The Press Box - Ep. 218: Premier League Contenders, Pretenders, and Surprises With Chris Ryan and Ryan O'Hanlon

Episode Date: December 8, 2016

The Ringer's resident soccer heads, Chris Ryan and Ryan O'Hanlon, return to discuss Premier League title contenders (6:00), Chelsea's talent (10:00), Mesut Ozil vs. Alexis Sanchez (17:00), Tottenham's key injuries (20:00), Manchester United's Europa League nightmare (24:00), Stoke's middle-of-the-pack life (29:00), and the most impressive players so far this season (35:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Today's episode of Channel 33 is brought to you by Seekkeek, the presenting sponsor for my podcast, as well as the only fan-friendly app for buying and selling tickets for sports and music. With just two taps on your phone, you can instantly buy Seekkeek tickets to an event, and you can enter that event just using your phone. No paper tickets. Drop your old ticket app.

Use one that's built for 2016. Download the free SeatGeek app or go to Seekkekeek.com. Welcome to SoccerPod. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com, and I am also joined by an editor at the ringer.com with Ryan in his name. It's Ryan O'Hanlon. How's it going, Chris?

What's up, man? It's been a while. We had to let the Thanksgiving... Had to practice our pronunciations. Yeah, they're going to be impeccable. We're getting into the... All the fixtures are coming hot and heavy in the Premier League. You start to get into Christmas.

People are playing nine games in four days. Guys are just, like, rolling around out there in the frozen. Stoke Knight. And it gets really, it gets, there's a, there can be a lot of, like, movement in the table. Yeah, it's sort of where the, like, the league becomes a completely different thing. It crystallizes. For, like, a month. Yeah, and, you know, like, all the group matches for a lot of the European competitions

as they're coming to an end. We had champions that were recording this on a Wednesday. At the end of a really nice, really good Champions League day. Like, the, the Dortmund Madrid game was awesome. and even if you don't like goals, but you do like good football, I recommend people check out the Leon Sevea game. It was really fun.

But we're here to talk more about the Premier League. Now, obviously, there's really major storylines going on in the Premier League that have nothing to do with football. One is this soccer leaks thing, which is coming out of this Belgian newspaper called Leswar, right? Part of it is. And it's basically what it sounds like. It's like this terabytes of information.

about deals, contracts, financial arrangements between players. There's a lot of rumors out there. The Guardian has some good stuff today about Joseo Morino and Cristiano Ronaldo's tax havens, alleged tax havens. Now, obviously, in the other hand, there's been a lot of talk, and there's a lot of really devastating stories about the sexual abuse, child sexual abuse scandal that's rocking British football. So it's kind of like this cloud hanging over the game right now.

We're not going to get too deep into the, that stuff. We're just going to talk more about the actual football, but thought it'd be worth mentioning that that is sort of hovering over this stuff. Today we're going to go through the Premier League table, and we're going to start. We're going to kind of break it up into categories, so the first thing we're going to do is do title contenders. And let me ask you this to start with. How many teams can win the title now? I think that answer has only changed, my opinion that answer has only changed if I now answer one, which I

wouldn't say, so I think the answer is still three. Okay. And it's still Chelsea City Liverpool? Or Chelsea City Arsenal? Not Arsenal. Okay. I think arsenals, come the end of the season, their main competition is going to be for fourth

place. But you could make the case, I think, that it's Chelsea's League to lose. Yeah, you sent me a message the other day that was just like, Chelsea's next five games through this like very chaotic

Christmas season. And you're like, this could be over in the years. Yeah. Well, so now they're, you know, there are three points ahead of Arsenal. Four points ahead of City and Liverpool. Played City and Liverpool already. The next four games are West Brom,

Sunderland, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, and Stoke. So that should be another 15 points. Yeah. So, you know, if you, everything you just said about how hard the Christmas period gets, it's a lot easier when you're just not playing any good teams. Yes.

