London is Red

Welcome to the can of crew.

I am Grant and I'm joined by Patrick.

Patrick, how are you, sir?

Great.

How are you?

I'm all right.

And Rhett.

Sir.

Tell us about yourself.

No, we are.

Hello.

We know who you are, what you all been doing.

Not too much.

Honestly, this weekend was a good.

A beautiful long weekend.

Yeah, it was a good one.

It was a lot of.

A lot of footy.

But yeah.

And a nice, A nice rivalry weekend.

What color is London, Patrick?

I don't know if you know this.

North is red, west is red, south is red, and east is red.

So I think the whole thing.

Yeah, all of it's red.

Yeah.

So did you enjoy Sunday?

I did.

I had a blast.

Scared 20, 30 seconds in.

But I immediately texted some of my buddies in a group saying we got this, like, offensively, we look great.

I'm not gonna.

This isn't the team of old where we're not gonna get scared because we just went down.

We're gonna figure it out and we'll get back in this.

And honestly, I think that was kind of it from Chelsea.

They had some, some trash little runs and stuff like that.

And I do know my wife said one thing, she was like, ooh.

Because it bounced off the posts.

And I went, you know what?

I used to be scared.

I've been like, oh, thank God.

But I was like, no.

Honestly, to me now it just means Raya had his angle correct.

He didn't.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Because it wasn't going in the goal.

Don't waste that energy.

Don't do that extra stretch.

Maybe hurt a muscle or something like that.

Just let it go wide and the post is wide all day long.

Yeah.

But you, you know me, nice long four day weekend.

I don't know what to do.

I'm ready to go back to work.

Honestly, too much stuff for a guy like me.

That's because you work 24 7.

It's hard to get you, you know, pinned down because you're always on the road, stuff like that.

So it, for those of you don't know, sometimes trying to schedule time to do podcast.

We all have our lives and we work around it, stuff like that.

Patrick's always fun because, like, oh, I'm going to be sitting down.

I could do it from the, from the road if you want me to, or from a hotel or wherever.

Strip clubs, wherever Patrick frequents when he's not in town or when he is in town.

So forgive us if we don't get him out all the time.

Like would like to, but Patrick, it's always his fault.

It's true.

It is my fault.

Take ownership of that.

So let's talk about the lineup.

Louis Skelly, I want to talk about him first because year ago at this time, I'm not sure he was going to see any more playing time outside of some, you know, group phase, Champions League matches.

But now he's, he's ahead of several fantastic midfielders and doing a fantastic job.

Yeah, I mean, someone said it best was he hasn't lost his spot and someone else hasn't gone and earned it from him.

This is what we've seen when he was 17 years old.

Same exact player, same same exact movements, same exact vision, same exact strength, same exact tenacity.

He's 19.

He hasn't changed.

We as Arsenal fans had a prolonged break from him from whatever reason, whether that was internals or contracts or whatever was going on.

I'm glad he's a staple in this team.

He is a player who is red through and through.

Like most Arsenal family members will understand, a player who plays for Arsenal is always an Arsenal player.

Danny Welbeck came on.

He's always an Arsenal player in our hearts.

Gets a clap.

No animosity towards him.

Skelly is the epitome of an Arsenal player through the academy.

Young coming through, playing first team football.

Maybe he was sat for a year to give him a little more maturity.

But you guys know he's one of my favorite players.

This guy brings it every time.

And bare minimum, if you're overloaded, which we are in this position, he's giving you the first, whatever amount of minutes the coach wants to allot him and running the other team to death, setting that physical presence that our substitutes when they come on can continue.

We're not going to get a lapse in it, we're not going to get a switch of play.

But it's so refreshing to have our midfield be a standard in this team and kind of set that precedent that the back line has set for the past three or four years.

Yeah, and he, and he started out, was it left back?

He's kind of on, along that line.

I don't know if that's, Arteta's, you know, starting ground for young players and he didn't work out very well, the left back there because he, I think he has a tendency to want to control the ball and sometimes when people get past him, it's hard for him to, to catch up.

But when he's in the midfield, he's, he is making people's Ankles break almost all the time.

Rhett, do you have any thoughts on the mls?

Yeah, no, totally.

I. I think the break last season was duly noted and I think that he needed that, I think, a lot.

Most players, you're always going to go through trials and tribulations and he had this like.

Him and Ethan had this, like, fantastic first season and when they weren't even supposed to play that big of a part and they just ended up having to play a big part and, you know, I don't think left back was his favorite position.

We all knew that coming up, he was a midfielder and we'd wanted him to kind of see what post Thomas Partey last season.

We kind of wanted him to slot in there and Mikel was adamant he's playing left back and he kind of lost his spot there and honestly just didn't look great at left back.

Like all of last season was just a little shaky.

So this kind of like.

But at the end of the season, obviously kind of like threw himself back in and got it, got into that center defensive midfield position.

And ever since then it's been.

I mean, it's just like watching his highlights from whenever he was in the academy days, I mean, it's just been phenomenal ever since.

So he's a player that loves to play on, Loves it, loves a nice kind of role, loves to roll a defender a little bit.

