OTB Football
FINAL ONE STANDING: ‘We’re probably still underrating Arsenal a little bit!’ | Chaotic Champions League week | Premier League
23 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Off the ball, breakfast. I thought you all liked Amram. You thought Amram looked good too. He also looked very well. I never liked his hair. It's important to be honest. He was doing too much. He didn't do too well.
Live every weekday morning from 7.30 on your smart speaker. Just ask Alexa to play OTB Sports Radio. Download the app and play today. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Alright, you're very welcome along to this week's final one standing.
It's a doozy of a weekend in terms of Premier League fixtures. We are live on Sunday from Arsenal against Manchester United. That's a half past four kick-off. And the other game that we're doing on Sunday live on the radio is Crystal Palace against Chelsea. Also on Sunday, it's Brentford and Forest and UCAS United and Villa. They're the other two o'clock kick-offs.
And it's a reasonable state of the game tomorrow as well. West Ham and Sunderland get your weekend off to. A nice gentle one that you can largely ignore unless you're Ben. Burnley and Spurs at 3 o'clock. Fulham and Brighton at 3. Man City take on Wolves, a resurgent Wolves, at 3 o'clock to see who they're going to sign in the summer.
And then Bournemouth against Liverpool is a half past five kick-off and are Liverpool back or not? Bournemouth, slight resurgent. Slight green shoots in terms of their form just recently. Ben and David are with us in studio and Lee Phelps is with us on the line. Lee, good morning to you. How are you?
Yeah, really good. Thank you.
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Chapter 2: What Premier League fixtures are highlighted this weekend?
Yeah, it's a cracking weekend, isn't it? And there's a lot of those games that you just listed that it's not that easy to predict. I mean, like, you know, everyone will be hating me for saying this, but we've had a good start to the year because it's been a weird start. There's been some really strange results. And you look at Liverpool, how confident are you back at them?
How confident are we back in Man City at 2-9 against Wolves? We should be, shouldn't we? We should be. You're not, though.
At the moment, you're just not backing City. I mean, they will win that game 2-0, right?
Yeah, they'll win the game, won't they? But 2-9, it's not like, yes, definitely put it on Urraca without even contemplating it, isn't it? It's not that, because the performance against Manchester United, the performance against Bodo Glimt, I mean, would Wolves beat Bodo Glimt?
Well, I don't know. I think Bodo Glimt in the Arctic Circle have been tricky for everybody. Juve had a late winner there. Spurs, who were obviously no good, also managed to draw there. Spurs and Europe aren't bad, right? They're, for whatever reason, a slightly different team.
I think it's because of Europe. I think that's what it is. It's because of Europe, isn't it? The Premier League, whatever you say about it, I know people always say it's the best league in the world and all that. Well, it must be pretty good because teams who are out of form in the Premier League just go places and win fairly comfortably, don't they?
You said it's been a good year for the bookmakers so far. Is that because the draw has made a comeback out of nowhere? There were no draws for a couple of seasons and now suddenly we're getting loads of them.
Yeah, I mean, some of the results have been absolute. I mean, we kind of like, obviously, you're looking at it through the prism of, you know, commercial results, obviously. But obviously, this season for us, we're also looking at it through the prism of final one standing. And when you look at, like, some of the... Obviously, those first...
leagues, and especially the €500,000 one, they went so long, didn't they? We got all the way to round 19 for that, and you couldn't get rid of players. There was players getting through every week, but then suddenly you look at some of the results over the past couple of weeks, like, you know, for the newer leagues, you know, draws galore.
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Chapter 3: What insights can be drawn from the Champions League performances?
His third favourite is 9-2, so ahead of him in the betting. Oliver Glasner's 3-1, obviously, given where Palace are. At any given point, he could do another semi-explosive press conference. And Thomas Frank's 11-10 favourite, even though they've had a good result in Europe in the week. So, yeah, it's...
you wouldn't be, sometimes you get to this start of the season where no manager to leave is starting to kind of, maybe not quite now, maybe February, March, no manager to leave gets shorter and shorter. It's 50 to one, no manager to leave. So at the moment, so yeah, you've got Nuno's nine to one, but Pep's the same price.
Pep Guardiola's nine to one, same price as Nuno to be the next manager to leave his job.
Mad. Do you think Nuno's staying?
I think Nuno stays yeah I think it's more a combination of the owners and the board there and they recently added to his backroom team Paco James which only tells me they're going to back him so like maybe two or three weeks ago I would have had Nuno as a firm favourite to go but I think a combination of West Ham maybe just accepting there probably is no better manager who will come into that situation and they've gone you know what we'll back him there's nothing else we can do here
And did last week's result give you any hope that they might be about to slash their way through the lower, the nether regions of the Premier League and escape?
