Chapter 1: What is the main focus of The Football Show episode?
Good morning and a very warm welcome to the football show here on Sky Sports. Two hours of football chat coming your way. You can get involved using the hashtag Sky Football. Plenty of opinion coming your way. We're going to speak to Chairman Matt Pallios, West Brom Sporting Director Luke Dowling.
We're going to hear from Lucas Moura and some of our very own in the shape of Alan McAnally and Paul Merson. And two of our very own are joining me from the very start this morning. It's Keith Andrews and Don Goodman. Gentlemen, welcome along to the show. Right, a bit of housekeeping. Don, how are we? How's everything in the Midlands?
Wet at the moment, Pruts, to be fair. But no, in general, looking forward to the safe return of football. And the thing that made it for me really was about three weeks ago, they opened the golf courses up. So I've had a smile on my face since then, Pruts.
There you go. Every cloud and all that. Keith, I'm sure you're on board with the golfing chat. Have you been out and about making the most of the fresh air? A couple of rounds, David, which has been very nice indeed. Getting our weather has been decent in the main, obviously. So, yeah, it's been lovely getting back to some kind of normality.
some kind of normality, how we're all looking forward to that. Now, Donna, I just want to touch base on something with you. Very much in the news, the Black Lives Matter movement, we've seen huge protests across the world off the back of George Floyd, the incident with him over in America, the tragedy that occurred over there. And now I'm not asking you with any...
kind of hint of agenda or any form of tokenism you're a friend of mine we've spent many a time in each other's company and we've heard black footballers speak out daily ali trent alexander arnold have kind of voiced their support in the last 24 hours just how important is it people players of that stature the old adage was stick to you stick to football stick to your sport don't get involved just how important is it that young men like that are getting involved
Yeah, I mean, I think it's really, really important. It just keeps happening, doesn't it?
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Chapter 2: How is the return of League One being discussed by Mark Palios?
I think that's the problem, isn't it? Because, you know, it happens, we threaten to do something about it, we threaten to keep it in the public domain, and then slowly but surely it just disappears until there's another tragic incident. And unfortunately, the loss of George Floyd is just... Shocker, really. And because we've seen the footage of it, I think it's sickened literally everybody.
And you hope now and you pray that people can come together and do something about the problems. And it's a social problem. It's not a football problem. But the footballers that you've mentioned clearly have a large audience, a big social media presence, a voice in the public domain. And it is important that people in the public eye understand
Keep the problem in the public eye until we can get together and try and move forward and find some solutions to this.
Now, I'm not betraying any trust in between myself and Don. Just a little story for you at home.
talking about this and myself and don coming from different backgrounds but being in a position socially where something occurred remember don and like i said i'm not going to go into too much detail about a comment that was passed and i sat there jaw on the floor say as if to say i can't believe that's come out of that person's mouth you being a man uh of with the greatest respect your age your experience
took it on the chin dealt with it very calmly dealt with it very well indeed um that essence of a generation saying well that's what happened and we just had to get on with it it feels now across the board even though like you said it's been said before that that isn't the case these things can't happen it can't just be shrugged off it can't just be taken on the chin and dealt with maturely by someone like yourself the education re-education has got to be there hasn't it
Yeah, absolutely, because the problem is ignorance, you know, pure and simple ignorance in society. And, you know, I remember the incident. Well, you know, I'm a black guy that grew up in a generation of Alf Garnett and love thy neighbor and so on and so forth, where it was a bit of a bit of a joke, a bit of lightheartedness because it was the norm back then. Society's changed. Life has changed.
And we move forward now where society, Situations like you and I found ourselves in are not really acceptable in the slightest. And I remember the shock on your face, but it was something that I'd experienced before and I knew how to handle it. But it's wrong and it's a lack of education on so many people's part.
Keith, I'm just going to bring you in here. I mean, I'm not saying that football dressing rooms are paragons of virtue by any stretch of the imagination, but such is the cosmopolitan nature of a football club, a football dressing room. Yes, we have instances of the past few seasons where the interaction with so-called supporters has let the game down.
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Chapter 3: What plans does Niall Quinn have for club football's return in Ireland?