And he's so strong on the ball.

Like, for his age to be so strong is.

It's just really, really incredible.

It kind of reminds me of Saka where you just never saw Saka, like, losing the ball or like, really, like whenever he would just shield the ball and just kind of roll his defender, he just always rolled.

And like, I don't know if he's picked that up from Saka.

I'm not really sure.

But it's a one incredibly good trait to pick up because if you're going to be able to do that at the highest level, it's like you can get past anyone basically, or you're going to get fouled.

So, I mean, and that's what he does.

He tracks a lot of fouls and he also just rolls people.

So, yeah, it was just another phenomenal performance by him.

He's done.

He's done super good this whole season.

And like, yeah, I mean, I kind of look at it and go, is Zuba Mendy going to really kick him out of his place?

I mean, maybe Bruno G, whenever he comes in, he's fit, but, like, how are you going to kick I mean, he's going to earn that.

He's going to earn it over Louis Skelly.

It's got to like, make a lot of sense.

So, yeah, really, really good from him.

And it makes me feel a lot more confident when we're getting through the group stages and everything else with Champions League because now we have a whole bunch of players that aren't getting so many minutes in their legs that they're playing injured like I think we saw last season.

The other person I was thinking about was California.

He didn't have the best game, but man, he's just, just a beast out there.

The more confidence he gets, the stronger he seems.

Yeah, I want to, I want to say on Calor, it's.

I actually saw a really good article on him today that was basically talking about how he's basically like a unicorn of a player.

Like he, you know, we, we always talked about inverting the left back or right back and doing all this stuff and it's like, you know, what is this guy doing?

This guy's plays wherever he wants.

And it's funny because you could, you can hear the commentators and he's like near soccer at some point.

There goes.

Well, there's Arsenal's left back over there, you know, like, it just, it's, it's really cool how fluid Mikhail.

And I think in games where he wants us to attack really hard, Cal Fiori is going to play.

He's also a very good defender as well.

Fantastic defender overall.

But whenever Mikel is like, I want to go balls to the walls and I want to really attack, I feel like we're always going to see him because if we want to be ultra defensive, put in Capier in.

But in Capier is not going to really be your.

He's not going to, he's not going to find himself in, in between the two center backs in these, in games like this.

So very, very cool that.

Before you go on Patrick, I, I think what I'm thinking about is the evolution of Arteta because when he first started, everything was non negotiable.

You played the way I want you to play.

You had to play exactly by my rules.

And California is breaking that mold.

I broke that mold last season and I think you're seeing more fluidity of players where they have a little more agency on the pitch to be able to move around to find themselves in that spot.

Saka was floating back and forth and, you know, cross the D and everything else.

So Patrick, now to you.

I'm sorry, I just Want to throw it out there?

Yeah, no, I just.

I think what we're discussing is what we saw maybe three years ago and so on with Ben White, this breakout role of California kind of linked to.

We now have the numbers that will cover that side.

We tried it with Zinchenko, we tried it with left backs, but we were always exposed.

We had something that would let us down.

I think with MLS in the middle, his speed, his tenacity, his, like, track backness gets in the way where Gabrielle is not having to commit outside, Consa is not.

Not having to go out wide, they can kind of stay central and control that center of the pitch.

Defensively, if we are being countered to allow Califiora to get back in time.

We saw it like you talk about Odegaard, Saka, Declan Rice, and we had what at the time, like, granite Jacob.

That's a lot of help on the right side that would track back and kind of help that Ben White role if he was caught too far forward.

So I think now we just have more pieces to this team that allow us to do it to whatever side we want to.

And offensively, Odegaard doesn't have to stay and commit to the right like we used to see and play that kind of expected triangle with White and Saka, he's now floating to the left.

He's now floating more central and forward to kind of play these dink balls or these through balls.

And we're not.

We're not so much waiting for, you know, a player to slow it down.

Let's wait, wait, wait, and break him down.

We're now playing these 50, 50 balls and just kind of expecting a guy to get onto it, which is a big change for Arsenal.

And I think the squad depth we built around this team really has a lot to do with it.

Let's.

Because you threw K's name out there.

When.

World cup, when Celiba went down sitting on the ground, I was like, oh, this is not good, because this, he.

He's injured and he's gonna be injured for a while.

And then we picked up Konza and everyone.

We've been talking about how we haven't picked up a big, strong player at the back except for Konza, and maybe we need a better defender.

And he had one hell of a defensive play against.

I don't know what that Chelsea guy's name is, but it was just reminiscent of Salba going back there and just taking the player out and the ball and getting up.

And I want to shout out to Ben White for turning around and yelling after he cleared the ball out, yelling at G, you know, in approval of his fantastic tackle.

Yeah, I think the player you're talking about is going to be hard to make a rhyme about because he wasn't 60 million.

He was 160 million, so.

And it was down the drain.

On the drain, yeah.

Toilet flusher.

Sorry.

Defensively, I thought we were pretty solid.

They had some space.

But honestly, I think this was a game where Arteta committed, like you said, Rhett, to us being forward, us playing with this free flowing, the old school Barcelona way of like, kind of go up there, free flow around, intercept, cross, make runs, like no one's playing a standard position.

