The Athletic.

The Phil Hay Show.

Hello, welcome to the Monday edition of the Phil Hay Show, brought to you by The Athletic,

along with the Square Ball, down here from the Square Ball, along with Phil Hay from the

Athletic, where you can read all Phil stuff, and there is going to be a lot to read this week

with the sacking of Jesse Marsh, theathletic.com forward slash leads pod for the new year sign up.

You and I sat down some hours ago now, Phil, to record a show, the Monday show.

It was all hideously out of date.

I was just finishing up editing it, and I was going to put it out, and lo and behold,

Jesse Marsh got fired.

So what we're going to do is have a quick chat about that now and then we will play out

all the stuff that we recorded earlier so you can see how right or wrong we got it post-forest.

I can't remember how wrong we got it.

But I think we were both on the same page in saying that we thought it had reached the end

of the line and we thought it was only a matter of time now before they took the decision.

I did genuinely wonder this morning whether they might be tempted to leave them in place

for the Man United Games given that the odds on taking much from those two matches was

low, but I do think this is the sensible decision. I think it's the

fairest decision as well. I guess the overriding image of yesterday's game at Nottingham Forest

was supporters in the way and fighting with each other as the game went on. And a few people

who were in there said to me it was incredibly toxic and it was as negative

as they can remember the way and being in a long time.

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