Singapore GP 2026 Recap: Verstappen Wins, Liverpool Smashed by City

And it's lights out and away we go.

Podcasting from Studio 2520, somewhere near Akron, Ohio.

Bringing you all the latest talk in motorsport and soccer, this is Tackling the Chicane.

All right, so here we go. On a Wednesday eve, lots of stuff happening in the sports world. Of course, Guardians are right in the hot seat. Yeah, like we said last week, a little continuation of that. Uh, if we were talking about the Guardians this week, then we were in a good spot, and here we are.

Had the privilege of going to a decisive Game 5 ALDS. Um, White Sox were defeated by one swing of the bat from Jose Ramirez. Very cool. And now we are in the throes of the ALCS and, uh, have split the, split the spoils in Tampa, which I think is ultimately not a bad result at all.

Um, and looking forward to it next week, maybe, uh, maybe in a different round, or, or, or not, but we shall see. Yeah, so go Guards, and we'll see what happens when they come back to Cleveland to play 3. I feel good. Yeah, yeah, I do. I feel good about it.

I think this is a team that, um, is gonna find their own destiny at some point here.

Um, they feel a lot like the team from 10 years ago. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so I— we couldn't be in a better place. I think they proved themselves late in the season, proved themselves through that first, uh, series with the Sox, and we'll see what happens. Indeed, indeed.

Uh, so let's get down to the business end of things here with this edition of Tackling the Chicane. Your headlines, we've got, uh, Singapore street race If you want to call it a race. We've got, uh, of course the Premier League has returned from action and it's our first time seeing Man City in action since the, uh, 115 charges of which they were found guilty on 114 of, um, were lobbied by the Premier League. We've got banners We've got bananas, we've got red cards, and all of the above, really. Yeah.

So we'll get into that a little bit later in the podcast. But I did notice, as you said, there were balloon numerals for the number of indictments. Yeah. Uh, we'll get into the banana thing. I'll ask you about that a bit later, but, uh, let's start with the Singapore GP in F1.

And to be quite honest, uh, not really the finest GP to watch. Uh, no, I have abbreviated notes here. Uh, Verstappen basically was the fast car and remained the fast car throughout. Regardless of pit strategy or tire strategy, Max kind of ran away with this one.

We had a few cars that went out, but it didn't really seem to matter at the end of the day.

This one just ended up with Max about 7 seconds ahead of the, the second car, which was Charles Leclerc. Kimi Antonelli comes in 3rd, gets a podium at 24 seconds back from the leader. So that tells you exactly how this GP went. And then Norris, Piastri, Hamilton, and Lawson in the top 7. And by, by the time we get to position number 7, we're over a minute behind Max.

So yeah. Sometimes that's how these things go, and I guess we'll just take it for what it is.

Um, I, I will posit this question to you. Do you feel like Verstappen is going to make a late run and try to win some more GPs? Do you think he's— well, he, he can, he can win more GPs. Um, if the— I did cut you off a little, but if the last part of your question was going to be, can he make a run to the championship? No, no.

But, um, I, I think it's interesting. It's clear that for— or, uh, sorry, Red Bull have very obviously brought in some pretty serious upgrades to their car. Uh, towards the tail end of the season that has given Max, uh, a nice little performance boost. Um, and now it's 2 on the trot for him. So I'm, I'm fine with, with anything adding a little extra wrinkle to the season that has frankly been largely a dud.

Um, but yeah, I think, I think to answer your question he's probably gonna win one or two more, I would think. Yeah, and I think it should be noted that the second Red Bull car hasn't really been all that successful in the last several races. Yeah, um, so we're seeing a bit of a, um, a distance between the Verstappen car and the Hadjar car. Hadjar finishes 10th in this, a full 90 seconds, um, behind. So the question I always have is, what is the difference?

I think that the difference is pretty simple, and it's just that Max Verstappen is that good, and he has showed time and time and time again. There's how many heads have rolled from Red Bull besides him because they can't seem to really compete with him. The closest I think we've ever seen was Sergio Perez, who even still was, was not really ever, uh, competent compared to— I mean, he was competent, but he wasn't comparable to Max Verstappen by any means. I think Hadjar has a really high ceiling And I would expect maybe not this year but perhaps next season he's seriously challenging for some wins. Um, but yeah, the difference is just that Max Verstappen is much, much better than basically everyone on the grid, um, sans I suppose Antonelli and maybe Lando Norris.

