The Extinction XI

0:00I'm sorry, you can sit there and look and play with all your silly machines as much as you like This gas going on have a crack. Here's your note. Oh! I say! Brilliant! But Jay! He's round the go! Okay, but he's done it! Absolutely incredible! He launched himself six feet into the crowd and Kung Fu kicks As the porkler who was I with without a shadow without getting him lipped I say! It's amazing! He does it, Jay! And Jay! And Jay again! I got the music! Charge and loss! This nation is going to dance all night! Glenn Hoddle's ever-lasting cultural impact, dusting off the English existential crises already, the most inevitable post-woke-up qualification content of all. Truly unhinged goalkeepers, the 20-year heyday of the sweeper, no nonsense penalty-taking fallbacks, the demise of the Premier League-owned goal machine,

1:01man markers, the surprising nuances of the free roll, fat strikers, beanpull strikers, and the long-lost art of poaching. Brought to your ears by Gohanger Podcasts. This is football clichés and the Extinction 11. Hello everyone and welcome to Football clichés. I'm Adam Hurray and I'm joined today by David Walker. How you doing? I'm well. How are you? Yeah, I'm all right. I saw your face frozen in time on the EnglandPod post-Japan. Quite iconic. I really did sum up the sentiment of what felt like a completely unhelpful game of football. Yeah, the old thousand yards there as we stood down a side street in Covent Garden after watching the game in the pub. Oh right, okay. Wasn't that fun? Would have liked it to have been a bit more fun, but hey, you're back from the... I saw it coming. I saw it coming. I knew that it was going to be completely a sort of disjointed game of football and so it proved. Alongside us, for this one is Michael Cox ending a 147 episode absence

2:08and here for his 22nd clichés cap. Coxy, this makes you Lee Dixon, which fits quite nicely because he had five years in the International Wilderness and came back. So this works really nicely, I think. I quite like that comparison and he was presumably on Combs last night. I was watching the playoffs, but very much an international break voice, I think, for me these days. Yeah, I think so. Later on, we're going to have the first proper themed 11 since the pure Bundesliga 11 episode with Kevin Hatchard back in June. I think it was great to be back in the football approximating selection saddle. That comes later, but at Judication Panel Time, Dave, we've had a lot of correspondence about the throwaway debate we had on the last part about the meaning of the word tilt, specifically when you talk about title tilts and things like that. It's also related to full tilt, if you go full tilt. Those people got in touch and glad to see these medieval reenactment weekends are finally paid off because it relates to jousting, apparently. It's really jousting. Okay, a lot of these things are often some sort of, you know, military reference, combat reference. So I'm not particularly surprised that this one is jousting,

3:13guess it makes sense. It's actually like, you tilt off the towards the opponent when you're on the horse. Is it that literal? Sort of. Jonathan Wilson, unsurprisingly clarified it for me, says it's both the barrier between the combatants and the act of charging, which is, you know, more directly related to full tilt. So if you're at full tilt, that's when you're charging at someone in a jousting session. Okay, don't know. So there you go. Glad we had that clarified. To also address something we talked about on the Dreamland episode the other day, football on the radio. Coxie, we had a debate on this episode about whether 693 or 909 was the dominant frequency of five live if there even was one. You're a 909 man, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a geographic thing, is it not? So it seems, I mean, I should have worked this out really. In the further north we go, the more 693 seems to take hold, Dave, which, you know, I guess is what frequencies designed to do, right? It makes sense. Although I don't, yeah, I didn't realize that myself either to be honest. I'm sure there is, there is an element of randomness to it. You're just driving on the motoyle ever and you just try. Sometimes you can get one and you can't

4:16get the other. It goes in and out. It's very patchy. I mean, in the era of DAB, it's a bit of a, you know, a bit of an anachronism, isn't it? But we got some correspondence from Sigmund Vestergaard, the only Faroeese listener that I know what we have. And he says, I grew up in the southern most village in the Faroes, and we're close enough to Shetland that we can get five live on a transistor radio. The 693 frequency was always clearer for us, so we use that. Sometimes 999 worked whether depending, but 693 was genuinely the one to go for. They lived in a completely different life and they're buzzing with the southern hemisphere. So how genuine question, how does the weather come into it? Does the wind blow the frequency across? I genuinely have no idea how that works. Incredible first guess that why the weather would affect radio frequencies. Up low electrical storms, but air pressure. I don't know. It can't be the wind. Surely not. On in Dennis's voice, just blowing on the wind literally. You know, like a, you know, like a glass summary, sometimes the wind's just blowing the wrong way and everyone

5:16at the back of the pyramid stage can't hear it. I think it's the same for the Faroe Islands. It just comes blowing across the North Sea. It's hard. There was a, there was a submission actually on the on the Reddit thread for that episode, for that Dreamland episode, and we didn't mention it in the episode, but it was a guy who said he, I think he was like studying abroad in northern France or something. He could just about pick up capital gold on his radio. So Jonathan Pierce was like his link back to home. It's like the radio equivalent of sitting in a tree outside an FA Cup game. It's like, yeah, just make it. This is great. It's opened up a slight kind of worm to me though, Dave, because he's now reminded me of something I haven't thought about for absolute decades, which is, who remembers throwing your voice? Do you remember throwing your voice? Because everyone's talked about that for years. I was convinced this is a kid, you could do it, and now I just realized it was complete bollocks. Throwing your voice. Wow. Seriously, is it for either of you thought about the concept of voice throwing for 20 years? No, no.

6:19It's sorry, but that does feel like something that would come up in like Peter K's latest 100% 100% Oh, you know, what a great start to the pod. Next up, this came from Get It Together 19 on the Reddit. It's Glen Hoddle phraseology and dance music song titles, because disclosure, I've just released their new single, The Sun Comes Up Tremendous. The Sun Comes Up Tremendous. Yeah, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, he just, rises up Tremendous. I mean, it's not completely beyond the realms of possibility that Glen Hoddle could be the vocalist on this track, is it? I could see it. Yeah, bringing him out on the strength of his singles that he released for Was It For World Cup 2022? So yeah, very possibly, but yeah. What was that? Was it Manson who did that Sunwide Open Space? I'm sure you, you must have covered this on the podcast, but it emerged that the singer whose name I've forgotten, sorry, got that from a John Watson line on Match of the Day. That's right. Where he just, you know, there was a ball out to the wing and Watson said, he's in a wide

7:23open space and that became actually a really good song, but it's not impossible, is it? I don't think we have discussed it on the podcast, but yeah, it's a great story and I'm really glad that sort of song lyrics come from things like that. But yeah, what chorus that was, by the way. Peter Ormerod writes in next day over the complaints about football. Referees point the wrong way when indicating which team has been given a decision in their favour. They should point in the direction the team has come from not where they're going to is the one thing that rugby gets right. It's a really hard thing to adjust to if you find yourself watching rugby is referees pointing in the other direction to football, which do you think spiritually, if you're being really even handed about this Dave, which you think is spiritually correct? I've never watched a game with football and thought that this was a problem. So they're pointing, yeah, so if you're defending in your heart and you get a free kick, they will point towards the goal that you're attacking. Yeah, it's like one of those things that I've seen it so many times, I'm questioning myself as to which way it is, but yeah, that's right. So the other way round would look, I think it would

8:26look weird. They start in that half and they're going towards the other goal. It's more positive, it's more creative coxie to point in the direction of where they're attacking though, isn't it? I mean, I think for certain things like a free kick on the edge of the box, it would look weird if you pointed to, you know, 80s down the pitch. I must say I've always thought the same for like a throw in on the halfway line. I think spiritually your half of the pitch is the one you were defending. That's where you start. That's where you would be warming up. That is your goal. I must admit, when I was eight or nine, I thought exactly the same thing. I didn't have really thought about it for 20 or 30 years, but yeah, that will annoy me next time I watch a game. Yeah, you can see, I fab, getting their mitts on this and thinking, yeah, maybe let's change it. Right, on to World Cup qualification matters. Now it's all wrapped up. Let's start with England, after the game, England's lamentable 1-0 defeat to a much better organised Japan team. Tom was too cool. Was presented with the idea that it wasn't the send-off that he wanted and he replied with its march. It's not a send-off. Bang on! Exactly! It doesn't matter how the FA