And I thought after Chelsea's goal, we held our foot on their necks for most of that game, minus one or two breaks that they didn't really take to us.

They just had space to shoot and that was it.

They didn't, like, make this crossing run and get in.

And it was awesome.

Like, the.

Another thing, the announcers just shut the hell up.

Like, you want to sit there at one point and be like, oh, Cole Palmer made that pass and it got to the guy.

That's the pass of the season.

Okay, well, he didn't.

So what are we talking about?

The guy, Joe Pedro, was on his ass sliding because there's no chance of him getting it.

So, like, sorry, Chelsea, spend another billion followers, find another group of players, because this one's not working either.

Patrick, I got.

I got to point out one thing because it's freaking me out.

You have a mirror behind you, so when you put your hand out and you're explaining stuff, it looks like this hand's coming out from behind you.

There it is.

That's not me.

Is that riot behind you?

Is that the hand.

The hand of God back there?

Okay, I'm sorry.

I was looking.

I was like, what the hell is that?

How many people?

Patrick got in his massive studio?

Got a few.

There was another huge defensive play, which I thought was absolutely wonderful, and everyone was calling for a red card for it.

And that was Gabrielle laying on his side and kicking Emmy.

And that was, I don't know.

Red card, Not.

Does it matter?

No, never red.

I mean, he's going for the.

He.

You can see his.

He's going for the ball.

Like, he's going for the ball.

The ball's right there.

It's in his.

It's in his hand.

He's trying to be cheeky, but he misses and he hits him in the head.

I mean, like, here's my thing.

Too.

It's like, I can't believe what's happened.

The whole Emmy Martinez thing is just so interesting because he went out of his way whenever he was leaving.

And, like, I think all of us, whenever he was originally leaving, we're all sad because we're like, oh, man, this guy just won the FA cup, basically, with us.

And, you know, he's been on the bench.

We all know he's been on the bench for, like, eight, nine years at this point.

He's just been not really playing.

And he finally.

I mean, he started balling out.

I mean, that.

And that's been his career ever since.

He's.

He's done well.

Like, he's done well, but he does all the work, wins the FA cup, is probably crying.

I'm sure I can find a video of him crying at the FA cup thing.

And then we.

Mikel says, hey, Leno's gonna be my keeper.

Sorry.

You did well.

But, like, this is my.

You know, I'm gonna use him.

We sell them.

And he goes out of his way and he goes, I'm gonna make a.

A farewell message to all the Arsenal supporters.

Makes it.

Because he's like, we should.

You should always be doing this.

People should always be making farewell.

And then, like, it's like, oh, man, that's a great video.

It makes a great video.

Great.

And then, like, a week later, he's like, talking shit.

It was like, the mo.

I've never seen anything like this.

And, like, it's like, he does all of this work to.

To get to the point where you could be, like, seen as, like, a, you know, like a Chesney player is like, you know, kudos, man.

Like, good luck with the rest of your career and go on and do great things, and we'd be happy for you.

And he just immediately caused it.

And now it's hilarious.

Every single time he gets a ball, he gets booed, we kick him in the head.

Everyone's like, this is awesome.

I mean, it's just like.

I don't.

It's funny how this happens.

And I didn't like him at Villa.

Like, I hated watching him at Villa, and I was hoping he would go to Juventus.

He doesn't.

He goes to Chelsea, of course.

And now he.

It's fine.

He's let in.

How many goals has he let in in one week at Chelsea?

Five goals in one week?

Well, Chelsea, in just 90 minutes.

He let in two the other day.

I heard.

I mean, five goals.

He literally let in five goals in.

In.

In.

In seven Days, maybe eight days.

Brad's crazy.

Let me ask the question to you this way.

Are you surprised Var didn't intervene?

No.

They were.

They're laughing too hard.

I know.

I, I, I, I, I'm not surprised it intervened because.

Okay, that's, it's an interesting question.

It feels like, what.

Because as an Arsenal fan, Right.

Because what season is it?

Basically,.

In essence, yeah, like two seasons.

Ago, I feel like that would have been a red card.

Last season, it really wasn't a red card.

I don't think so.

Hopefully this season it continues not being red card.

I just hope that, I hope we don't get too far into that conversation.

But common sense, right?

Let's use common sense.

To me, it's, it's similar to a high kick.

If you're going to do something, give them a caution for a dangerous play.

That's it.

This is not a red card.

Never is a red card.

I don't know when the whistle blew, but it just, I, I don't know how you could even get to a red card if it was called against us, you know, the other way around.

Somebody kicked Ryan in the forehead again, right?

Would have got the ball again with him.

Wouldn't have to be talking about this.

I might be a little pissed about.

It, but, hey, and also, like, what's the intent?

Right?

Okay.

He's on the ground.

He swings his leg.

Nip.

Nips him in the head.

Is there any blood drawn?

Like, what are we talking about?

What's, what's the extent of this?

And it's like, nothing.

He's rolling on the ground.

He's like, oh, my gosh.

