Change isn't coming. It's already here. Commerce is going digital and tax complexity is multiplying.

Tax rules evolve, rate shift, data floods in. Vertex connects it all. A global tax compliance platform

powered by tax-ready data and intelligence systems.

Smarter tech, continuous tax compliance, built-in confidence.

Learn more at vertexinck.com.

Thank you. Hello, hello everybody and welcome to the total soccer show. My name is Taylor Rockwell. It's time for us to talk about this week's big thing. If you're new to the show or to this sort of episode, we like to close out the week by discussing a major story we haven't yet had the time to fully explore. This week, it's Unai Emery's appointment at Aston Villa. Three years after getting

sacked by Arsenal, Uni Emory returns to the Premier League with a point to prove. He takes over

at Aston Villa after the club sacked Stephen Gerard for a string of bad results that culminated

in a disheartened squad and an incensed fan base. What went wrong for Gerard? What will

Uni Emory bring to Villa? And what represents success for a club who have a stated objective of being the best of the rest? Here with me to answer those and many other questions is a man who, as far as I know, has never been sacked after hundreds of people sang very angry songs at him. It's Graham Ruffman. Hi, Graham. Hi, Tara, Rockwell. What I would say is you've only known me really for the last couple

years, and there's a lot in my past that I have hidden from you today. See, this is my concern. So I was trying to figure, like, maybe if you worked at a supermarket at some point and you just did a really bad job at checkout the line built up, maybe they organized a song. But I really struggle to think of

a moment in normal life in which like hundreds of people would be sort of forcing you out of a

position. It's basically soccer and politics and in politics that tends to go south pretty

quickly. So I worked in pubs when I was younger and all I'm going to say is I was not good

at pouring the pints of Guinness. So there you go. Those can be tricky. Those can be tricky. They are tricky. Everybody seems to have very particular views about how exactly it needs to be done. And when those people give you those specific instructions, it's just an immediate sign that we don't need to be friends. So, Graham, you and I can be friends and bond over our inability to poor Guinness.

We can also be friends and bond over our enthusiasm for talking about Unae Emery and Stephen Gerard and Aston Villa.

But that is where I kind of want to start this episode, Graham, because we tend to focus the big thing on exactly that, like the very

big stories, the major things, the breaking news of the day. And this one, Arsenal's like

sacked former manager moving from a Spanish club back to the Premier League to take over a team

that are 15th in the table, three points from the relegation zone. It doesn't seem like it should be that big of news.

And yet it is, and to me, it's really exciting news at that.

Yeah, so I think you have three parts of this discussion. You have the Stephen Gerard part, and obviously you have the name recognition of Stephen Gerard being one of the best ever Premier League players, one of England's, or certainly one of his best English players, the best English players of the

...