I mean, a lot of this is car dependent, of course, but I, I really don't have a problem saying I think Max Verstappen is probably the best driver on the grid. Yeah, I have to agree. Um, they've had their challenges this year but still, uh, continues to sort of dazzle from that not Mercedes position. Um, And I, I expect to see him win maybe one or two more races before the end of the year. Yeah, I'd say potentially that's probably smart money.

Yeah. Um, yeah, there isn't a whole lot to take away from this race if we are being brutally honest. You look at the, the podium here, Leclerc finishes second, which is a good result for him. Antonelli is able to finish 3rd while George Russell is all the way down in 9th. So he further extends his championship lead, and with I think 6, maybe 6 races left, um, that is pretty much a given at this point.

Um, so we didn't learn a whole lot from this race. There was not much overtaking. Um, one of those, one of those. Yeah, one of those GPs where it's really hard to pass, and you're gonna have those types of races in Formula 1. Unfortunately for the fan, it's not the greatest spectacle to watch.

Um, 3 DNFs Stroll for Aston, Colapinto for Alpine, and Bortoletto for Audi. Um, Albon did not finish either. Okay, I suppose that anytime, uh, 2 Cadillacs can actually finish the race, that's probably a good thing. Yeah, both did. So, um, still struggling with some Braking issues in the Cadillac car is what I've sort of rendered from this.

We'll see. We'll see what happens with this team.

I don't suspect that there's going to be a huge shakeup with Cadillac at the end of the season, but you never know. I think they're pretty happy to have 2 really good butts in the seats, and whether the car performs or not, I think, um, they're probably going to continue with these 2 drivers for the next campaign. Now, we don't know that for sure, but they would be a little bit foolish not to.

So we'll see what happens with Cadillac as we move forward. Yeah, I don't have a ton of notes here. There isn't really a lot of stuff to talk about. Nothing really dazzling with this particular race. But so here we are in the last, I suppose, quarter of the F1 season with just a few races left to go.

And we won't, um, we won't get into the next race because we still have, uh, it looks like not quite 2 weeks till we get to the US here. So we have learned this week that really it's not likely that Qatar and Abu Dhabi are gonna happen in their, I guess, traditional form here at the end. Um, people have talked about, are they just gonna axe those 2 last races of the year, um, or 2 of the 3 last races of the year? Of course, that would mean Kimi Antonelli would basically have the title, um, if they were to do that. It doesn't seem like that's happening.

It seems like F1's solution is that they would finish the season in Europe, and specifically, um, in Italy at Emilia-Romagna, which is one of the 2 Italian tracks that they typically race at, uh, in Imola. So I guess that adds a little bit of interest. I don't know if we're gonna see both of those races moved, if we're gonna see none of those races moved, one of them. I— it doesn't seem likely that we're gonna be racing in the Middle East this season, or probably not even next season. So yeah, interesting.

Of course, the fans will be the last to know if races get scuttled to another track. Um, I don't really have a lot to say about the political aspect of motor racing. It's a shame that we have to come to this sort of out— you know, the outcome of not being able to complete the schedule because of certain things that are happening.

I guess I'll leave that there. Uh, did you see the headline about racing in Africa? I did, yeah. Um, I also saw some oddly weird pictures of constructing a track in Africa. Yeah, so F1 is signed a 10-year deal, uh, because that's what they love to do, um, in Rwanda, Africa, um, which I'm not going to sit here and pretend to be an expert at all about sub-Saharan African geopolitics, but, um, yeah, there's no, there's no track currently built, so this would be a brand new facility.

Purpose-built facility. Um, I don't know, like, this is one of those things where inherently there's, there's obviously nothing inherently wrong with racing in, in Africa. The thing is, they've attached themselves to a nation that I just, I don't really understand why. For One reason it's just— I mean, Rwanda is not amazingly, um, economically well off, which doesn't really stop F1 from going to you. Um, but they're currently waging some sort of war on their neighbors.

Again, has that really stopped F1 from racing somewhere? No, there's, you know, I, I was— this the '90s or 2000s? The Rwandan genocide. Not saying like a country can't come back from that, but it's just kind of odd. It's a little odd and just kind of proves that wherever the money is, F1 will follow, which is nothing new for us.

Obviously, I'm not saying anything revolutionary here. No. Again, just odd. I think it sort of makes the series that much more interesting, is they have to travel the globe because this is a global sport, and they also have to deal with any shortcomings that are happening vis-à-vis the globe. So we can't stop the politico or the wars or anything that happens, but this series kind of soldiers through that.