Plus, Manc City still has to play Liverpool and Arsenal. City is also going to be without Aguero and Fernandino for three or four of the next games. And I think you can make the argument those are the two most important players on that team. So let's talk a little bit about that City Chelsea game from the weekend. I know it's a little bit of ancient history at this point, but I thought it was pretty instructive. we imagined this incredibly tight group of teams, six teams maybe competing for the league

and it was going to be and it has been like an awesome season there's been great games there's been a lot of really good football played like some of the players that are emerging or it's just been really great to watch I think we're seeing like the first great Alexis Sanchez season and stuff like that

but when I watched Chelsea versus City I was struck by how even though they were down 1-0 for a while And even though the goals that they got were somewhat against the road of play, I just feel like Chelsea's way more talented. And I feel like we didn't, like the talent disparity between Chelsea and other teams was a little bit, is starting to become a little bit glaring. If Chelsea is playing their best 11 and they are playing in this like complete Voltron 3,4,3,

that Conte has them playing now, which they haven't lost since they played that. In the form table, they have won eight out of their last 10. they've won six out of their last six. They are the second best defense in the league. They have a plus 21 goal differential. And you can just see, basically, as Costa goes, this team will go. And if Costa is the best striker in Europe, Chelsea is going to win this league by a healthy margin. Yeah, I think I might push back on the idea of them being the most talented team.

I think they're currently... So where do you think that they have issues? Just look at the City Chelsea game Like, Matich is out And who comes in for him It's Fabragas who's, you know If there's sort of a player That's best suited to break down

City's pressing style And like play long balls That make Cities defenders Who aren't really good at defending Actually defend, it's him That was pretty suicidal defending by City There was a couple of those plays Where it was just like

Car to Crab Tree It was just like from right outside of his box, he was just like throwing fade routes to Costa. If you get into a one-on-one with Diego Costa and give him 25 yards of room to run, you might as well take your gloves off. Yeah, yeah. And like, I think

the story, like, the game was like the chances for each team were sort of split up into each half, I think. Chelsea had that one great chance in the first half where Hazard rounded Claudio Bravo and then just didn't shoot for some reason. But other than that, city had, like,

the balance of chances, for sure. DeBroyne missed the wide-open net where he somehow hit it into the crossbar. And I think a lot of that came from Fabragas' presence instead of Mattech. It just opens up Chelsea's defense in a way that it really hasn't been open since they started playing,

the three in the back. But if you don't sort of punish them for that early on, Fabragus is eventually going to get on the ball and just flip it over your defenders and cost them. or Willion or Hazard's going to run onto it and you're fucked basically when that starts happening. City in fourth place, four points behind Chelsea,

plus 15 goal differential. Not having a great run of form right now. They're one, two out of their last three, but they lost the, you know, it's a mixed bag. And I think that what people are really noticing is just, there's a team that started really strong that people thought, like, well, this is like the runaway favorites. And I personally do see.

a correlation between the talk that was coming out of city that Guardiola was going to want to pretty much turn over the entire squad next season with them not playing up to their potential? Yeah. Do you see any, what do you see is their major problem right now if there is one? I think the major problem, like weirdly enough, is that, you know, Fernandino is great. I think we sort of, we're now in a cycle where he has one amazing season. then we forget that he's good, then we realize how amazing he is.

And Gundaghan's great, but he's essentially, like, made of licorice. So, like, that's who they're relying on in center midfield. Yeah. And they started Sane and Navas on the wings? Yeah, seeing, like, Navas is way more present than I was expecting him to be. And Fernando plays a lot, which I think he's just awful. I don't know if he should be starting for any team in the Premier League, let alone Man City. So I think they are, I think we, because.

they had the stretch where they were basically playing Silva and DeProyn as center mids. That's sort of papered over a lot of the depth issues in center midfield. But as the schedule has gotten a little harder, I don't know if you can play that kind of midfield against a team like Chelsea. I feel like, you know, cities, you know, we'll get into analytics. Their expected goals, like goal differential is best in the league. so I think they've maybe been a little unfortunate as we saw with DeBroyne again hitting the crossbar.

