ROOM 101 - PART TWO | We Talk Shin Pads, Rule Changes & Prices!

0:00This podcast is part of the Sports Social Podcast Network. Hello everyone and Chris, we're welcome to How Are The Podcasts and I hope you listened in to part 1 of our Football Room 101, which so Andrew go up against Johnny to see who could read football of their pet hate by persuading me to place them in Room 101 to banish them forever. So we started off with Johnny going one up with his Americanization of the game going straight into Room 101, while Andrew wasn't quite successful because Gambling ads didn't. But luckily, I have the same two gentlemen with me today looking to have a couple more attempts in part 2 in the next two rounds and first up is Johnny Hawley, hello Johnny. Hello again Chris and also hello to Andrew who can't speak yet

1:02because he's not being introduced. Ha ha ha, I'll look him in. Well, I saw you kiss the sky though, so you still chuffed with going one up. Ah, I've just riding this high Chris, I hope it doesn't end to be honest, I could ride this feeling forever. It sounds like an Americanization of a game show or something. Listen, we're all hypocrites on this podcast. Okay, we've all come to terms with that a long time ago. Well, that's it. I had a stoppers from being massive hypocrites on the last one and I think that's it. That's a good point to welcome Andrew Smith and hello Andrew. Hello. People will be looking at Johnny gone. Johnny's riding high, he's in a good mood. It must be because some of them beat Newcastle. No, no, no, he wouldn't be up to the round on the latest Room 101. Yeah, run, run the moment to this week so far. Room 101, Robbie Talby. When he said that, our Andrew can't speak because he hasn't been introduced yet. I don't want to speak at all because I know what you're going to do.

2:03Chris, you are going to drop in that clip from the start. This is my suggestion. Just to really make me look like a horrible shell. What do you mean? What do you mean, what do you mean, make you look like? Oh, that's, that's nothing. I didn't know we were going to be getting the boxing gloves on for this. Well, that's it. You've got to get warmed up for this. It's a fight to the death. And Andrew sat there and he's bed-fried hoodie and he's putty power heart. Like a walking endorsement. It's set now. But luckily, we're not doing videos. So nobody can, can quite see how hypergirl we are. But anyway, look, we need to go into round two because I can see you two are itching, especially with Johnny being one off because Andrew's desperate to pull her back. So we need to go into the second round and I'm going to start with Johnny. What's your second pick? So my second pick is modern football socks and shin pads.

3:03I absolutely detest them. So the socks part, the one that everybody always talks about is people who have cut them stupid holes in the back. I'm not going to touch on them because that's a totally different kettle of fish. That's a whole kind of worms that get everybody all bent out the shape. But the part that I really hate now is they cut off the entire foot part of the sock and they just slide the remaining tube up their leg and sort of have it around their calf up to their knee. What on earth possible benefit can there be to clearly haven't aware another pair of socks under your socks that have got a feed part on to then cut the feed part off your other pair of socks and put them over top. You cannot possibly tell me that that makes any blind a bit of difference to an elite footballer. Oh wait, these football socks have got feet and then well I'll be useless now.

4:03I was worth 60 million yesterday but I'm about to quit now because these bloody socks have got feet on them. Do you expect me to play in socks with feet in them? God, what is this? You know, is this the 20th century, you know, peasant land somewhere where we're all expected to work ourselves to death that you can't expect us to do that. And conjoined with this is the shrinkage, not only the shrinkage of the sock, the shrinkage of the shin pad, so we can't have full socks, you've got to cut the feet off. And shin pads, what? You want me to wear a shin pad that covers my shin? You want the shin pad to actually be the size of a shin? No, that makes no sense whatsoever. Obviously I need to get a micro SD card size piece of plastic and slide that in the middle of my pair of socks. So it looks like somebody's accidentally dropped a grain of rice down the front. And that'll protect us from all sorts of injuries, obviously. You know, if I take a set of studs, clean down the middle of my shin with full force in a 50-50 challenge with somebody,

5:07obviously that tiny little bit of plastic is going to, everything's going to bounce straight off. I'll be absolutely fine. No, you won't be fine. You're going to be injured and you're going to cry about it. And it's going to be all your own fault for refusing to wear proper shin pads. When I was playing football, that sound like an old man here, it's about 10 years ago. When I was playing Sunday League, I had get big shin pads with the, you know, they'd have a strap around the top part, they'd have a strap around the middle part, they'd have the ankle protectors on the bottom that would slide all the way around with that little loop that goes under the bottom of your foot. I had actual football socks that were entire socks and weren't just random tubes made out of cloth. And guess what? I could still run around and I could still kick up a hole and I could still get through 90 minutes without me legs being in some sort of unspeakable agony from being contained by bits of plastic and fabric for 90 minutes. So yeah, what on earth is possessed people to move towards these horrendous abominations?