I, you know, I'm knocked out or whatever, but I'm like, okay.

It's not like he slid into him, you know, did like a karate kick into his head.

Completely different.

That's when people try to act like it's like something, Some big deal.

I'm like, that's not a big deal.

Yeah.

It's also like a NFL football pile where there's guys on him, he's trying to kick and still play the ball.

And like, yeah, I'm sorry, but a guy who has hands.

Put your hands up, reach for the ball.

Like, grab the ball.

Cole Palmer's foul on Louis Skelly in the first half was worse than that.

It's worse than that.

Yeah.

Not even playing the ball.

He does.

Not even trying to.

He goes straight at his leg.

So, like.

And I mean, what are we looking at here?

You know?

And I think, I think Emmy's got such a.

Such a reputation about him that referees go, yeah, okay, he's gonna fall.

He's.

He's gonna roll around for a little bit on this.

But, yeah, I didn't see any blood.

I didn't see any.

You know, I don't think they did a head injury assessment.

That's how.

How barely he touched him, if he touched him at all.

Can I.

Can we actually real quick on the head injury.

Do you guys see?

This is second half, but Declan Rice on one of those kicks, got.

Smashed it in the head and they didn't stop the game.

Oh, the ref.

I've never really seen that before.

That's like.

Isn't that the.

The rule now?

It's like someone gets smacked in the head.

Like, you stop the game.

Yeah.

You let them get treatment and the rest of the game play on.

He's like.

He's like, always wobbling around.

I'm like, what's going on?

Right.

There was no adventure.

Like, the ball was bad.

The half line.

Yeah, I. I didn't understand why he didn't call it.

Cuz he was turning around looking.

He had his arm outstretched.

Like, he's pointing to him.

Like, I acknowledge that you got hit in the face with the ball doing about, you know, 500 miles an hour.

And I'll call if I need to, but I don't know why he just didn't blow the whistle.

That was bizarre.

It was like, all right, he just got hammered.

I mean, that was not like a.

He didn't ship the ball or something.

He literally got pelted.

He got snipered.

I mean, when he.

He went down, it was like he got shot in the face, you know?

So, yeah, I'm like, dude, that's got to be a concussion protocol.

Like, that's like.

That's like the number one.

The number one right there.

I've had buddies that have gotten concussions from getting hit in the head on.

On free kicks.

Like, yeah, your brain sloshes around and that's what takes you out.

But he seemed to be all right afterwards.

Maybe he went down and consulted Emmy.

I don't know.

But back to the Palmer foul.

That Palmer file was so cynical.

I don't know how a card didn't come out.

And then.

Then later on, he did pull a card for a really weak call on Palmer.

But I think that was probably the makeup call.

I mean, that.

That file was still a yellow card file, too.

Yeah.

The law of.

The law of the land.

I mean, he pulled someone's jersey from behind you stopped them from progressing.

That's a card.

And he did that.

I. I remember texting with Preston, and that file happened, and we were going back and forth, and it was like, that should be the second.

And then another file happened later, and it's like.

And there's the third.

And it, like, five minutes later, it wasn't.

We're gonna give him some grace.

Reset.

Like, it's just.

It's not dirty.

It was just, you're too slow of a player and you can't keep up with it, and you're mad now.

Yeah, it was kind of like playing.

I mean, it's probably from training with Enzo before he got sold to Man City, but, like, a player like that, where it's like, oh, you just kick him as hard as you can, or just pull them back.

It's fine.

Or, Chelsea, we pay refs.

We'll get out of it.

No calls.

And I think I will be honest.

I think overall, the game was really even on, like, calls, and I thought it was well, well done from the referee.

I mean, yeah, I think the Palmer one's the only weird one.

To me.

I think all the rest were Incredibly fair play.

50 50S, even some of the ones that looked.

You know, people do the frames and be like, oh, why is.

You know, why is Morgan Rogers being thrown by cons that it's like he's holding on to him?

You know, he's like, these are all, like, 50, 50s that, like, never need to be calls.

Like, these happen in the game.

You don't need to call every single.

Every single time you see something.

You can't just, like, call it.

And it doesn't.

The game doesn't deserve it.

So I think they did really well with.

You know, Declan clipped Morgan while he was sprinting, and he got really mad, right?

But, like, honestly, at the end of the day, like, that's a.

You know, the referee wanted to give him a card for that.

Like, that would have been fair, but, like, he didn't.

So I'm like, okay, whatever.

Like, Cole Palmer should have gotten a call in the first half.

He didn't get one.

So, like, where are we at here?

I think that.

I think on the level scale, it felt even.

It felt really, really even.

I will say with Declan's.

He's looking over at the ball.

He probably is running stride and stride, knows what he's doing.

But if you're looking at the ball and clip, that's one thing.

What's your guys take?

Like, I feel like Saka got overly filed Two or three times, uncalled.

But that's what Saka gets.

Happens to him every match.

That's.

That's the norm.

Yeah, but I don't feel like Chelsea got overly fouled and not called.

I. I feel like they actually got away with a lot.

We won the ball on multiple occasions and they received fouls for them.

So, like, I. I get.

