made him look even more stupid after that goal.
Definitely, definitely. It was kind of like the way that I kind of saw it was almost like an ant prodding at a rhino in full flight. Because when when Gabriel starts running and he's like a bulldozer, he just he can't be stopped in the box.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. But then something unusual. Was it really unusual for for Arsenal to receive a red card, something unexpected. That's the word I was looking for something unexpected happened.
And Trossard, who was already on a yellow card, bumped into was it Silva or think it was Bernardo Silva. Yeah, yeah, I think so. He bumped into it was it was quite reckless from my point of view.
Honestly, it was quite a bad tackle. But the referee, who was none other than Mark Oliver, who prides himself on not trying to send people off if he doesn't necessarily have to.
I think he did something last season, where he was on record saying that he did not send Kovachikov because he wanted to he wanted to he didn't want to ruin the game.
Yes, but he does exactly that in the Arsenal City game to Arsenal, who have been on the receiving end with similar decisions before. And what so what happened is that, first of all, there was a reaction from from Trossard first, he was really unhappy with the decision.
In my opinion, it was an obvious fault. I don't even know why he was trying to react like that. And I thought he received the red card for that. But it wasn't that was it.
Well, he the thing was that and I think it's what the theory that everybody was working off of in the moment, especially the commentary, you know, Peter Drury and Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher were referencing, you know, kicking the ball away. And that was why he was sent off. But it's the PGMOL and, you know, the referees representation kind of
almost went back on themselves because Michael Oliver gave out the red cards. And initially, everyone thought it was for the kick kicking the ball away. But then the PGMOL come out and say, oh, no, no, that was for the foul, which to your point, again, going it didn't look like it to me.
No, to me, he definitely barges into a minute and it's it's without any sort of control. But it's not it's not a to me a bookable offense in that situation.
I can see why a referee could give a yellow for that. And even if it's a second yellow, I think it's insensitive yet again, like in the case of Rice, which happened. Was it the game before or two games before?
So it's yeah, well, I mean, it's happened to us. It's twice in the last five games that we've played.
Right. Right. Right. But it was so insensitive and the big so I could even accept it. Right. I could even accept it because you can justify this kind of yellow. In my opinion, there was a foul, which was very reckless.
It was there was a reaction from Trossard. He should have just shut up. And if he had really kicked the ball away, then we know that they have changed the rules now and then you should be receiving yellows for that.
But the problem I have with this is the inconsistency, what basically Miguel Arteta keeps pointing to the inconsistency of decisions.
Yes, absolutely. Dockwood Dockwood did exactly the same in this game. He also kicked the ball away and he didn't didn't get booked for that.
So yeah, I did. To be honest, my feed on YouTube on all social media has just been reaction to the match since it's since it's all sorts of different things.
But certainly things that I've seen and listened to and read, they were indicating that, you know, Docu was actually he looks at the referee before he kicks it.
And then after kicking it points back to where the free kick was supposed to be taken from.
And as you like to your point about inconsistencies, Michael Oliver made such a point as to go back to the back to the position where the original foul taking place.
And yet for the goal that we scored, he had no issue with us being 10 yards forward from where the foul had taken place initially.
So like it is very much to your point about the inconsistencies. Joe Pedro didn't get booked in the Brighton game.
And then Declan Rice gets booked for kicking a ball that was still in motion, that hadn't yet stopped.
And Veltman then almost breaks his leg by clattering into him with the with his attempted free kick.
And then, yes, Docu kicking the ball away and then Trossard also kicking the ball away.
So for me, I have no problem with him getting sent off for those sort of things. I have no problem with Declan Rice getting sent off so long as it happens throughout.
Yeah, exactly. And the problem is like this. The game is kind of gone.
Like after that moment with City, the way they play, how good they are.
Nobody expected us to get anything from that game at that point.
And we were one, we were two one up, which was, I mean, we were like, how do we hold on to that now, to that lead?
Basically half time, right? Half time talk. We both, you and I weren't there.
But what could Arteta possibly said to his boys? Just park the bus, guys, and see what happens, right? Something like that.
Yeah, literally. And like you listen to the post-match analysis from the likes of Roy Keane and those guys and they were saying, like, why did they not have an outlet?
Like they were playing six at the back at times with three in front and then nobody up front.
I'm kind of thinking to myself, like, how could they possibly just like leave Martinelli up on the halfway line and then just soak up more pressure with less people?
It was like, like, you're a man down.
It was the only thing we could do, in my opinion. It's painful. It's sad.
