In this episode, the boys talk about Jeffrey Epstein and his shady dealings with members of congress, and whether or not they were part of the Deep State. They also discuss the CIA and whether they are using the scandal to distract us from the real issues at hand, which are the ones that matter most to the rest of us. And, of course, there's still time for a killer alien quiz! 5 Star Potential is a podcast by Popular Science. Hosted by , , and . Produced and Edited by and This episode was brought to you by Yes You Are, a production of Gimlet Media. Please consider pledging a small monthly subscription to Gimlet if you'd like to support the show and/or contribute to it in some other way. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.media/OurAdvertisers and use the promo code "UPLEVEL" at checkout to get 10% off your first pack! We'll be giving out a limited edition limited edition box of 10 boxes of 10 or more, priced at $99.99 each! This includes shipping, handling, postage, handling and handling, plus a free shipping and handling fee, and a free copy of the show's first issue of the book "Upfront" to be delivered to your local store. We hope you enjoy it! - we'll send you a review! If you do, tweet us your thoughts and we'll get back to you in the next episode! if you're looking for a place to review the book, we'll read it on the book and review it on next week! Thank you! in the comments! :) Timestamps: 1) 2) What do you think of Jeffrey Epstein? 3) Do you agree with Jeffrey Epstein's story? 4) What are your thoughts on it? 5) Which congressperson solicited donations? 6) What kind of donations did you think Jeffrey Epstein got? 7) Which politician did you get the most of Epstein's work? 8) How much money? 9) Is the CIA involved? 10) Is there a conspiracy? 11) Who was the deep state out there? 12) What would you like to see Jeffrey Epstein s list? 13) What's your favourite member of congressperson? 14) Who got the most powerful guy?
00:00:38.000In this video, you're going to see the future.
00:00:41.000**music** Our Lord God he don't make trash he makes awakening wonders and that's what we're being joined by now in the form of yes you are we are here together it surely must be friday this is what we call it friday yeah that's it now you've done well that's my favorite one yeah that's my favorite one of the days all the different ones they're all just made up though i always come to you when i want to know what day of the week it is ask me yeah i'm like what day of the week is it today
00:01:16.000Ask me if NATO vetoed a Ukraine peace deal, and how did the US find an extra 6, 6, 6 billion.
00:02:04.000What I think was interesting about Epstein is it's comparable to the Black Rock story that we did the other day.
00:02:10.000We know already, don't we, that this kind of corruption goes on and then a story like this breaks and it merely confirms what we already reckon.
00:02:19.000If you're watching this on YouTube, we're only going to be here for about, I don't know, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, something like that, because we're just actually a bit busy at the moment.
00:02:26.000And also, we do our broadcasting exclusively on Rumble.
00:02:30.000Because like RFK, we recognize that free speech ain't free if you ain't willing to fight for it.
00:03:09.000Hey, if you think we weren't about to mention killer aliens, you're mistaken, because we're going to be doing a deep presentation on those killer aliens.
00:03:16.000You lot, do you think it's a distraction?
00:03:18.000Do you think the CIA are meddling with us?
00:03:20.000Because a lot of our sources, and we've got good sources actually, say that the CIA, the deep state, don't want this stuff coming out, and that it's epochal, and it's seismic, and it's paradigm shifting.
00:03:30.000So if you think that they're just using this stuff as a distraction from I don't know.
00:05:45.000I believe in your right to disagree with me.
00:05:47.000I believe in our right to find new mutual systems of consensual governance.
00:05:53.000What I don't believe in is calling Matt Taibbi and Schellenberger a couple of flyby nights and charlatans, which any of you that attended the show last night will know they simply are not and could not be.
00:06:03.000And then, knowing that you yourself have solicited donations from Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates' former buddy, We can't even tell you what Epstein did on YouTube, because we would get demonetized, but you know, because you're an awakened wonder, aren't you?
00:06:19.000Also, you know, she was talking about Mark Tovey and Michael Schellenberg as releasing cherry-picked out-of-context emails, and basically, as you say, calling them so-called journalists, when she essentially is a lie, is a lying, she is lying.
00:06:42.000But she actually did, because we've got emails that have come through this case of JP Morgan versus the Virgin Islands, which is going on at the moment.
00:07:50.000Because I'll tell you this, this is a bit of news that we're not supposed to report, but we will because we love you, because we respect you, because we believe in your ability to discern truth from fiction, take a bit of a joke, have a laugh, recreate, create new systems of government, thank the old order for establishing commercialism, commodification, centralised media and government models, say your time is done now, we're going to decentralise, we're going to end this gargantuan experiment, this gigantist model that's gone out of control, this tumorous, horrible, Metastasization of our value system that you have undertaken.
00:08:45.000We already know the situation with like Boris Johnson that was reported in Ukrainian newspaper that Boris Johnson went over in April 2022 to discourage Ukraine from going ahead with its peace deal.
00:08:54.000So Putin's not saying anything that is like totally we haven't heard about before.
00:09:22.000But also, do you think he did have a peace deal and that the West scuppered it?
00:09:25.000But let me ask you this simple question.
00:09:27.000What possible motivation could Western governments and their commercial sponsors in the military-industrial complex have for prolonging a war?
00:09:38.000It's not like there's recently been a war in Afghanistan that went on for ages and ages and ages and basically achieved nothing and that we now know was basically an attempt to siphon taxpayer monies into the hands of the military-industrial complex.
00:09:51.000Like, when we're talking about surveillance and all that stuff, and we're saying how the deep state has turned in on itself like a souffle made of corruption, what we often say is that the reason it's done that is because they've solved the problem of terrorism, right?
00:10:05.000They've solved terrorism now, because you don't hear about it, do you?
00:10:47.000Once we got rid of all of our data, once that was all bundled up by commercial enterprises, then sold back to the Deep State, it's another story we're going to be bringing you soon.
