Hello, welcome to the Ornstein and Chapman podcast on The Athletic.

As usual, we bring you exclusive insight and stories from our team of writers.

David's still on holiday, so his weekly column is in the hands of Laurie Whitwell,

and Laurie will have updates on

stories including pay-per-view and Chelsea's continued pursuit of West Ham's Declan Rice.

Greg O'Keefe joins us to talk about the small details really that are having a negative

effect on what was a great start to the season for Everton and the Athletics Italian

football writer James Horncastle details the second coming of

Slata and Ibrahimovic in Italy and also what Milan are doing off the pitch to get back to the top of the European game.

To read all the articles we discuss on today's podcast in full,

simply head to www.theathletic.com slash Ornstein and Chapman to sign up for just one pound a week.

So once again, in David's absence, Laurie Whitwell has taken care of the weekly column,

musling in, stating his claim for it permanently. Lorry is with us. Let's deal with

the pay-per-view, first of all, shall we? Yes, what do you want to know, chappers? Well, it's not going to stop, is it? Because even though there hasn't been a great uptake, it's still made them five million quid. Well, that's it. I think that's the sort of takeaway from what I've been speaking to people about this over the weekend. and so last week when you look at the numbers that were coming in, it doesn't look like anything to write home about, but then again, they were only ever intended to make up for the loss of match day revenue tickets and what have you. You know, with lockdown coming in, I think quite a few people appreciate that it's a bad look to then still be charging people 1495 for matches that, you know, ostentably wouldn't draw, you know, huge crowd wouldn't be on TV at all. But the fact of the matter is that those clubs that are, you know, have smaller commercial revenues want to stick by it, I think, really. There might be a debate over the price point at Thursday's meeting, but there is, it's not like a case of the clubs looking at that and

going, actually, yeah, we've had a nightmare with this one. We need to change it. I think some

are looking at it and thinking actually it's been what we expected it to be and we want to continue

with it. And that's the key point, I suppose. It is the so-called smaller clubs in the Premier League

whose revenue has maybe been hit harder because they don't have other

revenue or as many commercial revenue streams who will push for this to stay at its price

point? Yeah, I think that's the way it sounds at least because I mean you look at the bigger

clubs, let's just say Manchester United, the club that I cover, they've got huge commercial

revenue. So for them it doesn't really make much sense to charge $4.95 for a game.

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