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

The Premier League is back and there's so much to discuss from the opening weekend.

Sunderland's return to the top flight got off to a brilliant and noisy start at the

Stadium of Light. Does their win against West Ham and Brentford's defeat at Nottingham

Forest mean that the Premier League isn't a closed shop after all? We'll also discuss wins for Liverpool, Manchester City, Tottenham and Arsenal. Draws at Chelsea and Brighton and hear about some grumbles of Newcastle fans. Apparently they're upset about some bloke called Isaac. This was a bit odd, I've never heard of him. I'm Tom Clark and joining me today to discuss and dissect all of that. We have the senior sports writer and Sunday Times columnist Alison Rudd, the reporter and tactics analyst Hamza Kleeck, Lunat and the former footballer turned journalist Gregor Robinson is here as usual. Team, we're back. The Premier League's back. Just how excited are you? Out of ten. Greg has got a big grink because you didn't do one of those jokes about the former footballer. No, no, no. He misses them really. He misses them really. Rumour has it, he's got them all written on his fridge as a little kind of memento as his glorious playing. But you missed a trick because he could have described him as the former footballer who now

loves the tiger who came to tea.

Ah, yes. We managed to work the tiger who came to tea back in to the show, despite you two rambling on about it before we started recording. Anyway, let's head north. Just as I like to always do, let's head north to Sunderland. and a jump-in stadium of light where Regis Lebris' team picked up a fantastic 3-0 win against West Ham. Martin Hardy was there for the Sunday Times and he sent me a little clip with a few thoughts. This is what I had to say. The first half has that excitement and the energy of a 46,000 stadium of light crowd on an opening day of a season for the first time in the top division since 2017.

Sun and found that first period a little bit difficult, but the thing that may offer as much hope to Sun and fans as anything else is the fact that Regis Lebris is very, very pragmatic coach.

So there's none of the idealism of Russell Martin or Vincent Company we want to play a certain way. Lebris wants to win games of football or draw games of football and accumulate enough points to stay in the division. To that end, there will be periods of games which happened in the first of where son and are very, very content to sit deep at home on a sunny day with everybody burst with energy

and allow West Ham to have control of the ball for certain periods on the understanding that at some point they believe they will fashion a chance.

And that is exactly what happened in the second half against West Ham.

A West Ham that if you were a West Ham fan, by the way, you were thinking,

we might be one of the teams that's something they're looking to catch

because along with the likes of Brentford and Wolves, West Ham looked very, very stale.

They were struggling for ideas, which was emphatically enforced by Graham Pot afterwards

in a post-match press comments in which

used the word kind of back to basics about seven times.

Sun and fans didn't care about that.

Dan Ballard continues to be this win everything kind of ahead and dangerous at set pieces,

again, scores of pure a goal than the one he scored against Coventry.

Granite Jacques stands out as being a leader on the pitch.

We were told afterwards by Lebris that Granite Jack had addressed a celebrating dressing room after the match

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