00:10:55.000It's going to knock your knickers down, mate, because what we found out is that the Deep State are using taxpayer dollars to acquire from commercial entities your private information.
00:11:05.000But look, we've got so much to tell you, it's difficult, Gal, honestly.
00:12:05.000It's from the government of our country, the UK.
00:12:08.000They've said they're sorry for everything they've done up to now, and the whole way they behaved during Partygate, you know, where they held parties during the coronavirus pandemic while locking us up and everything.
00:12:17.000And they've acknowledged also that the opposition won't be meaningfully better, so here they've said, I can run the country, because I'm a nice lad.
00:12:24.000So that bit highlighted in green, that says, that's you can help.
00:13:05.000And that gives me... Yeah, that's why I know all about this.
00:13:08.000Well, yeah, I mean, this is all going on, you know, at a time when Biden says Putin's threat of tactical nuclear weapons is real, is when Putin's sending nuclear weapons over to Belarus, at the same time the US is sending depleted uranium to Ukraine.
00:13:22.000Depleted uranium is essentially what I think they call nuclear bombs, or Putin's called that.
00:13:26.000So this is all, Jen Stoltenberg of NATO has said that Russia have to lose to send a message to China, so at this point we're not even talking about this being about Ukraine anymore, it's about sending a message to China.
00:13:38.000Everything continues to escalate in the wrong direction.
00:14:00.000That is the wrong message all over the place, isn't it?
00:14:02.000Unless it's a mirror, and he's actually in the room with him.
00:14:05.000And he's over there going, listen, Joe... When you think of that Russiagate nonsense, where they said that... Well, I can't say this properly while we're still on YouTube, that Trump got wassnamed on by a couple of Russian wassnames.
00:14:22.000OK, listen, we're going to get into this story about the Pentagon's accounting errors and a $6.2 billion bonus has been found for a bit more bonus war over there between Ukraine and Russia.
00:14:35.000Later on in the show, we're going to be... Talking about killer aliens?
00:14:47.000Killer aliens it is for us, and also we will cover this Pentagon story.
00:14:49.000So listen, if you're watching us on YouTube, click that link in the description right now.
00:14:53.000If you're watching us on Rumble, press the red button on your screen and give us a bloody good rumbling while joining our locals community, which I believe was invented by Dave Rubin.
00:15:54.000Isn't it true, or have I invented this in my admittedly magnificent mind, that Mexican drug cartels were found in possession of some weaponry that was intended for use in Ukraine?
00:16:06.000Well, someone's got to get these people an A to Z.
00:16:08.000Because I tell you now, Ukraine and Mexico, they're in completely opposite directions.
00:16:12.000Yeah, it's almost like the Pentagon and the military-industrial complex don't really care where those weapons end up.
00:17:01.000Have you noticed that they never find 6.2 billion dollars and say, oh, do you know what we can do?
00:17:05.000We can help the most vulnerable people in society.
00:17:07.000We can create some new infrastructure.
00:17:08.000We can change the world, make a better America for one another.
00:17:12.000Immediately or alternatively we could send more weapons ostensibly to Ukraine, but they
00:17:16.000do tend to end up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels.
00:17:19.000At least that has already happened once.
00:17:21.000Listen, it's high time we started to examine the mystery of beyond.
00:17:26.000Extra dimensional entities move among us.
00:17:30.000Some claim that they have diplomatic relationships with the most powerful governments on our planet.
00:17:35.000Ludicrous and outrageous suggestions have been made that many of you believe, let me know in the chat if you believe this, press the red button, join us on Locals, are simply another distraction from important stories i.e.
00:17:46.000the corruption, the high-level corruption within the Biden administration, And the fact that Trump is being unduly hounded to take him out of the race.
00:17:53.000You know over here on our channel, we believe that there is no systemic solution using those hollowed out entities that are the bipartisan participants.
00:18:01.000But nevertheless, we're very interested in your views.
00:18:05.000And we're very interested in murderous aliens from another dimension.
00:18:09.000I mean, some people watching this don't like it when people cross the border from Mexico.
00:18:13.000How are they going to like it when people turn out from Venus and start killing people?
00:18:18.000We are going to need better ones, because they've got vaporizers and stuff.
00:18:29.000One of the things you were suggesting last night though, Gareth, when we were... Well, I shouldn't have done that.
00:18:33.000So you've actually lowered the tone of a perfectly good conversation with Schellenberger, and Taibi will be broadcasting that on this channel.
00:18:41.000But now, it's time for us to take a deeper look at an issue that's important to you, psychologically, ontologically, spiritually, and mentally.
00:19:15.000The revelations keep rolling out from David Grush.
00:19:18.000The whistleblower has revealed that he's heard about extraterrestrial craft and he's even heard that extra-dimensional or terrestrial beings are murdering people.
00:19:26.000We can rely on our friend from the mainstream media to ask questions about this in a personal, provocative and peculiarly eerie way.
00:19:35.000The common interpretation from some commentators is that There is a non-human species and it's incredibly benevolently well disposed to the human race.
00:19:46.000Yeah, and I think the logical fallacy there is because they're advanced, they're kind.
00:19:52.000We'll never really understand full intent in that because we're not them, whatever them is, or are.
00:20:01.000But I think what appears to be malevolent activity has happened.
00:20:06.000Okay, so for the first time we're considering the ethics and morality and perspective of extraterrestrials.
00:20:17.000Or are they Sigourney Weaver gut-wrenching extraterrestrials?
00:20:23.000Based on not only nuclear site probing activities, witness testimony, I think at least if we look at it through a humanistic lens, it does appear negative, at least to us.
00:20:39.000Let's not start worrying about it on the level of, oh no, they might be coming to get us.
00:20:42.000I've been told that there have been attempts to bring down craft.
