Gab Marcotti

But either way, the fact that they pursued him, as you just said, gives you an insight in what they're trying to do.

One of the things that's been suggested to me, which I think makes sense, is that Semenyo comes from a team that asks us forward to just press and press and press constantly.

He is one of the hardest working players, front players.

When I look at...

So City's front players, Erling Haaland does not press obsessively.

I mean, you can ask him to, but it's probably not what you want him to do.

Jeremy Doku does not.

Savinho doesn't do it well when he plays.

Schurke is new to the system.

Is this part of the thinking that maybe if they have guys who work harder up front, then it's less of an issue if I have Nico Reilly getting beat like he did against Chelsea at the weekend?

Yeah, I think there's a lot going on there.

We're going to go and break this down a little bit further on the Gavin Jules podcast and also getting to this idea that what you said, the Linder's effect.

Is this the direction European football is moving in?

Because you could look at Arsenal and you could say, hey, maybe this shouldn't be the trend right now.

All right, Jules, I want to stick with this theme of the Linder's effect.

And look, Pep Guardiola's won everything.

He's changed guys around.

He's the guy in charge.

I'm not suggesting that Pep Linder, despite the wonderful job he did at Salzburg last year, is the issue here.

But when you look at how the top teams play and look at the footballing landscape, does this greater verticality, greater press, is this the direction of travel?