Hello, thank you for the in and listening to the Not the Top 20 podcast. We're covering

all things EFL and we're doing so a little later than usual this week, recording on a Tuesday

rather than a Monday, that I'm afraid to say, guys, the result of an attempted assassination.

George Ehrlich poisoned over the weekend by maybe a rival podcast, maybe, who knows, a jealous

lover or perhaps a dodgy oyster, George.

I don't like the idea of a jealous lover very much.

That could go down badly in the wrong ears.

Yeah, it was an oyster. i realized this morning that anyone who listened to the betting show will know that

it was the shrimps and the shrimpers who did me in both morcombe and south end scuppering my my my selections there and then an oyster has left me in

a ridiculous way for the last couple of days. Not very pretty whatsoever. So shellfish really

not my thing in the last couple of days but back towards full fitness now. Oystons, oysters, all bad things, of course.

Let's get into things belated, but the delay helped us to include the Monday night game,

which so often we are forced to ignore due to it not having happened yet.

But it was Stoke and West Brom and we're going to start

with this one. There's quite a lot to dissect over the two teams, I suppose. Firstly, quite

fun. West Brom won 2-0 against Stoke, George. Now, the first ever league fixtures in English

football on the 8th of September 1888, Stoke Nill, West Bromwich, Albion,

two. So two historic teams playing out a fixture with the same result as back in 1888.

But it's hard to imagine the narrative at that time being similar to what it is now,

because Stoke taking their first steps this season without Nathan Jones and with Rory

Dallap in the dugout. There were, I think, five changes made, a rigorous three, five two

formation looking for plenty of bite, plenty of solidity, and that's not at all what happened.

...