The first manager sacked in the Premier League is Manchester United's Eric Ten Hag. He has not done a particularly good job, but there are few hallmarks of good process in his sacking. Support the show

We talk about Liverpool - Chelsea, City's struggles, Arsenal's, well, you know, and whether there is truly a big three in the Premier League as we expected. And then on to the real stuff: the Netflix romantic comedy Nobody Wants This, on which we have so many takes. Support the show

We take questions from the Double Pivot discord on these topics, we remember some center backs who scored goals, and we fight the urge to throw out the script and do a pod on Nobody Wants This. Support the show

It's in our wheelhouse.* What exactly did a legal review panel find in relation to the Premier League's "associated party transaction" rules, why are City and the PL spinning this ruling so aggressively, what is an ownership loan anyhow, and what's to come next for the financial regulation of English soccer? * we also learn the etymology of 'wheelh…

In the Premier League this season, a number of the most striking team stories appear to be, when you dig into the data, fundamentally tactical stories. This means we're talking about Ten Hag and Ange and how Spurs and United have been playing, but also we look at the major shifts in style of play at Chelsea and Crystal Palace and what Fabian Hurzel…

An extremely strange match, and one in which Manchester City's tactical approach to the second half most particularly deserves analysis. But the draw and the injury to Rodri in the first half leave us with a peculiarly wide open Premier League title race. Much to discuss! Support the show

The Premier League has four matchdays done, and that means we have just enough data to be dangerous. What's going on with Liverpool. Nottingham Forest, Southampton, Spurs and Arsenal? Support the show

Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali are fighting over Chelsea. We break down the exact financial relationships here and the context for their fight, and what it tells us about the business of football in the modern era and what might come next for Chelsea. Support the show

Saudi Arabia alter their course but continue to struggle, we end up going deep on PSG's transfer window, and how wages end up getting treated differently from transfer fees in the market. We're still trying to make sense of a bunch of things! Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

The US Men's National Team has a new coach. He's a good one. We look back on the trajectory of Pochettino's career, his tactical ideas, and what it might mean for the USMNT. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

The one with Chelsea. Also Everton and Fulham and the previews of the rest of the league will be available to subscribers on the Patreon. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

All 20 teams in the Premier League and it starts here. We're going in alphabetical order and talking about how it could go right and how it could go wrong for AFC Bournemouth, Arsenal, Aston Villa, Brentford and Brighton. Support the show

We keep waiting for the summer transfer window to shake out and it keeps not. The best example of this is how Victor Osimhen is not only still a Napoli player but does not seem to be particularly close to becoming a player on another big team. We have some theories about what's slammed the breaks on the transfers. Support the show…

A reasonably comprehensive 2-1 Spain victory ends the Euros. We break down how Spain got it done and why England never managed to click into gear the whole tournament. And we look to future for the top European sides, what questions do we have heading into the next World Cup for England, Spain, Germany and France? Support the show…

Well those were certainly four football matches. Another discussion of what's wrong with England, why the Netherlands struggled with Turkiye and what it might mean for the semifinal, and then there's the other semifinal! Why Portugal-France was so bad, an elegy for Portugal's wasted tournament, the big Mbappe question, how Spain barely survived, wh…

The Copa America is over for the USMNT after just three matches. It was pretty dumb. We consider what we learned, if anything, from this tournament and what the US should do now with limited competitive matches before 2026. And some bonus Uruguay and Italy takes. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

England and a number of other countries. What's wrong with England and why they're still the favorites, some depressive Italy/Switzerland takes, Netherlands pretty good, and accountability for our Lawnball picks. Support the show

The favorites mostly keep winning, but all the different ways they're winning are worth some discussion. England, Italy, Germany, Spain, Netherlands, and Switzerland, a lot to whip through! Support the show

We've got a full Euros preview for you in three parts. Part 1 covering groups A and B is right here with takes on the highly competitive Group B of Spain, Italy and Croatia, on the enigma that is Germany and Nagelmann's plan to make them even weirder, and I guess Switzerland is there too. You can read Grace's newsletter at graceonfootball.com. Supp…

The double-correspondent triple-podcast blowout draft commences. We are joined by Salacious Gossip Correspondent Joel Wertheimer (@wertwhile) and Financial Shenanigans Correspondent Skanda Amarnath (@irvingswisher) to draft the very worst contracts in the Premier League. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern and Chelsea appear to have lined up their managers. It's not exactly what we expected. Some takes on how the managerial market has changed in the last few years as well as our skepticism about these choices for most of the clubs involved. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

We talk briefly about the Champions League final and then take a question from the discord about fullback / wingback transfers which segues into a longer discussion about trends in buildup structure and pressing in top level football and the diverse expectations of wide defenders in these systems. Support the show…

A mailbag question on what the team of the season is, excluding players on the richest clubs, prompts a discussion of what "non big six" should mean anyhow, and then we get moving on talking about some great striker seasons. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

We are joined by Grace Robertson of www.graceonfootball.com to discuss Liverpool, who have chosen a manager. What do we know about Arne Slot, what's intriguing and what's worrying, and how do we think Liverpool are approaching the current transition? Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

We've been doing our Champions League match breakdowns for subscribers, and this week it's the free podcast. Pretty good match! Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

A lot is happening right now in the administration of the game of football. There's a proposal for a Premier League salary cap, and we discuss what exactly this means, why it's so very different from PSR, and whether it stands any chance of succeeding. And there's the government regulator, which we have both become convinced will not happen in the …