It was harder to hit the crossbar than score in that situation. So I think they've been a little unlucky, but it's sort of seeing them in contrast to Chelsea. It's like Pep is still sort of figuring out what's the best sort of presentation of this players. Conte figured it out and they have been looked back sense.

I think the story of the season so far is that since Conte's, switched to a back three, Chelsea's the best team in the league. And also, this is not analytical at all, but Chelsea just looks like title winners. There are just years, this was a real Ferguson-Manu thing. This is a real Manchester United, I know people like Manu, and a real Josie Marino classic Chelsea thing,

where you would just sort of watch them, and they have this completely under control. They had it completely, they just felt like they were going to beat City at the Edithad, like even though they were not won nothing. It's just like they got this. Yeah, it's like, They win a game that they're not even dominating, but it just feels inevitable that they're going to win.

That wasn't Stoke. They just beat three-ed-year. Yeah, exactly. It was that was the hardest game that were going to play all season at City. And they've also, I think we kind of had talked about in the past, they hadn't really had to come back from a deficit and play differently, but they completely, you know, disprove that.

So another team that is in the tile hunt, but where Chelsea looks very cool, calm and collected, this team resembles throwing a table saw and then trying to catch it is Liverpool and I refuse to watch the highlights from the Bournemouth game but this Liverpool team is in a very similar situation to Chelsea in that they don't have European commitments they can kind of concentrate on the league and have fun in the domestic cups

and they're dealing with what Klop teams will always deal with which is injuries starting to pile up for them do you think Liverpool can sustain through the Ketitians? injury and do they need to reinforce in January? I think if more people were healthy, if Sturge was healthy, the Cotinio injury would be a lot easier to deal with. It's pretty obvious that Sturge isn't a first 11 player for Klop now, but he's pretty much the best backup striker in the entire world at this point. So having to plug him in is not a bad thing, but he's not around either.

and O'Reigi, you know, he's scoring and he's not bad, but he's still, if you want to win the Premier League, you don't really want to have to rely on him as much as it seems like they're going to have to. But I think the thing with Liverpool is that they're similar to Chelsea, but Liverpool's style is like,

score a shit load and give up a bucket load of goals. A shit load is more than a bucket load. I know that that, from my study of the periodic table, I'm aware of that. And Chelsea, you know, they just don't. don't give up goals. Yeah, right.

And Costa is pretty much on a hot streak, just scoring everything. So it's sort of like if you had to pick one of those two styles to trust, you'd pick Chelsea. If you had to pick one to, like, fall in love with, you'd pick Liverpool. Sure. Let's move on to North London because those are, there's a group of teams that there's those three. Arsenal, now Arsenal fans are probably pissing themselves right now because they're looking at this and they're like, we're three points off the top.

We have won our last two. we look good in Europe right now with Lucas scoring a hat trick against Basel and Alexis Sanchez and Mesaduzzo are arguably having career years why shouldn't Arsenal believe that they are also in the title race? I think that it's because I think they're just really just running hot and getting lucky in an unsustainable way at this point.

It's interesting, I think, the way to sort of of frame it is that a lot of Arsenal fans would tell you that Bellarin was one of the most important players on the team and then Cazorla was I think like true Arsenal heads. A lot of our Arsenal fans

in the office when he was ruled out with his classic Arsenal it's just a knock he'll be back in three days six months yeah but despite them both being out they're still winning so is that like Arsenal's medical department do they have like a guy with walleye who's just like

Oh, I read the scan wrong. It's actually completely torn off the boat. It seems to happen all the time. I have no idea. But it's like those guys were clearly two important players, but they've basically been better without either of them, which you could say, okay, we don't know how to assess players, or they've just had a lot of things go their way so far.

