Someone else has got a breakfast show, yeah.

Rio Winston sold his tickets for Frank Sinatra, and he said purely and solely just to put bread on the table.

Well, I'm not that desperate at this moment in time, but I've sold me motorbike for to get tickets for the Chelsea-Hull game today.

And you were talking to me, Guvnor, before about the Hull game.

I managed the club 10 year back.

I managed them.

I can't get a ticket for the game.

Mm.

What do you think?

Well, I was listening to Stephen talking after the game.

He was doing a great commentary on the game.

And it has to be said, there's a lot of people that have been won over by Sergei and his tactics and the way he is as a manager.

I think he's embraced the Premier League.

There's no doubt about it.

When he got promoted...

I just want to ask, Phil, how does this team, and I don't know if you've met Sergei yet, but how does this team compare to yours?

hopefully to have a good season this year and then next year if a marquee midfield like signing is available then you can go out maybe and get that but i think it's important to address those other issues there first before we just go kind of splashing all of our transfer kitty on one player

and you have to talk about midfield in a group you can't talk about them individually i mean we had the last time we spoke about a midfielder individual he was paul parker And how many times did we say we need to unlock him? We need to get this player, get that player.

You can't talk about a midfield in isolation of each player.

You have to talk about them as a collective, as a group.

I think where United will see, again, I don't even know if there is such a thing as galactical setting, but if there is going to be one in midfield, it will be to replace Bruno Fernandes.

I think that...

You know, one thing, there's a couple of things that will help Buleba.

Can you see a few similarities with the great Ferguson there?

... how, how quickly can you get a, a team to gel, especially with players that are coming in who've never played in the Premier League or never played in England?

England?The, it's a, it's a great question, you know, because at the end of the day, as a manager, you don't know.

You're just, y- you're just, you're really...

You, you've talked about the manager in the preamble before we came on the show, and I think the Premier League's looking to embrace him because he looks like a right character, and vice versa.

I think he wants to embrace the Premier League.

He wants to take it on, you know? And given that style of management, which was fairly similar to myself, given that style of manager- management, I, I, as a player that's just signed for Hull City, just wanna play.

I wanna play and show this guy, because he looks like the type of guy you wanna play for, you know? And I'm talking about me now, personally.

Was that something that you were aware of, that agents were just throwing names left, right and centre?

Um, yeah, what, what, what you thinking?

Uh, Azza, I'm telling you, I've, I've been involved in football for a long time, yeah? And, and I'm talking about goalkeepers.

You know who I like, likes a Boris Myhill and juicy Jas Lane.

Lawrence Vigouroux probably one of the best footballers I've seen in, in the sticks with a pair of gloves on.

James Trafford just gone for 40 million to Leeds United.

There was a young kid playing for Stockport today, a lad called Ollie Watmough.

He's 18 year old And I kid you not, he handled the ball better, and I mean better, right foot or left foot, than most of the outfield players.

Yeah

... to follow, yeah

...

I think it's, it's enormous.

It's absolutely enormous.

The best part about Enzo is that he knows them very well.

He knows Pep Guardiola.

He worked with him.

We know what European football brings in terms of stretching squads, and their, their squad was stretched when they lost players to AFCON last summer.

Do you think we'll get that over the line or do you think it'll end up being somebody who wasn't on anybody's radar?

No, I don't think they will get over the line.

I think that they got Andre Santos from Chelsea because Chelsea have, you know, a dearth of midfielders.

They have a deluge of midfielders, though they also needed to sell.

Plus, he was young, so you're not quite sure about what the next stage of his development is like.

Tielemans was because, of course, of a buyout clause.

The Villa could not do anything about it.

How could they possibly go into a season with Bayon Deer as your number one, thinking that he's not going to make mistakes?

How about you, Phil? Any highlights?

highlights?Yeah, I think each kind of segment of the loop has highlights to it, right? And that's, uh, one of the things I loved so much about it, right? It's not like there's just one big moment or two big moments that you're looking for in the loop.

It's really all along the way.

And as you look at each segment of the loop, there's really key highlights in, in places, at least locations-wise, whether they're a, a particular city that has certain things or a particular geography or things that have, uh, highlights to them.

So each one had tremendous amount.

You know, for us, I think we enjoyed a lot Canada and the Great Lakes.

Um, but I think a lot of that was because we had not spent a lot of time ourselves previously in those areas.

[laughs]

So d- was that the toughest part of the gig at that point?

If you, if you take a main back, Burnsy, to what we actually achieved, and okay, it was...

I think it was classed as a 60 million pound or a 65 million pound final, which, you know, it's...

You, you can't sort of brush over the fact that it's, it's three times as much now.

But the c- the, you know, the transfer market's gone up five times as much, if you like.

Um, you know, the price of players and wages and, and, uh, and, and what have you.

Um, did it make it easier? It made it easier, in hindsight I'm talking about now, it made it easier for them players to prove...

Baz, did you, did you hear that? Is that a number that-

Go on.

Not at all.

When it happened, when it first happened, I was thinking to myself of the people that was around me that were supporting me, Brian Horne, Steve Parkin, to name but two.

That's part of me, backroom staff.

But there was loads to mention.

You know, Paul Duffin, what a great guy to be my chairman.

And it's a very similar situation.

See lowes.com for details.

That is important, isn't

it? I served my time under one of the greatest managers, I think, in the modern day game.

He turned the game from what it was, a lot of changing rooms were governed by alcohol, and that's not being disrespectful of the 70s, 80s and 80s, but then it went to super-fits, superhuman technicians, and that's Sam Allardyce.

But the psychology of Sam Allardyce was the most important part, in my opinion.

So serving my time under him, being on his right shoulder, left shoulder, in moments that were aggressive or intrusive or, you know... you know you could just lose the plot um sam would sometimes in a quiet moment pull me to one side and say there's there's a reason for that now he wouldn't do always he wouldn't be a performing chimp on the side lane he wouldn't be doing that for any reason when he blew up when he actually went overboard i couldn't understand why you know because of the the that kind of pressure that you're under as a manager, you're talking about 202.

Sam was wired up, if you remember, with, strange enough, it was Leicester City's manager at the time.

And we were, two managers were wired up for the benefit of the League Managers Association to show people what the heart rates were like and how people were going through the ceiling at times, you know.

Can you understand why those comparisons have been made?

So that's why I think ultimately they go back to a more successful model of senior managers because they will be more pragmatic and they will get the job done much quicker and much better than young coaches just wedded to a philosophy which doesn't work.

It's great, honestly, listening to the way we sort of move on so quickly in terms of trends and setting, you know, because we're getting great examples there from Mark.

And I think one of the best examples is the Manchester City example is unbelievable.

Pep Guardiola, you can guarantee, would have the power because he's got the the success he would have the power to say whatever he wants to say to a boardroom with regards to bringing in players you know the recruitment of players and that ultimately is what we're talking about responsible for who who's bringing who in but if you go to across the city and go across to Manchester United Man United have been crying out for something like a Michael Carrick Not I'm saying anything like in the trend of Sir Alex Ferguson by any stretch of the imagination, but a former player who understands the club.

And, you know, we always thought about the likes of Brian Robson would be doing that.

You know, if you go back to the greats, the great players that Manchester United produced, that would sort of jump in, Roy Keane, jump into your way of thinking how Manchester United should be run.

Michael Carrick's gone in there very, very pragmatically, standing back and watching everything that's going on.

The League Managers Association, that is.