Sid Lowe

And at the risk of simplifying it,

a kind of a sense that this is something a bit more modern.

This is something that's a bit more in tune with the way football's going at the moment.

And I think that when he was sacked, it wasn't just that people thought Alonso's gone, it's thought, ah, there was our chance to build something coherent and structured, and it's gone.

And what that, I think, speaks to is an idea that, and to answer your question really directly, that perhaps there is a culture at the club in terms of the way the players feel about their own power, in terms of the way the players approach the game, that they're not necessarily uncoachable,

But if you try and impose a system on them, if you try and impose a model on them, rather than... And Jude Bellingham himself used this phrase, I think, in the first season under Ancelotti, we play off the cuff a bit.

And rather than doing that to try and have a structure and a constructed model, I think there's a sense from a lot of the fans that that's broken down.

Why?

Because the culture at the club...

kind of wasn't really inducive to it.

Now, that's not to say that's necessarily a bad thing.

Who knows?

They might go and win the Champions League now.

They won three Champions Leagues in a row with Zidane in a period in which lots of people said, there isn't a structure, there isn't a model, there's just lots of really great players.

And then you've got Carlo Ancelotti and people said, well, where's the, you know, what's Carlo Ancelotti's footballing philosophy?

What's his identity?

Well, his identity is, I've got lots of good players, let's help them play.

Robbo, what do you make of all of that?

Yeah, and everyone in Spain is asking the same question.

Villarreal are quite literally, or at least joint, the worst team in the Champions League.