I think sort of case and point is the Manu game, where they really didn't do anything the entire game. Manu seemed to have it under control, and they got a huge chance at the end. How do you feel about Venger, the rumors that Venger is just fine with its squad as is and is not looking to improve in January? It's the least surprising thing I've ever seen. I actually don't really know what they need to buy. I mean, I think they still, they need someone to do what Cazorla did, which is like get the ball from the defense and progress up the field.

Does he think Jacques is going to do that? He might, but I don't think he's really, you know, shown the ability to do it just yet. He has shown the ability to kick dudes. That's true. Yeah. And, like, hit the ball over the net from 40 yards out. Arsenal have a pretty tough end of the season. Well, they have Everton and Man City in the next couple of weeks and then go to what they host

West Brom on Boxing Day. So I think that they'll still be where they are now at the end of this one. But I have one thing that's been sort of bubbling up with Arsenal. And this is going to come up, I think, a lot as the money continues to be really stupid, but There's also outside economic factors affecting professional sports in Europe, like Brexit, and like a lot of the other, you know, Italy is going through its own sense of up people, France. There's been rumors that Ozil and Sanchez, upon seeing what Pagba is being paid at Manchester United, and somewhat rightly thinking we're on that level, want to be paid in the 250,000 euro or pound a week,

range that Pog was getting paid. That would shatter Arsenal's much coveted wage structure that they've always stuck to. I was kind of thinking about Matt Law from the Daily Telegraph tweeted this out. If you can't keep them both of Ozil and Sanchez, who do you

get rid of? Get rid of Ozil, bring back Wilshire. Walsher is better than Ozil. Are you being completely serious with right now? No, absolutely. Because I think you'd get rid of Sanchez. Yeah, I'd get rid of Sanchez. I love Sanchez, but Sanchez is also another guy where it's like when he loses a step, his career's going to be over. Yeah, exactly. And it's, the thing with Sanchez, it's like the dude is in amazing shape, but he also feels like he's on the verge of like snapping a hamstring at all time. Well, at least he's got a manager in a medical department that's

really good at managing things like hamstring injuries. The way that they manage a hamstring injury is saying, this isn't an injury. And then they realize it is. Chilly, yeah. I think Ozil just like, it's harder to replace a guy. I mean, Arsenal has, you know, much worse versions of Ozo that they can plug in, but it's just so hard to replace a guy that can sort of link the play for a team that doesn't, as we've talked about, they don't have this like sort of system that can, you can plug someone into and get by with.

He sort of knits it all together. His like assist numbers are down a lot this year, but. His goals are up though, right? He's got eight already. Yeah. So he's making up for it in that regard. And Sanchez, to go back to expected goals, he's, like, outperforming what you would expect from the shots he's taken basically by double.

That might be, it literally might be because he's now playing up top and, like, teams just don't know how to handle it or more likely. This is like, they're throwing like three burr camps at teams right now. Not in terms of skill, but in terms of style of like off striker, strikers. Yeah, but I think he's just easier to replace than OZill. Okay, so let's talk about their neighbors really quickly just to satisfy the Kevin Clark contingent. This five, this group of five, Chelsea Arsenal, Liverpool, Man City, Tottenham, I think that that will be the five at the end of the season,

but I think we should give a little bit of time for Tottenham, who a lot of people were very excited about coming into this season, and they still have the best defense in the league in terms of goals allowed, but have really struggled to find goals, I think, and stay healthy. They have lost Kane for a while. Dembele's been in and out. Allie. Yeah, Allie's been in out.

And now they are in Europa League, which is a blessing and a curse, because clearly the Champions League wasn't working out for them. Do you think we're going to see a strong second half of the season from Todham, or is this who they are? I think they'll improve a little bit. So it's been Kane, Ali, Lamella, Aldevereld, who's going to be leaving soon because we found out in the football league.