00:20:49.000That we've acted offensively against non-human craft.
00:20:53.000There have been instances, and there are certain techniques.
00:20:57.000What a ridiculous approach to take to extraterrestrial life if you encounter a technology that indicates an advanced civilization.
00:21:04.000To fire a missile at it seems like a bloody ridiculous thing to do.
00:21:08.000Like, the assumption is, well, this means war.
00:21:10.000Surely we should be approaching this open-mindedly, open-heartedly.
00:21:14.000But somewhat sceptically, because we know that the mainstream media and government often put out information that's intended to distract us and confuse us, particularly a time where the Biden administration seems like it's in particular trouble, when Trump is being pursued in peculiar ways, when trust in government and all of our institutions is waning, and when it seems like our systems are beginning to quake and shake and fall apart.
00:21:35.000When even people at the extremes of the cultural argument are surely beginning to recognise that it's the establishment itself that's the cause of the problem, not the people that they supposedly oppose.
00:21:49.000Or killed by a non-human intelligence.
00:21:52.000Now listen, I'm asking you this as a friend.
00:21:55.000Did those aliens touch you on your dick or your arse?
00:21:59.000Look, we're talking about extraterrestrials, but we're talking about more than that, aren't we?
00:22:03.000While I can't get into the specifics, because that would reveal certain US classified operations, I was briefed by a few individuals on the program that there were malevolent events like that.
00:22:17.000I came here in good faith to talk about extraterrestrials.
00:22:20.000It takes a lot to shake me but you've shaken me to the core.
00:22:23.000I didn't realise you were going to make me feel this way.
00:22:25.000People have just heard you say non-humans May well have murdered human beings.
00:22:34.000It's also funny to think of it as a murder when it's an extraterrestrial because he can't have the motivations.
00:22:39.000Did that extraterrestrial murder you because it wanted your watch or because it was jealous that you was looking at its girlfriend?
00:22:45.000It's like beyond the framing of reality that we have.
00:22:49.000That seems to be the case at one point, yeah.
00:22:52.000Grush says the craft may not be traveling through space as we understand it.
00:22:58.000It is a well-established fact, at least mathematically and based on empirical observation and analysis, that there most likely are physical additional spatial dimensions.
00:23:10.000If you're a person that's a nerd about UFOs and extraterrestrials, you'll have heard about some of these theories, the ability to warp and bend and change space, and ideas that exist purely in the realm of the theoretical ideas of Bohm and Planck and all of the great Copenhagen physicists seemingly in practice with these extraterrestrial vehicles.
00:23:27.000There's so many ways to approach a story like this.
00:23:29.000What are the connotations for the way that we use energy?
00:23:32.000What are the connotations for the way we understand reality?
00:23:34.000What about morality, the way we organize our systems?
00:23:37.000And the interviewer as well wants to know how Sexy these aliens are, and more importantly how sexy you are, David.
00:23:43.000You could imagine on 4 and 5D space where what we experience as linear time ends up being a physical dimension in higher dimensional space where if you were living there you could translate across what we perceive as a linear flow.
00:23:58.000So there is a possibility that, and this is a theory here, I'm not saying this is 100% the case, but It could be that this is not necessarily extraterrestrial and it's actually coming from a higher dimensional physical space that might be co-located, you know, right here.
00:24:19.000The one thing I like about this story is it introduces us to ideas and concepts that challenge the way we look at reality ordinarily and makes it seem ridiculous that we would continue with punitive economic models and martial militaristic outlooks when people can bend time
00:24:36.000and space and travel between dimensions.
00:24:38.000When people talk about stuff that might seem a bit tangential and new age,
00:24:42.000like meditation, reflection, contemplation, changing the way you view reality,
00:24:46.000altering your obsessive nature with the self, stories like this, for me, assist me on that journey.
00:24:51.000I think, why am I so obsessed with what I want and what I don't want, and my opinions, when I'm clearly operating in a tiny cube of potential realities?
00:25:08.000But I also have always believed that there is extraterrestrial life, and I've always believed that the government are in contact with them, and I've always believed that that information is concealed, because the minute you accept it, you have a kind of spiritual experience.
00:25:21.000What I mean by that is your inner life alters when you accept that, oh well, life's just life, you just get on with it, you're born, you live, you die, death and taxes, that's what's unavoidable.
00:25:30.000No, space and time and the most basic assumptions of the way that we live are all up for question.
00:25:36.000And if they're up for question, then everything's up for question.
00:25:38.000Why would you spend your time worrying about whether the Democrats are better than the Republicans or whether this way of living is better than that way of living?
00:25:44.000Plainly, you've got to arrive at a broader More open perspective, a more open-hearted understanding of human life.
00:25:51.000Our role in the universe has just changed.
00:25:53.000Maybe that's why people challenge the ideas of someone like Graham Hancock so strongly, because if you start questioning the lineage and heritage of our species, you undermine the assumed narratives that are used to control the way we live today.
00:26:06.000We're the apex of all that's possible.
00:26:08.000Well, we'll consider some of your ideas, but for now, let's just trust the experts.
00:26:12.000Look at what happens when we trust the experts.
00:26:14.000Look at how the experts have lied in the last few years.
00:26:17.000Look at how certain experts have been ignored in the last few years.
00:26:20.000Now bring to bear upon all that we've understood in the last three years that now, for whatever reason, it's becoming more prevalent in our news cycle that we're not alone in the universe.
00:26:29.000For me, this seems like an end times move.
00:26:32.000This seems like the kind of information you release when you're running out of ideas, when you recognize that there are challenges around resources, challenges around the population, whether you think it's too big or whether you think it's too small.
00:26:43.000We've heard both of those arguments here.
00:26:45.000Whether you need to reorganize your understanding of national sovereignty, your And what does it indicate more broadly, philosophically?
