The Square Bowl podcast.

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It's Dan, it's Michael, it's Chris Mack,

on a pre-season update that is brought to you by Levi's solicitors.

Great news with Levi's, which I think we can lift the embargo now.

Indeed, On Steam or Romano, probably going to be announcing this, but we're ahead of them. So, yes, they're in for the year, aren't they? Because of all the good work we do for them. They're very welcome. You're definitely claiming that one for yourself, aren't you? A 10% discount on their entire range of services. Off your legal fees, that is. Will's probate, conveyance in, lasting powers of attorney, commercial dispute resolution. Just some of the services. I'm sure there are more. You will find that at Levi'slisters.com. At UK, forward slash the square ball. Professional as ever, starting off another year as we mean to go on. It's preseason, isn't it? I'm just getting into it. Yeah, well, speaking of preseason, we've actually got football to talk about. We'll get on to Anton Stack, who signed from Hoffenheim in just a bit. And there's a game today as well at the time of recording. Another secret game. But we did see a very public game at the weekend at the Strawberry Arena in Stockholm. Did you watch it and did you enjoy it? I watched it. It was fine.

It was fine. We didn't look out of our depth whatsoever, did we? Man United did, though. Hey?

They actually did. For the first half an hour, I was genuinely thinking like, God, they're horrendous.

They looked like, I don't know, pick a random champ post in Preston or someone.

The only time that there looked like any disparity between the two teams was whenever Jaden Bogle came off towards the end and you had Sam Chambers at right back. And even then, like they had a couple of chances. But I think Leeds, if Leeds had won that game, I don't think anybody could have come out of it and said they didn't deserve it.

Yeah, I was, it's very, very, very, very early days. But yeah, I was quietly encouraged by the whole thing. I thought, oh, we look all right. Maybe the gap to, and I did have a passing thought, and I thought, am I just been a dick about this? But yeah, the top end of the championship to the bottom end of the Premier League, it's not as vast as you might think

if you are organized and look half decent, which I thought, I thought we did. You know, we lacked a bit of cut and thrust, but it's only pre-season. And we're playing a very midfield-y midfield, weren't we, rather than an attacking one. Yeah, we did look to be lacking a bit in sort of attacking midfield and up front,

didn't we, was where it was mainly not sticking for us.

But generally speaking, the general pattern of the game was that we were doing some

quite nice passing, and as soon as they got it, it just completely broke down.

But for the first half an hour, they really did struggle to connect more than two or three passes. We pressed him pretty well. And when we got it, I thought we played out some quite nice tight situations. I thought Nonto and Tanaka were doing some quite nice stuff down the right inside. Like, it all looked pretty good. Yeah, I think we maybe lacked a little bit of ambition going forward at times and it probably didn't

help we had the dead weight at left wing but yeah down the right hand side like it just picked up

from where they left off last season I thought nonto was really sharp yeah him and bogle combined

really well you can see the difference quite you between jack harrison who's not been there for any

of the last what two seasons with sam byronron, who was the standing left back versus these two. Bogle just looked like he was having the time of his life. Yeah. And then on the other side, you had Byram just kicking the lump sort of there, which was great fun. I was encouraged by Bogle, actually, because obviously the last time we were in the Premier League, we attempted to do it with Rasmus Christensen as I write back and even in that opening bit of the game there you were like Jaden Bogle's clearly a better football than Rasmus Christensen because some of the tight spaces he was working in and the way he can control it and go past people but Christensen didn't have any of that he was a very a very meat of potatoes twat it down the line sort of a wingback, wasn't he? Whereas, you know, Bogle looked, he looked pretty lively. I know defensively, Sheffield United fans have given us these grave warnings that he's going to get horribly exposed, but maybe in a better team, it's fine if you write back gets exposed. I mean, you know, Liverpool, Vetter right back can't defend defend and he's just got a Real Madrid. So what I'm saying is Bogle to Real Madrid. Yeah, defensive in it. Defending's overrated is what I think I was trying to say. And as we're compiling a solid midfield, it's maybe okay that the wing backs are going to be bombing on unless it's San Byron, in which case it'll probably be a bit more conservative, but still.

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