6:11I don't know, but it's got to stop. Well, my first question actually, and brilliant argument as always, Johnny, but the first thing I wanted to ask was about the holes in the socks. I still don't know what they're for. So apparently something to do with the compression on the back of a calf muscle or something like that to alleviate. I mean, as I say, that's a, that's a whole, that's a set of weeds that I don't know if we want to get stuck in, because apparently there's some signs behind it. I can't pretend to be an expert on the effects of compression on the human calf muscle. You know, I've got many strings to me, but that one isn't one of them. But what you can never convince me is that there's some equivalent sort of benefit to not having a foot to your sock. Come on. Can you remember, you know, back in the day, actually, you talking about cutting socks and things. Can you remember back in the day when you were young, when the football socks for some reason went really hard,

7:14and it was really tough to put them on at times or not. Is that just, just, just me? Yeah, I think, I think, and I might want to fact check this. But I think the depremulated football club can probably afford some fabric softener to walk in with the socks when they put them through the wash. So I would, I would imagine that's less of an issue at the top level of the game than it was for us like. Well, just going about socks and shimpads and things like that, because you see sometimes, and I'm trying to think, I'm sure Jack Relish is one of them, who wears, who basically down his sock as a tiny little piece of material, basically. I mean, I can't really be called a shimpad, but I'm not sure actually what, what the laws are. I mean, do, do players actually have to wear shimpads or have to wear something down the socks? Because I go back to the days of Steve Claridge, who used to look like, he used to roll his socks down, and he looked like he had nothing under his socks.

8:14I think the rule is that you have to wear something as a, as a shimpad, but I think the specific definitions of what isn't, what is not a shimpad, are quite loose, which is how you've seen players able to get away with sticking. Like you, you remember in them, is it a goal, the film where, you know, early, early on the Santiago Amunias character, he's like, you know, he goes to his first training session, he's got no shimpads and he panics, so he gets a couple of bits of cardboard and just wax him down his sock. That's the equivalent of what players are doing now. Whoa, whoa, hang on a minute, hang on a minute. You just called it, or have you just mentioned the goal movie? Yes. Go on Chris. Go on Chris. You've got the one, the one where he plays for, and I've genuinely never seen it, but he bends a plan for who? Real Madrid. He goes to a steppenstorn club in between then, you know, he goes to one of these little minors, one of these English minors in the meantime.

9:16Before he gets his move to the proper big time, we all know that. You knew he signed for that lot, and you still sat down and watched the whole thing. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. How much control did you have over what films your primary school was showing Chris at the end of school? Yeah. That's another little goal right there, Johnny, just saying that. I forgot what you're arguing is now, Johnny, you've completely blown it now. But tell you what, even a primary school, if that was on behind us, I wouldn't have turned around to watch it. Would you rather watch a film about football that includes the mags or do your maths homework? That's the equation you've got to consider. That maths homework, but maybe because maybe I was quite sad because I liked it so. I'll cut a few things, but it says, it says, it says me, you did maths at your level as well. Like I can't talk. That's an indictment on me, but, but anyway, getting back to this, but, yeah, I mean, talking about the safety aspect, because I want to get into you.

10:16Oh, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah, the health and see you. Hey, it's you, Johnny. We're going to bring up the health and safety. You know, the sections, but, yeah, you talk about, and I remember Gary Mabbitt, I think, had a really bad one where he fractured his leg. I think where he basically kicked, kicked, cleared the ball. And you've got that scenario, Johnny, and you'll recognize this, where a striker comes across and tries to block the shot and the follow through from the clearance, barely wraps the leg around almost the striker. Yeah. That's where Schimpath's come in important, isn't it? Because that essentially stops you from fracturing your, your shin bone, doesn't it? Well, exactly, right? It's, I think you can compare it in a, in a strange sort of way, to a pair of keepers gloves, right? So you remember, you can get keepers gloves that had, like, the finger save things, you know, those, like, essentially, bits of plastic that will go up the fingers that would stop your fingers bending back when you, you know, saving a shot, tipping something wider or whatever. And it'll get, it's like the same principle, right?

11:17You have that support, you have that bit of structure in there to prevent the uncomfortable bending and warping of, of bits of human bone, which is never a, a fun experience for anybody involved. And Schimpath's are the same, the same, but to a much greater extent, because the shin bone, as I'm sure, were all aware, not the most robust of, of the bones in the human body, certainly not in the leg. And in a game of football, that's front and center for any damage that's, that's coming more likely than not. It's going to be coming front on for the middle of your leg, isn't it? So that clearance scenario, your classic, you know, 50, 50 and two players going with a slightly outstretched foot, one of them gets the ball, the other one doesn't. But the foot still, the foot still got to go somewhere. And if it goes through and clacks into the middle of your shin, you're going to know about it. If you've got a proper pair of Shimpaths on, then at least you've got a chance of walking away from that non the, non the worst for it. If you've got one of these modern little bloody SIM cards in your sock instead,

12:21you'd be lucky to be walking away from a full stop. SIM cards. But just because we've gone all hell from safety, I just want to finish by, before I bring Andrew in, Johnny, swing the other way for a second. Obviously, on the, on this topic, that we're going to go to, you know, huge Shimpaths. You know, are we talking about that players have to wear their socks rolled all the way up? And they have to wear a certain size. Is this what you're seeing? Because then, do you, you know, you even think about back in the day, the old footage of the legs are George Best and things like that. Do we lose that Maverick who wanders around the pits with these socks rolled down? And, you know, no Shimpaths on and all of that sort of stuff. Are we happy to just lose that and all players have to wear regulated Shimpaths and socks pulled all the wheel? Would you rather watch George Best for 10 games with his socks rolled down look and all cool? Or would you rather watch him for 100 games with his socks rolled up and looking slightly more like a nerd?