00:26:50.000All of these things now are entering into some cyclone, some cauldron where we have
00:27:11.000And what does it indicate more broadly, philosophically?
00:27:14.000This is from Daniel Pinchbeck's sub-stack on the subject.
00:27:17.000Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup explores the dreamlike nature of the world in Why Materialism
00:27:22.000is Baloney, The Idea of the World and Other Works.
00:27:25.000Kastrup proposes that consciousness is the ontological primitive, that everything we experience occurs within consciousness, and that we we ourselves are temporarily disassociated alters of this
00:27:35.000instinctive, unified field of sentient awareness, which in a sense dreams us into
00:27:40.000manifestation in order to experience itself from different angles and in many different ways.
00:27:45.000The modern history of the UFO ET phenomenon is particularly dreamlike and eerie. For Patrick
00:27:50.000Harper, the world of UFOs and crop circles, as well as the thousands of accounts of strangely
00:27:55.000detached aliens who perform frightening abductions and often communicate with their victims in
00:28:00.000nonsensical riddles is an expression of the demonic otherworld.
00:28:04.000The trickster likes to express itself outside of our limited conceptual categories of thought, breaking apart the distinctions we try to hold between real and fake, physical and imaginary.
00:28:13.000The UAPET phenomenon is inherently subversive and liminal.
00:28:17.000Rife with paradoxes and contradictions, it stubbornly wishes to remain on the margins.
00:28:22.000Most people are not able to hold their attention on it to take it seriously for very long.
00:28:26.000There is something about it that continually slips away from one's grasp, one's attention, even when you try to focus on it.
00:28:32.000It's like the black spot in your gaze after you look at the sun for too long.
00:28:35.000You have to look away from this spot to see it, but it immediately starts moving away as you start to track it.
00:28:40.000Have we made agreements with non-human intelligences?
00:28:46.000That's the kind of information I really hope national leadership is able to get to the bottom of.
00:29:14.000It has to be incorporated into our mythology.
00:29:16.000What I believe is that this is an invitation to start considering the real nature of reality and the limitations of our understanding of reality and the potential that the way that we'll change the world, which is clearly what needs to happen now, the way that we'll reorganize our power structures, the way that we'll reorganize communication, the way that we'll get rid of tired government models that want to surveil and censor and and control and continue with sort of weird feudalist ideas
00:29:40.000from the medieval times, want to perpetuate wars, want to perpetuate control, is by
00:29:44.000recognizing this is a small finite rock in limitless space. The way that we see reality
00:29:50.000is tied to our personal and spatial history and our personal and subjective experience.
00:29:55.000There are new ways of regarding reality now. Consciousness itself, the fact that you're
00:30:00.000able to watch this and understand it, the fact that you know what the experience of being you is
00:30:04.000in a way that no one else will ever understand, has to have some value in the way that we
00:30:09.000conduct our personal lives and the way we organize our political lives.
00:30:13.000There's no point in us just marching on, trudging on, pretending that we still live in a time when it isn't possible to organize things differently.
00:30:20.000And every time we have to consider the possibility that there are intergalactic agreements, life elsewhere, different types of species, different ways of understanding time, different ways of understanding space, the model starts to shake a little more.
00:30:32.000It starts to seem more and more implausible that the type of decision you're reduced to making is whether or not to buy Bud Light or whether or not to vote for the Democrat Party.
00:30:40.000It all is exposed as a little bit ridiculous, isn't it?
00:30:43.000Are there agreements between non-human intelligences and the American government?
00:31:55.000Do you see this as connected to the emergence of RFK, to the new conversation around politics, the breaking down of our systems of trust in government and media?
00:32:04.000Do you see this as the paradigm shift that we've been waiting for?
00:32:07.000Or do you see this as yet another distraction?
00:32:42.000Hello and welcome to a very special edition of Football is Nice with me, Russell Brand.
00:32:48.000Today I've dispatched with Hull's favourite son, Gareth Roy, in favour of British entrepreneur, broadcaster, author, iconoclast and disruptor, Simon Jordan, who by the age of 32 had built a company from nothing.
00:33:02.000He sold it for $95 million, bought Crystal Palace Football Club, which is a type of football team almost In London, he's the best-selling author of Be Careful What You Wish For, now co-host of The Daily Show on Talk Sport in the UK, which I've had the great privilege of appearing on, where his opinions, views, willingness to confront the establishment and ordinary platitudinous orthodoxy has bought him legions of fans, many people calling him a kind of peroxide
00:34:01.000So I was, the reasons why people are sitting there gawping at their phones and doing nothing else besides sitting in their mum's bedrooms with their pants around their ankles sending out rude messages over cyber optics is because of people like me.
00:34:12.000As I voyaged out here into the country I saw a little signpost saying Medieval Jousting.
00:34:18.000I assume that's not a metaphor for what I'm about to experience is it?
00:34:22.000We're so deeply ensconced in rural Britain that Medieval Jousting is the frontier of entertainment here, the apex.
00:34:30.000That's what we do out in the... It's an interesting little setup.
00:34:33.000As I came wandering up here and saw the studio I thought it was Get a bit more on mic, it ain't as good as your radio.
00:34:38.000A little bit like, I expect it's sort of Felicity Kendall come bowling out from the good life and get mugged by Richard Bryars on the way in.
00:34:45.000You could get mugged by a cosy sitcom.
00:35:08.000Which ain't... That's a rare treat, because I've always been someone who divides opinions.
00:35:15.000I've accepted that, and as part of Because if you're dividing opinions, it means you're moving across echo chambers, moving into different spaces where people can relate or disagree in equal measure.
00:35:29.000Marmite, for those of you watching this in the United States of America, is a disgusting yeast-based paste that people... That you get to smear.
00:35:45.000America, they care about Australia even less than they care... There was a brief moment with Paul Hogan, who you're not dissimilar to, let's face it.
