Neville & Carragher on the title race after Liverpool's draw with Arsenal | The Gary Neville Podcast

Hello, everybody. We're at Anfield for the Gary Neville podcast, joined today by Jamie Carragher off the back of a terrific one-all draw between Liverpool and Arsenal, both of whom chaps aspire to being the champions. In that context, how do you read it, Jamie? I still think there's questions probably for both teams in terms of have they got enough to win the title, I think. I think I would favour Arsenal more than Liverpool when I actually look at Arsenal's sort of play this season, obviously just slightly above in the table. When I look at that sort of strength of the two centre-backs, Declan Rice in midfield, they look really solid. Coming to Anfield today, it was tough at times for them, but they didn't really give up too many chances, to be honest. It was the same at Aston Villa. They lost again, quite unfortunately. Again, didn't give up too many chances, and they are the two best teams at home this season. The records tell you that. So even though they've only got one point, I was more impressed with the performances in both those away games, really, than what they picked up points-wise. So a better point for Arsenal, do you think, Gary? Yeah, I think so. I think when you're coming here, I think you always take a point, unless obviously there's some sort of desperation at the end of a season where you need to win to do something, which Arsenal did famously 34 years ago. But no, I'm a little disappointed, probably just because I felt as though the game could have had a winner, and I'm looking for a team to step up. I'm looking for a team to emerge and think, right, okay, go on, really grab this opportunity. And look, they leave here tonight, Arsenal, I think probably proud of the work that they've done. They've been solid here this year. Well, last year, they weren't solid, were they? They really sort of crumbled. So I think there's an element of real positivity. I just feel that there's that little bit of tinge of disappointment, maybe, in me that if you're really going to go and win the title, I always think go and win here. And that's very difficult to do. Not many teams win here, but big ask. But it's not happened, I think, like I say, they live to fight on another day, and big games to come up in the next few months. I think one of the reasons why it was difficult for anyone to go on and win the game was I thought the four centre-backs were outstanding. Honestly, you couldn't give any one of them man of the match, really, when you're looking at Canarty at times. The way he came across, he made three or four blocks in that second half. Gabriel and Saliba, I'm sure it was a toss-up to sort of give a man of the match, and Van Dijk's been outstanding again, as he has been all season. So I think it was always going to be difficult for anyone to go on and win the game or create a lot of chances, considering the form of those four players in this game. On the reverse of that, I think that, and we've seen probably one of the best front threes you'll ever see at Liverpool in the last 10 years, and Arsenal, I think, is an emerging front three that could be great, but they don't actually combine a lot together. And I think that's a real problem. I think that the best front threes, you know, they involve their centre-forwards, the wide players, they play off them, they bounce it off them like a wall pass. You see, sort of, in years gone by, Salah, Firmino and Mane, they would link between the three of them. And when I was playing at United, the front two, not a three, but two, when we were at our best, the front two would link between them. It's very difficult when front players link for defenders to actually be able to deal with it. And at the other end of the pitch, Martinelli, Jesus and Saka, I don't see them linking a lot either. Even when Saka's trying to cross it to the back post, I don't see Martinelli charging it at the back post. There's quite a lot to work on in the front threes of both teams. The question mark is, I don't think Liverpool will sign anybody in January in that front three, so they've got to work from within, because they've got Jota, they've got plenty of players up there. It's more Arsenal in terms of, I've left myself, or found myself talking at the end of many Arsenal games this season now about whether Nketiah and Jesus are number one and two strikers in Premier League title winning sides, or whether they're actually more two and three strikers, and they need that number one, because I actually love Jesus. I really love him, honestly. I think he's a brilliant player. I'd love to play with him. He's got a bit of Rooney in him, he's got a bit of Tevez in him, he's got a bit of the sort of everything, but he hasn't got that sort of instinct in front of goal, and sometimes it's everywhere you don't want him. Do you know what I mean by that? I think when you have someone like Jesus at the top end of the pitch, you almost need to have Mo Salah wide. Your goal scorer needs to be wide, so he's almost like a little bit, not exactly, but Firmino-like in that, Firmino when he played for Liverpool, his job wasn't to score goals. Now, when you look at Arsenal's front three, when you put them all together, there's not really enough goals. They need someone to be a Mo Salah or a Sadio Mane when you go back to Liverpool's front three, and then no one mentions Firmino's lack of goals. Firmino, would you believe it, this season Liverpool won the title. He didn't score a goal at Anfield in the league. I