For the majority of the game, I just thought there were some.

I felt as we got closer to the end, the 80th plus, it went more 50, 50.

But I felt for a while it kind of shifted into the.

Are we going to do this?

Like, they're just going to get these little calls that are like, we are winning the ball and not going through a player.

We're standing up winning the ball.

And it's just annoying because it's a.

It's a total change of pace of play.

Like, we're winning it in the center of the field, midfield, we can break.

But now you're calling it back.

Like, it's.

It's very aggravating to me.

In those.

Couple of those with.

With like, Zuba Mindy.

Right?

Zuba Skelly got like, one or two.

And, like, I feel like Skelly is now getting this reputation because of two years ago, that one red card.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, how is this going to stick with the guy?

He wins the ball.

Like, I. I don't know.

I don't.

Skelly gets this weird kind of.

I don't say weird, but it's this different body shape than other players normally do.

And he's got this, like, it shifts his center of gravity down lower, and he gets his hips, you know, and his legs a little spread, a little wider.

His hips are putting players off.

And sometimes I don't know if referees know how to handle that.

And just way I watch him try to shield the ball and stuff like that.

It's different than what, 99% of the other players, how their body kind of shapes and forms when they're trying to protect the ball or go after the ball.

And sometimes I think they just call it just because they don't know what to do.

And he looks the same as, like, McGinn, like, that kind of the show.

Who.

McGinn from Villa, who literally didn't get called.

Anything echoes across the field.

Like, I mean, it's just inconsistent.

Yeah, I know.

He is.

Like, he was.

He was.

I write my book watching Scotland play at World cup, and then as soon.

As soon, as, you know, he played against us, I go, no, He's a bag again.

Yeah.

So what do we think, what do we think of their couple hundred million dollar off season transfer spree?

That it's not working out so well?

I think it's working out very well.

Because they did a lot of on us.

Yeah, that's working out very well, I think.

Yes.

They held us only two goals, not 12.

I think we did well.

I, I have a couple buddies that are Chelsea fans and sorry for your loss.

I know, it's careful, careful, careful.

And it's so funny because, like, over the summer when this, all they were talking about is like, wow, we're so good in the market.

And, and they are, I'll be honest.

They are.

They're really good in the market.

Like they know how to sell by.

Every player in the world.

You got it.

You all are the best.

No, you're just the richest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they do well with like on, on a, on a.

And I'm like, and it's funny because I'm like, they're saying, oh my gosh.

Like, you guys are just jealous.

They would say, it's like, you're just jealous you can't do this business.

You're just jealous you can't do this business.

I'm like, I'm not really jealous of the business you guys are doing because we're winning.

So we're like, whatever we're doing actually works.

I feel like we did a really good job over this summer.

Yeah, it would be nice to get a left winger.

We didn't.

Whatever.

All the rest of the business we paid not a dime more than what we should have, which feels really good for a club like us, right?

And we sold well.

And like, we got our players out that needed to.

And they need more game time one year and other players.

So I'm like, I think it was really good.

So it's funny because I'm having this conversation with them.

They're like, oh, it's just really good business.

Really good business.

And they're like.

I was like, well, how do you call this?

Good, good business?

Whenever you're like, it's not working.

You're not winning anything.

You finished 10th last year.

And they were like, well, like, that's, that's the caveat of doing this.

Like, it's good business.

But like, we're not actually, we're not actually doing well with it.

I'm like, yeah.

So then I'm going to come back to this.

Is it good business?

Is it good business if you're making money?

Yeah.

If you're making money but you're not winning anything, is it good business?

You know, are if you're selling a lot of merchandise but you're.

But at the same time you're.

People don't really like or.

I don't know, actually, I don't even know a good analogy for this, to be honest, because it doesn't really make any sense.

There's no other scenario here where you can be doing.

Well, like business wise.

But actually it's not correlating to anything.

Oh, I do.

It's called United.

And then we have an Arsenal former Arsenal player equalize against them in the last couple of seconds of the match.

Anyway.

Okay, I digress.

So that's my take on.

It is like, it's really interesting.

I don't know how you guys look at their like that, but I look at like all this is like, okay, you've done all this for four years straight.

You've done.

You've literally won a Club World Cup.

That's it.

Which is like.

Okay, you might as well count that as like a.

The same as winning.

You know what, whatever trophy we won at the beginning of the season.

I forgot what it's called now.

Mazda Cup CX8 Cup.

I don't know.

Something that doesn't matter.

Like, is this not bother you guys when this is the argument that I'm seeing online.

Like, I see the hate and it's like, well, you're European thing.

You haven't won a thing in years.

Talking about.

I mean we can sit in our record book.

Yeah, we won premier titles.

We won Europe before it was Champions League.

We actually dominated it.

But we don't want to sit and dwell on 50 years ago, 60 years ago.

Yeah, your past is a little more recent, but until you go ahead and get up there like, you can't really talk and be like, we've won this before.

That's such a bad mentality to have.

That's such a Spurs mentality of like, look how good we used to be.

Okay, you're.

It's not like you used to be good and your owners are dog and not spending $502 billion like you're spending the money just like Rhett says and.