A big weekend in the title race, Liverpool and then Arsenal lost winnable home matches in succession and it was highly dramatic, but it seems far from obvious to us that we learned much from the drama. Support the show

The club is in an odd spot. They're at risk of relegation, and worse, relegation would probably be a death sentence for Everton Football Club as an operation. But they're also pretty good? With some valuable assets to sell? And a good manager? If it weren't for everything else... So we discuss how we would approach the problem of running Everton. S…

We take questions from the mailbag on how we watch games, on Jeremy Doku and Brennan Johnson, and then we end up building an entire theory of the intersection of player development and modern tactics in the development of really fast guy wingers. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

Part Two of our conversation with official Double Pivot Financial Shenanigans Correspondent Skanda Amarnath (@irvingswisher). And while there are a lot of important details, there's a simple takeaway. Chelsea's PSR crunch is significantly worse than has been generally reported. Support the show

There has been a lot of news about the Premier League's PSR with the Everton points deduction, reports of violations at Nottingham Forest, and all the stories about how clubs are seeking to get into compliance with these regulations. But we think the actual news here has not been well explained in much football media. So we called in an actual fina…

A little check-in on the ol' title race. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

We finally have the guest who can help us do the Barcelona finance pod we needed. Jon Sindreu of the Wall Street Journal (@jonsindreu) helps explain the books, the league rules, the levers, and even what the heck Barca Vision is. Plus we talk about the Barcelona football team a little bit even. Support the show…

Solidly beaten by Leverkusen in the top of the table clash at the weekend and then a shocking loss away to Lazio in the first leg of their Champions League knockout. So what's wrong? And separately, how impressive were Leverkusen? Support the show

The Champions League will kick back off in a week, and we take a look through the top teams remaining and whether anything has changed since we last considered them. And at the same time, two of these teams are playing potentially title-deciding six pointers (Bayern against Bayer Leverkusen, Real Madrid against Girona) and we preview those matches …

It's another Trivote episode as Grace from the Grace on Football newsletter joins us to discuss Klopp leaving Liverpool, how we expect the search to proceed from here, and why this situation resembles the period leading to Brendan Rodgers' hiring. We've also got Goodman and Grace taking on the question of Thomas Frank. Subscribe for Grace's takes a…

We take your questions on Andre Onana and Mark Flekken, goalkeeper stats, why financial regulation has come so late to European soccer, and expected goals modeling. And because the questions came from the Double Pivot discord, many of the questions have already been answered so we also discuss some answers. Support the show…

Jordan Henderson has found his way out of the Saudi Pro League and Karim Benzema is hunkered down in Mauritius searching for his own escape. What's gone wrong with the Saudi Pro League? And how is it implicated in much larger economic and geopolitical dynamics and the broad political outlook of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Support the show…

There is not much hopeful that can be said about the present Manchester United side. But the club is still massively wealthy, a nearly unparalleled cash generator, and they have a new part-owner in Jim Ratcliffe who will now control football operations. What do we think is coming next for United? Subscribe to Grace's newsletter: https://www.graceon…

The big bets of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali on their new and innovative methods of running a football team have been tested by another half-season of Premier League football. Where do they stand? What do we think they should do in the January window? Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

For the holiday, an unlocked premium episode on the European Court of Justice, the Super League, and the future of the business of European soccer. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

City keep dropping points. Liverpool also dropped points against United in one of the most tactically bizarre matches of the season. Arsenal did not drop points. But now they're both ahead of City, and we take a look at the three teams most likely to win the Premier League. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

The launch of fbref.com has changed public soccer analytics, and we sat down to interview Sean Forman, the president of Sports Reference, about the website, how it came to be, what he learned about soccer analytics from building it, and about their new Stathead feature (stathead.com). Support the show…

The Premier League is holding serve so we're talking about a more general subject. Where do you go if you want to progress up the table as a manager? Thomas Frank has done an excellent job at Brentford, but exactly where does he go next and what is likely to be open to him? Why and how has the managerial market changed in the past decade? Support t…

The relegation race, such as it is, is defined by the historic weakness of the promoted teams and the 10-point deduction taken by Everton. We put the weakness of Sheffield United, Luton Town and Burnley in recent historical context and talk about how we remain relatively unconcerned about Fulham, Bournemouth and even Everton despite those teams bei…

We are joined by Semafor's Liz Hoffman, who has broken all the big 777 Partners news in the last week, to talk about what she discovered, what her business and finance reporting means for Everton Football Club and what we still have to learn. Read Liz's reporting (and sign up for her newsletter) here: https://www.semafor.com/newsletter/11/15/2023/7…

Roman Abramovich hasn't been owner of Chelsea for a while but he's back in the news with a big leak of documents from Cypriot banks where he did his shady banking. We take stock of what these stories actually mean, what they tell us about how oligarch football team ownership functioned, and whether there will be any consequences for Chelsea. On the…

Everton, Brentford, Arsenal, United, Bournemouth, West Ham, Brighton, Liverpool and more. Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

The Derby gives us the opportunity to do the United pod that's been needed. An impressive win for City (who attacked!) but the real story coming out of it is how bad United were and how fully in line with their performance this season that is. Why is it so bad and can it get better? Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley

Their numbers are so good. Drill down a little and their numbers are so weird. And this was true last season too except they were weird in a completely different way! What are we to make of this? Support the showDe către Mike Goodman and Michael Caley