I have to agree that taking a race or a series of this magnitude to a country that we know has a lot of challenges as far as just socially and geopolitically. For them to land there is going to be really odd if they do, I think, because basically what's going to happen is they're going to bring the fan base to this country. It's a traveling circus. It is. As long as you're within that microcosm of F1, you'll be fine.

But God help you if you're not within that little, you know, radius. Um, I guess we'll see what happens.

Uh, I'm just looking at the schedule here. So we have 3 races that we know are gonna be pretty much the norm. The US GP coming up later this month, um, and that is going to be at COTA, I believe, in Texas. And then Mexico, Brazil, Vegas. So we have 1, 2, 3— we have 4 races that we know are going to happen.

And then round 22 in Uh, Qatar, we don't know. Abu Dhabi, uh, is— I guess that's the last one, right? Yeah. So those last 2, we're not sure if they're going to get scuttled. And I guess the bigger question is, and I think we know the answer to this, is will they keep the, um, moniker of said races regardless of where they go?

Now I can tell you this, that it'll be quite funny if the, uh, Qatar Airways Qatar Grand Prix is happening in somewhere else. Correct. Well, I, I almost want to see, just for the sake of absurdity, like, how, how far away can you possibly race from the original location and still have the original name? Which, uh, Bahrain to Malaysia Um, you don't have to be a genius to know that those countries are very far apart from each other. So it'd be very funny to see how, how massively far they could get away from the original location, just for my own shits and giggles, I guess.

But, um, what a mess this season has kind of turned out to be in terms of that whole Um, region, that whole part of the schedule. And this is a thing where F1 has slowly increased the amount of races that they've, they've raced in that region of the world, um, because, well, again, they follow the money. And, and it's no secret that, that, that region has become a real force in the globe because of a lot, mostly just oil money, um, And, and they like to flex that power and use sports as an avenue to, to do so. So of course F1 has no problem going there. But then you get the, uh, I guess reality sometimes hits, and some of that of course is probably our own nation's doing a little bit, but one more than a little bit.

The point being like you said, the happenings of the world, yeah, can impact when you're a World Series. And I suppose what it, what it does for me as a race fan is make me realize how special it is to have IndyCar in the United States kind of stays in the United States. We don't have to worry about the, the geopolitical stuff with IndyCar and/or NASCAR and/or IMSA. Um, and frankly, it's, it's a little bit sad to me that F— this F1 series is sort of largely being dictated as to where they're going to go and, and why they're, you know, why they're not going to go to certain places. Of course, you're never going to hear any commentary about that, and I think that's a shame.

I really do. I think that F1 would, would do the world a better service by saying we've been supplanted from Qatar or Abu Dhabi to race in X or Y because of this. I really think that it would serve the community a little bit better if they— and of course, you know, no, no one wants to be controversial. Yeah. But I think they, they should at least say something.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I don't disagree. I just, you know how it goes. You piss one sponsor off and there you go.

Um, so it's, it's an interesting moment, uh, to be an F1 fan and not really because of the on-track stuff, which, uh, I would like it to be the other way, uh, personally. But yeah, that, that's one of those things where I had last week, I, you, this is always how it goes with F1. You start to hear whispers of a rumor And then they become louder and louder and louder until they are confirmed. And last week it was like, oh, F1, they're going to return to Africa, says whatever source, but we don't know where. So it's like, oh, okay.

Immediately you're thinking, you know, probably Saharan Africa just because money, or maybe South Africa. Because they have a history of racing there. And then to see Rwanda, that's just like, whoa, okay, that's not at all what I was— so that begs the question, is, is that the cheapest place to get enough labor to actually build a facility? Yeah, and that's the thing is like, I don't know about cheap. I mean, but yeah, someone has to build the fucking thing, which, which we know.

We were a podcast covering the, uh, Qatar World Cup. We— the worst kept secret in the world, and, and Qatar had no problem even saying it, was that they used exploited foreign labor to build everything. I don't— I'm not saying that's what's happening in Rwanda or will happen. Uh, I wouldn't exactly put it past them, but someone has to build these, uh, giant facilities. And in a lot of the countries that F1 goes to, labor laws are a little more slack, right?