13:23But at least his legs work and he can still play football. That's, that's the equation you got to think of there. What's the best ability? Availability. What's the best way to not be available? It's the way they stupid British Shimpaths are to set up your leg it off. I mean, I thought I'd logged in a LinkedIn for a minute there, if we had to read it down. Well, it's about time we brought Andrew in on this. Yeah, I mean, I'm still waiting for Johnny to put his point across, because all I've heard for the last 10 minutes is Steve Bracknell, complain at a point. I'm complaining about it, please. Right, I've got so many various points here. I think this whole conversation's null and void because of that whole admittance to watching Goal, which by the way, the Goal franchise, I dare say, that was Hollywood funded, American ideas and football. Do you know what I mean? I bet, I bet you're right.

14:23I bet, I bet you're right. You are, you are a bugger because you're stolen a gag. Great, great mindset. That's all it is. I'm in a mood now, right? I'm in for you. The maths hall work instead of watching football and the TV. I think at the moment you need to practice your maths to just count the amount of wins we've had over Newcastle in the last few years. To the point where you have to take your shoes and socks off. Now, it will be a lot easier to take your socks off if you were just wearing sleeves that didn't come in your feet. But, but, I think now you know how you're talking about your cut off the feet. I don't even think you can do that. You don't even need to do that now because you can just buy the sock, a bit that goes over your, that would be your coughs.

15:23No, it's not your cut. Flip the neck. What part of the body is that that socks cover above your ankles? Your shins and your, your coughs. Yeah, shins and your coughs. You lower legs. You lower legs. Lower legs. There you go. I'm not going to win many arguments if I don't notice that. But, you don't even need to buy them with the feet. You can just get them that are purely the, the bits that kind of means you, you adhere to the rules about care to you, you wear in the right colors. And I think under that, what a lot of them wear. Now, like these kind of grip socks, which mean you get fewer blisters, that's apparently the only, the only reason why they cut off the bottoms of the socks. Wait, if they're that good, if they're that good, it's stopping blisters. Why don't they just start making football socks with them on the bottom? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's right. I mean, I don't, I don't dispute that. And the other point I want to make, you were talking about those old-school shin pads.

16:23They were a health and safety hazard because after playing football, you just chucked them in the boot of your car, left them there for a week. And then you didn't think about them again until your next game. You'd get them out. They would be absolutely lifting. There'd be some buy your diversity on that one, after all. Exactly. God knows what was on those antel protection sections. And that is why they've had to get rid of them because, yeah, they were just the skin conditions you will have got from putting them back on. I put players and players were going on European trips and getting detained for committing biological warfare trying to cross over the board, isn't that? Well, I think we've talked about socks and shin pads for a long enough now. And we need Andrew's pick, because, of course, it is best of three. This is round two. And we need to know what's going up against socks and shinnies. Of course. And I don't think any of my response circuit actually took Johnny Dahl. I think I just made a whole random selection of four.

17:25It was just you trying to remember part of the boy. Yeah, basically. And not succeed. Who ever said this podcast is an educational mind? Providing a service to all the listeners. I put one of the guests on it needs to have the education. Right. Right. I'm now having admitted that I've got no morals and got no intelligence whatsoever. I'm now going to criticize somebody else and tell them they don't know what they're doing. My second option for Room 101 is iFab. And just them basically piss farting around with the laws of the game. Now, I'm going to get stressed in these next couple of minutes. So if I say rules instead of laws, I apologize in advance. I know that that upsets people. iFab for those who don't know the International Football Association Board. They've been in place since the 1880s.

18:28FIFA do have representation on the board. But they are meant to be like a standalone body. And their remit is to meet twice a year and kind of help improve the game by tweaking laws, maybe introducing new laws ahead of each season. But come on. Do they actually watch football? Has any of the major headaches over the last few years been sorted by them? You know, there is controversy after every single game. And yet things don't get dealt with. Now, this was going to be me joke in me notes, Johnny. I was going to say that I would bet you or I can almost guarantee the next set of Premier League fixtures. There will be arguments about handball. There will be a decision on the Saturday

19:29where everybody's up in arms, ironically, about handball, complaining. That one wasn't pre-prepared either. I don't know which is worse. The jokes that are off the cuff. Off the cuff there's another one. Off the cuff or pre-planned. They're all as bad as each other. But you're a row week. Yeah. I think I have been to be fair. People are going to be sick of listening to me on the boards. Anyway, on the Saturday there'll be a big row about a handball decision. And then on the Sunday, a similar incident will happen. And you'll get a different decision. But no, no, no. We'll not tighten that up. We'll not look at any of the issues that cause the most scrutiny. We'll just ignore them and just let the game carry on instead. What we'll do is we'll change things like last, this current season. One of the things that brought in was only the captain protocols, which surprise, surprise

20:30hasn't lasted one minute. Captains are meant to be the only ones talk and to the referees now. Well, we could have told you that, told you that that wouldn't work. And it hasn't worked. That's, that's, you know, that's born fruit. Double touch penalties from this season onwards. If the ball goes in the net, they're meant to be retaken. How often is that being a problem? How many times in football has a double touch penalty really been an issue? But no, no, no. Lads, we better get this one fettled. We better come up with a solution for that problem that doesn't, doesn't exist. A couple of years ago, they introduced changes to the kickoff where you no longer had to roll, didn't you have to roll the ball forward to then roll the backwards, but now you can just roll the backwards. Brilliant. I mean, that is revolutionized the game, because that's all we did on a Monday morning in the office. We argued about somebody whether they took two touches