So playing three was clearly something that we supported. But two things happened. One is that the time frame, I don't think it's been used as effectively as it could have been used, and the decision has taken a long time to come.
Now, with that comes the problems that you see, and where the fault line is in the EFL, and that is really in League One, whereby you have this division between those who actually want and have the finances to play, and I am a finance guy, so I entirely understand the positions of those who don't want to play.
So, as we've gone on in time, the opportunity to play and finish out the season, I think, has virtually disappeared from us, but there's still an opportunity to have playoffs. The proposal I put together was because during our League One call, which had about 50 people on it, it was not a forum for proper debate because
a lot of the people were unaffected by um other than the decision to play or not play were unaffected by for example ppg which is what they was trying to apply if you actually stopped playing so there wasn't a great debate there but what was clear was this massive division in league in league one in league two there wasn't so much of a division so they helped they felt the game to the conclusion
but we needed a compromise in League One, and that's what the chair of the EFL asked for. I indicated to him that I could look at one, or I was looking at one, which was a compromise. I mean, I'll go right from the start and say, I don't think if you're stopping the season with 25% to go, I mean, you, David, I think you, was it 11-12, Chef Wednesday? You had a great run. Was it 14 games, 1-11?
It was absolutely right, yeah. Yeah, if you'd applied PPG, Sheffield United would have gone up, I think, instead of you. And that's the type of thing that all football people know. So, you know, the solutions to not playing were not great. I don't think anybody really thought about PPG being as unfair as it is, but all football people intuitively know that it doesn't take into account form.
the fact that some clubs towards the end of the season may play youngsters and stuff like all those things that we know happen we just know in our blood or intuitively in our water that in fact it doesn't actually bear any resemblance in terms of what happens so
I just basically put a proposal together, which started looking at no relegations, because I firmly believe that that's the position that we should be in, despite the fact that people like the FA have got three different positions on it in three different leagues. I can see your frustration with that, Mark. Yeah. When you're talking about the frustration, yeah. It is.
I mean, at the end of the day, yes, of course, I'm looking after Tranmere's interests, but I was actually looking for a compromise that got teams who were just outside the playoffs with the ability to sort of get into the playoffs, expand the playoffs. I accepted on the way through that. Because time is becoming short, it was impossible to persuade people that relegation shouldn't happen.
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Chapter 4: How is West Brom preparing for football's return according to Luke Dowling?
And the others haven't really got a chance of getting out of it. So that's what I essentially tried to do. The difficulty is getting around clubs and explaining it to them.
Well, you mentioned the various clubs and where they are. I mean, just to play devil's advocate here, Matt, when you see Dranmere just under that dotted line, obviously, sub-season back into League One and any form of staying in that division is seen as your success, isn't it, as you incrementally improve season on season. Can you see where the argument might come about
Particular clubs wanting a particular way of settling the season because it does favour them, rather than it being purely altruistic with regard to the rest of the league.
Yeah, I make no bones about it. It's not purely altruistic. What I tried to do was to offer this solution for the EFL to take it on and to look at it and take it forwards. Because I knew that coming from me, people would say, well, I have a vested interest in it.
And the answer is that, yeah, of course, I do have a vested interest in it, but the principles are still there, and it doesn't make it wrong because the chairman of a club that would actually be saved by it is putting it forwards.
What it does is it basically allows, in the division where the fault line is, it gives them the opportunity to vote for a margin for error, and that enables clubs to get into an expanded playoff situation that they justifiably could have argued was the case, and PPG avoids that for them. and equally clubs that could have actually got out of the relegation.
And as I say, if you stand back and look at it as a football person, you look at form and everything else that goes on, it does actually paint the same picture as that. But the reality is that... you know, this was a financially based decision to stop playing the league. Let's not kid ourselves on that. It's a financially based decision.
And actually what you're doing is you're severely damaging clubs when you relegate them. And everybody would agree it's far more harsh to be given or stop given the chance to avoid relegation than it is to stop being given the chance to be in the playoffs. So that's the background to it. And one thing I would say is, as regards to championship clubs, our proposal makes no difference to them.
They can do whatever they want to do. They can select PPG if they want to as a fallback if they don't play out the season. And equally, the League Two clubs, what I tried to do was to respect their decision in that meeting that they have. And they can select PPG if they want to select it. All I'm saying is, in the division where the real... fault line is, you might want to look at MFE.
