The Double Pivot: Soccer analysis, analytics, and commentary

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. 

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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?

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We've been doing our Champions League match breakdowns for subscribers, and this week it's the free podcast. Pretty good match!

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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 UK government has any sense...

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. 

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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. 

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. 

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.

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...