Hello and I thank you for joining us.

Hello and welcome to the Game Podcast from The Times.

I'm Gable McCarthy and I thank you for joining us and

I'm excited this week because making his return to the studio, it's Julian Lawrence and down the line from a special location somewhere in West London, just what, a quarter mile from

Matthew Side's house, it's Matt Dickinson.

Hello.

Later on, we're going to be talking about the ugly scenes at the London Stadium that

Mard West Ham's defeat to Burnley.

But we start at the Theater of Dreams with one of the biggest fixtures in European football.

Right, Dicko, I'm going to start with you because if you were to look at this game in a vacuum it would be all about one of the

two of the most criticized players I think this year Romelo Lukakuaku and Dejan Lovren.

Lovren criticized because supposedly he's a bit wosy and he can't defend.

And Lukaku being criticized for not scoring enough and being just too much of a front to goal striker.

And on this occasion, Lukaku was big and

won the headers and

Lovren was was monstered.

Absolutely and it's one of those things where you still

you see it and you see the lookard could do it and you think why isn't he doing this all the time?

I mean there are games when we've all seen and notoriously some big games where he just seems

to have sort of drifted through and he thought,

hang on a minute, this guy's got so many attributes,

even if he's not playing great or not finishing great,

...