And what this podcast will never do is not talk about those types of sub-issues that happen around motorsport, and whether it be soccer or otherwise, um, we're not here to ignore the fact that there's some very, very wrong— very much wrongdoings that happen when these facilities are built. Yeah. And should, uh, news or otherwise come negative or positive about this, then I guarantee we're going to talk about it because, um, that's just the right thing to do. It is. And it makes me a little bit nervous to have them eyeing that particular part of the country because you know as well as I do that whatever needs to be done will be done.

Yeah. To get the track built. It's just kind of one of those things where you just instantly are thinking, well, why Rwanda of all places? And it's not— I think we can very easily kind of get stuck in a, in a Western-centric sort of bubble of Well, anything not Europe or America, you kind of scoff at. But, you know, I think there's a lot of African nations you could have raced at and you would have thought, okay, okay, I mean, that's, that's whatever.

I mean, we go to a lot of random Asian nations, uh, that aren't particularly fantastic places to live. Um, but yeah, I just— it— I don't really understand it. I don't— someone is paying F1 a lot of money for them to be there, and that is always why F1 shows up. Or, uh, because if that wasn't happening, they, they wouldn't be there. Yeah, so keeping a wide eye on what happens here in the closing GPs of F1.

I don't believe that we really need to talk too much about standings here. I will go to the constructors standings, and for those folks that are new to the podcast and new to F1, there are 2 points races that happen within F1. One is the Drivers' Championship, the other is the Constructors' or the Team Championship, and they are both separated from each other. And the reason why I'm bringing this up is we may have some new listeners that, that aren't really akin to how this all works.

The Drivers Championship is largely, uh, pretty much a done deal here. For you folks that are just new listeners, I just want to dip in real quick. Uh, we have Mercedes on top with Kimi Antonelli at 340 points, George Russell at 238. Uh, next up in 3rd is Lewis Hamilton with 229. Max Verstappen at 221.

If he wins a few more GPs, we could see that shift a bit there from the, the, uh, 3 to 4 place. Yeah. And then kind of after that, I don't see any real movement happening. Uh, Verstappen in 4th, Leclerc in 5th with 215. So there's, there's some chance for a little bit of movement in that middle sector.

Um, let's just talk quickly about the constructors.

And just as we said, Mercedes probably is going to run away with this one at 578, Ferrari at 444, McLaren at 339. Uh, there might be a chance that Red Bull Racing, if they have a a good finish to the season could supplant themselves in 3rd place. But other than that, when we get down to the mid-pack, I think where these teams live right now is where they are going to stand.

Audi strangely has supplanted himself in 8th position right behind the Haas F1 team. 30 points for Haas, 23 for Audi. And if Audi can get some points here, we might see that position shift. Other than that, I think we are where we are. But I just wanted to kind of go over that for any new listeners that are tuning into the podcast, just to let you know where we're at.

All right. Well, with that, I think we will go ahead and shift gears into the world of soccer. And let me tell you, it was, uh, a pretty entertaining weekend, especially down south in the, the Premier League, which I think is where we, we are kind of forced to start, uh, this time around.

Let's not really beat around the bush here, and, and we'll go into league-wide results after this in our, our second teams and what's going on there. Um, the infinitely sized elephant in the room for the rest of the season probably will be the Manchester City guilty verdict on 114 counts of, uh, financial doping, basically cheating. Um, and, and it's basically hanging over this team until we know what the punishment will be. I said off air, I've heard, um, that it's potentially going to be around December that we're going to hear something. Um, could be earlier.

I've also heard that Man City legally are allowed to appeal. Um, the Premier League has already kind of started planning what the punishment will be and don't seem to be much concerned about the appeal because frankly there's no way Man City win that. So it's going to be really interesting. Um, to see what happens with this case as it continues to move on. But the whole sort of narrative with this match, Liverpool hosting Manchester City, a big match between, you know, 2 of the better teams in the league— you now have this question though of Man City, spoiler alert, wins this one 3-0, but How much does that matter?

You know, how much does that really matter at this point? Because I think everyone can kind of read the writing on the wall, and that's Man City is going to face a large punishment, and with that, probably a massive crippling points deduction. To the point where I think, yeah, I think if the Premier League gets their way, which I don't see how they wouldn't, it's going to be enough to effectively relegate Man City. So you, you now have this weird thing of the players rallying around whatever it is they are— I, I don't know, I guess anytime you have a target on your back, you do it. Whether right or wrong.

But you have this thing of Man City won, they beat the shit out of Liverpool. Does that matter at all? I guess we'll find out. Um, and we're anxiously awaiting the actual ruling.

