The Athletic

I think he will now be the go-to goalkeeper for any elite club in Europe who want to need one, basically.

I think a lot of people will be putting a lot of faith in Darwin-Nuiliers for Liverpool in the second half of the season.

The spotlight's going to be on him, regardless as it always is, and it's going to be interesting to see

if he can sort of force his way back into being sort of

one of the first choice picks for United

when Martinez and Varan are back.

And Ketia has, whilst he's performed in the Europa League,

he's never really done it in the Premier League,

but it wouldn't surprise me if this was his time

to finally prove himself as being a legitimate option up front

for Arsenal going forward.

Hello and welcome to the Athletic Football Podcast. I'm Dan Bardell and this is the weekend

preview. I'm joined by George Ellick, Bet365 Steve 3 and the Athletics, Dan Barnes.

Coming up, we're going to get stuck into the return of the Premier League

as leaders' Arsenal restart with a visit from West Ham.

Liverpool travelled to Unae Emory's Aston Villa,

plus Manchester United begin life without Cristiano Ronaldo against Nottingham Forest.

That's all to come here on the weekend preview.

But before we do get back into the Premier League, what about that World Cup? I think I was a bit

anti the World Cup before it started purely on a football basis. I won't get into all the other

stuff, but from a football basis, because of when it was, I really wasn't looking forward to this World Cup at all, but I tell you what, when it started and when it got going, George, the football was incredible. One of the best World Cups ever, in my opinion, from a football standpoint. Yeah, I absolutely loved it. In my view, even the games that were low-scoring in the group stages were still brilliant watches. There were very few games that were kind of devoid of quality. And, you know, when we've got in the Euros, this ridiculous system now where some third place teams go through in the World Cup, you see how important it is to keep the, the method that we have at the moment, where there were no, there were barely any dead rubbers throughout the whole group stages. It was unbelievable drama throughout. And then, of course, the knockout stages provided as well. Disappointing that England couldn't go further, of course. I don't think we'll get into that now, the reasons for it and whatever. But as a spectacle, it's brilliant. The only concern I have now, I mean, there's no denying how good the World Cup was. what's going to happen now with the rest of the football? You know, I obviously cover the EFL a lot.

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