21:31to start the game or not. It's just, it's all of this. We've got the world coming up next this summer. So they've already announced the rules for next season. Some of these are going to be implemented in the world cup. Some of them are sensible, you know, but how am I? A lot of these are going to be abused. How would they not thought these things through? So like, for example, there's a five-second rule going to be introduced for throw-ins and goal kicks. I grit. Do you think there's any danger of a throw-in being taken from the right place, maybe? Please, Lads. Or for a throw-in to actually be taken properly. Throw-ins, now we're just people launching the ball like bouncing it off the ground as hard as they can. The other one, or one of the other ones, substitutes only having 10 seconds to leave the pitch otherwise the soul will be forced to wait a minute of live play. Now, I, we need to stop time wasted.

22:31We need to manage the game better. Who's going to implement that? Who's going to count that down? And time how long it takes the player to come off the pitch? And the big one, if you are injured in a game and the incident, the clash, doesn't lead to a card, you have to leave the pitch after treatment for a minimum of a minute. It's 30 seconds now, but it's going to be a minute. I mean, why? A no-play acting is an issue and needs looking at. But in a contact spot for a team to be disadvanted, disadvantaged by a genuine injury. That's wrong. What happens when a player who is injured refuses treatment because it's towards the end of the game and you're hanging on in, you're trying to hold on for a result so he refuses treatment so it can play on and then they make things worse for themselves. I've read a BBC report talking about this latest set of

23:35new rules, new guidance that bring it in. It said they had a few trials last season. They had technical teams discussing it, but they could find no solution for what is the tactical time out that has become the scourge of the modern game. So I thought I've recognised this. I've recognised that goalkeepers, for example, just take a dafton and fall down so that the managers can get a few instructions into their players. But they've disgusted at length and gone, I can't think of any solution for that one. So we'll just mess around with the edges of it instead and extend the amount of time a genuine ly injured player has to come off the pitch. I just think that sums it up for me. The real heart of the issues get ignored and they just mess about with these fiddly little things. And here's another one. They've agreed to further trials

24:37about potential changes for offside. We've been waiting for changes to offside for, I don't know, since Johnny last put on a pair of proposition pads. They're never going to bring it in. And he has, they've agreed next season to consult about measures to combat players covering their mouths when confronting opponents. Because of that recent racist episode, I think it was a Champions League game where a real Madrid won against the Figa. Yeah, they can't now determine if it was racist because apparently the Ben Figa fans covered their mouths so you can't lip read or anything. What do you need a consult about that? Just saying, right? Lads? You can't cover your mouths anymore with what position? Am I being like ridiculously naive and thick with all these things? Or could some of these things

25:38just be a simple fix that gets sorted a lot sooner? Well, you ended with a really loaded question there, Andrew. Dangerous. Dangerous. Yeah. But actually, as you said, the IFAB had its 140th annual general meeting which was held in Wales. That was at the end of February so that, as he said, they've been going up 140 years, changing the game a bit by bit. You did mention a few things, of course, because they did come to quite a lot of decisions in that. But just, for instance, I'll pick out a specific one. You did mention that the team cracked them one. Rules like that, if you look at the actual text I'm getting a kind of health and safety documentation, Johnny Hawley for a second. But the actual text of it does say that competitions may implement the only, the captain guidelines. So they didn't kind of enforce it on every competition.

26:40So it wasn't like the Premier League said, right, we're going to take that and that's going to be a thing. I think they encouraged it in the Premier League but didn't bring it in as a law and didn't bring it in so people could be punished about it. Which, I'll just jump in crystal or I'll say to you that I'll say to the trouble here. They don't even have the courage at the convictions then. So the God, well, he is a law that will think they'll change the game and improve it. But I tell you what, you lads just pick and choose whether you want to fancy it or not. Well, I'll bring you in on that. Because you're saying, well, you know, what's the point and all this? Well, on one hand, you're saying they keep fiddling with it too much. They keep messing with it. And on the other hand, everything you listed, I think, there, when you went through the rules, you said, well, that's an issue they need a sort. So they are trying to do it but at the same time that if they're brought in huge changes, if they change something fundamentally, surely it's safer to do it bit by bit

27:42and make sure they're not ruined in the game that we love rather than building something, just introducing something huge and changing it fundamentally. That we go, oh, my God, they're broken it. In theory, that makes perfect sense. But they're fiddling with the bits and bobs that don't matter, like I say, changing the way the game is restarted or kicked off. Little bits and bobs like that don't need addressing nearly as much as the offside guidelines, the handball issues. So yes, by all means, change things and I appreciate they'll come in for flak and I appreciate anybody that changes football. There'll be just as many people agreeing with them is disagreeing in. You can't do this or that's the best idea ever. But it seems that they'll kind of do piecemeal bits and just pussy foot around things rather than actually have the guts and say, this is a problem that's impacting the game.

