Hello and welcome to the game, football podcast from The Times and Sunday Times to entertaining

League Cup semi-finals, but it's errors from players and officials making the headlines again.

On today's show, we'll discuss victories for Manchester City and Arsenal, look at some

early worrying signs for Liam Rossinia at Chelsea and ask

how can we approve this refereeing system? We'll also discuss this weekend's Manchester

Derby as Michael Carrick is confirmed as United Head Coach with former England No. 2, Steve Holland,

as part of his coaching staff, and we'll discuss our favourite rivalries across the country

and loads loads more besides. I'm Tom Clark and joining me today. We have the chief correspondent for The Times and Sunday Times, Martin Samuel, the former striker and Times columnist Tony Cascarino, and the former footballer-turn journalist Gregor Robertson is here as usual. Chaps, loads and loads to talk about. Let's get straight into it. We talk about Chelsea, 2, Arsenal 3. I'm just going to read a little section of Pete Rutzler's report on the Times website because it gives us a good grounding, I think, and a good summary. He wrote that Arsenal were the much better team at Stanford Bridge, intends off the ball and potent on it. For Resina, his first outing here was never likely to be as serene as his debut in the Chelsea dugout at the Valley against Charlton. There were moments of frailty and angst caused by his team's attempts to play out from goal kicks, though there were some positives too, not least the introduction of Alejandro Garnazcho to change the game and the response to falling behind. We were discussing this before the show, chaps. I mean, Chelsea have lost, but Arsenal could have won by four or five, couldn't they, in this one? Gregor, who comes out of this game happier, do you think, before we get into some of the incidents that we saw? It's a difficult one. I still have to. And, you know, you listen to Michael Artetta afterwards, and he was, he struck a positive of tone he was saying you you've got to remember they've got a lot of good players they put in some subs in the second half they you know Esteval was really really dangerous there were people that had to shackle so like they've got to stand for Bridgett they've won the game they should be happy but clearly and there was a period in that second half when they were three one up and it looked like they had a few chances to make it four and you thought this could get embarrassing and then just the balance of that shifted again and it's obviously a narrower margin of a vector to go into the second leg. So Arsenal still have to be the happier of the teams.

Chelsea and Liam Rissignor would probably be a mixture of relief

that it didn't get embarrassing and happy that they're still in the tie.

But Arsenal still have to be happier.

Martin, from a Chelsea point of view, what did you make of this?

Players missing, Rees James, Col Palmer,

missing from this game, but we believe available for the weekend.

Quite interesting from the dynamics of some of the things we talked about with Enzo Moreska's departure that Liam Rossignor is already

as having this kind of topic around player selection.

It struck me like a team that had been picked by the medical department.

Because for the manager to come out and say

well, East James can't play tonight,

but it can't play on Saturday,

Cole Palmer can't play tonight,

be compliant Saturday, Malagusto can't play tonight,

...