9:27have branded these games, it's spot on. And because the players didn't do a lap of the pitch after the game did they a little wave, because it would have been stupid, because it's 70 days to go. Probably stood in front of a board which was emblazoned with the words of the send-off series. They did they did brand these games, the send-off series. And they won't play at Wembley before the World Cup, so there is an element of it being the send-off, but as we discussed before, I mean, it's march. They're not getting on the boat tomorrow, are they? The boat. Cox, see, this is this is one of these sort of what it's a minor example of one of the things I really like about having a foreign manager in charge of England is they don't really give a shit about our little traditions, and this is one of them. Oh, a send-off! Do other countries care about their little send-offs? Yeah, probably not. I mean, sorry for a second mention of rugby on this pub, but I do remember in 2015, the England rugby team had a send-off even though they were hosting the tournament. It's really wrapped up, man. But yeah, you're right, too cool. Yeah, I do quite like things like that, because they hear it and they just think of it quite

10:30literally in a way that if you've heard these phrases for 20 or 30 years, you just accustomed to them. But yeah, it's a perfectly, perfectly valid point. Definitely had that little sort of polite but mischievous smile on his face when he said it, Dave, almost certainly. He's really good at that. He's really good at sort of politely fielding questions that you think secretly are bollocks. Yeah, and him saying that it's not the end of the world, again, is a thing that you can't imagine Southgate really saying that he would just put more reverence into every individual moment wouldn't he? So yeah, you can get away with it. So luxury he has that people aren't really thinking about. However, a potential backward step for English football coxie. Oliver Holtz tweeted after the game. He says it's interesting and slightly worrying to hear Mark Gay saying it's not easy putting the shirt on. Are we back to the days when England players said the shirt hung heavy on their shoulders? I really don't want to go back to the days of the shirt hanging heavy. It's the last thing I want. It's the way possibly the worst strand of England discourse bound for pound. I think that reminds me of the only nice spin I've heard on this was when Italy got

11:35eliminated from the 2010 World Cup and Fabio Canavaro had had a bit of a shocker. I said many of his teammates and Canavaro said something like, if the shirt felt heavier this time around, that's because we put a fourth star on it last time. And I thought that was that is nice. That's an Italian spin on it. I really liked that. Yeah, they're just better at these sentiments than we are Dave. But I don't we don't need this in our lives. We don't need the anxiety being an England player in the mix anymore. We've done that. Well, it wasn't new shirt last night. So maybe he was maybe he was literally talking about it's not very easy putting this shirt on. I've never done it before. Yeah, yeah, like the 2002 World Cup shirts. I had an inner lining, didn't they? If I remember rightly. Next up Henry Winter in Harry Kane's absence against Japan, Dave, is setting the ball rolling on the root and branch review for the lack of English number nine. And he's sort of asking Oli Watkins, Dominic Salanki, Dominic Calvert Lewin and Danny Werbeck to up their game and put themselves in contention to be Kane's deputy.

12:37But more broadly, he's thinking about why we're not creating number nine. And he thinks that cage football styles are leading to ballers and not poachers. You can sort of see the logic there. Dave, but I wonder what kind of grassroots set up we would need to go back to to bring back the poachers, bring back the linakers, like headers and follies. Do we like to bring headers and follies back into the curriculum? Maybe we should. Yeah, it's a good show actually. The thing is, I mean, without being too serious about it, like I'm sure there are plenty people going into your 2024 saying, oh, you know what, Oli Watkins, is he really up to it if Kane gets injured? He comes on in the semi-final scores the goal that gets us through. You don't need to be Harry Kane. You might be on for 10 minutes here and there. Yeah, who'd? Okay, so of all the kind of number nine standings in the England set up, Coxie, who is the example that you're thinking about if you're saying if the ball drops for them in the area of the 89th minute, which is the only test for the backup striker? I mean, that is a good quote. I mean, I would have, see, I'd have done he were back as my backup striker, but I don't think he fits that, does he? Because he's notoriously not a prolific goal scorer. So that's quite a good way. He might

13:40be the ball to drop for player, possibly Salanki. I mean, I do think this is quite funny because a lot of people don't watch that many other international teams, you know, between the two-year cycle. So I think we just assume that everyone else has got these, you know, incredibly, you know, great striking options. You look at the striker's Germany called up for this international break, and it was Nick Walter Marder, who is basically playing midfield for Newcastle. Denny Zundov, who played a little bit for Brighton, and Nicholas Falkrug, who very well, he couldn't do it at West Ham. So like, I think that spot on, we are in general so quick to, I mean, it's probably quite a natural thing. You're focused on your own team, but we assume that everyone else is going great guns, heading into tournaments, and I think Argentina has struggled to beat. I started to beat somebody really proper minnow the other day, you know. So everyone's got problems. It's fine. Yeah, but if the ball falls to Nicklas Falkrug, of any way. Right. A team whose lineup for the work we don't need to worry about, of course, are Italy. I really enjoyed the absolute barrage of context-bending stats after their non-qualification was confirmed. People trying to frame their

14:43absence from the work of in various different ways. If you were 17, you've never seen Italy at the World Cup, et cetera, et cetera. But my initial thoughts were drawn straight away to what Gazetta and Corriere dello sports front pages are going to be the next day. And it's great to see Coxy, the kind of sort of slight decline in incredulity on their front pages since 2018. In 2018, it was Italy. This is the apocalypse on the front of Gazetta. In 2022, it was to hell, said Corriere dello sports. And then in 2026, both of them have just gone with everyone at home. And that's it. So yeah, it's quite natural. Yeah, this is us now. So it's great to see the kind of the horror has faded over time. But yeah, I guess that's what happens if you failed to qualify for three in a row. Yeah, I mean, this technically, this is the worst one, because there's more teams in it. So you really shouldn't not get into the 16-year-over teams. I watched extra time with this in probably not far from David. Actually, I was in a pub quiet and I was just off for Leicester Square. And there was, it was a packed room, almost everyone Italian.

15:47And when the first penalty went over from a sposito, there was an English bloke behind me in Italy shirt. You know, there was a horrified noise from around the room as it went over. And this bloke just show it out. Chris Waddle, when it went over. And I wanted to turn around and be like, maybe probably Roberto Bangeo, to be honest, rewarding Chris Waddle. Yeah, it's the first reference you can reach for. That's absolutely fine. However, Dave, most importantly of all now, now the playoffs have all been decided. We can finally enjoy the most vital pre-World Cup content of all, which is the not going to the World Cup 11, which is like mandatory for all media outlets to publish. The BBC have had a stab, Donna rumoring goal, Ola Einer at right back, Willie Orban, Nicola Millenkovich, a centre-backs, Milos Kerke is at left back. So, Rudi Rassi on the right, Tanali and Subosla in the middle, Gavarat Skelia on the left wing, Osumen and Levandowski out front. It's a very top heavy team back back for, I'm not having at all. The World Cup is going to be fine. They're not going to be all right. Yeah, yeah, I think it's fine. I'm very pleased

16:51that Poland aren't there with apologies to any of our Polish listeners. I'm just fed up of Leuandowski being touted as a potential Golden Boot winner and in scoring once if that in the group stage. So, yeah, get rid of them. Yeah, and Nigeria might have been fun. I was watching DR Congo against Jamaica last night, which went to extra time. Axel Twanzibis scoring the winner for DR Congo. So, he's on the plane, he's going to be there. Hungary have done well to have three players in this team, haven't they, Coxie? Yeah, they have. To be honest, like you say, hearing that back for, that for me is the first real legacy I've heard of a 48 team World Cup, because I mean, there's 16 fewer teams than usual to choose from for this missing out 11. And like Dave says, you know, Leuandowski, we've seen before, credit scale, you're a great player, but we see him every week in the Champions League, he was great in the Euros. There's not that many where I'm like, oh, you can't have a World Cup without them. I mean, it seems fine really, doesn't it? All right, don't quite share Dave, your hand washing of Poland, because I was so close. I was so close to working out whether their home share was white or red. Anyway, it's ITV's loss, because they are pure ITV. Anyway, this