mean, that is unbelievable for a team winning the title. But he was essential, wasn't he? Exactly, but Jesus, we look at him because there's not those amount of goals coming from the wide area, so you do, that's the one thing you look at Arsenal, there's parts of Liverpool you look at and you think, can they win the league with deficiencies in certain positions, and you look, you do look at Arsenal and think, can you win without a real sort of goal, goal scorer, you think every week he's going to be getting a goal or very close to getting a goal. Yeah, when we had, Tevez would run around everywhere, sometimes Rooney would disappear and he'd be out on the left wing, but you did have Cristiano Ronaldo up there who would be, to be fair, prolific and Rooney was prolific as well, but I'm just thinking about the great front threes or great parts of these three, not even just in goals, they don't combine a lot together within the game to play and I just feel as though that's going to cost them at some point. So yeah, look, definitely Arsenal, I found that there's been a lot of times during this season whereby that player running across the near post, across the centre back, stepping across to get in front to tap it in the back of the net or just get a little nick on it. They haven't got that, they haven't got a sniffer. I actually thought Nketi coming on might just give them that edge, but he just couldn't get into the game with only 15 minutes to go. I think looking at Liverpool's front three, there's something not right about it and for me, Nunes starts on the bench there, I know he's in a poor run of form in terms of goals, but for me, Darwin Nunes has to be almost one of the first names on the team sheet. I think even when I watch the midweek, he still creates a goal, he creates panic, there's a feeling even if it's not going well, you're thinking he could run past someone, he could get a shot off him somewhere, he could do something. Gakpo has been here now close to 12 months and he's had flashes but nowhere near enough and Diaz just looks a shadow of himself since those knee injuries he had last season, obviously he had family problems this season, but I really feel that Diaz, especially on that left side, is going to have a really big second half of the season or I'm sure Liverpool will be going into the market in the summer, because it just feels like with Sadio Mane going Firmino, they haven't really replaced him in terms of quality. Nunes, listen, we're almost making excuses for him, but what Liverpool have still got right now in terms of a front three, Mo Salah is your number one, Nunes is your number two, and then it's who else is playing for me in a front three. But you say that you're not sure about the front three, Jurgen Klopp's not sure about that front three because he switches them around, he moves them from position to position, you're not quite sure which he's going to play each week, he substitutes them quite early, you had that front three for years who, to be fair, were like clockwork and they always played, and now he's got a situation whereby he's juggling balls every week and wondering which one he's going to pick, and they are the scruffier, I mean the three that were there before were world-class, Nunes is scruffy, Diaz is a little bit scruffy, Gakpo is a little bit scruffy, Salah's obviously not, and I think that's something that ultimately Liverpool are just a little bit short. One thing on the positive for Liverpool, I actually thought the midfield three could get overrun, I thought Endo, Curtis Jones in particular could get overrun, I actually thought they stood up to Urdegaard, Rice and Havertz, would you agree? Yeah, and considering those three players played midweek as well, and then you think about who you're playing against, the quality they've got, they're going to be a lot fresher, the energy they put into the game, the amount of times they won the ball back, and I think that's just one of the reasons why Arsenal came into the game a little bit more as the game went on, and why Jurgen Klopp broke Curtis Jones off, I mean that was a big surprise for me, I thought Curtis Jones was outstanding in the game, but it was the fact he played midweek, and Gravenberge comes on, but that is, I think on the back of what happened midweek, and what happened today, that I think for the foreseeable future, or certainly the next few weeks, that is Liverpool's go-to midfield three now, I would say. So moving on, how do you think Manchester City are viewing all of this? And in that context, how important has this weekend been for them? They are the world champions, just say a little bit about that. No, I think that tournament doesn't get obviously the credit in this country, that it will never get the credit in this country, it got a bad name, the World Cup Championships, even though it's slightly different, 20 years ago, yeah 23 years ago, when we as United went and missed the FA Cup, and it was at the time seen as a crime, maybe it was, but it's a really important competition, in the sense that to win the league, and then to win the Champions League, to get there, you've got to have done a hell of a lot to even be in that competition, and then to go and win it, it's not always easy, so for Manchester City it's a great achievement this weekend, well done to them, they'll be happy about how the results have gone with Villa, Arsenal and Liverpool, so that'll be something that gives them a little bit of a lift, and for Manchester City, they've been below par, let's be clear, I won't use the word complacent, I'll