Chapter 1: Why were anytime transfers scrapped in football?
And we're joined by Steve Bone for another scintillating half hour of Witten Wisdom. Steve, hoping that you're well and asking you what's top of your priority list Pompey-wise at the minute? Yes, I am well. Thank you.
I'm not sure how much Witten Wisdom I've got to impart. I'll try. Well, it's FA Cup week, isn't it? It's all very exciting. I still like the third round of the FA Cup. Some people have tried to write it off and it's been diluted a little bit, but I'm still excited by it and I'm sure Pompey fans, having been drawn at home to Arsenal, small matter of Arsenal coming to town, feel the same about it.
Yeah, I believe Arsenal have got a game tonight against Liverpool, which is a bit close to them coming down to us. They might be slightly depleted themselves.
Well, I think they should rest a few tonight, save themselves for the big one on Sunday. No, I mean, I imagine clearly Arsenal's number one priority. Almost their only priority, surely, is to win the league this year. They're looking like they might do it at the moment. The sides behind them keep dropping points and they've been quite consistent. So that will be on their minds tonight.
And I believe they've got... I think I read somewhere that they're playing four games in four different competitions in... 10 days.
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Chapter 2: What is the significance of the FA Cup third round?
So they're playing us on Liverpool tonight, us on Sunday, somebody else on Wednesday, which I think might be in the League Cup. No, is it the League Cup or something? I don't know now. And then they're playing the following Saturday as well. So it's a hectic schedule for them.
and you would think that they would probably play their reserves in the cup tie, with a few big names on the bench to bring on if they need to. That would be my expectation.
Going back to what you were saying about the League Cup, I was listening to Dan Shaw's excellent annual Pompey quiz over the holiday period, and he refers to it as the League Cup, and I think I like that. Yeah.
Well, it's one of those that seems to change sponsor name every two or three years, doesn't it? And you forget who the latest sponsors are. I still think of it as the Milk Cup and the Rumbelows Cup from its early days of sponsorship. But the League Cup is what we remember it as and know it as, isn't it?
People try to attach the sponsor's name to the FA Cup, but I don't think your average man in the street ever does.
i think you i think you stick to fa cup it's a thing with sponsors names isn't it they a lot of them come and go every five minutes and you forget who's sponsored what and when yes i remember telling somebody as if i knew that a carabao was a wild canadian elk isn't it is it it's a soft drink or something isn't it i think it's one of those high energy drinks it's trying to muscle in on red bull
It's a wild Canadian elk sounds a much more exotic thing for it to be.
Oh, I know what I meant to ask you. I only caught this story because I was straying onto the Arsenal website just to see what their latest was. And they're delighted to be playing in their traditional kit on Sunday, red and white sleeves. Yes. Since 2012. I think 22 or some such. A few years. They've played their FA Cup games all in white. That's right. As part of their anti-knife campaign. Yes.
I mean, you know, explain and discuss. But they reckon that white kit has brought them bad luck.
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Chapter 3: How does Arsenal's current league performance impact their cup strategy?
It is. Oh, definitely, yeah. And so many teams these days change strip... a drop of a hat, don't they, when they don't need to. Whenever I do one of my things in the programme about what about the modern game do you not like, a regular thing that comes up is teams playing in their change strip when they don't need to.
If it's blue against red, and the red is the way teams stick to red, why do you need to play in green and pink? Absolutely. So if Arsenal are in there red and white on Sunday, that'll be grand. We've seen them play in yellow and blue before. I think Arsenal have played in black down here a couple of times as well. So yeah, it'd be a rarity if it happens.
I read also, doing a little bit of research, I stumbled on one of those things that I know you like. Excuse me, this flu won't go away. Sorry to hear that. When they were founded, two of their original players were from Nottingham Forest, and one of them brought with him as a gift...
Nottingham Forest's shirts and the players who were then just about to become Woolwich Arsenal liked the look of them. And the rest is history. I don't know where the white sleeves came from, but that's the red shirts.
So it's all down to Nottingham Forest. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? You always think of Arsenal, whether it's Woolwich Arsenal or whatever Arsenal, as being older than... I would think of them as being sort of... just being older than Forest and older than almost everybody, in fact.