18:00episode is brought to an associate with NordVPN. For those who don't know, VPN stands for virtual private network. It secures your connection, protection your personal information and online activity, especially on public Wi-Fi. A VPN can also make your phone or laptop a period of, it's in another country, which is great for accessing content while traveling. Indeed, over to Australia, we go. This came from PM who was watching Perth Glory vs Melbourne City in the A-League, the other day. And is this the most compelling evidence to date that football now has total ownership of this cricketing phrase? Daniel Arzani has been bowling bounces in the box. That's another one. That's a great area. And Sutton was unsure whether or not that was going to take a little clip off Brian Caltech. And it's a good save in the end, but it's something that Melbourne City can do more of. Patient build up, waiting for the right moment to put it in. Well, what do they call that

19:01the corridor of carnage? I think it's in harm's day by the fact that they introduced a cricket analogy first, which I quite liked. Actually, that kind of troublesome bouncing ball in front of the goalkeeper is a little bit, you know, as tricky to deal with as it is in cricket. Just on that, first of all, a bouncer in cricket, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm fairly certain, it's a ball that bounces short, right? And so bounces up. So it's not bouncing just in front of the goalkeeper. You couldn't plan to hit across ten yards before the goalkeeper to make it bounce up and over him, would you? Is it more of a Yorker? Certainly. Yeah, full length, I think. There's certainly closer to a Yorker than a bouncer. Yeah, I agree. The cricket analogy was good, but the bouncer, I mean, that is not. I don't think you could bowl a bouncer really in delivering across it, just wouldn't make any sense at all. Of course. If anybody was going to sort of graduate corridor of uncertainty to corridor of carnage, David, was going to be the Australian. Corridor of uncertainty is a cricket. Absolutely, originally. Was it a boycottism? Maybe, I don't know,

20:02it feels like it's ours now, and then the Australians are on board. Then it's definitely ours. Yeah, quite like the corridor of carnage. Yep. You must have been down one of those in your time. If you want to try NordVPN for yourself, go to nordvpn.com slash cliches. And our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. It's the best discount available. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money back guarantee, and the link is also in our podcast description if you need it. We'll be back very shortly with the Extinction 11. Welcome back to football cliches. We've done the adjudication panel now, a time for the main event. The Extinction 11. This is inspired by listener Jackson Keeer's Reddit thread of favor off the beaten track footballing archetypes. But this is the Extinction 11. Attempt to a catalog some of football sub-subcategories of footballers that appear to have fallen by

21:05the wayside. There are so many angles to go here. From Dave, Tactical, Physiological, Aesthetic. I think we should try and cover them all for this 11 because you could potentially sprawling concept, but we need to touch all the bases of unfashionability in football. Yeah, and I mentioned on the last episode that we didn't want it to just be old football versus modern football. Yes. And the submissions have been very good on that front. There is plenty of nuance in there. There is of course a bit of they don't make them like this anymore about it, but there's some subtlety in there as well. Some of these possibilities that we're going to talk about are position specific and very much fixed to that position. But some of some listeners have come from the other direction and produce sort of concepts that could be pinned to pretty much any position really. Take for example, Wembley tour. They said player managers seem to be half the league in the 1990s. Peter Reed, Glen Hoddle, Trevor Francis, Jan Luca Viali, not sure they're even allowed now. What is the most player manager-y position? Like it can't be two. You can't really have striker player managers. I know there's been a couple, but I don't like that. No, I think it really is a deep midfielder for me, maybe even dropping back to center back, but ideally someone

22:10who has retreated I think their position. I mean, I think Wayne Rooney did this really well because he had a really natural evolution from like a number nine, a number ten, a weird kind of all-round central midfielder, Darby, he was basically almost on top of the defense. Then he became a player manager. Then he became a manager. I don't know if Roy the Rogue specifically did that journey, but I'm fairly sure it was pretty similar to that. That's nicely spotted. I like that. I was going to say, David, I can't imagine a winger player manager, but didn't Ryan Gix technically do because he played while he was manager of many 90s, didn't he? So yeah, he could have a winger. Yeah, in 2013-14. He brought himself on as a sub, didn't he? That's a good question. I think part of the issue now is that I think you can be a caretaker manager and a player manager, but you need, I mean, you need your UEFA pro license now to be a manager. And obviously no one's got that whilst they're still playing because you've got them, you know, go and study it, cover Chano for two years. Vincent Company was player manager of Andalect, and then

23:10and then went back into being just a player, didn't he? Because he just couldn't do it. Never liked that backward step because that basically, yeah, it's like, I fucked it. I can't, I don't do it. I was looking for something, I think it's something, I'm doing some research for something on one of our shows recently in us, and I happened upon a bit of a rabbit hole and discovered that Brian Robson's last ever game as a professional footballer was at Highbury in 1997, in the Premier League, in like January 97, while he was a player manager for Middlesbrough. It was like New Year's Day, wasn't it? Yeah. Was it the year where they had that big flu outbreak? And I think it was the year they went down, wasn't it? Yeah, maybe. Was it the year they forfeited a game because they had a flu outbreak or something, and it's part of that he had to name himself in the squad. I'm just doing an emergency job, surely. Yeah. 97, that is a bit mad actually. One of the nice things about player managers is when, you know, you've got someone who doesn't have their badges, so technically the assistant is the one who's got the license, which kind of feels like the football equivalent of like paying someone, you know, above 18 to go and buy booze when you're

24:14a teenager. Have a such a seri-ar thing for a while. It's probably a little jobsworth. Oh, we have got you. It's difficult. You can't sit in the duck out. I don't even play with that, right? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly, right. What formation should this team play in? Spiritually, Coxy, because what's the most unfashionable mainstream post-war football formation? I mean, can we stretch to WM? Can we have that? I don't know if we can. I mean, I was trying to put together, and we're going through all the World Cup's region and we're trying to put together like a best team from all the World Cup winners, and I was thinking, actually, why can't I have a WM? If half of these teams, or the first few of these team played WM, I want to include five forwards, because that's more fun. But I suspect a lot of the, maybe a lot of the positions are actually like quite anglomerous, full-backy type roles, and actually we need to stock up on defenders here. So I don't know. Maybe, maybe, in fact, maybe 42 through one's good. It just covers all the bases, doesn't it? That's gone out of fashion. Is it 42-3-1? No, it hasn't. But I'd also think that the players I've got might be suited, or the roles I've got might be suited to a bit of 42-3-1.

25:18Well, let's find out where everybody falls in this team. Let's start in goal, Dave. Connor Fox wrote in and says, it would have to be the ball-American goalkeeper in the Premier League. Long gone on the glory days of Brad Friedle, Tim Howard, Brad Goosan, Casey Keller, and Marcus Haneman. I mean, it's an incredible sub-genre of Premier League footballer, the ball-American goalkeeper, but where have they gone? Is this a turkey-trip thing, or what's going on? Interesting you're coming at it from the, from the hair angle first, and not the American thing. Oh, American steel-producing great goalkeepers, regardless of how they're suited, they may be. Is it, what's that guy's name? Oh, it's Matt Turner. Is it him? Might be. I think this is a strong start, Dave, but how about what have you got for our goalkeeper? Matt Turner was on the bench, actually, as USA played Portugal the night before last. Matt Freeze was in goal. I don't know who he is, but anyway, yeah, I don't mind that. That was a very sort of mid-naughty thing, wasn't it, with all those lads, but I think in general, and I think a few people have suggested this, goalkeepers have become less mad, haven't they? They are. Now

