Welcome back for another Old Spice Boys podcast. We’ve gone upmarket this week because we have someone who has just been awarded an MBE! It’s a delight to welcome former Sunderland defender Gary Bennett whose tireless work as an anti-racism campaigner was duly recognised in the New Year’s honours list.

It was a proud moment for Gary and his family and well deserved for someone who has been a model professional on and off the pitch and now having reached the age of 60 shows no signs of slowing down.

We’ve known Benno since 1984 when he joined Sunderland from Cardiff City. Always a dream to interview during his 11 years with the club and is still one of the main men to go to for his views on attempting to stamp out racism in the game – something that sadly has still not in 2022 been eradicated.

He was one of the first players to get involved in Show Racism The Red Card campaign. He has been and still is a mentor to many aspiring young coaches and is heavily involved with local charities in the North East.

Welcome to final Old Spice Boys podcast of 2021. We’ve had some remarkable guests since our launch in August and aim to bring more exceptional football folk to you as we grow in 2022.

Now is the time to pause and reflect. We are within reach of Christmas Day and into the usual frenetic period of the football calendar when form fluctuates and there seems to be no time to relax and take in the true meaning of the season. 

Except that more and more footballers are confident enough to proclaim their Christianity and celebrate the birth of a child in a manger who changes lives and alters perceptions.

We have two very special guests today. Gavin Peacock was a gifted forward who played over 100 times for Newcastle and Chelsea in the 1990s and similarly for QPR at the turn of the century. 

He became a Christian in his teens, has presented Songs of Praise on the BBC and is now a pastor at the Calvary Grace Church in Calgary, Canada.  His autobiography, A Greater Glory was published in May.

Jason McCarthy is in his third spell at Wycombe Wanderers as a wing-back or full-back, has two young children as is utterly devoted to the word of God. I have seen close up how much his Christianity means to him and it is truly life affirming.

This is the end of Season 1 of the Old Spice Boys podcast.  Our penultimate guest in 2021 is Howard Wilkinson the man who led Leeds United to the First Division championship title in 1992 , the final season before the Premier League came into its gilded existence. To date, he remains the last English manager to lift the trophy for finishing top of the 92 clubs.

Howard Wilkinson has plenty of achievements to his name, not least as someone who, in their first full season as a coach, masterminded the tactics and style which inspired three different clubs to the old First Division, Notts County, Sheffield Wednesday and the aforementioned Leeds to earn promotion to the First Division

As FA Technical Director he was instrumental in the planning and development of English football's first National Football Centre.  He later had spells as caretaker manager of the England senior and U21 teams.

Wilkinson is currently the chairman of the League Managers Association.

On this week’s Old Spice Boys’ podcast, we’re joined by the man who managed some of the most expressive football teams of the nineteen seventies, eighties and nineties.

Few people from the present generation have left an imprint on the game as indelible as that of Ron Atkinson, aka Big Ron.

Ron talks about 

• Why it wasn't easy to leave WBA and join Man Utd
• Signing Bryan Robson for £2m  and why Sir Matt Busby resigned 
• What he thinks about modern recruitment and tactics 
• Why Charlie Nicolas, Terry Butcher and Gary Lineker never signed for Utd
• How he helped Norman Whiteside get picked so young for Utd and Northern Ireland
• How Ole was so close as a Utd manager but unlucky
• Why Pogba is better suited to European football

There is no one alive who watches more football and bets on more football than Harry Findlay.

Harry may be instantly recognisable for his co-ownership of Denman, who twice won the Hennessey and whose 2008 Gold Cup victory at Cheltenham is legend among its pantheon of races and he’s famed in Ireland for owning Big Fella Thanks, one of that country’s foremost champion coursing dogs.

But Harry knows his football, inside and out.

Harry’s talks about

• Tips from the man who watches more football than anyone else. He knows as much about soccer in Belarus as in the U.K. 
  
  
• Why Brighton and Brentford have the best owners in the Premier League.
  
  
• Educate yourself on how to bet properly. It can save you fortunes.
  
  
• Don’t get caught up in the world of accumulators as promoted by Jeff Stelling and Ray Winstone.
  
  
• How betting in small amounts can give us much satisfaction as a huge wager.

Join the award winning sports journalists Neil Harman and John Richardson as they talk with Darren Ambrose and Alan Smith about their time at Crystal Palace.  

They also talk about 

• The immediate impact of Patrick Viera, can he store the "Crystal Palace Way?"  
• The old players such as Geoff Thomas, Andy Gray, Ian Wright and Gareth Southgate
• Why  Gareth Southgate could have been a travel agent
• What next for Gareth Southgate after Qatar World Cup 
• What will happen to Newcastle under the mega-rich Saudis? 
• The abuse of managers via social media, why it has spoilt the relationship with fans and the press.  
• Can Eddie Howe build a 'Geordie Way' like Bobby Robson and Sir John Hall?  

The Old Spice Boys podcast has a distinct Mancunian flavour this week, even if our two guests hail from Aberdeen and Newcastle. 

Martin Buchan captained Manchester United for most of the 12 seasons he played at Old Trafford under four United managers, Frank O’Farrell, Tommy Docherty, Dave Sexton and Ron Atkinson. Martin made 456 appearances for the Reds, and won 34 Scottish caps, playing in two World Cup Finals. 

Dennis Tueart had two spells at Manchester City, playing 224 times in light blue and was later appointed as a director of the club in the time before it was swallowed up by the mega billions of Abu Dhabi.  His overhead kick with which won City the 1976 League Cup against his hometown club, remains one of the most fabled in club folklore

In the history of this local rivalry, United have won 77 times, City 55 and there has been a regular diet of been controversies and shall we say, collisions - George Best and Glyn Pardoe, Roy Keane and Alf Inge Haaland spring readily to mind.

Fast forward to November 2021 and the current Premier League table has leaders Chelsea five points clear of third placed City with United a further three points away in fifth. 

City – who lost at home in the League to Crystal Palace at the weekend - play in the Champions League group stages tonight against Bruges. United were twice rescued last night by Cristiano Ronaldo in Atalanta, for a 2-2 draw. United’s manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is facing a daily discourse as to whether he’s up to the job.

Join Neil Harman and John Richardson as the talk to Paul Stewart an English former professional footballer who played top division football for Manchester City, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool, and was capped three times at senior level for England in the early 1990s, also winning the FA Cup with Tottenham Hotspur.

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"When I look back, I played in that FA Cup final. I scored a goal, I played for England, they should have been the two happiest times of my life, but I didn't enjoy them. 

I didn't enjoy them at all. And, it's subsequently, when I joined  Liverpool, the drugs carried on, and I know that you say in your intro that through injury, but to be honest with you and I wasn't taking care of myself in any way, shape or form and one can't be playing at the top when you're taking drugs and drinking as much as I was, during my time at Liverpool.

And that I'll always regret because. I genuinely think I could have gone to Liverpool. And, I played, I think 32 games, maybe I think I could have played 321, and done really well there, but I was completely gone by then. And I was doing things off the field that I shouldn't have been."