say below par, based upon their sort of unbelievably high standards, but I think if they're going into February in the position whereby they're sort of neck and neck with these teams, and these teams haven't just stepped up a level, they'll feel really confident, because that sort of know-how, running down the final straight, with that power that they have with Haaland up top, and if De Bruyne comes back, he's obviously a different player. I think this last week's been fantastic for Manchester City, there was talk that I think the next handy players are across Stanley Park at Goodison, and they could have been 12 points behind Liverpool, you know, and Liverpool have dropped four points now, so I think it puts them in a great position, if they get back to anything near their best, and they're within touching distance, I think they're going to win the title. Okay, that's them, that's the title race. Gary, it wouldn't be one of these without a word on Manchester United, who've had a, well, they've lost again today. Yeah. What did you see of it, what did you make of it? To be fair, I've just seen the goals on the app, because I was travelling over to Anfield and didn't see, I think you've seen the full game, haven't you? It doesn't surprise me at all, you know, I didn't get carried away last week when they played here against Liverpool, I thought Liverpool were below par, I said in the podcast that I thought Manchester United were actually relatively poor in possession, I think they showed some resilience and got through the game, and you've always got a respect to draw at Anfield, but I think now what we see from this team, and I say this team, I don't just mean under this manager, I mean this team under any manager in the last six, seven, eight years, is pretty much the same, that you can't trust them, they will let you down when they give you a sort of glimmer of hope that they might be on track to do something, they go and basically lose a game that they shouldn't lose, and you know, they've got Villa on Boxing Day, they could go and win that, that's how daft it is, and then they could go and lose at Forest four days later, and that's just what we watch, you're watching such an inconsistent budget, and inconsistency is a really bad trait in all walks of life, what you want is to be reliable and consistent, to be that seven or eight out of ten, to make sure that everybody knows in any single job, every single day, imagine if you're a bricklayer, right, and one day you don't know whether the wall that he builds, that bricklayer, those sort of 400 bricks that he might lay, or 300 bricks that he might lay, are going to fall down the day after, are they going to be really good bricks, imagine if that was the case in any job in life, you'd be really really annoyed, wouldn't you Sam? Do you do your own tell? I had a very good bricklayer, no but I'm saying, what I'm saying to you is, you think about every walk of life, consistency and reliability is really important, we came up here every single week, you've got to turn up, you've got to maybe give a little bit of insight, you've got to be consistent in your work, and Manchester United are inconsistent in their work, and the problems go a lot deeper, we've talked about them so many times now, it's cultural failure right the way through the club, that only can be fixed through new ownership, and they're still playing bad, so the players on the pitch are not doing very well, the manager's going to come under great pressure, you didn't like the manager's interview at the end of the game, did you? No, I mean, I saw the interview at the end of the game, and listen, I understand managers are not going to be totally honest, I'm sure he's a lot more honest with his coaching staff on the way back from the game, and when they go through the video, and you've got to be careful what you say, and not criticise your players, and bring, you know, some sort of, you know, sense to the game, and when I heard the manager saying they had control of the game, it reminded me a little bit of managers I've had, when they were in there last season, and things weren't going well, and when he was saying they had control of the game, I mean, I watched the game, I mean, it was a really poor game from both teams, but I think that when I saw the teams, I didn't think for one minute Man Utd would win that game, so when the result happens 2-0 to West Ham, I think, well, I'm not that shocked by it, I'm thinking, well, that's what should happen, when I saw those two teams, Paquita's involved in both goals, he's the best player on the pitch, not after I've watched the game, I know that before the game, you know, and so when I saw that United team, the biggest shock about Manchester United for me this season is where they are in the league, I can't believe how often I've seen them, how poor that they've been, they're so far off the table, and you know, if they got two or three results together, they wouldn't be far away from a Champions League position, so that for me is sort of the biggest shock, but no, they're a really average team right now, and you know what the worst thing you'd ever say about Man Utd, they're boring, and now that's not a dig, it's just when you watched them, it was always, we were rivals, but you watched them, it was exciting, even if they got them beat, you know, they would go for the throat, it'd be all guns blazing at the end of the game, now it's just, I mean, they've scored 18 goals in 18, I think they've scored the same amount of goals as Luton. As Sheffield United, I