26:25they need to be calm. It's a very crucial part of the role now, being calm. You can't be a complete nutter anymore. I do like this, Coxie. I think the death of El Loco is something that needs to be documented. I mean, is there a candidate for El Loco anymore? Is Emmy Martin as Loco? How Loco is he really, though? Because like, using his 2022 World Cup Golden Gov as a kind of phallic prop doesn't quite feel loco enough, because it's not an on-field thing. You didn't do anything mad on the pitch, but he is capable of it. I agree, and you know when I think El Loco died, it was when Manuel Noir had that game against El Giro in 2014, and there was no chat like, wow, this guy's mad. It was like, that's the right thing to do. He's calculated it. This is a tactical thing. But what is it like to watch? If it was Higita who was doing that, people would be like, this clown, he doesn't know what he's doing. So yeah, I agree. I thought about that a lot. I mean, used to be the same when we were young, like, all goalkeepers are crazy, that kind of thing, but they can't be crazy anymore. They've got, I mean, credibly, sure of themselves with the ball at their feet to slide like 10-yard passes through the lines. So yeah, I agree. Crazy goalkeepers. And in particular, I mean, an incredible raft of goal-scoring

27:29keepers from the Latin American countries in the 90s. I mean, Higita, Shilver, Seni, Horde Campos. I mean, almost like mythical figures. And you know, that doesn't happen anymore. Well, should goal-scoring really have been sort of held onto the umbrella of El Loco day, but everyone was mad about scoring a goal. Is this the aim of football? Well, it depends on how you do it, though. Yeah, true. You know, if you're dribbling up the pitch, like Higita or whatever, then fine. But if you just, if you're purely a penalty taker, then I think that's different. Yeah. Okay, El Loco is in the driving seat here. I want to, I want to shout out for properly short goalkeepers. The mind goes back to Ipswicheskeeper in 1992-93 Clive Baker, who was five-foot-nine, and he retired to go work in insurance, which honestly feels like another galaxy to where we are now with your Donna Rumors et al. But yeah, don't short goalkeepers, Dave, don't feel like they're workable anymore. Is this just a general thing, but are all players just taller now? Nico Riley, look how big he is playing at left-back. Yeah, humans continue to grow. It's definitely a

28:31thing. Okay, I'll settle it. El Loco in goalie is then. Let's go to our back. Four, three, five, who knows. I want to start with potentially the most fashionable position in football history, but not one scene for a while, Coxy, and that is that of the sweeper. Sweepers were great. Like, what was the peak era of the sweeper? Would probably, well, it was kind of bookended by friends back in about a Mathias Sama, so it could be anywhere in between that time, but it was, that was a great position because they weren't. They weren't defenders. They were, they were very out of place midfielders by definition, and it, they looked so great, and it made me want to be a sweeper. It was such a great role. It was, it was sold really well to the footballing public, I think. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Italy and Germany would say probably the two key positions for the sweeper, particularly Germany, because they loved converting like quite elegant midfielders into this role. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's something that has gone out of the game almost completely, I would say. Probably the, the closest we've had in the modern days, certainly in England, has been Conor Cody, who was a very odd, again, a converted midfielder. You looked at his numbers,

29:36he didn't tackle, he didn't win any aerials, he didn't really do anything, but he read the game, and he commanded the back line, and he played it very well, but it was a completely anomalous role. And, and there was a great thing, I think, didn't Wolves play a back fall for the first time in like 130 games, and immediately Conor Cody was dropped, because it's like, well, he's not, he can't do that. He can only stand behind everyone else and kind of just, well, sweep up. It was great. Franz Beckenbauer, Mathias Sama, Conor Cody, the great lineage of sweepers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you just, it's a bit like the false nine, you can't just automatically call yourself a sweeper, just because you're happy to be out of place at the end of your said during your defend. Did Argentina play a sweeper against England in the 90th World Cup? Because when you see the Owen Gold, all of a sudden, there's just running through all of a sudden, there's just that one defender who's just so far back. Ayala, I think it is, and what the fuck are you doing there? That goal wouldn't have happened. Otherwise, so thank God it did, but yeah, it must have been doing up his laces or something, but yeah, sweepers got a strong contendership here, Coxie, who else have you got pure defense? I mean, this partly comes from looking at the score list for this international break, but wherever the Brazilian fallbacks gone, I mean, that, you know, you could be absolutely

30:41guaranteed. 2010, they had like, Mike on and Danny Alves, the two best fallbacks in the world at that time. Under the low. Yeah, I mean, they were considering playing Danny Alves on the left just because they were so good and they had to get in both in the team. And to be honest, I didn't know who a couple of them were for the Brazil national team this week. That's interesting, maybe like on a global TV or something, one pundit said, nobody wants to grow it to be a calf of some sort of analysis. That's it. That killed the fallback art in Brazil. But yeah, there was, there's never really any explanation at the time, Dave, about why Brazil were creating fallbacks out of nowhere, like a production line. So maybe these things just have a natural end. So yeah, Brazilian fallbacks, but on a related note, Dave, we had loads of correspondence, but this is probably the headline one that we got loads of people saying penalty taking left back. I've gone out of fashion. AJ Marsh was head of the queue of this. Nigel Winterburn, Stuart Pierce, Julian Dix, Dennis Owen, Ian Hartz, Paul Bowden, Andreas Braimer with both feet, of course. And then penalty guru Ben Littleton wrote in and says, just fallbacks,

31:42generally, you like to smash their penalties. Your Dix is your pierces, latent veins, Graeme Alexander, Riccardo Rodriguez, Tavanera Rangers. Fallbacks aren't really allowed to take penalties anymore. Why is this? It can't just be stat-padding for strikers. And generally smashed penalties are just don't seem to be as invoked as they once were anyway, even though when you see a bad one miss that's slow, you still want someone to just put their foot through it, but like the rise of the no-look penalty, the sort of the game of chicken that takes place now, that's kind of seemingly dominant sort of penalty method, isn't it? Rather than someone just running at it and smashing it, if you're smashing it on target, it would have to be an insanely good save. You very unlikely to get blamed for it. So yeah, the death of the smash and that would sort of lend itself to fallbacks. As an offshoot of that, I think I saw a few people suggest this, but I liked it as well. It's defenders could be leftbacks or centrebacks, not rightbacks, though I would say. Defenders who are their teams designated long distance free kick-taker, so Alex Mahilevich,

32:47you know, someone who's just got an absolute rocket of a shot up. Robert, who took a couple, I think, didn't he at some point? You don't really get that anymore, either, do you? Yeah, I guess it's because they're easier to read and defend against. Whenever this situation does still come up, Coxie, you'll get a, well, he can hit them as we know, and then it will just be the same free kick every time. There's not an element of surprise when a centreback steps up for a free kick, I guess, so it was a bit one-dimensional, so maybe that's why it's died out. Yeah, I agree, and I think with all this, like attackers have to be good technically these days in a way that, I mean, you can go back to the 90s, there were players who were just good in the air, like they were an aerial threat, and actually probably weren't necessarily better than the left back, actually kicking the ball in the goal, I know that seems ridiculous. I think I'm saying, Les Ferdinand never really took penalties. Yes, right, yeah. He regrets it now, apparently. Like, he says, I reckon I've scored so many more, but yeah, that's mad. Well, your fault, mate, really, you should have figured it out. Didn't really need to opt to figure that out for you, did you, Les? Sir Les. Now, this has to go in our team, Dave. It is strikers playing as emergency centrebacks.

33:54This was also suggested by Moon Shine MS on Reddit. Crucially, this way round, as well in this team, because centrebacks being deployed up front is definitely the inferior way round for this, because that is, that's a needs must situation. You know what they're, therefore, they're going to try and win headers, whereas deploying your striker as a centreback has so much more nuance to it. Yes, they're tall. It'll be Chris Sutton. It'll be Dion Dublin or whatever. Obviously, they have to have the physical ingredients for the job, but they're there because they're probably quite savvy, as well, and they know how to be defenders, so that they take that job way more seriously than a centreback just being gleefully chucked up front with no stakes whatsoever. So this is definitely the way round it should be. Yeah, and I guess this is probably linked to something we might talk about later in that there are fewer big strikers these days. So fewer big lads to put at the back if you need to. But because you have seen a couple of examples in recent ish memory where like Fernandinho and Fabinho have ended up playing a few games at centreback rather than Harland or, you know, Fabinho or whoever was around.