It was painful to watch because it was like a siege, right? I don't know. It reminded me of, I don't know if you know the sport ice hockey.
It was like when there is a power play in ice hockey, basically the whole time the team with five skaters on the ice is in the final third.
Always.
Right. And they would pass the ball and waiting for the goal to be scored.
And that's that was exactly how it felt. We didn't have, we had like 10 percent.
Our possession was only 10 percent. City attempted 26 shots.
I heard somewhere, including the blocked shots, we only had one shot.
It was it was it wasn't the same kind of sport anymore. And you were just waiting for a goal to be conceded from our point of view.
Right. And it wasn't it wasn't coming for a long, long time.
So I don't know how about you, but I really started hoping we could get something out of it.
And when it came to like 80th, 90th minute, I started believing that we could really win that game.
Yeah, definitely. I like the as you say, like the minutes kept ticking on.
And I was actually I was I was listening along with I was watching along with a friend of mine.
We were on the phone together at the same time while watching us.
He was in England. But the two of us were saying, oh, my God, it's only like 56 minutes.
Oh, my God, it's only the 66th minute. And then it kind of changed.
Oh, wow. It's the 76th minute. It's the 86th minute.
And OK, this is all of a sudden. But, you know, one, it just shows you that one lapse in concentration from a corner kick at the very last.
And I know people will complain and a lot of our own fans have complained about it being the 98th of the 99th minute.
And that was it was called. But certainly if the if the roles were reversed and, you know, the opposition team had been wasting time,
we would not be objecting to add it on times on top of the the original added on time. You know?
Yeah, I mean, they looked clueless city. They only they only their shots were like from long distance.
Usually, like they didn't they were not able to create much. You're just passing the ball along all the time.
Honestly, I couldn't see a goal coming and it came in the end from an unusual source.
Was it John Stone? John Stones? Yeah. So like, well, it was if the ball came to Kovacic from Grealish in the corner
and he had a pop and it literally just it was the deflection. So it wasn't even a direct pass like they broke through.
It was literally a fluke deflection that dropped at Stones' face and he managed to take the chance when it came.
But like I said, they just they had no outlet.
And I think as much as we missed Odegaard, they definitely missed Kevin Bruyne in that sort of situation
because he's the man there man to pick out that pass. And when I saw Phil Fulton come on, I thought, oh, no, like,
here's a guy that can unlock the defense if anybody's going to do it, let's face it.
But he just seemed to, you know, stand on the box and sit in it like something is wrong with him.
Well, I don't know about that. I think this like Pep deployed him in a position where he couldn't actually influence it.
He was relying on Gvardial, Akangi and Diaz.
Those three had his three center backs, they should be passing it across back and across our 18 yard box
and then relying on them to pick out the key pass.
If it were me, I would have had Fulton back out where Diaz was, you know, but I mean, it was strange.
She also mentioned that Rodri had got injured as well in that game and that didn't help City.
I think it's it's it will be a huge miss for them.
As Pep Guardiola says himself, he's the best center defensive midfielder, right, holding midfielder in the world.
So that didn't help them. But in the end, they got they got the point.
What do you think? What kind of impact will this have on the season, on Arsenal's confidence, on City's confidence?
Will there be any impact? It seemed significant. It seemed significant, this equalizer.
It does. And, you know, I was having words with my housemate, who's a Manchester United fan, who was equally distraught that Arsenal couldn't beat Manchester rivals.
But he I was saying to him that it's a very stark contrast to, say, two seasons ago where we were the ones, you know, celebrating.
So, you know, outrageously, let's say about last minute winners or last minute equalizers and all the pundits and all of the supporters are saying, wow, guys, you're too emotional.
You're you're you're letting the occasion get to you. But it seemed that, you know, the tables were almost flipped.
That City kind of let the emotions get the best of them yesterday, especially with the reactions of Alan.
But and the fans, your quest. Oh, absolutely. And you can call it hypocrisy of the highest level if you want.
Definitely. But I suppose since your question about what does that do for the rest of the season, I guess it gives us great confidence going back to the Emirates
and for the reverse fixture when it comes along later on in the season.
I think it's too early for them. I guess last yesterday and today will definitely be a day of kind of feeling sorry for themselves.
But I'm sure I won't let that happen for very long. He'll dissect and pick them up and say, look, we have a lot of positives to take from this.
Absolutely. I think there are more positives than negatives like the spirit, the togetherness and the way we defended it was almost heroic.
I would describe it as heroic. Absolutely. This is the table cow.