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Chapter 5: What insights does Lucas Moura share about his experiences?
Having been with the FA, you mentioned the EFL earlier on. You mentioned how busy you've been in this interim period, working out this system, speaking to different people. How do you feel, from a governance point of view, they've performed in this very dark time for everyone involved in it?
Yeah, I have to be careful what I say here, but the issue is, look, COVID, this is an unseemly argument, if you like, around how we finished the season, et cetera, because there are bigger issues coming along down the line in the game in terms of, you know, COVID is exceptional. So, you know, if you accept all of that, I think that if you look generally at the whole football scene,
There's been a total lack of coordination and leadership in the approach to it, and I've said that as much publicly. With regard to this particular issue, I think that some of the stuff that I've been doing was at the request of the chairman. He said, can we have some innovative thinking about a compromise that will actually get us through this? And this was in the League One meeting.
And certainly the stuff that I've been doing, I would have liked the EFL to do, and I would have liked the EFL to budge it. But they came out a few days later just under a week later, and said they were going to have relegations and they were going to have PPG. So they gave that leadership. I'm not sure that they gave that much thought to the implications of that.
And I will not accept, because you guys know as much as anybody, how much effort goes in a dressing room, how much effort goes on the terraces and all the people around the clubs to get promoted and to stay promoted. And for us, we've had a pretty horrendous five years, which we've had to fight through. So I just want to accept the glib statements. Well, this is a pandemic.
We can't please everybody as a way of dismissing the injustice of us actually getting relegated. Because you guys know that we won three games away from home and we had three games on the trot away from home. We won them. And so we had a run of form which was coming in because what we do is we spend in the January window. And the last four seasons, we've had successful second half of the season.
This was starting to happen again. And so we were very confident. And so you throw all that away just on the altar of expediency. When you make a financial decision, you change the rules mid-season. And they weren't the rules we started with. I can take a refereeing decision because they're the rules we started with.
But I won't take something as easily as this and just dismiss it in terms of, you know, we can't please everybody. I think it's an insult to our fans.
Mark, you alluded to bigger problems perhaps for football on the horizon. Is that particularly, in essence, financially? And from that point of view, do you look upwards as a team in League One, up into the Championship, up into the Premier League? And we know the kind of money that's floating around that level of football. Do you look to them for help?
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Chapter 6: How do the guests view the impact of the pandemic on football?
Stay well. OK, so all this week on the football show, we've been looking at the great forgotten Premier League goals, goals that may have happened in games where the team didn't eventually win. Here are the top four.
What a wonderful goal from Christian Benteke. That is extraordinary.
It's a Premier League classic.
Whether it changes the shape of this game, we'll find out. But an amazing goal from Benteke. There was a time stood still when it went in the air. He wondered what was going to happen.
Absolutely brilliant from Benteke. I don't think he's at his best today, but he'll remember that one. Lombardo, here is Cercic.
Gordon coming on the scene it's a try and what a goal from Dean Gordon and Crystal Palace have hit back straight away and that has stunned Bolton Wanderers and their followers Gordon saying leave it to me great goal from Gordon He has a goal, and that's a spectacular goal.
It may be a great day for Leicester here, but Damari Gray has fired them spectacularly, a consolation goal at least. Well, he won't hit many better than that in his career, and this has flown past David De Gea almost before he could react. It is a beauty.
He will run away from Van Aanholt to try to bring him down. Two to pick out in the middle. Carlos Gil! Oh, what a goal! What a finish! Well, you won't see a much better goal than this, technique-wise, everything-wise. Look at this for a finish. Looks like it's gone beyond him. His technique is brilliant. This is a stunning finish. It really is.
Okay, so four cracking goals there. And Dean Gordon, there's a name from a different era of Premier League football, of course. And we've been asking for your votes over the course of the week. And you voted for Christian Benteke's goal against Manchester United, which I think we can all agree is quite a fantastic goal. Gents, I'll come to you. Don, you're an expert at scoring goals.
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Chapter 7: What are the key challenges faced by football clubs during the pandemic?