34:58But it's, yeah, I like it. The very specific example that comes to my for me and yes, was in the 2002-03 season, we had just gone from, so Viali had been sacked the season before and he'd signed all these players on quite a lot of money at the time as the ITV digital splurge and then it all went tits up. So we had like a random squad left from Ray Lewinson to Cove and he decided after the first sort of month or so of the season where we were struggling a bit and we had a few injuries. He decided to take Marcus Gayle who at that point had been playing sort of striker bit of left wing at times but he was a had a reasonable pedigree behind him and he hadn't done well for us and he converted him to a centreback and he played the rest of the season at centreback on one player of the season and he was so good. He was really good. He would like play out from the back. He was just, and everyone used, I can remember everyone and at the time saying, ah, you know, that's a thing, right? These strikers, they know, they know how to beat a defender. So when they become a defender, they know what to do. You can't kid a kid a, that's the way I see it.

35:58Wingers should be converted to full backs because they never really get triple pass. They know all the tricks. But the thing about Marcus Gayle was that he wasn't an out and out sort of target man centre forward. So this is a really nice example of, yeah, Lewinson knew that's it. He knew, he saw it in him which is great. So yeah, Cox, I really liked this but if this was ever to come back into fashion, which current Premier League number nine is the most centrebacky? That's a great question. Delap, Delap's very centrebacky. He pulled his socks up. Yeah, that is quite good. Mattetta. I'm just trying to think of big lads. Harland, I mean, Harland would be fun to see what happened if he plays centreback. Like a centreback, I think. He's got range about him. He could play for like Everton in their back four of a moment. Harland and Van Dyke together at the back. He'd have no chance. I call out to see Harland play centreback. Can they just do it on the last day if they've won the league or something, which admittedly would be a mad turn of events? Is Volta Marder going to keep getting pushed back? Will he end up there? That's really. I don't like gangly centrebacks. This is the Dean House and I'm really struggling

36:58with at the moment. And yeah, Volta Marder would push me over the edge. But yeah, so I really need, I need strikers as emergency centrebacks in this team. Tell you what Cox, tell you what's really gone out of fashion in Premier League these days? Own goal merchants. Shinji Archer says Richard Dunn springs to mind, of course, because he's the record holder for Premier League own goals. But mostly I feel now, own goals are too diverse across different players. No standout own goal specialist, even Valt-Fass or Maxi Mestev don't feel strong enough to this category. I mean, if Valt-Fass isn't producing own goals, then nobody is. But the only player in the list of all time Premier League own goal scorers that's currently active really at the top of the list is Lewis Dunn. He's third all time in the Premier League. He's called four in one season, 2017-18, which is long enough ago I'd say to say that the whole concept is dying out. He's last scored one in February 2025 against Nottingham Forest, but we're still in the cutback era in the Premier League. Own goal should still be happening, shouldn't they? What's happened to the own goal specialist? Yeah, I mean, when you look at the number of old own goals scored per season, it's actually

38:00gone up recently. I mean, there's so much focus on getting the ball into the mix at the moment and cutbacks, like you say, and kind of teasing crosses that might get a bit of a touch. So yeah, I think that might just be that there's probably fewer players who rack up 400 games for bottom half clubs, rather than it being a tactical thing, but I'd have to check the numbers on that. It's interesting it's gone up and maybe that's a set piece thing, like a direct thing, like you say, but cutbacks. Cutbacks don't, that makes sense to me that they don't produce own goals, because it's not the same as like the, you know, the corridor of carnage where a force coming in and you're trying to get, you know, you're trying to divert it out for a corner and you get it wrong and it goes in or something like that. A cutback is coming back toward, you've got, you're going to do pretty well to score an own goal from a cutback, if you're a defender. Yeah, it's good. No, but I think cutbacks include like getting to quite close to the goal on the byline and then just hitting it into the six-year box and then someone goes in. There's no time to react. Yeah. I remember looking a few years ago at the numbers and there was more own goals than ever scored by goalkeepers and that was partly because of them,

39:02which I don't, I always feel like it's a bit harsh to credit or debit an own goal to a goalkeeper. Sorry, that was a terrible phrase. Oh, I think we should use it. I like it. I just, I think, unless a goalkeeper actually kicks it in himself or pushes it in, if it just hits him and goes out, I'm sorry, it's just, even if that's off target, I think that should go down as the attackers go. I think it's really harsh on goalkeepers. Yeah, good show. Okay, so our defence is sorted. We've got a sweeper in there, we've got a penalty taking left back. We've definitely got a striker playing as an emergency centre-half and we've got an own goal merchant as well. We'll be back very shortly with our midfield and forward line. Welcome back to football cliches. This is the extinction 11. We've got a very colourful

40:04defence and goalkeeper. Where do we go from here in midfield? Interesting. I'll give you a little quiz, first of all, Coxy. Keith Miguel, what a name that is, wrote into mourn the death of the midfield man marker, but who was his example? I mean, I think the most famous man-marking job in an individual game was Pontius Carmark in the League Cup Final against Middlesbury 97. He marked Jeaninho out of the game, but are you looking for someone who did it across various games, like a dedicated nullifier of opponents? Now I'll stop you there. Pontius Carmark was correct. That was the lovely game. The man who just lived to be remembered as a man-marker. That's not a legacy. Incredible legacy. A relatively recent example that I can think of. I think this might have been an FA Cup game or maybe it should have been a Premier League game, but didn't end a Herrera man-mark. Someone for Chelsea? How about Hazard for Chelsea? Yeah. I remember it just being notable at the time because people didn't really do that anymore, but Merini, I just told her to follow him wherever he went on the pitch. He'll never was deployed on Zola in the late 90s, I remember.

41:07Ferguson quite liked it, actually. Towards the end, I remember him using Phil Jones in that row a couple of times. David Silver maybe was the one he went for, but you definitely don't have a fair match-up for man-marking to me. I remember David Moise doing it to David Silver. I think with Phil Neville and Jack Rodwell, and one of them had the job got booked, so he switched it to the other one, switched it to Rodwell. Rodwell then got booked two minutes into his mind-marking job. So he switched it back to Phil Neville, which was quite good fun. You can have another guy. This is great. The referee won't remember. They won't remember. This is great. Okay, man-markers got a good contendership here, but I expected this from our listeners first up, and Ricky 97 wrote in, David says, the pure crossing winger. So these are wide men who go on the outside and whose first instincts is deliver across nothing else. This feels like a tap-in for modern football. We're so well-versed in the wingers cutting in on their onto their strong foot and going inside, and this isn't necessarily,

42:10are you still see wingers who are quick enough to get to the byline and maybe stand up across as we've talked about recently? But players who want to get the ball out from under their feet and whip it round a player, so you're Stuart Ripley, is your David Beckham's? Have we witnessed the death of the pure winger, at least the unfashionability of them? Like a lot of these things we're talking about, I guess they just get repurposed elsewhere, they'll either be thought backs or maybe there'll be number eights or they get moved inside. You know, like Kevin DeBroiner might have been a pure winger if he was playing. I think it's very visible as before, but he ended up not being, you know, there's the whole trend thing. But I don't know, maybe at some point, as the game continues to evolve or devolve, depending on your perspective, maybe we'll start seeing this again with all the set pieces of been such a big talking point in the season. Maybe he's going to keep going and we're going to just get more big strikers and crosses. But yeah, I was expecting this one as well and you've got paid people like Mark or Brighton's been suggested, like Andrews Townsend. Yeah, so slow, slow wingers. I almost think there's two slightly different categories here. One is the

43:13winger who also doesn't track back. So you look at that game between Liverpool and Newcastle the four, three, thirty years ago. Basically, all the goals come because Jinnler doesn't track back. So he's in a position to attack, but also Liverpool's right back. I think his macketeer just has the runner, the pitch to himself. And then you've got players who actually did work hard. So I think Beckham was quite hard hardworking, protected Gary Neville, but he was fundamentally just a crosser. So yeah, I think why players in two different ways, I don't think Jinnler and Beckham were at all similar as players. And yet I think both of those type of players have slightly gone out the game. On the pure crosser, Coxie, of all the roles that we've discussed in this team so far, most of them feel like they're terminally gone, like they're never to return. Football will come back to crossing. Like, I've got no reason, no logic to back this up, but it feels like something that football could fall in love with again. A player on their strongest side whipping the ball in, it's going to be aesthetically and tactically good. Or is it just so low value that it won't come back? Well, I mean, obviously, there's been a bit of return to getting it in the mixer.