And you're not performing and this isn't.

Oh my God.

They did it this off season.

They've done it every off season for what, 30 years?

Well, no, they did a good job with Kai Havertz.

Yeah, that was a good out deal.

Yeah, well, he won in the Champions League and then they said no.

Yeah, he doesn't score.

He doesn't score.

The, the best piece of work they did was their coach is getting Xavi Lonzo because I think he's a phenomenal coach and if anybody can, can pull that team together, it'll be him.

But when you got characters like Cole Palmer on there that just.

I, he's not, I don't think he's a team player.

I think he's, he's.

He pulls that team apart more and he helps it so.

And they, they got a defense.

They should have spent a little more money on defenders because if you're giving up two plus goals a match.

And Emy Martinez, as much as I dislike this son of a.

He's still a decent keeper.

He's broke my heart a couple times.

And so yeah, they got a.

They.

They have to do better.

They have like Garnacho 2.0 playing left back.

Yeah, whatever.

That busted ass dude.

Like not a good defender.

They have Gusto who is like huffing and puffing and it's like, dude, you're getting ran by.

What do you like, you look like you're going out to like tackle a guy it.

They.

I'm pretty sure Javi Alonzo is going to make some big changes come January with this team and kind of start rebuilding it how he would like.

So do you think that, do you think that he actually has the ability to do that or do you think that that's out of his hands though?

Because that's my discussion is like, I don't know if that's actually in his hands because I took.

They care about money.

They would rather bring in.

They'd be like, oh yeah, we're going to bring in some Brazilian kid.

He's like, no, no, no, I want like a Premier League proven player.

And he's like, they're like, no, this guy, this kid is going to be good for the, for the, the accounting team really likes this guy.

I think with high profile coaches like this, there is a balance that he understands to like your extent.

Like he did put the Brazilian kid on.

He's not a terrible player.

He's giving them that energy probably that were lacking, but I think he's trying to go with, hey, I'll use the best players that we brought in and I'll give it a go.

I'm not saying like Morgan Rogers, like, I think that's going to be his staple.

He wants to build the front around and everything like that, but I feel like they're going to make a splash.

They're going to get a high profile striker.

They're going to spend the money on it.

They're probably going to go and get some high profile outside backs.

Rhys James is fine.

He's a good player.

Offensively, he brings it kind of like the Arteta mode of like he can play two ways.

I love that.

So.

I just feel like a coach like Xavi Alonso does know how to play that system and I think he will have more input than say like a Marino and stuff like that where he's brought in and him and the owner probably know like, you give me these guys, this is my wish list.

You can give me some.

That's great.

But I think the buck stops there with coach like that.

And like Alonzo seems more of like a project kind of like they, they see Arteta now of like, hey, if we stick with a guy and we kind of build into him and give him what he want, five years return, maybe we're going to go ahead and replicate what's done.

I mean, football is all about replication.

People see what works and they do it like the low block.

I'm surprised we're not seeing that more often this year because it has worked against us.

But like, stuff like that.

I feel Chelsea may not be jumping ship on Alonso.

Maybe actually go two years with him before considering him gone.

And that sums it up for.

About the Chelsea defense.

We had nothing else to say about it other than is there was there a player out there in the starting 11 for Chelsea that Ben White didn't get in their head at some point during the match?

Martinez.

Martinez is in his own.

I'm sorry, There was, there was Gabrielle's boot and Martinez.

Okay.

Anybody else you want to talk about?

I mean, we talk about.

Oh, it's interesting.

Stolis, I want, I want your thoughts on this so far.

This year was a big question mark of like, who is this guy?

What's he doing?

I think he's done pretty well.

He comes from Bruges.

Right.

And he's.

That's never, he's never.

Has he ever played in Premier League?

Yes.

Has he.

He played for Norwich.

Norwich.

And so when he comes in, he.

I wouldn't expect him to do as well as he's doing right now because all, you know, everybody during the match, whenever he got the ball, you hear the whoop, whoop, you know, about the police stuff.

And I thought, you know, this guy just got it going on.

He seems nice, calm, cool, collected, doesn't panic.

It doesn't seem like he, you know, he wasn't the strongest the first half, but then he stepped up.

I think so far he's.

He's something I didn't know we were looking for right now.

Yeah, I agree.

I. I think he is.

We'll see at the end of the season.

Of course, he could be transfer.

This is a.

At the moment looking like a transfer of the season type type player.

If he's going to be playing the minutes that we.

We think he'll probably be playing and the impact that he's going to have if he continues this on.

I mean, I don't.

I don't see how you don't look at this guy and go 30.

I think we paid 35 million for him.

Yeah, I mean, that's like chump change for what.

Like the, the what he's putting out right now.

I think it's just unbelievable.

He does well.

He works well with Califiori.

He is like.

It's kind of funny.

It's like, how did you.

How do you find the Trossard V2?

Like, in someone that can just slot in immediately?

Like, literally immediately.

Immediately.

Immediately.

Yeah, that's the, that's the amazing part with me.

It's like the perfect hybrid of Martinelli and Trisard.