Yeah. So it's it's quite tight. You know, actually, Man City, 13 points, Liverpool and Aston Villa on 12 points, followed by Arsenal with 11 points, then Chelsea, Newcastle with 10 points.
I think it's very tight at the top of the table and it's very open, still very open.
Definitely, definitely. And like, as we've said before, many times there'll be ebbs and flows in the season.
And I think that, you know, draws are bad for us against the likes of Brighton or West Ham or Fulham or teams where we've kind of fallen down before,
but definitely taking a point off of Manchester City or in this case, maybe two, making sure that they don't get the full three is a really, really good result for us to get in terms of in terms of them,
because that's kind of been where we've fallen down, I suppose, over the last two seasons where we've done so well against our big bigger opponents, you know, the Manchester United, Liverpool and cities of the world.
When we come to the kind of just the tier below that, Villas, Newcastle, Fulham, and we kind of haven't put them away when we should have.
So hopefully, you know, Michael can kind of rally the troops and and get better results in those fixtures.
As long as we don't have too many injuries like that is the only thing I'm worried about.
I still feel like the likes of Man City, even Chelsea, Liverpool, I still feel like they have more depth, more squad depth.
But maybe maybe I'm just imagining this. I don't know. What do you think?
No, I think that, well, certainly across Liverpool's front line, they've a lot of depth for Chelsea.
I don't know if you can call that depth or whether you can call that a chasm of what they have.
They have more than that. Hundreds of players is what they have.
Have you seen that meme? Have you seen that meme that is doing rounds on social media where basically you've got I think it's AI generated.
And it's like it's like the dressing room, the changing room.
And it's like there are 100 people in the Chelsea shirt, like as in players.
Like an actual theatre almost.
And I also heard Peter Czech in an interview to the Czech media, he said that apparently there are eight goalkeepers in the Chelsea training.
Yeah. And I couldn't believe I was watching the because I was watching transfer deadline day hoping we would, you know, maybe get a last minute signing of someone unexpected.
Well, hopefully not. It was just like watching the ninth goalkeeper sign for the most going, where are all these players going?
Like they're hardly all sitting on the bench or sitting at home. How am I going to get in this team?
The one I suppose Manchester City are the gold standard.
They're kind of the outlier in this situation because they have so many players on their bench that could start for any team.
And you looked at you looked at their bench yesterday, I think the camera panned over and it had what?
Grealish, Stones, Kevin De Bruyne and Nathan Ake all sitting in. De Bruyne and Ake hadn't kitted out at all.
But Grealish and Stones were on the bench and you thought, wow, oh my God, two lads unavailable and two lads on the bench that would walk into any starting position.
And you think like as much as Liverpool, I suppose, and Chelsea do have a bit of depth, they don't have that level of quality of player.
In their squad. I think it's so hard to replicate that.
Like even if you look at Real Madrid, like Real Madrid have Mod and Hendrik off the bench.
Yeah. But like after that, you're you're looking at their kind of their players that have been there for many, many years outside their starting eleven.
So it's really not kind of I think for the Premier League, sadly, if you do want to compete, you kind of have to have almost two starting elevens worth.
And it's not just the Premier League, right? It's unfortunate. No, unfortunately, I'm glad because we see more games.
But unfortunately for the players and for the manager, it's the Champions League, the other European competitions, the two cups and other stuff.
So it's not easy. And these are the best players playing for this team.
And these players, of course, want to represent their own countries in the in the international games.
So it's it's absolute madness. And there's no wonder Kevin De Bruyne is complaining about it.
But yeah, him and Roger, I think a lot of the city players have been complaining.
Makes sense. And moving on, let's let's do the the popular segments.
Hero of the Week and villain of the week. Yeah. So you can pick any moment from this Premier League weekend.
I assume you're going to choose something from the Arsenal game, but you don't have to.
OK, so who is your who do we start with? Let's start with the villain. Who's your villain of the week?
I mean, this is such an easy pick for me. It's going to be Erling Haaland is the villain of the week for me.
The antics at the end, throwing the ball in the back of Gabrielle's head.
So when when Man City scored that equalizer, that late equalizer, Erling Haaland took the ball and threw it instead of normally what players do in that moment is they take it and rush quickly to the sent to the halfway line with it to the circle, the center circle.
And they want a quick restart of the game. Haaland instead, he threw it at the back of Gabrielle's head.
And it was quite with quite a lot of intensity. In my opinion, that was a possible sending off.
It's one of those ones where it's as you mentioned the phrase earlier, shit house three was was the term that was thrown out there.
And to me, it's not a violent act, really.
Like he's obviously just kind of it's a release of it's a release of of a lot of emotions and he and he throws it.
