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Hey old GFOPs! Before we get to the pod, we've got an announcement for the good people at SeatGeek.

For those unfamiliar, SeatGeek is a start-up ticket company that helps you see your favourite footballers, neck tattoos and ill-advite haircuts live.

And in person, you'll be able to smell that cloud of drag on the wall. They're giving one lucky GFOP a chance to go to an international champions cup game.

For a chance to win, all you have to do is download the SeatGeek app or sign up at SeatGeek.com. Go to the settings tab and click add a promo code and enter the promo code GFOP.

SeatGeek will send you $20 after you've made your first ticket purchase. And just to satisfy the many blazers, small council, we have to tell you, no purchase necessary void weeper hibisit open to all legal residents over the age of 18.

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Welcome to a Men in Blazers pod special. The gap between the end of one Premier League season and the beginning of the next can feel like a numbing soul destroying experience.

A chasm in which I vulgarably ask myself daily, what is the purpose of life? At the very time, I feel that life has been stripped of all meaning.

As a fan, this abyss is broken only by the water torture of transfer rumors. Arsenal supporters, you know better the most exactly what I mean.

However, I've always wondered how those within the game, the managers and the players experience that same time period, the postseason, preseason break, especially in this era in which international tournaments are ever larger and the football barely really stops.

So I jumped at the chance to spend some time with Crystal Palace manager Alan Parju and veteran defender Scott Dan who'd both arrived in Philadelphia as part of the club's US tour.

Talking to these gents about their emotional, physical and psychological experience of vacation, preseason training, club tours, transfer window turbulence and a task of bracing themselves for the marathon slog that is a 10-month English Premier League campaign, it was truly enlightening.

Our first guest is the manager of Crystal Palace Football Club last season. He led the team to its first FA Cup final since 1990.

In that game 16 years ago, he actually patrolled the midfield for Palace. And last December when he joined us on the pod, he told us that he drew some of his inspiration as a leader for this country's very own Vince Lombardi.

Now he's on these shores preparing Palace for the quickly approaching Premier League season. Thank God it's back. We welcome to the pod, a man there in a cross-south London, a Super Al, the one and only. Mr Alan Parju.

Hello, Mr. Parju. That's a nice introduction. Hello. You're now entering your 18th year as a manager. Palace have a run of games across the continent, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Vancouver.

In preseason tours, there was a balance between the footballing side of operations and the commercial brand building side. If it was up to you, would you prefer to be at home in South London preparing for the season, playing like a chaltern, full-length in QPR or does this kind of Odyssey, does that serve a purpose?

It does serve a purpose because you need new environments, new challenges and to open our minds a little. And they travel in and the working and broad only bonds the team together if it's done in the right way.

That's what we're going to try and achieve in the next 10 days. We're really looking forward to this tour. So I've had a choice it would be here because I think this market is very, very big.

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