They're apparently overriding that contract, yeah. But Alderweil had like a 28 million euro straight buyout. Like somebody could just trigger it and buy him. Yeah, our friend Mike Goodman, who used to work with, said that the release clause won't matter when Daniel Levy. mind tricks out of your album to sign a new contract, which he'll probably sign him to a lower contract than he's at right now. That's just a lot of key players to lose.

And remember, you know, when they beat City, what was it, a month and a half ago, two months ago, we thought, like, okay, this team is just going to, like, set the Premier League on fire and win. So I think they'll, you know, finish out the league as, like, a competitor for fourth place with Arsenal. goals are like around the same as Arsenal. But I think the thing with them is like with all these injuries, you spend over 30 million on Musa's Coco and he's just not, he doesn't bring anything to the team.

Pochino obviously agrees with you. Yeah. So that's just like, that's pretty much the story almost. Well, this is what I'm talking about with the talent disparity. I think Totem's awesome. Yeah. But like I just, at almost every position Chelsea is better and better by the 27th. to 34 points that they are better than you.

Well, yeah. It's like, Matchich goes down, Favagas comes in. Well, Mella goes down, Musa Sosoko comes in. Yeah. Like Chelsea has William, Oskerow, Oscar.

Yeah. To say nothing of like the 164 great young players that are currently, like, at Middlesboro or whatever. Let's keep moving. Tottenham, so you think they're going to be fifth. Now, what we wanted to do

is do title contenders, which you think is Chelsea Liverpoolman City. then there's the Champions League contenders, which are the five that are already there, and you don't think there's going to be a lot of variance. I want to talk to you a little bit about something that I think really needs to be a phenomenon, and I know one manager named Josie Marino

who would probably agree with me at this point as he freezes his ass off in Odessa right now saying that it's going to take a miracle for Manchester United to play tomorrow in the Europa is if you're not in the top four, tank out of Europa. Now, I think that what I don't understand is why he didn't, I understand that Manchester United

can't afford to be seen to be like tanking out of a competition, granted. But they're in second in their Europoli group of which there are 37 groups behind Fenerbace. But they're having a real tough time with the Thursday to Sunday games. They looked like shit against Everton. I don't get the lineup even if, I mean, even taking the relative health of various

people out, but I don't think that Rojo and Jones in Central Defense and I got who's the other player I was just like what is happening here It was just like the look of their midfield It was really strange too with Herrera and McCutari and do you think that Manchester United

should almost call this a rebuilding year even though they have Pagba and Zlatan on the books So I have an alternate theory Okay You just straight up just focus on the Europa League the rest of the year I think Manu has...

That's awesome. Yeah, that's what you care about. I think they've... It's been funny seeing Marino talk a lot about how unlucky Manu has been this year. And I think he's right. But like, that's essentially the exact opposite of what he's made his career on. Right. You know, dismissing luck and just getting results in whatever way possible.

So it's, you know, I don't really feel bad for him, but he's kind of correct. So there are nine points back. of fourth, which is like considering how good those teams are, it's going to take a great run of, you know, and they're not winning games. I mean, right now in the form table, they are

10th in the last 6th, and they are 11th in the last 10th. Exactly. I think there's reason to think that they'll start seeing some things go their way. To be fair, they have like a slightly nicer December right here. Let's take a look at their schedule. It is they're going to probably lose at home

to Toddenham or they have Tottenham on Sunday but then they get Palace West Brom and Sunderland although West Brom is no easy thing but look we are now at a place where no Manchester United fixture is a easy win for them Yeah and there's one the Tottenham game you know

conceivably as a humongous game for them but if they follow the Europa League only strategy it maybe doesn't matter as much I think what I'm being sort of facetious but I actually think like they might have a better chance of winning the Europa League You win the European League.