00:36:49.000Or, yeah, a cross between Catweasel, which the American audience will get no relevance to, Catweasel and Worzel Gummidge.
00:36:54.000But you can imagine rocking into the ballrooms of Premier League football clubs at the average age of a chairman being about 65, and that comes wandering through the door.
00:37:01.000It must have been a wonderful greeting that I got.
00:37:03.000Because you would have been talking to, like, sort of, Ken Bates!
00:37:21.000I don't know about global corporate entity, but a global entertainment opportunity, which will then maybe morph, as you suggest.
00:37:27.000Why do you think that is an important distinction?
00:37:30.000Because I think that your propensity to want to make everything about some corporate elitism isn't necessarily as prevalent in football as it is in other sectors, but there is an element of it, and we can perhaps kick that around in our discussions, but I'm not entirely sure that your little revolution that you want to go on sometimes is necessarily as prevalent in football as you'd like it to be.
00:37:48.000Where do you think the game is heading when we have more and more state ownership or de facto state ownerships of top flight clubs?
00:37:56.000Do you not think that it is precisely the type of corporate gigantism that I'm describing elsewhere?
00:38:02.000Particularly when contrasted to the time where a kid from South London with nothing but a blonde bob and a dream could march into Sellyhurst Road and start telling Mark Bright what to do!
00:38:21.000But that's the world that we wanted to create.
00:38:23.000Football was no different from any other parts of society that's susceptible to globalism and globalization and the opportunities that it brings because it's such a hook, a conduit, an anchor for so many different things that as much as I don't like it and the idea of nation states The subterfuge of people suggesting that the acquisitions of clubs like Newcastle United aren't nation states because they've got sovereign wealth funds that ultimately fund nation states needs to be debated.
00:38:55.000But if you look at recent terms, if you look in America, they don't allow that sort of acquisition of what people would consider to be Societal and community assets ie sports clubs.
00:40:10.000There's an arm's-length relationship between Mohammed bin Salman, who's the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and this sovereign wealth fund whose sole purpose in life is to advance the financial benefits for the nation is not a nation state yet you find out in another realm in america that live golf which is funded by pif has made the case that it is a nation state yeah so it's interesting isn't it yeah there's a lot of things i want to pick up on simon and what you tell me mate firstly the pif have taken over four domestic league clubs over there in saudi arabia making them some national assets you'll be aware that's how they work doesn't
00:40:46.000Is it mate? The moment a business in Saudi Arabia becomes successful, what happens is the state requisitions it.
00:40:52.000I see. That's how they work. And with the acquisition, the de facto acquisition of a club like
00:40:58.000Newcastle and with the you know the potential for United to become owned perhaps in a comparable
00:41:02.000way by Qatar with City already owned by Abu Dhabi and this for me isn't about the geographic location
00:41:08.000of the you know the fact that they're all Middle East and then East because I wonder what the
00:41:12.000distinction is between state ownership and corporate ownership when it's a gigantic
00:41:16.000corporation like you know FSG or comparable like entities.
00:41:21.000But one has a commercial agenda the other has an influence agenda.
00:41:24.000And one is slightly more different than the other, because if you're looking at the Middle Eastern guys, and neither one of us are sitting here from a xenophobic position, we're just questioning the validity and the motivation and the methodology being deployed.
00:41:35.000And so you look at someone like them, and I have no objection to anybody trying to advance their society, anybody being able to participate in anything like sport, because we don't have a God-given right in Europe or North America to suggest that we own sports and sports can't evolve.
00:41:51.000But when they're being used as a vehicle some would say for sports washing to legitimize their their their regimes through parts of the world that don't accept them or to go to your point to advance the industrial opportunity because they want to turn away from having to be sort of funded by the only thing they can be funded by which is underneath the sand which is oil and turn it into A hub or a commercial vehicle for different opportunities.
00:42:16.000So that goes to your narrative about the fact there's a corporate agenda behind it rather than just an acceptance of embracing a different opportunity for a different part of the world to compete.
00:42:25.000And whilst it's clear from your description that one of those propositions is potentially more nefarious and more vast, my perspective is a romantic one Simon and it's based on the, this is something I really would It's the idea that somehow football still encompasses a sense of deep community connection.
00:42:45.000People feel like they own their football clubs, that they love their football clubs, and that football can present us with these moments of incredible romance, whether it's something as potentially trivial but yet beautiful as David Moyes giving his medal to his father after West Ham won the most important European Cup recently, becoming champions of Europe, the most important of the trophies available.
00:43:07.000Uh, like, uh, what I suppose I'm saying is, is that it feels to me that even though a Super League was mooted, then rebutted because of fan outrage a little while ago, that if we see this kind of corporatism continue, does it become inevitable that the globalization of the game will eventually lead- Brace the Lynx.
00:43:25.000Breaks the links between community, community values.
00:43:28.000And like that, the next step of that dislocation will become games being played elsewhere, franchises being moved around as we see in the United States of America with their football team and pocket teams or whatever.
00:43:37.000And like, at what point did it stop being the thing that presumably motivated you?
00:43:43.000Because I bet for you, why did you buy Palace and not Millwall or Fulham?
00:43:47.000Presumably it's a romantic connection to your father.
00:43:50.000Yeah, my father father played for the Mugger but I'd been brought in up a
00:43:53.000hundred yards away from the stadium and it was the club that I wanted to own.
00:43:55.000And also Russell, it's because I saw a commercial opportunity because you know
00:44:02.000nobody goes into football, no matter how philanthropic they feel about it, to lose
00:44:06.000money. There will always be an end game whether it's your exit strategy that
00:44:09.000gets you back the money you've invested and maybe take some money out of it for
00:44:12.000you and if you've done well and everyone else has done well as a result of it and
00:44:15.000the club has prospered there's nothing wrong with that.