44:16This season's from set pieces and that kind of thing. So yeah, maybe now is the time. I mean, I think a few of these positions we're probably going to talk about is you used to be able to just be good at one or two things and you could get away with it. Yes. Whereas now I think there's more focus on your weaknesses. And it kind of goes back to the thing about strikers. The strikers in the 90s were very good finishes, but not as good at linking play and pressing and all those things. And Danny Welbeck is not a natural born finisher, but actually is a good all-rounder. And I think that is what football's been all about. It's been a shift from players who can do one or two things towards players who are basically quite good at pretty much everything. So maybe, yeah, maybe this kind of trajectory are on to kind of total footballers on an individual basis. Might explain a lot of this, but speaking of players who lack a certain attribute, a young Tom Celix says a candidate for the extinction 11 midfielders that can't run not because they not because they're legs have gone because they never had them. And you know, Cess Fabricass was a great example sort of late 2010s in that Chelsea team of a player who never could run managed

45:20to kind of orchestrate his entire game about around not being able to run and just about managed to survive. Who have we got left in that mode? Enzo Fernandez is hilarious to watch because he cannot run, but yet has still has an engine, so it's not quite in the same spirit. Bobby Maynu wasn't particularly good at running last night for England. And yeah, not sure he's particularly athletic. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Old Amorim didn't fancy him. But yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it's sort of midfielders, unathletic midfielders. I mean, general wise, you say Coxie, like the game has become more athletic, everyone's more of everyone's fitter. So you can't, if you can't run, you really are fucked. I think thematically, Coxie, we should distinguish a player who can't run, but yet can still function in their role in central midfield from the sort of fabled midfielder who never leaves the center circle, which is quite a Sunday lead concept. You still hear about it. There may be plays in their sort of doting years where they're just spraying passes around, but that's not the same thing I don't think. So you're talking about a kind of Charlie Adam figure, maybe Tom Huddleston,

46:22would you say like, we'll ping a 70 yard diagonal when it will look great. But then when you watch him for 90 minutes, you're like, yeah, I'm not sure about this really. You do need to supplement them with two players who can just do all their running, which I think is quite a nice concept. I love that. So yeah, delegation of duties. But crucially, Dave, the player who never leaves the center circle, nobody ever witnesses his first hand. You always hear it from a dad or a granddad. I watched you, but he was 38. He never left the center circle. No one's ever actually seen it themselves. You just hear it from a relative. Never needed to. I had a 10 minutes spell the other day of playing central midfield and Sunday lead for the last 10. We had a couple of injuries. So I came on and I thought, and I could sort of switch it around. I thought, no, no, I can do 10 minutes in midfield. I can do it. I'm knackered, but like, how hard can it be? It was hard. I thought I was going to do just that. So just sit in front of the back four, maybe just sort of stay in the middle of the pitch, keep it simple. But then you start getting, you start having to track runners and you'd like, oh God, should I be over there? What should I be

47:23over here? And there wasn't one of my opposite number. He'd been playing for a bit longer than me, but he was a classic sort of, he was carrying a bit of timber. Short guy, pretty stocky guy, but really good touch. Like, didn't move much, didn't run much, didn't lead the middle of the pitch, and he nutmegged me and sprayed one out wide. And I was just like, oh, this is horrible. Amazing type of football. I played an event league a few years ago and there was a guy in such a triumphant field who had Jerry Francis's hair and Gerard Depardue's face. And he was fucking unbelievable. He was unbelievably good and barely moved. So yeah, these players should still exist, but maybe not quite at the top level. Dean Grypton, a football manager, fame says in the 1970s, every team had someone who was described as a midfield schema. Where are the modern day schemas? When did scheming become yesterday's thing? Coxie, we still have schemas, don't we? Definitely. I must admit, I've never really understood this phrase or a role and I would like some clarification for you to. What's the difference between a schema and then somebody like a hatchet, man? Wow, I mean, they are diametrically opposed. The schema is essentially a playmaker.

48:27It's a little bit more modern day inversion of the playmaker. So Luke and Bodrich is a midfield schema and always has been. It suggests a bit of Skull Duggery. Yeah. No, not at all. Absolutely not. It's all about when they look at them over there scheming. It's coming up with ideas. It's coming up. Poor Skulls was a schema as well. Okay. It's players who come up with ideas and answers and options for players. That's it. But Chavvy was a schema. Iniesta, sort of a schema, I guess. But did they not have to be a bit more mobile? I think of it as players who are kind of quite kind of lively and mobile. Whereas like Javvy and Skulls and Bodrich are a fairly sedate players. I never thought of it like that. They don't they don't have to cover the ground themselves. They make the ball do the work. So yeah, they're standing there pointing their probing. But that's what scheming is about. It's a very subtle eye. It's not very dynamic. You don't really have to be running at defenses or anything like that. So yeah, that's scheming. But yeah, I think schemers still exist. I don't think we could say that they've died out. But on a similar note, Dave, Mike

49:27Hull 84 says, what about the free role you heard about Grelish at Villa? That was probably the last we'll see there. Adelterrabs at QPR, J.J. A. Kotcher at Bolton. It's obviously been replaced with the number 10, which is now part of a system. But what happened to the free role? And I hadn't thought about a free role for so long because it was something you could actually grant somebody on football manager, no matter what position you put them in. So you could play it right back and say, okay, I'll click free role on for you. What does that mean? I think it just meant that they were sort of immune from the pressing strategy that you might have set elsewhere. But yeah, free role, you don't hear about that anymore. And I don't think that modern tactics won't allow for us to rebot it now, Dave, isn't it? Yeah. But yeah, I guess yeah, Tarect is probably one of the most recent examples because the warlock used to go on about how he told him he'd find him if he went into his own half and all that stuff. That's not a free role then, I was saying. Exactly, yeah. I mean, I think it's a great show. I do wonder whether some of those suggestions, I mean, was Big Sam really giving JJ coach a free role? I don't believe it. I mean,

50:34I'd think with players like, especially international level, you had Gs and your stitch cops, I think almost certainly had a free role. But yeah, certainly the, the aim is on pressing in defensive structure means that's not as much of a thing now. So yeah, even in the kind of early modern era of football boxing, you had not only did you have to have the skill and the flare to earn a free role, but you had to have the kind of political status to do it. So you had to be had you in sausage, not only did you have the ability to do what you want, but you had the clout to do it as well. So it's a, it's a, it's a huge thing and those players probably don't really exist now because I know player power was a thing, but you have very few players like that who have all those ingredients to have the free role. I agree. I think it was a slightly complex equation almost because they, they were separate from the team and given their own freedom, obviously, but they had to use that for the good of the team. So like Maradona for all his talent and being given a free role was actually a very selfless player, like a great passer, actually quite a good lead encouraged his players as teammates. Whereas if you look at someone like Wesley Snyder,