It's definitely not right. And I think a booking definitely probably was was warranted.
And then obviously after that, just barging straight through Thomas Parity and after the kickoff had started and was also a bookable offense as well.
But I suppose Michael Oliver will come and say, well, we didn't book Kyle Havertz in the first half for when he stumbled into Roger.
So we're not going to do this for for Haaland.
I don't want to say any more about this, but that's your so that Haaland is your villain of the week. Usually on the show, he's the hero of the week.
I even call this segment Haaland of the week, not the hero of the week.
But now he's the villain of the week. So Haaland, he always gets his.
Well, it wasn't just that. It was it was the the comments afterwards.
I don't know if you saw this afterwards, but he was like telling Michael Arteta, having some choice words with him and Gabrielle Jesus and a number of Arsenal players afterwards,
which I thought kind of aired a bit more on the side of disrespectful because I'm all for a bit of, you know, sportsmanship and, you know, kind of getting behind your team.
Yeah. Yeah. But like there's a time and a place. There's a time. Exactly.
OK. Well, to be honest, my villain of the week will be the referee. So Oliver gets my villain of the week.
We don't have to really go into it much. What about your hero of the week then?
Well, I suppose I don't want to always focus on the Arsenal game.
I do have heroes from from the Arsenal game for sure.
If I was to pick out a moment, I think Onana made a crazy double save.
So United keeper. Yeah.
And for the amount of kind of pressure and a lot of stick that he gets from fans and pundits alike, he's performing very, very well.
I think he's much better this season. He's more consistent.
Honestly, I think he's great. Yeah.
And the double save, I think even eclipses the double save that David Ryan made against Atalanta in midweek.
So he'd be kind of my general hero for the week, I suppose, outside of the Arsenal game.
But if I was to choose a hero of the week from the Arsenal game, it's so hard to choose any any number of them.
You don't have to. I would pick I pick Urien Timber, I suppose, if I was picking one from the Arsenal team, just like pocketed Jeremy Doku, didn't let him have a sniff and just showing.
You said pocketed, not pick pocketed. We should explain that.
Pick pocket someone is to steal someone's money when they are not looking right.
Somewhere a tourist, a tourist can get pick pocketed in a city center, in a crowded city center.
But if you pocket someone and that means that they are in your pocket, right, it kind of means that you take care of the usually you talk about the defender pocketing an offensive player.
It means you sort of you eliminate the threat of that player completely. They have nothing.
They they are invisible in that game because of the way you play as a defender. Right.
Absolutely. So he for me was definitely a hero. Others, you could you could pick anybody across that Arsenal team that could have been a hero of week.
But for sure, I'm going to pick Raya. I think he was excellent in that game.
Yeah. OK, I would say still the defense of like they did such a great job that they made it easier for him.
But there were a couple of great saves made as well. So I'm going to give it to him.
Yeah. My fantasy football team definitely thanks him for all those saves as well.
And that is the next thing I want to quickly look at. Like today we are going over a little bit.
I suppose there was a lot to unpack in this game. Yeah.
So let's let's take a look at our fantasy team. Just just a second.
For those of you that are watching this, I'm going to share my screen with you and show you what's happening in this wonderful game.
So here are my points. I got 64. Basically, I kept in Watkins.
I guess I was deciding between Alexander Arnold and Watkins. I in the end I went for Watkins.
It was a mistake, but at least he got that goal. So all is well that ends well. Yeah.
Not not a bad week, not glamorous, but it's all right. I'll take it.
And let's have a look at your your. Wait, that's not why I was trying to join there earlier.
I don't think I managed to get in. But if you want, I can just I don't know how to find you now.
It doesn't. I can just tell you the team that I have.
Just tell me how many points you have. And yeah, I had 81 points this week, so I was very happy this week.
OK, maybe you shouldn't join the league then. Yeah, I my my midfield definitely pulled through as well as my back line.
I had Trent. Now I captained Salah over Holland for the for the fixture that I thought was going to be the easier one.
And obviously Salah did get an assist and a clean sheet, but not as prolific as I had hoped.
But I had Konza, Gabrielle Rogers and Smith Row as well.
So a lot of players, a lot of players kind of hovering around that, you know, eight, nine, ten mark that really helped kind of bump the score up a bit.
But, you know, yeah, it was good week. Good week.
So what is your total score at the moment? My total score is.
Oh, let me check. Three eight seven. Three eight seven.
Wow, you would be in the lead in our in our league. No way.
Yeah, definitely. OK, I think seven is a lot like you are.