00:44:17.000There's nothing wrong with people making money from football.
00:44:18.000No one seems to have a problem with football players or managers or agents getting paid a king's fortune.
00:44:22.000Anyone moots the idea that someone that actually owns a football club should get some money out of it, they should be flogged at dawn.
00:44:28.000But the notion that you're advancing is that we are beginning to move into a territory where you're taking away the grassroots and the values of a football club that was built from years gone past when the factory workers used to turn out at one o'clock in the afternoon and three o'clock kickoff times are put there to be able to meet the expectations of the people that wanted to watch football.
00:44:46.000And then you've got the other side of the argument, which is the romantic side against the reality of what fans actually want to see football become.
00:45:07.000Do you want to have the earthy football club that Bob Lord once presided over in 1960s in Burnley when he was the town mill baron and everyone went to him with their cloth caps to watch the football team?
00:45:18.000Or do you want this wonderful, dynamic, gold dust orientated, 360 degree, 7 day a week, 24 hour access to sport?
00:45:27.000I lived in America for 2 or 3 years and the tribalism, albeit it exists, it's not steeped quite so much in the culture and society of Western Europe in terms of specifically England where you've got a football club.
00:45:44.000A town often thrives and sometimes survives by the very nature of having a successful football club
00:45:50.000into it because it reflects aspiration, it brings commerce in there, it brings people coming in to
00:45:55.000spend money in that town because the team's doing well or not doing so well and obviously
00:45:59.000the knock-on effects of that have a diametrically opposed effect. But there is this
00:46:04.000I've often thought, and I would disappear into your sort of romantic, saccharine, sentimental world, of we should have a blue, you know, the blue plaques that we have celebrating Grade II listed buildings above a football stadium, suggesting that these things need to be governed by a different set of parameters.
00:46:20.000But, when you start flying players around the world in private jets to get their toenails clipped, and you start paying people £500,000 a week, the dynamics change.
00:46:30.000And it's about trying to manage the evolution alongside the aspiration, alongside the reality of what people see it to be.
00:46:37.000I don't think anyone, I'm sure some people would, but the argument I'm advancing is not that there's anything with enlightened self-interest, a young man acquiring Crystal Palace both out of a sentimental attachment to the club and reverence perhaps for his father, love of the game, natural love of football.
00:47:16.000You should own the entire Premier League.
00:47:19.000So what I'm saying, right, is, is there a point where the convergence of these two ideas,
00:47:25.000one idealistic and about a love of the game and...
00:47:29.000And just the basic way that the free market operates to turn a profit from a business becomes so sort of capsized, so overtly metastasized that you can no longer discern the original community romantic connection.
00:47:44.000At one point, like we experienced during the COVID period where fans weren't present and the economic model still works, but does the ideological model still work?
00:47:54.000The televisuality it did was because what you saw was this enormous rush to watch television and it's enormous appreciation.
00:48:00.000Ironically how important fans were and the moment they get back in the grounds is how can we control them?
00:48:05.000Don't let them go on the pitches and celebrate with the players and ultimately players should be distanced from actually even engaging with the fans.
00:48:10.000So there's this juxtapose of actually how football views what I consider to be the most valuable asset that it's got which is the people to watch it.
00:48:18.000Yeah, and that in a sense we don't watch it just passively, we participate in it.
00:48:24.000And the thing that I'm sort of circling around is at what point does this process of sanitization that we see elsewhere in culture, commodification that we see elsewhere in culture, corporatization, where in a sense the product, you know, if we're going to call No longer has its original value.
00:48:41.000At what point do we say, shouldn't we intervene?
00:48:45.000Because we can see where this is heading.
00:48:48.000This is heading to a global Super League where games are played in the state of the highest bidder, where it don't matter if you're Luton or whatever top-flight franchise you are, you can be uprooted and planted wherever.
00:49:02.000And what I suppose I still feel in football, Is it because it is a vehicle for community is a vehicle for sort of a version of tribalism that's safe.
00:49:12.000It's a vehicle for romanticism, heroes, etc.
00:49:15.000But it's also a way of plotting the way that the culture is changing and in a way that I think requires regulation.
00:49:22.000And yet when we spoke before you talk about the player, you know, salary caps and all you know, I'll yield that I'm not bothered in a way.
00:49:27.000You can't regulate emotional relationships, can you?
00:49:29.000You can't regulate the way people perceive the value that they attach to something which, you know, despite Bill Shankly's, you know, observations about football not being life and death, it's more important than that.
00:49:39.000People will engage with sport the way that they want to and there's one thing you can't do is control that.
00:49:45.000The product itself, and the uniqueness certainly of the English game, is very different than any other part of the world, even other European countries.
00:50:50.000That's why there's an element of cynicism about the Man City model because what they've
00:50:53.000done is precisely what you advocate for which is recognizing the community.
00:50:56.000So they've gone in and they've regenerated the community alongside the football club.
00:50:59.000The football club's been the hook and they spent lots of money in Moss Side and regenerated this and made valuable parts of the community feel more valid in terms of the investment into the structure and everyone goes how wonderful that is.
00:51:11.000But the objective behind that is not because Sheikh Mansour wanted to wander around Moss Side.
00:51:15.000It's because there's a vehicle here which indeed gives you legitimacy and validity and builds the relationships that they want to have by utilizing sports clubs.
00:51:36.000In terms of, look, let's look at it, let's look at the reality of what things can become, what things should become, and what they will become, and try and find a hybrid of the three.
00:51:44.000Because I feel that the biggest obstacle, the only way to prevent this globalised model, where it will impact the fans' emotional connections with clubs, because I think ultimately what will happen, and we witnessed a touch of this... The fans where?
00:51:58.000The indigenous to the location or this global audience that's now being brought around the world to see football in this country?
00:52:05.000Because I would say a less cynical model would be to build grassroots clubs in all these various territories so there is a geographical connection between the fans that love the game.