Um, Fat Mob says coming anytime now. Yeah, who knows? As you said, this thing has been going on for quite some time. Yeah. And at the end of the day, does the consequence really meet the crime?

Because I don't feel like whatever, whatever happens to Man City as far as now the points, the deduction in points and maybe a relegation of championships. Okay. But as far as the monetary penalty, this, that does not make 2 shits difference. No, as far as I'm concerned, no. I mean, they, they have more money than they know what to do with.

We talked a bit about that off mic and what really should happen with those penalty funds. You seem to think that the money will be paid to the league. Yeah, the the, the Premier League, I think, and I said this to you earlier, why not take whatever those massive fines are going to be, and they could be in the tens of millions or hundreds, hundreds of millions of dollars. Millions. Yeah.

Figure out a way to posit to put that money into making some of the under teams— I mean, wouldn't it be great if you took— if, if a small team got a piece of that action to improve their facility or put a new pitch in or something like that, you know? Yeah, I— that gets slippery because then clubs will probably pull the card of, well, why should we get the same amount of money as Bournemouth when Man City, you know, Man City finished, um, won the title this year when they were cheating and we were second and we would have made more money from prize money and blah blah blah blah blah. So I, I don't know. I, I do think that the Premier League will probably make a lot of money off of fines, and Man City will probably face a pretty massive points deduction.

Um, I don't know. I— here's where I, I'm kind of pushing back on what seems to be the general narrative. Now, I will say, for, for a while, in, in sort of my more formative years of, of watching the sport, I was a big Man City fan in a chapter of my life, and, um, maybe that's my bias showing a little here. I, I don't really get the narrative of, well, anything they do this season doesn't matter, um, because frankly, it absolutely does matter that Liverpool got fucking demolished by Manchester City because Liverpool aren't going to get a points deduction this year. So this is just a loss to them.

This is a loss which now puts them in 9th place with a new manager. So I, I'm not really buying into this nothing that Man City does in the Premier League matters thing, or any game they play in is just a wash because, you know, they might get a massive points deduction. They can still affect what happens in the league. Um, so that one I don't really get. I also want to sort of push back a little bit.

People seem to be putting targets on current Man City players or putting targets on, you know, just this team and their players as a whole. And then diminishing anything that they've done in recent years just as completely void or I suppose meaningless. First off, the allegations and now convictions, the window, if I'm not sorely mistaken here, was over the course of multiple years but had pretty much ended in 2023. Um, so to, to that, I would say I don't really know how you put the target on the current roster of players who are obviously very fucking good. Uh, completely blitzed Liverpool in this one.

Um, and, and I, and I listened to other podcasts and they're talking about, well, uh, Man City, you know, look at their bench compared to Liverpool's. And, you know, because they, they have, you know, financially doped and were able to— a lot of their squad, first off, is way past that window. Um, but if you really want to play that card, I'm gonna click on Liverpool right now and I'm gonna go to transfers. And I'm not— this isn't the point here, is not Man City didn't do anything wrong, because obviously they did. I just want to push back on the woe is me card that a lot of other fan bases seem to be pulling, Premier League fan bases.

Um, so Liverpool just paid on August 31st $150 million for Bradley Barkley. August 21st Uh, sorry, that was an outgoing transfer. Um, June, 46 million for Victor Munoz. We go back a little further, Jeremy Jacquet in February, 74 million. Um, and that is as far back as it'll let me go, but Florian Wirtz, they paid over 100 for.

They paid over 100 for Alexander Isak last summer. Uh, shitload for, uh, Jeremy Frimpong. Point being, every single Premier League team is flushed with ungodly amounts of cash. Yeah, so that's where I'm at. The example is Man City is being made the example of, it sounds like.

Uh, I will ask you this, uh, Jeremy Doku, was he— where did he come from? And, and obviously in this match, um, scored a goal. Yeah, I mean, he's been sort of a revelation. Yeah, he came from somewhere though. Yeah, so he was brought in, uh, in 2023 from Rennes in France, uh, and you might have seen him on the Belgium team in the World Cup, uh, where he was a pretty big uh, part of that squad.

But yeah, his first season or 2 was pretty quiet, and then he's really exploded the last couple years into being almost unplayable, as we saw here. Um, I don't know where you stand on the whole thing. I, I just— I felt like I wanted to come on here and say I'm pushing back on what seems to be the prevailing narrative which is that nothing Man City do now this season matters. I just don't buy into it. Yeah, I think we're gonna see a lot of that as we move forward.