You kind of think of them as the... probably because of just the length of time they've been in the top division. They've been in the top division for getting on for 100 years now without relegation or something. You just think of them as one of the originals really, don't you?
Yes. Yes, I've got the book in front of me, the football yearbook. It's a huge thing. Not really worth it. But it does tell me that their original name, before they were the Woolwich Arsenal, because of their shirts, they were called the Woolwich Reds. Right. Which is vaguely interesting. It is, yeah. And then I've got this at the bottom of the page, which is a fact thing.
It's Icelandic inside forward Albert Gudmundsson made two appearances as an amateur for Arsenal. in the 1946-47 season, but was unable to get a work permit and therefore couldn't play in the Football League. There we go.
How times have changed. Even then, work permits and visas were a problem. It's funny, isn't it? As we're going off at Arsenal tangents, the first game I ever went to at Frampton Park, Pompey against Arsenal. What was the score? Pre-season friendly.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Arsenal's kit changes for the FA Cup?
It was tricky then, wasn't it, going to football, because all those men.
Yeah, you had to find the right spot to be in, although because it was a friendly, it wasn't a packed ground. It was decent attendance, I think, but I think we found somewhere that I could see enough of what was going on. There were other games after that in my younger years where I didn't see much at all. But yeah, it doesn't happen so much now in the seats, does it?
But yeah, it used to be one of the perils of taking a young kid along.
Well, it can happen in the seats. I'm privileged enough to sit just behind, when he comes, Michael Eisner. And he's enormous. Is he? Tall chap. Big. I mean, he could have been a boxer. He's about 6'4".
Yeah.
Still. And broad-shouldered and...
Tempted to tap him on the shoulder and say, Mike, can we swap seats so that I can see better?
The last time we went to, it was so cold, I was tempted to ask everybody around me if they were prepared to give up their hat to Michael Eisner, because he's pleasantly bald as a coot. No, he didn't have one. No, he was acting it, he was toughing it out.
Yeah, I bet he wished he'd had one.
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Chapter 5: What were the historical roots of Arsenal's iconic red and white kit?
Scored in successive games, didn't he, against Watford and Middlesbrough. an assist just after that at Leicester, and then he kind of went off the boil.
There were a couple of games where he was really anonymous, then lost his starting place, come off the bench a few times, been OK, was responsible for the spectacularly great ending against Charlton last week with a nice finish, and it turns out that's the last we've seen of him. And I'm a bit puzzled by...
the story that and I don't know if this is the official line but obviously he was recalled by Spurs and he's going to Coventry I was a bit puzzled by the line that there were some suggesting that it's because Coventry have promised Spurs he will get more minutes there than he did with us I'd be surprised if Frank Lampard is able to say to Spurs
And if you send him to us, he will play X number of games. Because how can he say that? He's got a winning team. Fair enough, they've had a little blip recently, haven't they? A couple of defeats, so he wants to freshen it up a bit.
But will any manager give an absolute guarantee to another club that he's going to start a player every week or every other week for the rest of the season when he hasn't seen him in the flesh himself? He hasn't seen him in his squad, in his training ground. So he doesn't know until he puts him in the team what he's going to do for him. So that puzzled me a bit. I think you're spot on there.
Clearly Spurs have not been impressed at how much he's played and think he should have played more. I don't think he should have played more. I think he's probably played about the amount that his efforts have sort of warranted, really. I think he's had chances. I don't think he should have been kept in the starting 11 longer than he was.
Maybe he's a little bit a victim of the team and the squad as a whole struggling at times. He's not been able to sort of rise above that. But it's a shame because, you know, if Bianchini had been recalled by Swansea, nobody would have batted an eyelid, would they? They just said, yeah, OK, didn't work. Good luck to the lad. Hope he does well back at Swansea or somewhere else.
but with Yang I think because Yang has scored a few goals and we've seen some moments from him people are a little bit concerned about does that leave us even weaker in wide areas well I was going to ask you that was the next thing on the list is we've seen a little bit more of Harvey Blair what are your thoughts on him now that we've had a fairly good look at him
I think there's a good player there. I'm not sure if he is, depending on him to be a first choice, a regular starter, I think that weakens us a bit. I'm not sure he is at that level yet. Which game was it? Was it a QPR game? Yes. Where he started really well. He did.
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