He does attack guys, but he knows when to step it back and like curl it in or like make the layoff pass.

It's crazy.

It's really impressive.

Like, I think he's.

He's just phenomenal.

He's been phenomenal so far.

I. I love watching him play and I'm kind of glad, like, part of me is kind of glad he doesn't really have any competitions.

I'm like, let him, let him do his thing on.

Yeah.

On that side.

And like, he works really freaking hard too.

Like, like he's got that Marnelli where he can like, track back a little bit hard.

It's.

He's.

He's phenomenal.

My only thing is that the other side of me says too, like, you're coming from the league.

He's coming from.

To this league.

I mean, when, when December rolls around, it's gets dicey, you know, it gets really dicey.

So.

But I think.

So if you got.

If we're subbing him off, who do you put on?

Maruque?

How do you pronounce his name?

I think I see you bring on.

Yeah.

I mean, what are the options?

Right?

Like.

Yeah, so Madawake is an option and then you have E would be the other one.

Yeah, true.

That's who we've seen.

Come on Forum Which I honestly, I think as a.

It reminds me of like what Henri said when he was like, I always played central or whatever.

I never thought of moving to the left wing, but Vanger moved me there.

And that's when I started to like, understand football better with everyone else on the field.

I feel like AS is getting a dose of that medicine a little bit by being put on the wing.

I feel like when he's central, he's a little flat footed.

Like, yeah, he makes some great shots and everything, but he is just still where he's on the wing.

He has to be moving and kind of get himself involved in the plane.

I like it.

I think it's good for him career wise.

Yeah.

There's also Max Salmon as well.

But all these players, the Eze feels like the only actual.

No, I shouldn't say that because I feel like Matawake in the right moment would make a lot of sense to me on the left.

If you.

If you were like down, down by a goal and Solace hasn't done something and it's the 75th minute, why would you not put Mad Awayke on the left and just be like, all right, just run it.

Just run at these guys, run at them and do what you need to do.

It's kind of a chaos agent.

You don't know what he's going to do.

So the defense really has got to go.

Oh, crap.

We now we got to he.

He's not going to be successful most of the time or even a lot of the time, but when he is, he can bust through the lines and get in behind you and you all sudden you're in trouble and you don't know which way he's coming from.

Nobody knows which way he's coming from.

Right.

So let's talk about two other players before we wrap it up.

One is this Viking guy that plays in the middle.

What's his name?

Martin Odard, I think got a funny thing above his name.

How awesome is he?

I saw the best description of why he's on fire.

His.

His kid started sleeping and nothing hits.

This will hit close to home.

Soon.

His kid finally started sleeping and they're like.

And then his form just took off.

Yep.

I agree, I agree.

I've been there.

Well, listen, a bit in the trenches.

I get it.

Well, he's another one.

That's last year, year before, he would never take shots.

And we're like, you got to do something different.

You can tell Arteta, talk to him.

He started taking shots and now he just Finds himself in the box by himself.

You know, Kai letting that ball roll under his foot and, and once again him laying out a keeper.

That just absolutely hilarious.

Only thing I could think of with Emy is he still had the concussion going on from Gabriel's, the king of Brazil's boot.

He was on the ground before he even shot.

Yeah, his finishing is more clinical.

I don't think he's striking it early when he gets these.

He's, he's taking his Odegaard time and like look up and pick it out.

Yeah, this kind of reminds you of Ozil and like those prime Ozil years where he would like dummy the keepers and be like, yeah, no, this is cake.

I have the ball, I'm open, this is a goal.

And Patrick, one last player we want to talk about because I know this is your man.

Martinelli is gone to another team off in Saudi.

Would you like to say anything in memory of.

Yeah, always a Gooner.

So we'll see him back eventually.

Still a youngest, younger player, I think just honestly my heart goes out to Big Gabby.

He's lost all his gabbies.

He's the only one.

He's the only Gabby you bring in.

Other Brazilians, they're not gabbies.

Don't worry about it.

It's okay.

We got you.

Well, we will find another Gabby for you.

Yeah, it was, that was, that was my one transfer of the summer.

I was like, I think this is, I think it's time for that to happen.

I felt like it was time for us to kind of let a high profile winger and someone young go.

We really haven't done that at all.

So I kind of figured it was going to be him.

There's no way.

You saw Saka, so that wasn't going to happen.

But yeah, no, I, I, I'm sad.

I, I'm, I'm only sad because I just wish he deserves to be like in Syria or La Liga.

He deserves to be with Diego Simeone.

That's who he deserves to be with.

He deserves to be at Athletico Madrid playing in a center striker role or on the wings.

That's where I think he deserves to be personally.

But, but, so, yeah, I'm just kind of sad he's having to be in Saudi and getting paid very good money, but not playing where he wants to be whenever he's 24 years old.

So, but I mean that's the transfer market nowadays is like, those guys will pay up and like Syria, like no one's dropping crazy money in Syria.

Like really not like very Often they don't have a lot of money at those clubs.

So you gotta wait for like Real Madrid or one of the big three in, in the other leagues, if not the Prem.

