Allen and Sidarth get together to talk Villarreal. This was a followup to the last pod with Zach and Robin, and Sid had some interesting takes on the January market, where the league is headed (the salary caps came out this week, and they're interesting compared to last season), etc

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Allen is joined by Rahul, Zach and Robin for this one. How is the team looking? Who has particularly impressed of late? That takes up the first half. Second half is which other clubs have impressed us...and then we get into a discussion of VAR, which is..fun.

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Two major topics: (1) we recap the transfer window, and (2) assess our performance so far.

No surprises, (1) involves a lot of Kubo discussion and (2) a lot of Gerard. Enjoy and Endavant!

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Allen is joined by Zach to quickly review the Alavés match. Formation change, player changes, all seemed to work well enough against an outmanned opponent.

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Allen and Sid urge calm after a supremely uncompetitive performance that saw Barcelona pick apart the same week links we had last time we played them.

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Welcome to Rahul, who joins us from London to talk Villarreal. Robin joins from York as well, and Zach comes in about 20 minutes in (right before the break).

Allen and his guests discuss the first two matches of the season--what has surprised us? Are there any players who we feel are off to a slow start? What about our new signings? How are we going to do against Barcelona? (spoiler--people are optimistic). And don't miss our first ever product review as Robin comments on the newly available masks from the team store :)

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So, a confession: Sid and I got together before the weekend and recorded a podcast covering most of the same material, but.....there was a technical glitch and the recording didn't work. So we've done it again, but this time with the benefit of actually seeing Villarreal's first match.

We both predicted we'd win it, but Allen is doggedly insisting the glass was at least half-full; Sid is maybe more the half-empty kind of guy here?

Anyway--the first part of the podcast (about 35 mins) is a review of the match, Estupiñan arriving and what that means, etc.; after the break, we talk more about the league as a whole--who we expect to do well, who we don't. Enjoy!

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Obviously there are a lot of personnel moves still to come, but Allen and Sid review the preseason so far and prospects for the season ahead.

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Allen is joined by Zach and Sidarth (after the break) to talk about first, the arrival of Kubo. Where will we play him? What does his arrival mean for Samu Chukwueze? How do we get both Grard and Paco on the pitch?

The second part is more philosophical.....we all feel there has been a change in emphasis at the club. with Unai Emery brought in to try to get us a trophy (or at least to a final) and a real push for the Champions League. Is this a changing of the guard in the front office, a well-managed club seeking to take advantage of financial weaknesses elsewhere, or something else?

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Two parts here: in the first, Allen chats with Cristian Sirera, a vilarealenc (native of Vila-real) who is now in Chicago. They're joined after the break by Sidarth to talk about Unai Emery's hiring--Cristian's comments on Emery's style of play is an interesting one--and who might be coming, who might be leaving, what will happen to all those returning loanees, etc. etc.

A lot of interesting ideas and insights in this podcast, for sure. Thanks to Cristian for joining us!

Enjoy!!

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