28:44This is what we are going to do to resolve it. Well, of course, one of the main people on the board, I feel bored, is Arson Venger, who's apparently coming up with most of the ideas. But Johnny, I remember watching an overlap while back now with Gary Neville, Jamie Couriger, might have been Wayne Rooney, might have been Roy King, coming up who was on, Jill Scott was probably on. But they were talking about what rules they would bring in. And I was winning at some of the rules. They thought they were going to bring in. And I was going, oh my God, if they did that, that would be awful. So I don't think it's very easy. And I think sometimes Andrew said that they're fiddling. But sometimes these little changes they might go, or actually, well, if we change it a little bit, that works. Let's go full hogging change it. So I don't mind them doing that sometimes. I think you nailed the whole problem. Whether to be honest, Chris, is you can put a panel of as many people as you want or as few people as you want. You could probably have two people sat in a room.

29:47And you could say it to them two people. Now these could be X World Cup winners. They could be people who've played a thousand professional games at the top level. They could be amateurs from the park when it's Sunday morning. They could be armchair fans, whatever you want. You get these two people in a room and say it to them right. What are the problems with the laws of the game? They're not going to agree. They're not going to agree what the problems are. So that's with the minimum amount of people. Now you scale that up there. The board of iFab. That's a bit bigger. Then you scale that up to. All the football associations in a given continent. Then you scale that up to all the supporters in a given continent. Then you scale that up to the world of football. Even trying to get people to agree on what the problems are that we should fix is impossible. Never mind trying to get them to agree on solutions. Never mind then trying to get them to agree on. Okay, so we've agreed that this is a problem miraculously. And then we've on top of that we've agreed. This is how we want to solve the problem. This is the solution. Right now we just need to agree the implementation.

30:48Data hell's guys should be nice and easy, right? Which league do we trial it in over how long a period of time? What are we tracking to check whether it's actually worked or not? So I agree that I think the thrust of Andrew's argument is spot on, which is you get all this tinkering around the edges. And it's all of it nonsensical. Oh, thank God the kind of kick off forwards first. Now when it kicks kick off backwards immediately. God isn't football thrilling again. Obviously that's nonsense, right? But if you if you took I Fab in room one or one. What do you what? That's still a job that somebody's got to try and do, right? How are you going to do it? I just maybe I'm being unfair and expect Andrew trucking into room one or one and perfectly solved the problem in its players. That might not be quite his job, but I don't see anyone who can. Because we do audio only. You've listeners didn't get the joy of watching Johnny do real-time measurements

31:51as he was getting because he was getting bigger. Which way, which way big fish, little fish, cardboard box, that was it. He started off small and he showed us that I was getting bigger, but he showed us. Don't click that, I want to connect it. Do not click that. But yeah, anyway, I think that's that's run too good. And I think it's time to decide what goes in to room one or one. If anything from round two when I'm going to start with Johnny, socks and shinnies. Yes, the holes and stuff kind of annoying because I don't know what it is and it's a kind of newfangled thing. If and I always like wearing big ship pads and I always had my socks pulled right up just because it was habit. But you'd lose out on Steve Claridge thinking about it in the day. And I'm not really sure that was a good thing. You know, he was, he looked lazy, he was, he had that look. And there's quite a few players who will like that, especially in the lower legs. So yeah, no, I'm not going to put socks and shinnies in.

32:52It's like he doesn't know he is and it's kind of slightly annoying as I'm not putting it in. But I keep thinking the Steve Claridge I'm going back to that. So I'm sticking with that. Andrew, I fab. No, because I'm going to think about the final of the European Championships in 1992. That's not what I expected that to go. Sorry to interrupt, but that is an incredible segue. Well, if anybody, if anybody goes back to watch that final, they'll see Denmark passing the ball back constantly to Peter Schmeigel against Germany in the final. And I fab then changed the back pass rule because they saw it was a fundamental floor of the game. I don't know how they had noticed Grimm soon as volume up back to the halfway line before that, when he was in trouble in midfield. But anyway, I fab changed that and for that, they deserve the benefit of the doubt. So that takes us to a quick break before we go into round three. So we'll be back for you soon. And welcome back to how we're the podcast for the final round.

33:56And Johnny, we're going to go straight in with your final pick. So my final pick is this strange obsession. Oh, whoa, whoa. Why does he always get first gold like this is a stitch up this is an absolute stitching. I'm not other than this. Go on then and just go on. No, no, no, I can't be bothered now. You're obviously deciding how to do it. I mean, you're in with I fab, Chris. You're probably the caterers for I fab and don't want them to be thrown into room 101 because they'll get a lovely buffet at all these meetings. They'll agree on what to have for dinner and what time to have for dinner. But you're in with I fab, you're in with Johnny. You two just continue with your little stitch. You know, I'll hope you're proud of yourselves. You know, if anyone out there wonders why our pods are longer than we mean them to be. This is exactly why. Anywhere, Johnny, crack on with your last pick. So my last pick is Andrew Smithson.

34:58What is helping? I'll put myself in. I'm sick of this. No, my third pick is the strange obsession that seems to have overtake in the football world. With open play. Open play is now this sacrosanct thing that is almost a completely different sport that exists independently of, you know, trifling little matters like setpaces and dead ball creativity and skill at corners and three cakes and penalties. No, no, no, those aren't real football. Real football. He's all open play and swashbuckle and passon and try angles and getting in behind and don't get as wrong. That stuff's great. I love watching fantastic walk and play. But there's this strange snobbery as if... Well, if it didn't happen in open play, I didn't really count.

