Hello and welcome to the game. Football podcast from The Times.

Two very different wins at the top of the table as Manchester City show their strength at Palace

whilst Arsenal wobble at home to Wolves. But just behind them, Morgan Rogers

keeps Astonville's amazing run going. Maybe Thomas Tuchel knows what he's doing after all. On today's show, we'll also discuss Sunderland Victory in the Time Weir Derby. A brilliant win for Nottingham Forest, but more woe for Thomas Frank. And we'll take a look at the players heading to the Africa Cup of Nations. I'm Tom Clark, and joining me today, we have the Senior Sports Writer and Sunday Times columnist Alison Rudd, the football reporter and tactics analyst Hamza Khalik Loonat and the former footballer turned journalist Gregor Robinson. It's here as usual team breaking news. We're not going to talk about Liverpool at the top of the show. It's not a deliberate dig Liverpool fans. You won, good win, goals for Eka TK, Sallow is back and then maybe gone again. We'll bring it up at the end of the show, but we're not starting with Liverpool, which is actually quite refreshing, I think, Gregor. Yeah, I think a lot of. I was listening back to Thursday show after the Champions League. We did about 45 minutes on Liverpool and then barely mentioned any of the other wins, which they did get a few emails about that from certain listeners, but hopefully we'll appease them. It's waiting Hoc to like a few guys that email. Well, whoa, whoa. I do actually like the listeners to enjoy the show, Hamza. That's generally my tactic. I mean, you know, football managers wanting to, you know, the fans to be happy. It's a rogue, rogue move. I watch a lot of football. I don't enjoy most of it. Me neither. To be the Brentford Leeds, I will tell you, but we'll get to that. Strong start on the vibes front, everyone. Excellent. Two of you hate going to football matches despite getting paid to do it. Anyway, Alison, hopefully you enjoyed your game. And let's start there with Manchester City. And I would say an ominous victory for them against an excellent palace side, who I thought played quite well and still lost 3-0 to a side that actually looked like they were kind of always going to win. Would that be a fair assessment of the game, do you think? That's pretty good. Why did I bother going? Someone is watching on full screens manages to glean that information. All three of you don't actually like going to football. What a revelation this show is turning out to be, but a dominant. No, no. The reason it's ominous is that, well, there are lots of signs. One being that at the end, Oliver Glasner was as chuffed as I've ever seen him. Really? After a three-nil defeat, he thought they played really well. You see it was better than the final performance? Well, not quite. But he was sort of saying it's certainly better than some of their recent victories. So he was really pleased with the application. And they were good in the first half, I thought. They were good. They were good throughout. They just didn't have the cutting edge. They hit the woodwork twice.

So if you've got the manager who's just lost at home 3-0, really happy with the performance,

the overall performance and what it means for what is their best ever start to a Premier League campaign.

So this, I would argue, doesn't derail Palace's good start in any way.

In fact, it builds upon it.

But if you've got the manager who lost 3-0 being really upbeat kind of guy

and the manager who's just won 3-0 reminding everybody that they've got to learn

and they're not that good yet and he's got faith that they will be,

but they're not there yet.

And throwing in lots of grenades of negativity as well.

You know, he does that pep, doesn't he?

It's like you three at the start of this show.

Yeah, he'll throw in, he'll throw in a, let's not get carried away, we're not that good,

and then start calling people brilliant.

But his overall demeanour was of one of, one of, we can be so much better.

So if you take those facts and compare them to how Arsenal and Arteta was

after their very lucky win against the wolves,

and there's two points in it at the top, you have to, I mean, you have to conclude,

everybody has to conclude that it's by no means, by no means, arsenals to lose. It's cities to win, I would say. Well, I'll come back to you on City and things that were good about them from that game, but you make a good point to bring in Hamza, who was at the Arsenal Wolves game, and with just one question, Hamza, before we'll then go back to City and then we'll come back to Arsenal.

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