Hello, hello everybody and welcome to the Total Soccer Show.

My name is Taylor Rockwell and joining me for a review of the weekend and all the handballs that happened.

It's Ryan Bailey.

Hello, Ryan.

Hello, Tate.

I was buoyed by your infectious joy as your intro there, then slightly dampened by the mention of many handballs,

which we will undoubtedly talk about. I will apologize off the top of the show to listeners.

I'm a little bit under the weather, so if I'm even more unlistnable than usual, that is why.

I mean, I'm excited to see how you become even more unlistenable, Ryan, but I feel like you'll pull through.

Shots fly out the top.

I like it. I think anything that delays us from having to talk about VAR and handballs and stuff like that, I'll take. So even if it's trash talking, which is not my favorite thing, I'll go with it. And I guess, like, we both are kind of referencing it up front. There was much consternation, much debate, much confusion about handballs about VAR this weekend.

We are going to talk about that a little bit slash a lot bit throughout the show. We're going to try to avoid the hand-wringing, the this is an abomination, this is ruining the game and that sort of talk, but try to look at it as why were these given, why aren't certain things being given, and then maybe how do we feel about it a little bit?

But we're going but try to look at it as why were these given, why aren't certain things being given, and then maybe how do we feel about it a little bit? But we're going to try to stay away from some of the historiotics, because I do think if you start going down that road, it can be a little bit time-consuming and a little bit frustrating. That said, Ryan, did you want to rant for like 10 minutes straight? Taylor, I want to wring my hands. Come on. Just wash your hands instead. That's the rule of the day. Then let's start from this past weekend. We're going to start in the Premier League as we are wont to do. And we're going to go to Manchester City to Leicester City 5, a result that I certainly did not see coming. Ryan, did you have any inclination?

Because I had read the articles about the 4-2-3-1 working. PEP had brought him this new thing that he didn't really, really like, but it was working for Man City and they could keep it going. And this weekend, I feel like we saw a good example of how maybe teams can quickly adjust to that. And then the 4-2-3-1 does not work so well for PEP Cordiola. With the gift of hindsight, I can inform you, I 100% saw this coming.

Yeah. that and then the 4231 does not work so well for pep cordiola with the gift of hindsight i can

inform you i 100% saw this coming uh yeah quite quite the result here i mean lester we know a pretty

decent team and they certainly gave man city a good thing to in this one the the 4231 is quite

critical here because this is something i've hammered home again and again

when talking about Pep Guardiola's Manchester City on this show. Whenever he sort of diverts away

from the 433, trouble is a brewing. When you look at the times they've lost, it tends to be

when they haven't kept their 433 shape or when Fernandino has been moved out that defensive

midfield in the middle of the

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