We're gonna see a lot of the same types of fan-based issue with Man City. Right. The banners, the balloons. What was the banana? What's the banana thing?

Yeah, so this hails back to the '80s with Manchester City. And I'm not going to act like I knew this before Sunday, but I did a little more research after seeing it. Um, essentially there was a period, and not that long ago, where Man City were frankly not a very good club. They were languishing down in the 3rd division as recently as, uh, I believe it was the 2001 season. Um, and were in the championship in the 2000s.

And then until they had money, were really more of a mid-table Premier League team, more akin to like an Everton. Essentially, the Bananas are during the '80s when they were languishing down in the lower leagues. They had this player whose last name sort of sounded like banana. So they made a chant up about him. And did these inflatable banana things.

Well, what it became as more and more bad shit, uh, kept happening to Man City, like relegation down to the 3rd tier, um, in the '90s, they would just show up with bananas as sort of, uh, the fans, that is, uh, as sort of an act of defiance, as like whatever bad shit happens to this club we'll still be here, basically, which I think is kind of the point the away end was trying to make. What it ended up being was a pretty funny spectacle to me, um, especially you saw them at the beginning at Anfield, banners out the wazoo, sort of a holier-than-thou attitude from, from Liverpool, um, and boos and all of that good stuff, which lasted what, 20 minutes? Maybe, maybe. I mean, this, this match didn't really get hot until the second half. No.

Um, Doku to Haaland for the first goal for Man City in the 65th minute, and then quickly 68th, another Doku goal, 2-0 Man City. Uh, pretty sweet shot from him doing that. And then, uh, Cherki, Ryan Cherki in the 79th makes it a 3-0. Yeah, um, really Liverpool really didn't— I didn't see anything really. They had a lot of shots on goal.

Uh, they, they felt like controlled the match for the first 20-ish minutes. Yeah. And then really just fell off a cliff. Yeah. And I don't totally know why.

I think Man City has shown that they can sort of dominate a game when, when they want to in the Premier League so far this season. There's also 62nd minute, Ryan Gravenberch gets sent off for Liverpool with that red card, which to me was was really soft, I thought. And you could, you could feel the, the atmosphere change in Anfield at that point. And, and that was a really big wind out of their sails moment. And then Haaland does what Erling Haaland does and scores immediately after.

Yeah. And it was sort of a wheels fall off situation. Agreed. Um, Liverpool, a lot of injuries. Um, lot of injuries and can't really bring off even close to the same amount of talent from their bench that Man City can.

I also think they just have not hit on a lot of these huge signings. Florian Wirtz, it's his second season with Liverpool and still hasn't really ever impressed me. Bradley Barkley, their big $150 million man, Uh, was pretty much a ghost in this one. Um, so they're, they're having issues. They don't really have a forward that they can rely on right now due to injuries.

So Lewis Koumas got the start, 21-year-old Welshman. Um, anytime a guy is wearing number 67, it probably means he's an academy, a recent academy graduate, and doesn't have the tenure to pick a better number, um, and that was kind of a tell there. But yeah, I mean, frankly, with all of the charges impending, this Man City team is really fucking good. Yeah, and they're gonna continue to be good, uh, regardless of the impending doom that happens around them. I do want to talk, if you're good with moving on from Man City.

Yeah. My second team, Brentford, who strangely enough in 6 matches played sits in 4th place, but with only 2 wins and 4 draws, played Aston Villa this past Saturday and drew Aston Villa. Um, but yeah, I, I, I find that, and maybe you don't because we're early in the season here, but with just 2 wins and 4 draws, this team sits in 4th place. Um, I'm hoping that at some point I'll be able to actually watch a Brentford match. Most of the stuff that we're covering here has been really tight with the schedule because we only have a couple of days to get stuff in between F1 and the matches that we watch.

But yeah, I mean, what say you about the fact that this team sits in 4th place with just 2 wins? I'm— yeah, well, I think the 4 draws has more to do with their of just a really tough team to play. Um, that it's 4 draws with 10 points, it's not 4 draws with 4 points, you know what I mean? So, um, they're hard to beat, clearly. Um, looking through their fixtures, I mean, a 2-2 away draw to Aston Villa is nothing really to sneeze at, especially with a comeback there, uh, at the end.