The great forgotten goals. Christian Benteke there. Okay, coming up after the break, we're going to get the big opinion from the big man, Alan McAnally, on the Bundesliga. Welcome back to the football show here on Sky Sports. Keith Andrews and Don Goodman are alongside me for the duration. And we've been joined by the shy, retiring, the wallflower himself, Alan McAnally.
Alan, thank you very much for joining us this morning. I mean, that's a wonderful picture. Who is it and did you do it yourself?
I did it myself. I did it this morning. I was up early this morning and I've only just put the lights in. I can't tell you who it is because I want another one and he won't give me it for nothing. He's very famous. Irish. He's an Irish artist. Very, very famous. But anyway, great to see you guys. Lovely to see you.
It's wonderful to have you along, Alan. Thank you very much for joining us. Right, we're going to get stuck into German football. Timo Werner seems to be on the verge of coming over to the Premier League to join Chelsea. Currently at Leipzig, it seems they've activated his release clause of nearly 50 million euros. First off, is he worth the money?
And secondly, what could Chelsea fans possibly expect from him?
Gold is a good player, really, really good player. 50 million right at this moment in time. To be honest, in the world of football, it's probably as good a price as you're going to get for someone who's potentially Fantastic is Timo Werner. What he has is a versatility. His ability is unbelievable. But he doesn't just play through the middle. He plays in a wide area and comes in.
But his goals are always... Put it this way. I think he's got something like 25 goals this season. I think league goals that is. In the guts of 29 games. An international, German international. And he didn't... I think it was... I'm going to say it was probably when he was at Stuttgart. And it might even have been Ralph Hasenhutl, I think, was the manager at Stuttgart, actually.
Decided to play him up top, and that's where he stayed for ages. But since then, with Julian Nagelsmann, and I think this actually started one of the games against Bayern Munich, which was actually trying to counter what Bayern were doing when Alphonso Davies and Benjamin Pavard were going that way. He played Timo Werner in a wider area, almost to try and combat Bayern coming forward.
Because he's very quick, David. He's got real pace as well. But he's a very, very good football player. But ability and versatility he has, not just to play in one position, is exactly what Chelsea are going to get and goals.
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Chapter 8: How does the episode conclude regarding the future of football?
I think they were talking about some other... of the Chelsea forwards. And I can't remember who he got. Probably Didier Drogba probably got 20 goals, didn't he? He must have got 20 goals, Didier. I'm going to say Timo Werner will definitely score in a season 20 goals for Chelsea. No pressure then.
You mentioned where he plays, and I agree. I think from the left, he can be a little bit more dangerous. If you were him, with Pedro leaving Chelsea, Willian looking like he'll leave, maybe not the options they have up front, where would you go if you had the option of Chelsea or Liverpool?
I'd like to see him play on the left-hand side. I just think he's better there. He's a good team player, Keith, because he's not selfish. You know, if he needs to put a shift in down that left-hand side, he will.
And, of course, you've got the opportunity then to play more counter-attacking football, depending on what team you're playing against and how you want to play, with his pace going forward. But he can play up top. I'm just trying to think who the Chelsea player, Tammy Abraham, has done so well. I can't see... Frank not staying, providing he's okay.
Giroud is another one that, you know, struggled to get in the team. But I would probably play him on the left-hand side and just let him play when he wants, to be quite honest with you. Because I think with that freedom, I think you get exactly what Timo Werner's got.
And there's no question, and I think it was Don that actually said it, 30-odd goals, he said, I definitely know he's got 25 in the league. But that's a pretty good response considering they are only third on the table. They're chasing Borussia Dortmund in second place. But Leipzig have come in the last four or five years into promenade. And remember, they did what they had to do against Spurs.
And everybody was kind of woken up by, you know, the players that Leipzig have got.
So that's Timo Werner, and I'm sure Chelsea fans, on reflection of what you've all said there, should be very excited if he does pitch up at Stamford Bridge. Now, the Bundesliga in general, Alan, a couple of weeks back, the footballing world held their breath, didn't they? That was the first domestic league to come back within the higher echelons of European football.
We're a couple of weeks into it now, three weeks into it. What have you made of how the Bundesliga have approached getting their top-level football back up and running?
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