think, no, no, Sheffield United are the only ones who scored less than them, is it? Yeah. You're right, I think it is Luton, they've only scored the same goals as Luton. And that's just, I mean, that can't be Manchester United. They've never scored in four games, have they? No, no, no. I mean, I said this, I said this a few couple of months ago, obviously, we know that there's new owners coming in. And I said, how much does that make the people who are in the club? We know the CEO has already left, so he obviously knew that the writing was going to be on the wall for him, so he's left and gone early. And you hear all the reports that have come out this week, very detailed pieces about what potentially, what Jim Ratcliffe's going to do, and what Dave Brailsford are going to do, and they're going to have a complete wipeout. You can imagine how the atmosphere must be in there waiting for what would be the inevitable for probably 60-70% of the staff. You imagine how they must feel. They must all feel, not undermined, but they must all feel like, let me get out of here quick. Because the reality of it is, they're going to probably have to, at some point in the next few months anyway, because there's no doubt a new football director coming in, a new sort of, if you like, sporting leader, which is what Jim Ratcliffe is, he's going to make sweeping changes, because there's been 10 years of failure. So he's just going to make lots and lots of changes, and that's going to mean that at this current time, I almost feel like now it seems terrible. We're almost like getting to a point whereby he's right off this season, finish sort of like as high up the league as you can. It won't be obviously in the Champions League places, can we get into the Europa League? And just almost forget about it to the point whereby it can be almost corrected. That seems like a really defeatist attitude, but I think that's where I feel we're at. I think with Jim Ratcliffe coming in, no club's got a divine right to win anything, you know, but you've got to make Manchester United box office again. We're here watching this game, you know, you're enthralled, you're involved in the game. You never see Manchester United in games like that anymore. You know, he's got to get, as I said, Manchester United back to being sort of the team everybody wants to watch and are excited by, and big games on Sky Sports. I mean, if you want to see Manchester United play well now, you've got to go to UK Gold. I mean, you don't see them involved in the... We're coming here excited about this big game. You don't see... You're not excited about Manchester United in a big game. You watch them against City, you watch them against Liverpool, they're hanging on for dear life. You know, that's what you've got to do. As I said, there's a lot of competition in the Premier League, but as I said, you've got to get them back to being exciting and a team that people want to watch. I think on my way down in the car, I think there was some sort of stat put out on the radio that Manchester United have never lost, I think, for 92 years, as many games as they have done at this stage of the season, which was a staggering statistic. That's how bad it has been. Now, obviously, they've not drawn a lot of games, they've won quite a few, but this is the worst start to a season in terms of actual losses that they've had for 92 or 93 years. It's a really bad start to the season, but I can't help but think that, you know, the owners said they were going to sell the club 12 months ago. How they didn't get that dealt with in the summer, so that we started the new season afresh. They're a disgrace, those owners, by the way. They are a disgrace to the end, and they still hang on for dear life, and they're going to now pass over the football department, and Jim Ratcliffe's going to come in and take their sort of main worry away from them. They can just sit there and say, it's not my fault anymore, it's up to him over there. And if Jim Ratcliffe doesn't succeed, then they're just going to still sit there and have their value in the club. Look, if Jim Ratcliffe sorts it out, then great. And for that, obviously then, hopefully he'll have some sort of exit planned for the Glazer family in the next three to five years. But they can't lose now, the Glazers. They're sat there in America like they always have been, knowing that basically they can just, the main focal point of the club can be, you know, the main target is not them anymore in terms of football. It's not, it's going to be someone else, which is just an unbelievable position they find themselves in. They're the great survivors. And the saga goes on. Was it a penalty, by the way, Erdogan? I thought it was a slip. Do you not think it was a slip? If you got a slip, the first thing you do is put your hand down there. It's the first thing you do. Forget it was handball. You know if you'd slipped and fouled someone, is it still a foul if you slip? But handball's a different barometer and measurement in the area. It's about intent. It's about, obviously, did he mean to do it? Did he mean to gain an advantage? I don't think he did. So I just want to have a little debate about that because that'll be something that potentially could get mentioned by the managers that I look. If it had been given, I wouldn't have been jumping up and down. It's not been given. I'm not jumping up and down saying that's a disgrace. I thought the one last night, by the way, Villa Park and the Sheffield United. That was that one. Yeah, I think that one. Yeah, I think we both agreed on that. I