35:58You know, a striker scores 20 goals in a season. But well, you know, a few of those were penalties and... Didn't really count as if a penalty is just a guaranteed goal every time. Or, I mean, you see it sort of recently, the reason it's sort of stuck in me mind a bit is a lot of it with Bruno Fernandez and Declan Rice. Two players who are incredibly productive from dead balls. Create so many chances, set up loads of goals. I mean, Declan Rice does cook the three cakes against Real Madrid in the Champions League last season. Obviously, that was very prominent. Bruno Fernandez, there was something on the guy's board to wake up to a goal that was looking at his, you know, comparing his numbers to the rest of the league or whatever. And they showed not the heart too much back to the last episode. They showed his assist numbers. And they split it into open play assists and non-open play assists. As if there's something to be devalued about creating a goal, just because it came from a dead ball instead of coming from what I'm playing.

36:59And I don't understand it. It's like everything that happens within those white lines between the referees' whistles for the start and end of the game is football just because it's not as fashionable and just because it's not as aesthetically pleasing for a lot of people to watch things being, you know, created from corners whipped in or free cakes or whatever. That doesn't mean it isn't still incredibly difficult to get good at and something that's an incredibly profitable part of football for, you know, especially a team like Sunderland possibly biased towards it, you know, how many set-piece goals have we scored in games where maybe otherwise we wouldn't have had a sniff. It's very easy for these usually big club fans as well who have this type of attitude and that the kind of the sky generation of fans who only watch on arm chairs. Oh, well, you know, free cakes. Well, nobody, nobody like free cakes, corners or set-pieces, penalties.

38:00Oh, open play. Oh, you should see the amount of goals he scores in open play. As if it's something that's fundamentally different when they're all part of the same sport, you can't have open play without dead balls. You can't have dead balls without open play. They're all part of football. So why can't we just accept that and take things for what they are and appreciate that there are aspects of football that don't fit neatly into the, you know, the kind of received wisdom of at the moment, it's Pep Guardio's footballs the best before that it was, you know, I mean, you go back to the history of football. You had crows, football, you had Brazil in the 70s, whatever. Whatever you want to point that as the prevailing orthodoxy of the time. It's okay to play football in different ways than that. And I think people are, yeah, very, very snobby about it. Look down the nose as the aspects of the game, the team beneath them. I think it's, I think it's a crying shame. So you say and it's the discussion around it rather than actually having the start

39:02because I don't necessarily, I quite like it, as we know, other than X-A, as we talked about last time, I quite like a bit of data. But I don't mind if it defines, if, you know, somebody starts come up on the screen and the show, right, he scored, you know, a midfielder scored 10 goals this season. And then it says, eight were from set pieces. Or, you know, then you'll go, actually, well, I can get an idea of what that type of player is and what kind of goal he scored. Absolutely. There's nothing wrong whatsoever with Peyton as full of a picture as you possibly can. About a player or a team or sometimes you're even used to compare, you know, one league against another league maybe when you get those kind of debates about what the best of leagues in the world or what have you. You know, the more data you've got, you can, you can inform yourself more and come to a better conclusion. But it's the attitude that underpins it, which really wrinkles with me because if what was happening when these stats were being shown was what you've just described Chris where you're looking, you go, okay, so that's interesting.

40:03It tells us what kind of player he is. That would be one thing. I don't think that is what's happening though. You know, because the attitudes are overwhelmingly negative towards this sort of thing, the broadcasters, the news papers, the football content providers, lean into that and start, you know what it's like. You watch it, you watch a game on Sky and there'll be endless number of stats that are flashed up that are so clearly cherry-picked, perfectly to suit someone's agenda. Whatever the narrative the talk and point might be for that particular wake or that particular month, you know. At any given moment, it might be Bruno Fernandez who can only do stuff from set pieces. So all of a sudden it, he has the assists split in their open playing set pieces. You know, you say it how many times as well. This is a slight tangent, but it's great when a strike is in a decent bit of form and Sky will flash up like goals in the Premier League since the 13th of November 2025, specifically. And you're like, hmm, that's weird.

41:03I don't remember when we started tracking stats exactly from the middle of November for no reason. And it's all done to further this. It's like a, it's like a self-fulfill in prophecy, isn't it? People develop attitudes about the game, those seep through into the broadcasters, and then part of their job is essentially to pander the attitudes of the people watching, because that's how you get them to watch. So then it goes and it goes and it goes. And I think it's accelerated to the point now where there's a genuine distaste for what is a massive part of a game of football. Well, he did mention negative comments based on having an agenda. So I think it's probably the point to bring Andrew in on that. Oh, well, I'm expecting you to pull it apart. I wish I had massive shimpads on Chris, because you've just turned four. You just turned four. What is this with that? I thought you might have some negative comments, because you don't want them to win. I mean, I wasn't listening.