You get into Champions League. It's sort of like the calculus that Liverpool made last year where they ended up not really that far out of fourth place. But they sort of fucked up a bunch of winnable games at the end because they were focused on the Europa League. And it didn't work out. Yeah, right. But they were literally within a half of being in the Champions League. And Manu, you know, they've been like a decent team so far. Like they're not, they're good enough to win the Europa League, I would say, especially with the players they have.

So, like, putting all your eggs in that basket is sort of a way of, I think it's just a realistic way of looking at your place in the table. Like, you could be, there's a chance, man, you has the best finish to the season of any team in the league, and they still finish in sixth. I love this idea. All right. Let's take a quick break for our sponsors, and we'll be back to talk about the rest of the league. Hey, everybody. The Ringer Podcast Network is now playing on Tune in. And while you can listen to every episode on the Tune app for free, Tune is giving us.

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Okay, Ryan, now we got Manchester United and your plan where their Europa plan, where they just go right after the Europa League and forget about trying to catch a city at fourth. Let's talk a little bit about some of these teams. Some are surprises. Some are exactly where we thought they were going to be. And, you know, I think when you get below 20 points here in the table, you're starting to talk about teams that are susceptible to relegation.

So I don't think Watford is safe at all in 11th. You know, I think Southampton is quite. quite good, and I just cannot imagine them getting pulled down. But more or less, with the exception of Everton, Stoke, West Brom, and Southampton, I think anybody else here, with some bad injuries, with some bad luck, could get dragged into a relegation fight. Right now, against all odds, you know, Tony Peelis has West Brom in seventh place. Have you seen much of them this season?

It's the same thing they always are. Except they have, like, Nassar Chadley, who has, like, a little bit of, foot skills. Which sort of can make it palatable very rarely. I mean, they're in seventh and they have a negative goal differential, which is kind of

insane. But I think, like you said, they're nine points clear. So it's almost like Pulis is already he's already achieved success. He's just looking for land to buy for his son. Exactly. He's got like

a half a year to do it now. Yeah. I would love to see them in the Europa League. That would be incredible. Do you think that he would embrace... I mean, like, I just feel like this guy was born to... I think that he would go to Odessa on a Thursday night and just be like... The problem is what will happen is people will get into Europa League.

Use it as a reason why West Bromde is to invest 75 million pounds on his team. And then resign after... Between the first two lives. Right, exactly. And probably take over West Ham. Yeah. Everton, right around where we thought they were going to be the Blazy... The Blassey injury is going to be tough for them.

Stoke City, here's how you, this is how you be, this is how to be a middle class team, primarily. Stoke City does nothing but kick the asses of the people beneath them. Two nothing over Sunderland, two nothing over Hall, 3-1 over Swansea City, drew with West Ham, lost to Bournemouth beat Watford. You know, you take that Bournemouth one out of there. It's just like, you just got to beat who's been.

beneath you. And you're safe. Now, I think for Stoke, they probably have ambitions, right? They have a little bit of money behind them with the Bet365 money. They have all these weird European starlets who are trying to restart their career at Stoke. Is Yanna's eye on Stoke? He should be. He should be, right? He's on Sunderland. Who's the new Spanish kid that they have? Muneza. Yeah. He scored the other day against, yeah, he's against Burnley. He's pretty good. Yeah. I don't know.

I mean, Stoke is another team where I'm sure that Europa League football makes sense for their, like, bottom line. But I think it could be really detrimental to them next season if they don't massively improve the squad. Yeah. That's, Stoke is like, there are, you know, however many 10 teams better than them, probably, like, talent-wise. But if you beat all the teams under you, you're fine. I just can't. Sometimes, like, I will, I think I wrote this once, like, a year and a half ago, just about like, oh, Stokel. Stoke is, like, you should be watching Stokes.

Stokes really fun. It would be fun to see them with like a, like some crazy manager. Well, this is the thing is that every time I say that, I'll look at the actual Stoke lineup and it's still Charlie Adam and John Walters. So I just can't deal with it. Let me ask you this. Of this group of teams here between Bormouth, Wattford, Southampton, Middlesbrough, who has nothing, which of those teams has nothing to worry about?