Uh, they beat the belts, uh, off of beat the brakes off of Chelsea 3-0, tied with Bournemouth, hard-fought draw with Sunderland and Leeds. And, uh, we knew we covered on the first week of the season them destroying Tottenham 3-0. So I, I just think they've assembled a really nice squad, um, with a talismanic striker in Igor Thiago, who is someone they can rely on pretty decently to score goals, and they just are, are well coached. Keith Andrews, I like him a lot. Um, so they're just one of those teams that they're, they're well run, and, um, barring major injuries, you know, they're gonna be sniffing around those European spots all season, probably.

Fair enough. And then your second team, Hull, which sits currently in 8th place with 2 wins, 3 draws, and 1 loss. Uh, update us on how you feel about Hull. Yeah, so Hull City have sort of been the, the Cinderella story of the season so far. Um, I don't think anyone predicted them to have Uh, 9 points after 6 matches, sitting in 8th place in the table.

I think many people tipped them to finish 19th or 20th, and you know, this start has showed it's going to be a little harder than that to get rid of this Hull team, uh, this season. Uh, another, I think, a well-earned point against Everton, who are in 5th place and by their own right. Um, Hall opened up the scoring in the 48th minute.

Everton quickly respond in 20 minutes with 2 goals, but, um, Hall make a super sub with my guy, uh, Mohamed Belloumi, uh, Algerian right winger and on my fantasy team. He comes on in the, uh, let's see, that would be the 64th minute, and scores a goal in the 74th to take home a point for Hull City. Um, again, there's just a lot of fight in this team. You're not gonna watch a Hull City match and be, you know, awe-inspired by the way they play, or even point to a player and go, oh my God, is he amazing. It's more just they play so well as a cohesive unit.

Let's talk real quickly for new listeners about win, losses, and draws and how that point structure works. Just 2 seconds. Super easy. Um, 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, obviously 0 for a loss. Um, there's no playoffs in Europe, most European soccer, and for the sake of this podcast Um, so at the end of the season you play 38 matches.

Whoever has the most points wins. So, um, we talk a lot in U.S. sports about tying is like kissing your sister and all that. Not really the case at all in, in soccer. A well-earned draw is sometimes just as valuable as a win.

Yeah, and I think that's something that needs to be sort of remembered by newer fans of the sport is this is not US football. This is not— it's not quite the same. So as you said, a well-earned draw can be as good as a win in some cases. Yeah. And we have to remind the newer fan base that this game is more than just scoring the most points.

It's a little bit more difficult to get that goal.

I mean, that's, that was, that's the biggest challenge for people who come from United States football to this league is they might find it a bit boring, quote unquote, or maybe the pace isn't quite what they're used to. Well, but it's different from most any other US Big Four sport in that it's not stop-start. It's much more fluid, which can, I, I think, is misconstrued as being boring because there aren't as many explosive plays or big moments, I guess. It's a lot of small moments that then lead to one gigantic moment. Yeah, agreed.

So that's more, I think, where people who— especially pretty much every American is born with an inherent bias against soccer that you have to unlearn here. So Um, yeah, just enjoy the beautiful game that it is. Sure. And the more matches you watch, the more you'll understand how that works. But we just want to make sure that, uh, the folks that are tuning into this maybe for the first or second time, who may not be huge European football fans, understand how this works, and we will continue to sort of foster that as we move forward here in the podcast, right?

So a couple other interesting results from the Premier League before we move on. Uh, Man United and Tottenham, 1-1 draw in the toilet bowl there. Arsenal, 2-1 winners over Leeds, means they stay just 3 points behind Man City. Chelsea, big win over Bournemouth 5-1. Ipswich Town beats Fulham 2-1, and they're kind of flying so far this season, sitting in 10th on 9 points.

And then Coventry City earned their 2nd win of the season, now on 6 points, after beating Newcastle United 4-1 on Monday. I don't think anyone saw that one coming. So some shocker results. But let's go ahead. We'll put a bow on this episode with a brief foray into Scotland.

And we'll just start here because it knocks out sort of our flagship club on this podcast and my second team as Celtic traveled to Fir Park take on Motherwell. Remember when we last left off 3 weeks ago with the Celtic team, it was 2 straight losses to Rangers, one that knocked us out of the League Cup, so no chance of winning that this year, and a pretty terrible 3-1 loss in the Europa League against Hungarian side Ferencvaros. Um, which left a pretty bitter taste in our mouths heading into a very long international break. So really needed to see improvement from Celtic, or at least some signs of life. I, I think we got there in this one.