42:03I mean, it's a four-pizza, four-pizza, four-pizza, three-pizza. I've been shafted by you two. I didn't listen to any of that. No. I love you, sweetie. I genuinely do. I am just being an idiot. Johnny's right. There's a lot of sniffiness around it. I heard on a... I think it was the Guardian podcast recently, which is a genuine, heavyweight football podcast. Somebody was suggesting that if Arsenal win the league, the Premier League this year, it might go down in history with a bit of an asterisk next to it, because of how many goals that scored from set plays. Well, it's just... It's just rubbish. At no point have I come away from a good, sunland result, and given a nick about whether it was... The goals were from passing moves, open play, throwing...

43:04The game's there to be won by the goals you score, and as long as it's an legitimate goal, you take every opportunity possible. And that point is well about cherry picking stats, and it is all just to make talk and points on the comment reason, on the news articles, and all of this. It's just... I might even say fake news. I'm not going to say fake news. I'll stay clear of that, but it's all just... Generated the cause, talk and points, and it gets a bit tiresome. Well, he's me expecting you to pull that apart, and you back them up, because we need to go into your last pick, Andrew. Yes, yes, yes. England expects you to pay over the odds for your football shirts. Do you like that one? That was enough of a pre-prepared line of mine.

44:04Oh, that's very good. I like that one. Oh, thank you very much. How desperate of me to then ask for, like... The situation for things I've said. The New England kids have just come out, and the prices are eye-watering. I think it's scandalous. Now, listen, I've shown in the first episode, I've shown in this episode, I will quite happily shift the goalposts and change my principles to suit my arguments. I'll admit to that. I don't mind it so much when clubs charge a lot of money for shirts, because the businesses have got transfer fees to fund. It's like a finite number of funds that they can get money from. But the FA, they're a governing body. They shouldn't be trying to make profit. There's millions of people that would happily pay a reasonable price for an England shirt.

45:04But nah, you know, let's just cash in. Let's just forget the fact that during a World Cup, they will coin it in with various endorsements and advertising and all of that. Let's just squeeze a bit more out that the point is on the street to pay for a shirt with three lions on. And this, by the way, it's Nike Kits, and this has got nothing to do with the fact that Nike have pulled out with Docksville International Power, and no longer employ anybody in Sunderland. That's got nothing to do with it at all. Nike's UK head office used to be in Sunderland, but they moved out a couple of years ago. But seriously, if you go on the online England store now, and look at the prices, a last that the old England shirt, that what was called the stadium version of the old design, is still on there for sale for 85 quid, 85 quid for a shirt out of date. The current one,

46:05if you want to buy what is called the air or fit version, it's 135 pounds. And if you want to buy the stadium version, it'll set you about 90 notes. Now, not everyone will know what I mean when I say the stadium version. It's a relatively new idea, and a couple of domestic clubs do it and all. But you can now buy a shirt, which is the same tech and the same spec as what the players wear, and you pay a premium for that. Or you can gather out and have that in double XL now. Yeah. Well, the alternative is, if you don't fancy fork on that out, or it might look a bit snug on me, I think, if I tried wearing a top, a professional would wear. You can buy what's called the fan or the stadium version that looks similar, but might be made with lesser-grade materials,

47:05and what have you. Now, you wouldn't mind that if the fan version was considerably cheaper than you were getting in a bargain price. But then 90 quid, the cheap version is 90 quid. I think the youngest, my youngest niece, I think her season ticket guard for next season was only about 100 quid or something. So for a footy top, it's mad. If you do want to buy a kid shirt, it's 65 pounds, which is more than you would pay for a full price adult shirt in the Sunland Club Shop. You've got to fork out separately if you want to wear an England women's shirt because they've got a different design, which feels shun. It just feels like an absolute rip-off. And, you know, it's the same with the change strip that they brought out. Basically, it's a template job. Basically, it's the home version, but just in red,

48:05no originality in the design. This next point is personal taste. I actually think the England tops this year look like either a train and top, or one of those generic footy tops you'd buy in the supermarket, you know, they bring out like a head of a world cup they'll bring out like a generic England top. I just, I mean, just everything. The stadium version of the shorts alone will cost you 45 quid, man. And last but not least, I, we're all going to want to spend our summer stripping around looking like Jordan Pickford. That's perfectly fine. I get that. You want to wear, you want to buy a gold keeper shirt and look like England's number one Washington's very own Jordan Pickford. Again, it'll cost you 90 pounds. You can't buy a player version for the gold keepers. I don't know why, but they haven't learned their lesson from when that all kicked off with Mary Eurts a couple of years ago.

49:06Last season's design though is still on sale at what is marketed as a clearance price at 68 quid. Last season's England kit may I remind you is a template. And if you bought the exact same top now, but with a Birmingham city badge on, you can get for 40 quid. Now, listen, I know that's not comparing apples with apples and the stature between England and a championship club side are different. But the top itself, the actual shirt itself is the same. The badge is all that's changed. Fans know they get ripped off. Fans understand that, but they're not even trying to hide it these days, man. So there you go. That's my little, last rant of the day over. Yeah. And I think one year you didn't mention in there and you forgive us if you did, but there was this thing on the report on the BBC about shirts.