51:36about 2010, gradually moved into the kind of free role status, but he was just shooting from 40 yards. He used it because he was like, well, I've got to win the game myself, but actually that's quite predictable. You have to be separate from the team, but also working for the team. I think that's very important. Yeah, you had the stylistic potential to be a free roleman, but didn't have the kind of status and clouds. This is actually quite interesting. It's, it's messy if the last free roleman left sees that. Last World Cup, I think is probably a good shout. Do you have a free role if you literally don't move or something like that really does take the piss of it, doesn't it? I mean, yeah, to go back to phrase we just use, he very much got Julian Alvarez to do his running in that tournament. But Alvarez was the number nine, but also did like the midfield donkey work, as well that messy can't be bothered to do, which I quite liked. Did Beckham have a free role against Greece in 2001? Well, he gave himself a free role. He was putting in tackles, and that's not part

52:38of the free role remit. You know, I've not had to do that, mate. So it's different free. It's different from covered every blade. I think Beckham was a covered every blade of grass, but not really a free role. Absolutely spot on it. Yeah, so I've got something thrown to the mix, and this is not position specific. It really could be anywhere on right from goalkeeper all the way through the team, but I wanted to mention it. And it's something that I really miss, particularly as a fan of a team in the, in the EFL, is the, the short term loan signing. Now it's just six months or a season, and it's a cut and dry thing, unless there's an injury or whatever, and they get record, but you used to get routinely what food and teams like us would need a player for a month, or two months, or three months, and they'd come, and maybe there would be a clamor to get them back because it did so well. And they were often players from the Premier League, who were quite exciting. So we had all sorts of players. We had like Gabby Agbonelhoor came to us for like a couple of weeks. We had Germain Pennant, Danny Rose, we had Andrews Townsend, like Johnny Jackson, Jack Cork,

53:40we had Joshua Ketkren. I don't remember any of these. This is amazing. We had all these sorts of players. Chris Baird, I think had a good few months with us on loan before he broke through it at Southampton's, like those sorts of guys, he just, he's just gone out of the game now for administrative reasons or what have you, but I used to really like the fact that a player like that could just turn up for a month, like Germain Pennant coming to us for a month, having a few really good games, helping us get through a few rounds in the FA Cup, and then he disappeared. I like how they call it work experience. They're like down in non league. So I seem just in Congress words to use in football. It must be like a, I don't know, legal loophole when it comes to regulations, but where's work experience? I mean, King Stody must have had someone to work experience, Corksy. I do remember there was an opposition goalkeeper who was on, who's on work experience and some of the things people were showing him. People were shouting at him. He had to print out the team sheet or something like that. No, I remember someone showing out, like some kind of classic work experience show, like, can you go and get me a bucket of tart and paint or something like that, like the classic work

54:44experience tricks? You can't call it that. They need a new nave for that role, surely. Well, there's also dual registration at non league level, which I really like, where you're just contracted to two teams and whoever needs more on the Thursday or Friday can phone up and say, yeah, sorry, we're man short this weekend. He's going to play for us. That's great. If Clapham Chiefs heard about that, Dave, they've been up to the uproar. I can't have that. Any advances on the midfield quartet? Yes, perhaps. Well, I've got one. It's quite specific, but it's the player in the Maccalailly role, which you look at players, I mean, Maccalailly scored twice in 150 games for Chelsea, and at roughly the same time, Lucas Laver scored once in 250 league games for Liverpool, John Auby-McCale once in 250 games for Chelsea. And you look at players like, you know, the equivalents these days, Super Mendy scored five times this season for Arsenal, Moises KC, who can score goals for Chelsea. Kasimiro seems to have been, you know, seven or eight goals for the last five or six seasons. You don't really have players who just

55:44don't score. And I remember, like, 10 years ago, Tim Sherwood was talking about Maccalailly's impact on English football, and it was like, yeah, he never, never got into the box, never scored goals, never was like, no, he's stuck in the past, Tim Sherwood. But, you know, what, maybe he was right. Maybe actually, you can play defensive midfield and contribute three or four goals a season rather than two in 150 games, one of which was a rebound from his own save penalty. I love the fact that Coxie has raised the Sherwood case study on Maccalailly here, because we always hear about his merits in the Maccalailly role. And obviously, you know, essentially inventing it by the looks of it as well. But I've never, ever heard anyone bimboan, Claude Maccalailly's refusal to make late runs into the box. Maybe she didn't have the knack. Maybe he didn't have the knack. He didn't have the lampardy a knack of making late runs. He just couldn't work out the timing, so he stayed back. Wait, all you have to do is look at image training. Yeah, they're master to learn from. But I don't know. It's, if it's a tactical thing, it do midfielders with the sort of horseshoe possession style that's so often the case now,

56:45the defense midfielders have find themselves a bit more chance to shoot. I don't know if it's a thing or not. I mean, I think it's partly because of pressing, right? I mean, Maccalailly's job was just, well, he didn't leave a center circle, did he? And he didn't leave a position in front of his defenders. We've now the equivalent to like jumping so that they're marking someone on the edge of the opposition box. And it feels like actually they just find themselves in the positions and end up scoring, scoring some goals almost, you know, without really that being their intention. Yeah, often ending up in actually really quite presentable goal scoring situations, actually. Okay, so yeah, I like this midfield. Yeah, let's get someone in the free roll for sure, but we need a man marker as well, doing their work for them. Let's have a midfielder who can't run. We can't have schemers, so we'll have to have the crossing winger out on the right hand side as well, perhaps. Right up front, we go a bit of a tap in day, but I think I'll go with five cat Brazilian international from the 1990s. Do-do. There are still loads of Brazilians called Do-do. There's a couple of fullbacks are still going, but yeah, a cheap gag, and we won't go with him.

57:49I'm not necessarily going to say that this type of player is extinct, but it does raise a different question. The massive kind of barrel-headed target man. Let me just pick you up on that. I saw this on the running order. Yeah. Is it not barrel-chested? Barrel-headed. I deliberately did right. I know it's barrel-chested. I think I just want to do more for emphasis. I mean, that's absolutely fine. I'm glad you raised it, but yeah, I want to know between us for the sake of our relationship that I did it deliberately, so that's important. Yeah, I wanted to emphasize just how colour they're meat heads, basically. They're not. Yeah, exactly. But I think those sort of suppliers do still exist, Coxy, but what I want to talk about is, can any other player in football be described as a throwback? You can't have any other throwback. Can you? There was a bit of a throwback, and it's always big number nine. Is it not, was Jack Grelish not a bit of a throwback in the kind of free-roll, wide-player thing? I don't know. I think of it more stylistic throwback,

58:50socks down, and the hair flowing. I do know what you mean with the performatively, though, isn't it? A little bit in some respects. Yeah. Yeah, I think that is true. I mean, I was kind of maybe appropriately feeding off that. My approach at front was a big man, little man combination. When you obviously don't get, because you don't see football too, or two striker systems anymore. But that was, I mean, I'd be interested to go back and look at that Sunderland season when Kevin Phillips scored 30 goals. How many goals actually came from Noel Quinn's flickons? I mean, in our minds, they did that literally every game, and he got 30 goals from 30 Noel Quinn headed to cis. I know what I'm going to spend my afternoon doing now. I have an answer for you within an hour. What were you trying to do this recently when we, I think, on the WhatsApp group, me and Charlie, of just how many big man, little man partnerships were there? Can you name that many? Not really. But it's more than 80s thing, whatever, but yeah. Yeah, this is very much that the crux of a lot of our listener correspondents, Liam Walker writes in Dave's second strikers. What happened to the concept of the second striker? Because it's been

59:53muddy by the sort of slightly misunderstood concept of the false nine, which aren't really second strikers, obviously, because they don't ever want to be second to. But yeah, he cites Delielli as the last second striker of the Premier League era, or, essentially, a shadow striker. Shadow strikers were all the rager decade ago. His range is good and now they're extinct. So, yeah, quite like this. I mean, it's a bit of an offshoot of the big man's small man, but second strikers, Dave, that's a real art form that doesn't exist anymore. It's not just a position for like, I can't think of any players who could do that really well. But are there those players like Delielli and like Havards, for example, players who get labelled as second strikers or whatever, but if they were shorter, they'd be called false nines. Yeah, very possibly. Yeah, definitely. You can't have a massive false nine. It just doesn't feel right, but yeah, I think managers get annoyed coxie by being asked if, if someone's a false. I think Tuckle got asked if Foden was playing false nine against Japan and he just said, yeah, he's playing up front. All right, just leave it. Well, I saw recently, I think it was Ryan Babel tweeted a video of like,