Yeah, I mean, here we sit, 7 wins, no draws, and a loss, uh, top of the Premiership table. Um, this was a pretty decent game to watch. Uh, Camilo Durán with a goal in the 9th minute. Um, sort of, sort of a dinger off the right post from what I can remember here. Uh, stoppage to half.

Um, Hugh to Nygren. Is it Hugh? Who, who, who, who came into the league kind of sprightly and then sort of is having a bit of a problem now? It's really done next to nothing. Yeah, since— yeah, we'll see.

Nice assist on this one. Nygren gets his contractually obligated 1 goal per game, it feels like, and then does nothing else. Um, this was a sort of ragtag Celtic lineup. No Carter Vickers, no Austin Trustee. So Dane Murray and Liam Scales bringing out the, the back line there.

We saw Hassim Hassan come on, uh, on the wing, and, uh, Chimera Mueka, who still hasn't found the back of the net in, in legal form. Oliver Sorensen and Jordan Nwatumba come on. Um, we would be remiss to not mention, after, uh, nearly 700 days, Jota is back on the fucking field for Celtic, who— nice— is, is sort of a cult hero for many Celtic fans, and definitely on this show. Really one of the first players that I remember having the show and watching and, and, and being just really great for Celtic, having a lot of explosive moments. And you saw it pretty much right away when he came onto the pitch.

He was just instantly better than Sebastian Tenecte, uh, more explosive, better passing all around. And he hadn't played for almost 2 years. I'm really looking forward to him sort of supplanting himself into this offense and, and making stuff happen. So we'll We'll hope for that in the future. Um, as you said, your second team Motherwell played Celtic.

Uh, that was a, a 2-0, uh, loss for Motherwell. Um, yeah, as for Motherwell, uh, just quickly, uh, really horrid run of form. They've lost 4 matches in a row and seem to have really, really fallen off the the wagon here. Um, remember they finished, uh, really well last year, 4th place I believe. And, and there were moments where they, they were talked about as maybe being title contenders last year, and that just has seemed to completely fall off for them.

So I don't know entirely what the deal is there. Maswanise, who was such a big part of their season last year, only came on in the 83rd, and by then it was mostly done. So yeah, so my second team, Kilmarnock, falls to Rangers 3-1 on Saturday. Yeah, um, and sadly sits in, I believe, 12th position in the table here. Uh, so yeah, um, hoping for the best, uh, praying for the worst.

Or is it hoping for the worst, praying for the best for Kilmarnock, who sits on 1 victory, 2 draws, and 5 losses? And you know, if this continues, then, uh, we're gonna possibly see potential relegation here for Achilles. We'll see. Uh, it brings some added perspective into the show as we are looking at maybe a relegation battle for them. I will say Rangers have pretty firmly turned around their season in such an awful, awful start to the year where they were knocked out of every European competition, um, and were you know, not very good to start their league season, a draw against Dundee United and then lost to Hibs.

Since then have won 6 in a row, including beating Celtic twice. Um, so they've been significantly improved since about the end of August. Um, and that seems to be continuing. Uh, so I think we're gonna see a pretty nice title race I think this year again. Meanwhile, don't count out Hearts here.

5-0 winners against St. Mirren over the weekend. Uh, Claudio Braga, Josh McPake, um, all getting on the scoresheet as well as a brace from Calvin Miller. And the hot start from St. Mirren has Very clearly cooled off, cooled off a bit. So indeed, just giving brief color on the table before we head out for the week. It is Celtics still on top.

They are nursing a slender 2-point lead, 21 points compared to Rangers' 19. In 3rd place, uh, just 3 points behind Rangers, it is Hearts. Dundee in 4th on 13 points after another win, and St. Johnstone rounds out the top 5 on 11 points after they took down Aberdeen this past weekend. All points towards a pretty big fixture this weekend coming Sunday to you at 10 AM in Scotland. Celtic Welcome Hearts in a rematch of last year's final day title decider.

We know how that went. Is Celtic gonna repeat that? Do Hearts get revenge? Find out next week, I guess. Yeah.

All right, so eclipsing the hour, I think we will, um, put a bow on this one and get going if you're good with that. Yep.

For executive producer Richard Tanaka, this has been Tackling the Chicane, copyright 2026. Studio 2520 uses Rode microphones and a RODECaster Pro II console. They don't pay us yet.

But maybe someday they will. Let's go, Guards! We'll see you guys next time. Thanks for listening.