00:52:18.000You've got 92 clubs occupying a very small country and you've got overpopulation in certain parts of the country in terms of football clubs.
00:52:24.000Most parts of the country are represented.
00:52:47.000Well, you've got no basis for that fear.
00:52:49.000Well, I have got bases because only 14 Premier League clubs would need to vote for something like that and we're approaching that number where we're going to have comparable intentions.
00:53:00.000Explain to me the logic of XYZ club moving from XYZ location to another one.
00:53:09.000Okay, well give me an example of what that looks like.
00:53:11.000Well, because there are these new emergent models, for example, it would be unthinkable a little while ago for the MLS to participate in the funding of the Messi transfer in the way that they did.
00:53:21.000The league itself, commercial sponsors and the club come together to acquire a player because they all acknowledge that the benefits will be spread.
00:53:39.000The MLS model isn't particularly working, is it?
00:53:41.000It's working for the owners, but it's not working for the sport.
00:53:43.000And that's the only people it needs to work for, is the owners.
00:53:45.000That's why, in fact, the argument that I am trying to undergird here, Simon, is that if we came close to creating a Super League, it didn't work because the fans bought it.
00:53:54.000They're obviously not going to go away, as I've heard you say on the radio.
00:53:56.000It didn't work because there wasn't enough money put up by JP Morgan.
00:53:58.000But they'll refine it, and they'll find ways to make it work.
00:54:01.000But did you think there was anything wrong with that, then?
00:54:04.000I do, mate, because I think that... Are you happy with your team playing in Europe?
00:54:13.000This is set in a broader cultural framework.
00:54:17.000You're going to have to let me explain this.
00:54:18.000Don't interrupt because I'm interested in hearing from you.
00:54:20.000I'm only saying this stuff so I can make sure... I want you to understand the nuance of what I'm saying so that I can get the nuance of your response.
00:54:27.000What I think should happen is that there should be ownership, fan ownership of clubs.
00:54:32.000In fact, this is a big political point that I've been mulling over for ages.
00:55:25.000You'd re-nationalise them for the first time.
00:55:38.000What do you mean by the funding model?
00:55:39.000Well, because you've got a situation now where the genie's out of the bottle.
00:55:42.000The economics of football are at such a level, right, that ultimately, fan ownership, which I don't have a particular problem with, besides the fact that it becomes too emotive, too visceral in its decision-making process, and it doesn't make much commercial sense.
00:56:03.000What this is addressing is the fact that we have turned everything into a commodity and this is an attempt to redress that phenomena and reverse it.
00:56:38.000I don't want to operate within the existing framework.
00:56:40.000In your reverse Davos mentality of the Great Reset, but going with the alternative way with it, what you're suggesting is... It's democratic.
00:56:45.000It's not Davos because it's voted for by the people.
00:56:47.000You can never get it through unless the people vote for it.
00:56:49.000In the reverse is what I said to Davos, right?
00:57:13.000So we'd have this wonderful model in the UK which the guys on the bus with you would have this viewpoint that your sentiment has some validity to it.
00:57:24.000No one else in Europe would perform that and then we'd be the sick man of European football on that basis.
00:57:30.000Well, I can see why you wouldn't stand on an argument like Brexit based on some of the rhetoric.
00:57:50.000Instead of going about it in things people don't really understand or care about or can't connect to, find ways that they actually connect, mobilize them there.
00:58:05.000Why should your football clubs be owned by conglomerates abroad?
00:58:08.000Just because of an economic model that doesn't serve you, that's never served you, that doesn't respect you, that wants you dumb and dead, all that stuff.
01:00:11.000I'm not in the camp of wanting to see Premier League games being played in America.
01:00:15.000I understand why other leagues want to do that because they need to do it because they can't keep up with the financial juggernaut that is the Premier League which by the way hasn't even scratched the surface of the opportunity it can present.
01:00:26.000Yeah because we've got a situation where you've got a product which is in demand.
01:00:28.000You've got a model exists over here which is a VOD platform in Netflix which has got a market cap of 250 billion and you've got and built its business primarily on other people's content.
01:00:38.000You've got the Premier League that could build the same model, reduce the cost of football to people by the very nature of the volumes it can achieve worldwide and multiply its revenues by factors of 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10.
01:00:49.000And then what you've got is you've got a product which is delivered to people when they want it, how they want it, where they want it, at a price they're paid to consume And everybody wins.
01:00:57.000Then it goes against my argument then of course that I want football to suddenly suppress the expenditure on not what you call the poor hard done by footballers I'm targeting to get their wages brought down.
01:01:08.000I'm just trying to get substance into the game and a game to be supported by its own merits rather than daddy warbucks.
01:01:16.000pop in with an agenda whether that be Simon Jordan 20 years ago because he made 100 million quid and wants to buy his local football club or what they buy Sheikh Mansour because he has it for a different reason.
01:01:26.000It needs to be sustainability and at this moment in time we've got the wild west and that's why I have an aberration for the MLS model.
01:01:34.000But I also have a bit of a disdain for it.
01:01:36.000Because the MS model is a group of owners getting together.
01:01:55.000The other side of it, it makes it the world that you're advocating for, which is it loses the competitivity of it, it loses the objectivity of it, and it makes it all about money.
01:02:06.000I may well be in the land of brand but I'm still slightly commercial in my thinking.
01:02:12.000I don't think there's anything wrong with the entrepreneurial spirit.
01:02:15.000I think there's nothing wrong with capitalism either but I think there's everything wrong with irresponsible capitalism.
01:02:19.000Yeah and I think that's where we are and I think that we're going to see it play out in sport.
01:02:22.000I've got a question that's on a slightly different tack now but I think you'll be well into it.