Southampton, definitely. Which has the most to worry about? I'd say Middlesbrough, for sure. Okay. I think Southampton is like, I would bet on them finishing seventh. Like they're... Yes. They have one of the best defenses in the league.

I also would not be surprised if Southampton beat Chelsea. I would not be like... Southampton beating anyone essentially wouldn't surprise me. I think they'll slowly make their way up the table. I don't really... The Crystal Palace game this weekend was weird. Southampton is rumored to lose Josefant in January. They are repeatedly rated by bigger clubs for talent.

It'll be interesting. see if we'll like ever maybe Jose Fawn is the one that holds Southampton together. You know like every year. Who's the guy who they're like yeah? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Because even though Manet is amazing. What's up with Schneiderland? Does he even play? That's, I mean, that's a whole another discussion. I feel like Marino has recently

welcomed Schweinsiger back from the youth team. Yeah, right. She's a bit of him. I'm going to start playing over Schneiderland. I don't, maybe he's just not good. I don't get it. That's so weird.

I just don't get it. I think Watford probably needs to watch their backs a little bit. The second time around is always tough for teams that are thin that are playing like a three-at-the-back kind of style like this. Burnley is in trouble. Crystal Palace has been just odious. The one team that's really interesting here, and this is in the second batch of teams,

is that there is a very good possibility that one of these teams, Crystal Palace, Leicester City, or West Ham, would go down. That is crazy. You know, the only thing that's saving them is the fact that Swansea City has gone in a complete and total nosedive, one of the worst teams in league. When you talk about Southampton and be like one of these days, somebody's going to buy someone that undoes the entire thing, that certainly seems to have happened to Lester with Conte. And it certainly seems to have happened with Swansea with just one manager changed too many. Yeah. I think Lester will probably be fine.

Their run to the Champions League final might cause some more issues. If that team went from relegation to Premier League champions to champion-leash champions to relegated, I think that they should just end the club because that would just be that every emotion that you can experience as a sports fan would happen within 12 months. I totally agree. We've talked about this. in the office. The fun story with Lester, they're going to be fine. I think their underlying numbers are actually pretty decent.

Like, Marez and Vardy never passed to each other. They've completed, like, 20 passes to each other the entire season. Were they particularly friendly passing-wise last season? That's a good question. It definitely makes for a better story if you just ignore that part and don't look into it. But, like, it's kind of crazy that, you know, Marez was the best player in the league last year, Like, definitely. And this year, he's just not at all.

It's very strange that those guys didn't take their... I understand why they didn't. Yeah. But it's Vardy and Mores both being fond over by Arsenal, and they both were like, oh, I'll just stay at Lester. Yeah. I think West Ham... Of the teams here that if they were to get relegated,

it would be the most catastrophic. I would probably say West Ham, although Crystal Palace has a lot of money tied up in their players. I would have to imagine they did deals that involve relegation. elements their contracts. I guess it depends, like, what do you, do you mean, like, catastrophic to the brand? Catastrophe to the club.

Would it be hardest? Like, I think West Ham, if they get relegated, they have talented players. They'll just come right back up. Crystal Palace, I feel like they could shed a lot of players if they got relegated and then just sort of be stuck for a while. Well, we were pretty confident. I don't think anybody saw Swansea dropping like this.