50:06It said, so let's say you're a family of four made up with two parents, one older child and one toddler. You would like England shirt to the whole family this summer, plus shorts for the kids, the total cost, so family of four, two kids, three hundred and ninety-seven pounds, ninety-six pounds. That's where we end the work. It's absolutely scandalous. But, I mean, it brings me, it gives me a really good chance, actually, to bring up, if anybody saw it, the old son-in-strip with the Roker report logo on the sleeve from Dick Hitt's Gate. I'm sure, a few photographs we're taking to people on holiday, finding it in shops on holiday, and I think there's a few people walking at the match as well. But it does though. But it forces people, this is my argument about the life football and the amount of subscriptions. What they're doing, forces people to look for alternatives. And the alternatives are generally

51:08illegal. But the whole society seems to be forcing people that find and wears around doing things legitimately. And this goes, I think, across society, which is then what's it doing to society in general? It's making people who, you know, have no interest in breaking the law or don't want to break the law. They're actually considering it, because they're going, well, I can't afford to do anything in the right way. So, okay, the choice is just, I go without. But then people are offering alternatives because there's so much demand for them, Johnny. Yeah, 100% Chris, I could not have put a bit of myself. That was exactly the point I was going to come back with is not to disagree with Andrew whatsoever. But just to say, I think that the biggest problem with it really for me is the preachingness again and the sanctimonious attitudes that come from with the England shirts, it either comes from the FA or from, I think there was another BBC piece essentially

52:09shaming people for buy-in DHGate rip-offs. But don't you know that money goes towards you know, sweat shops and terrible labour and whatever. And it's like, I am sure Nike have got lots of properly good, lovely factory conditions of people working. I'm sure at all an absolute dream to work there. But it's this attitude of pricing people out of everything, forcing them to make these decisions between, you know, well, any luxuries and basic necessities essentially, with the way that things have gone so living in everything. And then, shaming people for finding alternatives that work for them, in the face of being exploited at every turn, and it's, it always makes his laugh as well when they'll be like, well, you know, it's costing the industry X amount of money from people buying these knock-off shirts or whatever it might be and it's like, yeah, if everybody who bought a knock-off shirt would have just bought the real thing instead. But most of them wouldn't. The reason the buy-in

53:09a knock-off shirt is because they can't afford 135 quid for a bit of fabric to cover their chest and arms. That's going to be out of date in a couple of years. It's just, yeah. They wonder why everyone's got fire sticks. And, yeah, exactly. And the tough thing is, if they're sold to shirts for 25 quid a pop, everybody would buy them. Would they sell double and make more money? Yeah, of course. Well, look, they wouldn't turn every single missed sale into an actual sale because, you know, there's always some people who just be like, wow, I can't be bothered going and buy in a proper England shirt and all the rest of it. But, yeah. They shoot themselves in the foot. They heard the true fans who were the ones who were being gouged at every turn for all this, whether it's kids, whether it's much tickets and a lot of instances, season tickets, TV packages, whatever it is. And then they turn around and cry foul when people do this and say, well, I wonder why? The knock-offs as well. Again, I get

54:10what users say in a bout bike. You don't have to buy a kit. You don't have to buy a knock-off one. Some of them are made using inappropriate materials and that. They're blooming dangerous, man. Some of them. So, it's illegal. It's dangerous. Yeah. I do fully get that you could just say, I'll not buy a kit. I don't have to buy a kit. But, not many people can get tickets for England games because, of course, there's millions of fans and the stadium only holds X amount of people. But, there's so many people who get into football because, as a kid, I, they couldn't go to the game, but they've got an England shirt and they're where remembering an England shirt and feeling proud. The FA won't have a game to oversee if people are priced out and fall out of love with England. In my opinion, anyway. Yeah. Man, I said that. I would have paid ten times as much for one with a Rocker Report rule going from day to day after. But, it builds it,

55:10just greatly builds into the Americanisation that Johnny did start off with because actually looking at tickets, it says for one person to attend eight matches during the World Cup won any round. It's the lowest ticket price range. It would cost them over five grand. In the middle price range, eight and a half thousand pounds and at the most expensive tickets, over twelve grand. For a lot of those, by the way, you'd have to commit to all of them at once or you get none of them. Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. So, I think, based on all of that, it goes without saying, Andrew, you do get prices into Room 101. I don't think there's anywhere we can pull that in. And that goes across the board, strips, tickets, and everything like that. I think that is actually changing the game more than anything else at the moment in changing, kind of the audiences and how people go and how people attend. But, yeah. So, Andrew's prices does go into Room 101. And obsession with Open Play. I think that's got to go in, Johnny.

56:10I think that's got to go in purely because it's people being snotty about things, about an element of football that people have got to be good at. People have got to be practiced. I can't remember anyone being snotty about David Beckham back in the day with said pieces. Or Seb Larson. Or, yeah, okay. That's a different thing. One free kick every six months didn't consider. But, but anyway. So, that gives Johnny the win. 2-1. Well done, mate. Be very proud of yourself. Andrew, thank you very much. Of course, prices was an absolute party one that had to go in and actually spend a whole pod talking about this. So, just let me just say thank you very much. Andrew, thank you very much. Johnny, for your time, as always. Thanks again, everyone, for listening. Please let us know if you agree or disagree with the lads or whether you think my decisions were nonsense or, of course, hoping to do lads more during the international break. So, we've got lads more coming out on our daily releases on how we podcast.

57:10People look out on the rover of our website as well. But for us, take a bite for now. Thank you very much.