think Odegaard's gone down. There is a slight slip. Of course, there is. Yeah, but it's his arms not right close to his body. It's out here. It's almost like there is a movement with his arm towards the ball, whether that comes from being slipping. But that's not Liverpool's problem that he slipped. Theo Walcott in our studio, who, let's face it, is hostile through and through, said if I'm playing, I want that penalty. Of course, if you're playing, you want the penalty. But if I'm a defender, if Jamie Carragher's defending his box and he slips, he puts his arm down and hits him. You wouldn't want it against him. I mean, I'm looking at it objectively because I stand nothing to gain from Liverpool or Arsenal getting a penalty or not. I just feel I can see some reasoning as to why that wasn't a penalty because of the slip and the fact it's a protective measure to put your arm down. And it felt like a natural movement of his arm to go down to almost counterbalance the slip. But yeah, I just thought it was worth discussing. And maybe just before we finish, we ought to touch on events towards the bottom of the table. A, because Nottingham Forest have made a management change and are, as a result of some quite remarkable results this weekend, now sucked back into a relegation battle we thought we might not have. You guys saw Sheffield United chisel out a good point at Villa and Luton have won and Burnley have won. We thought Luton would win, didn't we, against Newcastle? Yeah, I think Newcastle's just finding it tough. The same players are playing week in, week out. But I think Luton have been a revelation this season because I know they find themselves where they are on the table, where we all expect them to be. Probably all expect them to be bottom. But every game they play, no matter who they're up against, they're in the game. And if they do lose, they lose by the odd goal. And I think they've got Sheffield United on Tuesday, I think, or the Boxing Day fixture. And that feels huge. And we're talking about Nottingham Forest today, you know, making a change noon or they lost the game. So they're getting dragged closer. But I think teams over five or six points above the relegation will see those results today and start to see Burnley win games. Luton always been in a game, win a game today. Sheffield United, Luton, if someone wins that game, I think your Crystal Palace is... I'm not saying these teams will go down, but I think they'll start looking over the shoulder because I think there was a feeling, even for me, probably a month or so ago, six weeks ago, when I always thought, I can't see how many points the three promoted teams are really going to get. And just slowly, they're just clawing points back and just bridging that gap. And there's still an awful long way to go. And you expect them to improve, the more experience they get and the more belief they get, and players getting used to the Premier League. So I think this weekend, there'll be a few teams just looking over the shoulder. It's never quite how we think it's going to be, is it, at the bottom, or at the top for that matter sometimes. But I think at the bottom last year, I had Bournemouth certain to go down, like February, and I was pretty clear about Forest and where they were going. And all of a sudden, Bournemouth went on this incredible run, Forest went on a great run, and you end up seeing it completely differently inside four or five weeks. That doesn't surprise me. What's your view on Forest now and the management change? Do you know something? Instinctively, when I first sort of heard that Nuno had gone in, I thought, well, Steve Cooper plays great football, he's a coach, he plays out the back, but he's not been playing like that. I think actually, what we saw last week against Spurs on Friday Night Football was a team defending deep and looking to counter-attack. Well, I had to think and play five at the back. Actually, Nuno does that very well. He did that very well at Wolves, didn't he, where he plays five at the back, he is methodical, he does get a team playing with a pattern. So I actually think Forest will be okay once he gets a bit of work into their legs and sort of work into their system. And I think that generally, I think that it may suit them to get through this season with Nuno in the sense that that's how they've been playing with five at the back and playing deep to counter-attack. Is it worth discussing a little bit of the Super League or not? Go ahead. Do you want me to start? Yes. Obviously, we're against the Super League and how it's gone about, but I actually thought, I mean, I was actually embarrassed for Perez and Laporte coming out, you know, the owners or the presidents of Real Madrid and Barcelona, the way they carried on after this court ruling that they'd won this big case. And when you digged into the detail, basically nothing really had changed, but they tried to put on this big facade that they'd come out the winners, we're going to do this league. And the great thing was football clubs around the world just come out and put statements out. And the best one was Atletico Madrid, the number three team in Spain, basically just laughed at those two and they carry on. And the Premier League clubs have reacted really well, but I couldn't believe how poor they were a couple of years ago, where you don't understand that this is the Super League. We've got the Super League. And the reason the Super League is trying to be created is because Barcelona and Real Madrid have been top dogs for so long financially, buying the best players