You think his wage bill under Arsenal really affected where he could go?

I don't think so.

I.

What was he on, like 150 or something like that?

He wasn't on anything above 200.

So I mean the Prem is.

We're on steroids right now.

I mean we're, we're, it's, it's no joke.

We, we pay really well.

Like.

But I don't think it's not possible.

Like, I just wish you, like, I think even like the Turkish League would have been better than what he's.

Where he's at.

I think Turkey will pay you really good money.

And you know, there's, I mean if you, I don't know if you guys have looked at the Turkish League, you know how many players are in there right now, but is it a lot?

There's a, like you look at their big, their big three teams and Muhammad Salah is not even playing on the big three.

He's on Trevon Sport like, like it's crazy how much depth they have right now anyway.

But I, I think he deserved that and at least.

But whatever.

It is what it is.

Okay, let me ask one thing.

Is it finally getting some, should we get some respect for the sale?

We're not getting bullied off for a free transfer or like way undervalued.

I personally, I feel like this is overvalue for him.

I think 65 million was a really good, really good number.

I think that that's, I'm, I'm happy with that.

It's like almost double what we've.

Our, our max that we've had before, which is like 35, which yeah, for the times is so low.

So like, yeah, 65 I think is really good.

I think 65, her player that is like not in his peak form, but it's young is a good sale.

Like Martinelli is not a world beater right now.

He's not so.

And not a starter.

Not a starter either.

So 65 million is kind of steep.

Great, great business for the first time.

Yeah.

I feel like on our part, selling wise, buying wise, I think we've done well.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people, that's all.

I mean there was.

I mean obviously I know people wanted more.

Everyone wanted another left wing player to come in.

And here's what I've, here's what I think of.

I'VE seen it with Arsenal over the past couple years is we don't go.

We don't.

Just the times whenever you're, like, just doing a signing, just to do a signing, like, oh, we.

Let's go down farther on our list or something like that, or can we find someone else?

And none of that.

I hate that.

I don't like any of that.

You just.

You'll get a Raheem Sterling if you do that.

That's what happens whenever you.

Yes.

Little T. Rex arms.

And, like, that's what happens.

So, like, to me, I'm like, oh, we did.

We couldn't find our top two targets.

Just be done with it.

Yeah, like, just be done with it and be like, listen, it's not.

It's not our summer.

And, like, it is what it is.

I think we tried to go for that one guy that was, like, being fought by, like, Sunderland and Malik Fafana.

We were, like, going for him, but again, we kind of looked at it and said, hey, we want to pay 35 million for this guy.

They were asking 40 and we're like, we won't do it.

We're not doing it.

So.

And that was like a.

For the.

He's like, you know, for the future type player.

And we were like, no, we're not paying that.

We're not paying 40 million.

We don't need to.

We don't need to.

We're gonna pay what we.

What we think is fair value.

And we're the only club that I feel like did that.

That did that this summer.

We're the only club that said, let me put our.

Our foot down and saying, we're not going to be paying these Morgan Rogers, by the way, kind of weird if you think about it.

I don't know if you guys have looked into that, but, like, we're offering, like, 90, 95 for him.

And then Chelsea goes and pays what, 115.

And then they sell.

And then they sell.

Okay, they.

They.

They buy him.

And what happens after that?

They get two players from.

From or Chelsea, Aston Vil.

For how much?

45 Million and 65 million or something like that.

Which adds up to almost the same price.

Yeah, I mean, I. I'm not an accountant, but, like, kind of weird to me, that looks a little.

A little shady business, so.

But you own every player in the world.

It's pretty easy to break even.

Just give you a couple of these guys, too.

If you want them, it's fine.

There you go.

But it's not even the first time they've done it either.

No, they've done it with.

It's.

Who did they do it with?

They did it with.

It was a.

A direct.

A specific PSR thing that they did with.

Now I'm trying to remember their names.

Ian Matson.

And they swapped Ian Matson with some other dude Chelsea sent over.

I think it was like Chuck Wameka and like.

Or somewhere else.

It was someone else.

And he never played.

He never played for Chelsea.

He literally never played for Chelsea.

Bottom from Villa.

Never played one game for them the whole time.

And it's all for psr.

These clubs are doing terrible.

And guess what?

They're like having to figure out ways to get around the financial system and they're finding ways to do it, but it's just odd, man.

Well, they should keep doing what they're doing because they're doing a fantastic job, especially.

They're right.

You're right.

Good business.

Yeah.

Good business.

Good business.

Okay, that's all I got.

Gentlemen.

Rhett, thank you very much for joining us and hopefully we'll see you in the future.

You're a wealth of knowledge in that head.

I don't know how you cram all that stuff in there.

I just.

I. I feel like Emmy Martinez every time I talk to Rick because I feel like whack.

I got fat hitting the head.

And he's incredible.

The amount of knowledge of craming there.

You and.

And Patrick also, so thank you very much.

Patrick, any parting words again for.

For our Gabby?

No.

Yeah.

Battery lost 2 to 1.

Sucks.

Bad referee.

Yeah, boys.

Yeah.

Okay.

See y.