1:00:54you know, Roberta Firmino's best goals. And Ryan Babel tweeted, where have all the true false nines gone? It's funny for two reasons. One, because it's such a modern kind of mention. And then to have true and false next to each other in the same thing. So I really enjoyed as well. That passed away completely. I don't know. I mean, it seems that maybe maybe in 15 years, there's probably going to be a false nine. It's all the local government cuts for the cages they're going. On that note, then, on that note, then, a wash of indigo says pure poachers from elite ones to inzagi to guys like Francis Fox in the box. Jeffers strikers need to be so much more well rounded now. And even if they're not the best technically, they need to be the super quick or big and strong to play at a decent level. There are very few strikers these days at the top level, who basically only play to only be there to finish a chance. And when it forces them, and can we can we herald the death of the poacher coxie are they gone forever? I think probably every generation thinks that has happened. I mean, if you go back and read reports of like the players I assumed were poaches in the middle of the 20th century, like Jackie

1:01:57Milburn started out as a winger. I was amazed to just learn that as people always go on about and like he was a pure goal poacher and Jimmy Greaves as well. Listen to people talking about Jimmy Greaves. Like, yeah, he wasn't just a finisher. He was the best player, you know, play any position. So yeah, I think it has kind of happened. I mean, I, obviously, was quite a non league football. And one of the nice things about that is you do still have players who don't really do that much, but are so good in the penalty box. And I think it's so, it's so impressive and so admirable, you know, players who aren't necessarily great physically, but they just do know how to anticipate knock-ons and loose balls. It's such a good skill. And to a certain extent, I think it is quite sad that you probably don't see it that much at the Premier League level in an age of pressing and everything, but even like, I mean, I've been watching eighth-tier football. And there's a couple of players at that level that are so good in the box. Can we go back to the first one? Go back to the barrel heads. So, you know, we trail that I was going to talk about fat strikers. And now here we go. And now again, it's to do with fitness and it's the modern game and stuff. But even I saw a picture the other day of like Gaza in

1:03:00it was a, it was a young player who'd played with Gaza when he was at Middlesborough, I think. And he posted a picture of him in the dressing room as like, oh, what, what a memory this was, couldn't believe I was playing with Gaza. I can't remember which to who the player was, but anyway, Gaza had his shirt off. And like, yeah, he was, he was late career Gaza by this point, but he was still playing in the Premier League and would still have shown flashes of, of ability. And he was quite chubby. The fact that they used to be footballers like Mickey Quinn or whoever, you know, Nilshipily at the end and John Parking, like properly, poor, he blokes playing Premier League football, some of them. It's just amazing that that even used to be a thing. It's so alien to us now, right? I mean, yeah, physically it is a number universe. Like I probably, but yeah, I mean, they are, I've said it before in this podcast, you see a footballer in the flesh. It's insane how skinny they are. Like, it is ridiculous. There is nothing to them and they have to be like that because they play 60 games a season. And yeah, but it's actually, there's something slightly disappointing

1:04:01because you want them to be absolute specimens. You want them to be massive, but no, we're talking 4% body fat. Yeah, no, it's a completely different, it is a completely different game. And they don't have, I mean, they don't even really get any time off now, do they? I mean, they, you know, they have three weeks off in the summer and first thing back, they're, you know, doing two hours of physical to see if they're on the way in the summer. Exactly. Exactly. It's true. They just can't, they just can't, they just can't live that sounds. I haven't got enough time to put on weight. It's quite interesting when you see like legend games and sometimes it's only five or six years after players retired and they just, yeah, the body shape is completely different, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, he's amazing, but yeah, I guess they've earned it. But the big, the big rival for the fat striker upfront, Dave, is the bean pole because juggernaut saboteur says there'll be a, there will never be another Peter Crouch playing at the level he played at. I don't understand how it worked then and I'm absolutely certain it wouldn't work now. I mean, he was, we had, let's be honest, like Peter Crouch had people chanting freak at him when he was playing football. So

1:05:05his, his, his kind of body shape is well documented clearly, but he's the scorer of so many goals and so many types of different goal, including a perfect Patrick against Arsenal, of course. So I don't feel, I don't feel like Peter Crouch is underrated as a footballer, but I think he's anatomically under-respected because he's an incredible looking bloke and there are very, there are so many tall strikers like there are loads of six foot seven strikers, but none of them were quite as skinny as Peter Crouch and to do all the things that he did and not really be known for being a target man is an incredible achievement for footballer. If he would, if he was five foot four and did all the things that Peter Crouch did, we'd be lauding him for overcoming his physical limitations. It should be the same for being six foot eight and being skinny as a right. He has the gates of somebody who's walking on stilts. It looks like his, you know, his legs don't bend properly. Like it's just nothing, none of it looks like it should work, but I saw a clip of him recently on TNT training with Mackelsfield before one of their FA Cup games and again, it just looks like this guy shouldn't

1:06:06be able to kick a ball properly, but his technique is still good. Like he actually was technically quite good. Like that goal he scored for Stoke against Man City, the volley from out wide and the overhead kicks and stuff. Like he was not in a, the rogatory way, like he was a freak of nature. That is just, there's so unique. Yeah, Cox, I think when you're, when you're dreaming about being a footballer or you're thinking about the perfect footballer, you have a certain body shape in mind for a certain position and Peter Crouch's body shape would not be like that. So it's hard to compute when you see a play like that operating at elite level with great technique. He says, well, you're not built to do that, but I guess training training and practice supersedes all of those things. You know your own body. You can engineer all your limbs into the right place to do the things. It's probably just a little bit longer to do it than a properly built footballer. Yeah, I mean, the weird thing about Crouch was he scored the most headed goals in Premier League history. And yet, I honestly don't think he was that good in the air. It's, it's technically, couldn't really jump. His heading technique wasn't great, but he was just, he was just taller than everyone else. Like chances are, it's going to hit his head, you know what I mean. And he kind of

1:07:06spent his whole career kind of fighting against the idea, I'm not just a target man. I'm not just, and then he ended up at Stoke and scored the most headed goals in Premier League history. Like I think he was struggling the VAR era because his hands were just so always naturally on people's shoulders, weren't he? Whenever he, whenever he tried to headaches, that was just the proportions of everyone. That was just where they were. So we've got, we've got a number of different roles here. I think we might need to combine some of the attributes. We're going to have to have like a really, like a bean pole and a fat little man. Yeah, we can combine the concepts. Yeah, then someone playing in the hole behind them, maybe there's a third striker. This one, extra thing I want to mention, because it's the first reply and one of the most upvoted on the Reddit thread, which is from a real sloth. And his suggestion was, again, not position specific, elite baldies. And he's true. Where have all the bald footballers gone? The hair transplant era is meant, and this is the general sort of

1:08:06fashion consciousness, perhaps, of like the social media era, it means that there are no top level footballers who are prepared to like be bald, unless they really go early and go like properly shave it completely. I would say that there's a distinct lack almost, well, zero or it's a bald deniers out there. They're either shaving their heads or they're going to turkey to sort it out. But no one's clinging on to hair that, you know, certainly no one's got the kind of hair around the side, but nothing on top situation. Like, you know, uh, Plombardo. Exactly. No one's doing the Lombardo these days because that, I mean, that would make you look ancient. So it's not good PR, but there must be a top level footballer out there who still is rocking the Lombardo because they don't give a shit. Uh, it's not a stretch. We need to find someone who's doing that. I need to know, um, because it would save me hours a week if that got back into fashion quite frankly. Um, on that note, on that self-deprecatory note, uh, thanks to Michael Cox. It's been a pleasure to have you select this 11. You really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Thanks to you, David Walker. Thank you. Thanks to everyone for listening. That was

1:09:08the extinction 11. We'll be back on Tuesday. See you then.