in the world, are terrified of the product of the Premier League and the money that comes into the Premier League. And maybe the owners are getting involved all around the world. They've got huge backing behind them. So there is no Super League without the teams here. The German teams are never going to get involved, maybe not exactly because of our reasons, but I think their fan situation and fan ownership. So I'm looking at, I think the best thing that Saffron said, and let's not forget, you know, UEFA are not the good guys, exactly. But he said, I hope the league starts tomorrow with the two of them. I know that was just the best way to talk about it. Yeah, I mean, it's really sad in the way in which particularly Barcelona, who I've always viewed as being different than Real Madrid. I thought we've always seen Real Madrid as being sort of like a club that would do anything to win in the sense of the mighty in Spain, they got the sort of investment from, you don't know where, but it comes, they sign the best player in the world every single year. It's because Barcelona are absolutely skint. I know, and this is their world. Barcelona are a mess, and they've had lots of financial mismanagement. They've sold their sort of crown jewels of the future with their TV rights and all that sort of stuff. But I always felt Barcelona as a members club, you're like more than a club, sort of promote an attitude. That to me sort of stood to something when I was playing football, when I used to go and play at the Nou Camp and you play against this great club, it stood for what was right. And I look at them now and you're right, the other day, they were almost like despot leaders of sort of rogue countries, stood there sort of defiant at the last like, we are standing, we will win. This is the best thing and greatest thing that's ever happened. And I was like, come on, this is over. Now look, they won't lie down. My concern with these two clubs is that they're monsters of football clubs. And if they can somehow encourage and entice clubs from Italy, and clubs from some of the part, I mean, Germany, the German clubs won't go in, the English clubs definitely won't go in. But if you can somehow entice clubs from maybe Saudi Arabia, I think that's the play eventually, maybe Saudi Arabia, or maybe this clubs in Italy that might think, you know, Juventus might go and join, they were there at one point, weren't they? AC Milan, and all of a sudden, you've got five or six of the great clubs not playing in the UEFA competitions, playing in their own competition. And then they'll start to have like a live golf type situation whereby you've got a divide. And then people start to say, we need to bring this together. And they'll start to get, you know what I mean? It's almost like a bit of a, it's a bit of at this moment in time, a dangerous situation where we just need to be careful. It absolutely can't happen. But we also got to be mindful that these clubs are huge and that their game might be to play the long game with it. Playing devil's advocate, this is a devil's advocate. Listen, I'm a football fan. I don't want anything to change. I love our football every bit as much as you guys who've played it so many times for big clubs. But devil's advocate question, is there actually anything wrong, given that the Premier League is the big league, if you're an ambitious club somewhere else, trying to compete with it, trying to find a way, just as we say within our league, Manchester City are the best now, they're untouchable, when it's everybody else's job to catch them up. So is there anything per se wrong in being ambitious around revolutionising football? Because I didn't see the Italian league 25-30 years ago, holding a hand out to the English league when we were struggling and they weren't. The English league had to redesign itself, rebrand itself, resell itself. And that's what they're going to have to do in Spain and Italy. I am all for a social approach where we look after one another, not just in this country, but in Europe. But what they have to do is find a way to be able to market their product in a way which the Premier League did in 1992, which turned it from, you know, people were scared to go to football matches. We had a hooliganism problem. We had an issue whereby there weren't that many games on television. We couldn't compete with the money that was being spent in Italy, in Spain, with Real Madrid, Barcelona, Juventus, Lazio, Sampdoria, all these great clubs. We couldn't compete. Our players were going over there, by the way. So it's now a case of we've obviously done really well in the last 30 years. I wouldn't like us to go too far ahead of them. We don't win the Champions League every single year, by the way. And the two best English players, don't forget, have gone abroad. Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham. We shouldn't forget that. But that's exactly why Perez and Laporte want this, is because they're worried that they won't be top dogs in terms of the Premier League. And I totally agree with you, Peter, in that football should never stop evolving and becoming better. You know, the Champions League, the way we see it now compared to sort of the European Cup 20, 30 years ago, different competitions, the Premier League from the first division, you know, the transformation has been fantastic. So football shouldn't stop evolving. The Champions League is evolving next season in terms of a different format. We'll see how that goes. So that should never stop. But I don't think the reason of Real Madrid and Barcelona is to sort of push football forward. They're looking after themselves to make sure they've got enough money to always be the team who always has the best players. Real Madrid and Barcelona notoriously have always had the best players in the world. The best player in the world always, or the Ballon d'Or winner always seems to play for a Real Madrid or a Barcelona. And that's what terrifies them that it will start happening in the Premier League. I think what we might need to do rather than think about how we, you know, those clubs and sort of clubs in this country, they're always looking to try and sort of grow their revenues, which is a natural thing to do. What we might have to do is just put some controls in place on potentially the clubs. I know that there is FFP and there is sustainability measures in place. What we might have to do is make it, you know, rather than sort of say that we need to basically create new competitions that alienate a lot of clubs in Europe and create what would be a closed league, which is never going to happen. What we might need to do is just curb some of the big clubs in terms of the spending and neutralise it so that it becomes about scouting, recruitment, coaching. That's what we really want. Yeah, of course, there'll always be bigger clubs that have more money, but we don't want it to be inefficient. I mean, we still see some, Luton have beaten Newcastle United today in our league. You know, Sheffield United, the bottom of the league, went to Aston Villa last night, one of the best clubs in the league this season that could have gone top and got a point and were within a couple of minutes of winning. We still get those competitive elements in our league. But again, going back to the two giants, one of the reasons why we get that, I think there's a greater distribution in the Premier League in terms of the funds. So you talk about Real Madrid and Barcelona. So, I mean, that league, I mean, thank God for Atletico Madrid and Simeone, who's won a couple of titles in sort of the last sort of 10 years or so. They have it all sewn up there to make sure no one else can compete in their league. So now on the back of the Premier League doing really well, they want us to go and join them in a Super League to make sure they can get back, you know, maybe their heads above water, they're in huge debt. They're not even doing that to their own people in their own country. They're a joke, them two. I've never actually said this because I think it, to be fair, it wouldn't be right, but probably it's the right time to say it. Seven years ago, when I went to Valencia and I was there for four months, I obviously had my challenges on the coaching side of things. But what stunned me every single week was the actual matchday experience, not just from a point of view of actually for the fan, because the stadiums are really poor over there, apart from, say, Bilbao. Atletico Madrid, I'm not sure it was built at the time, but Bilbao had an amazing stadium. I think obviously Madrid now have got a stunning stadium and Barcelona and Real Madrid are renovating theirs. But when I went basically to Spain and I obviously went away from home quite a few times, I was stunned at the lack of quality and investment that had gone into what would be the league of stadiums and the actual matchday experience. It's a million miles behind our stadiums in this country and it's a million miles in terms of how you feel. Not just that, there were no pre-match interviews with television broadcasters for sort of, you know, me as a coach. There was no sort of pre-match production that sort of... Bet you were made up! But you know something, and I am saying like, obviously, I was happy, as Gareth just said, not having to do interviews, but it just felt like, you know, we sometimes, we get accused last week of building up the Manchester United and Liverpool game and it ends up being a little bit of a sort of disappointment in the end, but that didn't exist over there from a production perspective six, seven years ago and I was stunned at sort of how, sort of, we were so far ahead in facilities, in infrastructure, in training grounds, in matchday experience, in the way in which the game sold over there. They were miles behind and honestly, I've seen this, the Premier League, obviously, for many years from this side of the fence and from a playing side. Honestly, it was night and day. Now, obviously, that doesn't sort of take away from the fact that, you know, I went away and lost too many games, but it still, and that wasn't the reason I lost too many games, by the way, but I just said it really did surprise me, some of the stadiums that I went to, I thought, wow, this is like, this is English, this is like League Two, this is League One, this is not like, sort of, like the bottom of the Premier League, so this is like really low down some of the quality. They may have improved in the last six, seven years, a lot of them, but they were poor, they were in a poor place and a lot of them needed money spent, including Newcamp and obviously Burnaby. Yeah, well, maybe that's the time then for us all to say thank goodness for our wonderful league. Absolutely. Aren't we lucky to come to games like this in stadia like this? Can we pan the cameras to the rain? I've now got to wander through the streets of Liverpool to try and get to my car in that, you can't see it, we can't see it, he's absolutely throwing it down there. Yeah, thank you very much. We're driving home for Christmas. We are, thank you. God bless you. Thank you, well done.