We were all pretty confident that Hall and Sunderland were going to go down, but I don't know. I mean, Sunderland's gotten better results. They've won three of their last four. It's going to be hard for them to stay up, but Moy's is like a pretty solid manager. You know what I mean? You have to expect him to eventually start getting a point here,

a point there and just climb out of it. It does feel like the Moy's Defoe combination is like a match made in heaven to survive relegation, you know, pack it in defensively and have this, you know, poacher who will score out of nowhere. they were not good for the first like five or six weeks, but they've slowly, I just think defensively they're actually decent and I think that's enough to keep Sunderland up ultimately,

which is, you know, Swansea has the worst defense in the Premier League. So is that on Bob Bradley or is that on Swansea? I think it's mainly on Swansea, but it's also a little on. I think the way I would put it is that it was kind of an important. possible situation for Bob Bradley to come into. I think he probably would have preferred, I mean, you know, it's hard to pass up your first chance at a Premier League job, but you kind of want to come into like a slightly more stable

situation where you can take like a long-term view of things and like plan. And here it's like you just have to like pull the emergency break. And they might, they've kind, they've probably been a little worse even since he's gotten there. Yeah. And it's just like, it's the same Chelsea Liverpool thing, but in reverse, like, you're not going to score your way out of relegation. This is the hard part when you get down there, it's like, what are you going to do to get out?

And then what you've got to hope for is basically a five-team block at the bottom that you can get out of that five-team block because you're never going to get to 12th, you know, but you could maybe get to 16th. Yeah, and the other thing is that you, I feel like I could definitely picture Lester and West Ham, like, winning three of their next six games, and then they're just out of it.

And then it's, you know, shrink. The possible outcomes start to shrink. Exactly. I think I think like the magic is going to run out for Burnley at some point. I hope Sean Deich doesn't listen to this podcast. I don't think the magic is going to round for Bournemouth though.

No, I think they're actually pretty good. They legitimately outplay Liverpool in the game last weekend. And Bournemouth could be somebody next year who I could see like all of their good players getting bought or Eddie Howe getting hired by somebody. Yeah. But I think for now,

you know, like they have they have everything they need to stay up. Let's end the pot by talking quickly about the players you've been most impressed with this season. So let's go with who's the player that you did not expect to be so impressed by the season that you have been so far? I'm going to be a homer and talk about Liverpool, Jordan Henderson. Yeah. Playing as a deep-lying midfielder has just been legitimately incredible. Like his passing has been ridiculous.

And I think the good thing about the nice thing about Liverpool's midfield is that they have all the midfielder. fielders are comfortable if they get the ball at the top of the box in traffic because they've all sort of played as attacking midfielders in the past, which is like, you know, if Angolo Conte gets the ball on the top of the box, you're not maybe worried about it. Yeah. Henderson, you know, is sort of dangerous if he ever makes forward runs. And he's been, like, pretty good defensively.

And I think we all expected Emery Chan to be that player this season, but Henderson's, like, been great. And I think both of us sort of felt like the writing might have been on the wall that he was on his way out of the club And now he seems like one of the most important players in the team Yeah, along the same lines I would just say that I was pretty prepared for Diego Costa be playing in China in a year No disrespect, I just didn't think that his head was in the Premier League anymore and he just seemed to have gotten himself into a place where anytime he stepped on the field There was like a three to one chance that he was going to get tossed off of it or subbed or hurt or gotten like distracted Yeah, I mean it still could happen

He just looks unplayable right now. Like, I just don't even know how you stop him. He has that same edge and menace, which I think is a quality that's really hard to quantify in football, but is something that if you can utilize it right can be incredibly effective, which is basically to throw central defenders off their game and have them worried too much about what he's doing rather than Hazard on the wing. But I just can't believe that he... This is like...

I guess I've just seen too many strikers, be awesome and then just have their careers be over in 12 months, aka Fernando Torres. So it's sort of wild to watch Costa just look like he did two years ago. Yeah, and I think you give Costa credit, obviously, because he's a human being and he can control his fate. Yeah. I guess you can't control his fate, but he can control his performance on the field. But I think Antonio Conte, there's so many clips of him losing his mind on the sideline.

And I feel like he's sort of the perfect manager to channel. He needed somebody almost crazier than he is. Yeah, and he definitely has one. All right. Let's wrap it up. We're going to try and come back a little bit more frequently, especially after Christmas when the games are a little bit more meaningful. Until then, thanks, Ryan.

Yep.