You're like 50, 50 points ahead of me. Oh, my goodness.
Yeah, I decided to wild card early.
I wild carded in week two to get Holland in.
And I suppose I haven't looked back since his his hat tricks have been have been great for my team.
But yeah, it's it's this is the first time I have started so well.
I'm just kind of like looking around going when is this going to stop?
This is how I end at some point. I think you are a great player.
I remember from last season you were doing well as well.
So I think you are, you know, you're being too harsh on yourself.
But they're there about so long as I can keep the interest going.
I think my problem is that I always kind of tend to fall off towards the kind of Christmasy kind of new year type of turn of the turn of the fixtures.
But this year, no, the league that I'm currently in with a group of friends,
we decided to kind of, you know, a bit more encouragement to keep engaged by having a forfeits involved every month.
So everyone has to kind of, you know, to keep the eye on the league and the team every month just to make sure they're they're not going to lose the forfeits.
Of course. Well, you can join this league as well.
I will let you join even even if it makes me fall one one plays down.
It's OK. I'll take it.
And anyone else who is listening to this or watching this on YouTube, there is a link in the description of this video or podcast.
And I guess that's it, Gal.
I didn't want to make it so long, but honestly, there's so much to talk about when it comes to this game that I'm not surprised.
But thank you very much, Gal, for coming on today.
And it's been a pleasure to talk to you.
Thanks so much to Danik. Always a pleasure.
Take care.
Welcome back to the language corner.
As always, this is the part of the show where I teach some bits of language, some bits of the English language, of course, because that's the language of this show.
And because I'm an English teacher, if you are thinking of hiring an English teacher, then I'm your guy,
especially if you want us to have a conversation about football and then learn English through it, because that is how I teach.
I provide a lot of feedback and basically I strive to develop your English.
That is the aim. That is the objective.
OK, the language corner.
Here is an excerpt from Carl's speech.
Carl was talking about the game, how it started, the Manchester City Arsenal game and how it started.
He said, when they got the first goal, you kind of thought this was going to be a long day in the office for us.
But obviously with football, ebbs and flows, momentum changes, and we kind of had the upper hand just for enough time to get that free kick.
That's the excerpt. That's the part of Carl's speech.
And now from this, I'm going to pick out a few phrases which I think are quite interesting.
First of all, a long day in the office for us.
You thought this was going to be a long day in the office for us, for the Arsenal fans.
A long day in the office. Well, I think this is quite easy to work out, isn't it?
A long day in the office is too long. It's lengthy. It's tiring.
You don't want to stay in the office for so long.
It will feel longer. It will give you the feeling of boredom.
And it's probably going to feel longer than it actually will be.
A long day in the office. Longer than necessary, longer than usual.
So when you concede the first goal at the Atthahead Stadium early, then most teams sort of think that this is going to be a long day in the office for them.
Meaning they might concede a lot more goals and then you just pray for the game to be over.
Then you just want to hear the final whistle ASAP. But you know how it is with something uncomfortable.
It usually takes longer than we want it to take.
And then Carl said, but obviously with football, abs and flows.
So I think I've already explained this expression once when I had Carl on the podcast before.
And it seems to be one of his favourite phrases to use.
Abs and flows comes actually from the movement of tides. Tides, you know, the movement of the ocean.
And it means there are ups and downs. You know, football, it fluctuates.
Sometimes you're up, sometimes you are down.
OK, and momentum changes. Momentum is a very common phrase in football.
I think everybody should know it.
It basically means the energy, the speed, the motivation, right?
So the momentum swings or the momentum changes.
Meaning at first one team was doing well and then after the momentum changed, maybe there's a goal, there is a card,
some kind of moment in the game and then the momentum changes.
Meaning the other team suddenly starts playing well and has more speed and motivation and energy
than the other team.
OK, and also what Carl said is that we kind of had the upper hand just for enough time to get that free kick.
Right. So suddenly something happened in the game and we had the upper hand, meaning we were in control.
Right, which is strange when you play against Manchester City.
It doesn't happen very often, but we had the upper hand. If you have the upper hand, you have some sort of advantage or control.
You're in control or you have some kind of power over someone else.
Right. Well, that will be it for today. I know it was very long.
Sometimes it happens on this podcast. I hope you don't mind. Let me know.
Send me an email at thefutgrishpodcast at gmail.com.
I would like to know what you think. And if you want to support this podcast,
then don't hesitate to follow that link to my hero hero that you can find in the description of this episode.
Thank you very much for listening and I'll speak to you soon.
Take care, everyone. Bye bye.