Football Cliches

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker on the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: Diego Forlan as the most "tennis" footballer of modern times, some 8/10 football small talk on Coronation Street, the Premier League's ominous plans to tweet out VAR explanations in real time, the end of an era for the BBC and Garth Crooks, a superb fan-vs-player argument from non-league an...

Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Nick Miller on the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: new heights for the concept of "peak Watford", one last round-up of curious Olympic commentary, whether you can "crash out" of the Community Shield, a rusty opening Football League weekend for users of the language of football, the most perfect refereeing appointment in Football League history and...

Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Nick Miller on the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: Nick's unexpectedly gruelling journey to witness Jose Mourinho's managerial return, the continuing battle of the "knowledgeable" Olympic crowds, the most uncompromising coaches imaginable at a kids football camp, a highly-rated League One press officer and some more footballing road-sign inconsist...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker on the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: some gloriously harmonious Olympic football commentary, some FA Cup revenge 72 years in the making, Man City's kick-off-delaying shame and a definitive analysis of where Premier League teams proverbially store their pre-season minutes. Meanwhile, the panel enjoy some niche Olympic highlight...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker on the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: the moral implications of winning Most Improved Player two years in a row, the latest soap opera footballing small talk, a former England manager popping up in a 1980s US teen drama, the new Juventus away kit scraping the barrel for its inspiration and Richard Keys rolling back the years. M...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker on the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: whether you can "build a team around" a left-back, a data dive into a flippant newspaper line about Danny Drinkwater’s corner-taking, Steve Coogan's forthcoming role as Mick McCarthy in a film about the Roy Keane incident at the 2002 World Cup, an EFL shirt crisis and some more of society's...

The Football Clichés Quiz returns and the latest opposition for the Clichés team are the world football experts from The Sweeper podcast, whose focus is the furthest-flung corners of the footballing globe. The questions include semi-forgotten all-Welsh strikeforces, title-winning island clubs, Swansea defenders with unexpected royal lineage, countries who don’t have their own league, made-up Dutch...

Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker on the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: Alan Pardew reacting to the big US politics developments, fully media-trained MLS 14-year-olds, how much attention we should be paying to Olympic football, Nike's last ever Premier League match ball and the lineup for the worst Q&A evening in football history. Meanwhile, the panel decide how long it takes for "th...

Adam Hurrey, Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker entertain this month's listener entries for Mesut Haaland Dicks, as the Clichés faithful nominate their niche footballing fascinations and irritations. Among the selections are working out how embracing opposition players became friends, the mundane rise of the "squad arrivals" video, watching football in a bar on holiday, late substitutes getting t...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the final Euro 2024 Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: whether England's tournament failure was a "heartbreak" or "heartache", the Peak Montage moment of the pre-match coverage, the psychological pay-off of putting yourself through an opposition trophy lift, Chelsea's genre-revitalising marketing spiel for their new kit, a job...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare, David Walker and Nick Miller for the latest Euro 2024 Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: a cultural review of England 2 Netherlands 1 (from Talksport to NATO via spoon-benders, chess grandmasters and The Killers), the true fan anthem of the Euros summer, a questionable chant for an international match and where Ollie Watkins now sits on the Englan...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the latest Euro 2024 Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: an unexpected footballer's name pops up in the General Election polls, a radio commentator synchronising effortlessly with the crowd noise, a potential new twist in "penalties are a lottery" discourse, a cultural review of England's penalty shootout against Switzerland, wh...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the latest Euro 2024 Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: the Wimbledon tennis doing Wimbledon tennis things, a perfectly wrong football analogy on election day, the BBC's Cristiano Ronaldo penalty caption saga, how teams "make friends" at major tournaments, new Brighton manager Fabian Hurzeler gets the Mourinho treatment on day...

Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Nick Miller for the latest Euro 2024 Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: which player is at the front of the England clamour queue now, Jude Bellingham's self-referential goal celebration, the joy of Ally McCoist reacting to slow-motion replays, which Euros nations' capital-city streets are most likely to be "danced on", the transferrable football ski...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the latest Euro 2024 Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: the Stockholm syndrome of England at their laborious worst, Sir Geoff Hurst's silky-smooth product placement on Sky Sports News, one man's fantasy European competition for second-division clubs, and Keysey's inevitable mid-tournament solution for the Three Lions. Meanwhile...

Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Ali Maxwell for the latest Euro 2024 Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: the depths of Euros short-form video content, a curious commentator intonation for a full-back receiving a pass in their own half, a dramatic VAR development in Major League Soccer, why some England managers get referred to by their first names and Messi/Ronaldo sentiment reachin...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the latest Adjudication Panel of Euro 2024. The agenda includes: the inevitable keywords of the latest England group-stage non-event, some eerily good Euros predictions from the pod back in December, the rampant Commentator’s Curse of Euro 2024, whether Arda Guler’s wondergoal met the “a star is born” threshold, some classic Andy Tow...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the first Adjudication Panel of Euro 2024. The agenda includes: the (very predictable) reaction to England's laborious win over Serbia, Gabriel Clarke (sort of) gives his update on the mood in the Cliches podcast camp, which country are "the most Group C team ever", what makes a shot go "agonisingly wide" and more niche highlights fr...

On the eve of Euro 2024, Adam Hurrey, Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker are joined by Michael Cox to select a lineup of players most inextricably linked with the European Championship. The deliberations feature a strict Greeks and Czechs quota, the "Kopke vs Toldo" dilemma, a Silver Goal scorer in the heart of the defence, a dinker, a scooper and a disgraced former UEFA president in midfield, a...

Adam Hurrey is joined by Charlie Eccleshare and David Walker for the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: an alternative methodology for calculating England's "years of hurt", the latest a team can take the lead "inside X minutes", the scourge of midfielders being included among the "forwards" in international squad graphics, the obligatory Euro 2024 "dark horses" debate, the Jack Grealish/Hel...

Adam Hurrey, David Walker and Nick Miller entertain this month's listener entries for Mesut Haaland Dicks, as the Clichés faithful nominate their niche footballing fascinations and irritations. Among the selections are the "capo" (the one who conducts the Ultras chants with his back to the game), the joy of just kicking a football right up into the air as high as possible, clubs who have a generat...

Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and Nick Miller for the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: Adam Lallana squeezing in the phrase "football club" three times in just 6.8 seconds, Gareth Bale declaring himself the last piece of Real Madrid's mid-2010s jigsaw, a former Chelsea captain popping up in The Wire, un-highlights-able sports and a very brief history of England's pre-tournament war...

With the curtain now closed on the domestic season, Football Clichés takes another look at the podcast's very best moments of 2023/24. In the style of the bafflingly beloved Premier League Years, this review features: A protracted summer transfer saga, the Pure La Liga XI, the finer technicalities of “ghosting in”, the birth of quiz format Happy Hunting Grounds, Gary Neville's unexpected Squid Gam...

Adam Hurrey is joined by David Walker and James Maw for the Adjudication Panel. The agenda includes: Eddie Howe's trip to the set of Neighbours, a technical query on the Premier League's save of the season, a stunning Match of the Day coincidence, Gus Poyet's JFK secret revealed and some heavy-metal Keys & Gray. Meanwhile, the panel decide when a club is truly "established" in the Premier League a...

The Football Clichés Quiz returns and this month's opposition for the Clichés crew is Tayo Popoola, Mark G Smith and Stuart Laws who are the brains behind scripted football comedy podcast Dial F for Football. The colourful questions include a kit-manufacturer mystery, players who somehow never signed for West Ham, ludicrous La Liga nicknames, Steve McManaman's unique units of footballing measureme...