It did for all about five minutes. And then I realised we were playing Thomas Frank Spurs once the full time was went. And like, it's not hype to say that Spurs performs in the first half. was up there with some of the worst West Ham forms as I've seen this season. It was like shamefully bad. And it's the first time that I really kind of watched Thomas Frank on the sideline.
I thought he just doesn't look like a manager of like a so-called big six club. He doesn't look like he fits that mould. And I hate using that big six phrase, but he really didn't look like someone who was fully comfortable in that role.
Is that though, like... The results have been bad and so therefore he looks like he can't handle it. But if the results looked... If the results have been slightly better, you'd be like, oh, you know, the calm, gentle, professorial, vanguard-esque.
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Chapter 4: How does the betting landscape change with unexpected results?
is all I say. The only game they've lost was that Paris Saint-Germain game in the Champions League.
Chapter 5: What challenges do teams face in the Premier League this season?
But like, it's the elite European competition. They've still been, have to beat the teams that, you know, that were put in front of them. I think, like, the whole, this whole narrative around Frank and it's got so toxic and so nasty as well.
It's just a really bad reflection on Tottenham Hotspur fans in general because they see this guy from Brentford who, you know, who obviously Spurs see themselves as this big club. But like, Are they a big club, really? They've won two trophies in 25 years.
Well, the money and the stadium and their ability to generate revenue would suggest that they could be a big club if they decided to spend a bit more money.
Yeah, which is quite interesting this week because I think they overtake United in the Deloitte Money League as regards revenue. So that's really interesting. And also it's quite a worrying thing as well for the rest of the league that you have to increase your stadium and build a brand new kind of generic stadium to increase your revenue and make money. But
Spurs like off the pitch like we don't really know who's running the club so Frank is kind of this vacuum of he's in this vacuum well he met them for lunch so he knows yeah he meets them for lunch he meets them for breakfast but like he knows but like I don't know where the support is coming from like Vinay Venkatesh or whatever like is that like is he really going to be there like Paratachi's just left as well
I don't know I would kind of cut the slack on Frank and I'd kind of look at some of the players he has and maybe some of the players to step up as well because you know they haven't really been performing as what they should be as well so you're saying stick with him absolutely stick with him yeah
I tend to agree with that. You look at some of the vitriol that's coming out of Tottenham fans and you've got to ask the question, who do you think you are? When you look at the performances over recent years, obviously they had a really good spell and they obviously got to the Champions League final and they are capable as a club of finishing top four. They are capable of of doing that.
And they have done that in recent years, haven't they? But generally, the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, last year was obviously, you know, a crazy year for them. But they're not a, they are not a top four club consistently, are they? They're not in there.
So it's like what, they are a sixth, seventh, they're a team who probably should be in the fight to qualify for the Conference League or Europa League. That's what they are. So they're underperforming this season, but I think the expectation levels are way higher than they should be. But I tend to agree with you guys.
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Chapter 6: What are the implications of player injuries on team performance?
That's why they're not one of the best Premier League teams of all time. As in like, you know, maybe if they win the Premier League. They're not. They're conservative. I don't think anybody's saying this. No. The points tally won't be. I would just love if there was someone there to challenge them. And there's not really been anyone there to challenge them.
But that's the issue is Arsenal know that Man City won't win those games. Won't win all those games against those teams between say 11th and 5th. They know they will drop a point. So Arsenal, I've called for them a couple of times going into these big games to really go for it and stamp your authority.
And I think I've come to the realisation now that they know they don't need to because they know a point will do because whoever they're playing are going to drop points in the next three games and Arsenal are probably going to win the next three games. They know they don't have to stamp the authority because they can do it in the games that they're not playing them in.
The one thing you'd say is that this game against Man United shouldn't be, you know, if you're looking at the profile of Man United's results over the course of the season, this shouldn't be one of those games where you're like, oh, we're going to batten down the hatches and we're happy with an all-draw. You'd just be like, this is commoner garden, mid-table team coming to our patch.
It'll be dark on a Sunday afternoon. Let's go and batter them. I guess... they are still scared of the Manchester United brand.
Yeah. And I think that will carry into this game a little bit as well. Yeah. And it's the same when Arsenal play any big team.
Low scoring draw? Yeah, low scoring draw. 1-1. Yeah, 0-1-1. I don't know. The thing of United, with the result last week against Man City, like, Michael Carrick was, you know, in comparison to Ruben Amram and Darren Fletcher, he's greatly helped by having Harry Maguire back and actually having players playing in their correct positions, like Dalot right back and Shaw left back.
He played Dorgo in the wing, he's actually picked up a bit of form, which is kind of strange because he was literally a player assigned for Ruben Amram and since Amram has kind of gone, and maybe even before Amram was leaving, he'd kind of picked up his form, but this is...
I think like Dorgo is really young and has like a lot of gifts, you know, in a good coaching environment could be brilliant.
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