01:02:25.000With the success of Wrexham based around like Ryan Reynolds acquisition and the way it's played out on Disney and again sort of tapping into the romance of the game and I think any Wrexham fan would say it's like the best thing that's happened to them and they love it and all that kind of stuff.
01:02:44.000Is that now Wrexham, not because of the merit of their football club, although they've done very well getting to the league, but because of the paraphernalia of fame and celebrity, they've entered into a new domain.
01:02:55.000And I know you know an awful lot about boxing and you're a big boxing fan.
01:02:58.000It made me think of like 10, 20 years ago, if you're fighting in Vegas, if you're showcased as an elite boxer, you've earned that on merit and you've got the scars to prove it.
01:03:07.000Well now you've got the phenomena of like Conor McGregor fighting Floyd Mayweather, you've got YouTube boxers fighting for millions KSI and Logan Paul and all that stuff.
01:03:17.000Is there not a danger that the sort of almost the essence of sport which is meritocracy is being sort of eroded that you can create these Frankenstein clubs, these entertainment products, it's not an attack on Wrexham, it's in a sense I'm coupling it with that trend.
01:03:31.000Because years ago you wouldn't have got a couple of like sort of people that were unrecognisable in the context of the sport.
01:03:37.000It's a clever digital deal where they're using their reputations to enhance the opportunity and make a movie about it.
01:03:43.000That's what they're doing, really, aren't they?
01:03:44.000Netflix are going to fund them, I suspect, and they're going to build a television series out of it.
01:03:49.000And then when, you know, you could watch Salford, you could watch The Class of 92 and all that went with that, and of course the Stardust that goes with Beckham and gigs and Skolls and Gary Neville and that mob, and see that Salford were manufactured into a situation.
01:04:02.000But it doesn't alter the fact that the argument that you would make, which is the community that they represent, I'm delighted!
01:04:07.000They're thrilled that their football club is back on the map.
01:04:10.000Now, Brian Reynolds and his mate will go so far, and when it eventually lands in their pockets, they've got to put their hands in their pockets to go through the gears, because Meritocracy will still be the endgame.
01:04:19.000Wrexham will be the movie of the week, right, for a period of time.
01:04:23.000And when it gets a bit tough in League One, if they ever get there, and you've got to start funding a football club properly, then that may run its course.
01:04:32.000But if Westham, sorry if Wrexham, sorry mate yeah comparison between Wrexham and Westham not a good one.
01:04:37.000If Wrexham were to find a different way of delivering an outcome because whether we're
01:04:43.000in a digital age or whether they're using other aspects of the opportunity available to them to
01:04:48.000build a football club, still at the centre of it is a football club and a community.
01:04:52.000If that team were to go through the levels and get in the Premier League, it would be another story, a different strand of the football story that needs to evolve.
01:05:02.000We're in a generation now that consumes what it looks at and what it reads through things like this, mobile telephones.
01:05:08.000Once upon a time you used to call the kitchen wall to speak to someone.
01:05:19.000I'm not sure that we've lost too much.
01:05:21.000I still think you've got massive engagement.
01:05:23.000You know, I do media stuff where you're dealing with fans and their emotional investment on a daily basis.
01:05:29.000And I don't see it lessening, I see it heightening.
01:05:31.000I also see the entitlement of fans heightening, which I'm not sure is a good thing.
01:05:35.000I wonder if this is like a sort of a frantic and fearful twitching corpse as the sense that this game is being corporatized and owned elsewhere dawns upon the sort of collective unconsciousness that something is rotten in Denmark.
01:05:50.000I've got a few things I want to flesh out.
01:05:52.000They're all starting to tie together a little bit now.
01:05:55.000Say like when Wimbledon went through the leagues, FA Cup Final, Big Liverpool, Culture Club versus the, you know, crazy gang.
01:06:01.000Until I turfed them out of Sillis Park.
01:06:03.000You keep mentioning that, you obviously want that followed up on.
01:06:19.000Yeah, he wrote... He called you Billy Whiz?
01:06:20.000Yeah, I fired... Get him out of the door, you're a pirate.
01:06:23.000I fired Steve Cople and he wrote some article in the newspaper and I said, I really have to listen to these dinosaurs from the past.
01:06:29.000So he wrote me this letter... You evicted him?
01:06:31.000No, his side that he used to manage and he wrote me this letter saying, you know, bollocks, H. You, Harry Whiz, should mind your own business.
01:06:37.000How can I not mind my business? It's my football club, it's my manager, I'll fire whoever I want.
01:06:57.000Well, it sounds a little bit like it, yeah.
01:06:58.000I know, it does a bit. It's because I'm jealous, isn't it, of Ryan Reynolds.
01:07:00.000But what I want to also acknowledge is that as a West Ham fan, I'll acknowledge that a ceremony is created around a third tier European competition, and yet the emotions feel real, because there's so much investment that you put in it, it feels real while you do it.
01:07:15.000When Wimbledon get to the top flight, only to be evicted by the old peroxide Paxman over there, Like, it's like it's a real story.
01:07:25.000But now, it's almost like, you know, a sort of a construction.
01:07:29.000And my concern is this, is if it becomes, excuse me, a construction rather than a reality, it's going to lose the thing that it has in the first place.
01:07:36.000That we're going to, it's not going to mean anything anymore.
01:07:39.000We're killing the golden goose, to put it in a simple phrase.
01:07:42.000Again, I think you're being idealistic.
01:08:09.000So what we're saying is is that Rexim went through the gears by one methodology or another and this instance it's got two Hollywood superstars that can use their digital imagery To leverage the revenues that you can get from digital spaces.
01:08:23.000And you build a club that goes there and lands in the Premier League.
01:08:27.000Would that be less of a story than constantly watch Manchester City win the league with Middle Eastern money or Manchester United because it's steeped in 60 years of heritage and legacy and an ability to be able to print money for itself?
01:08:41.000Would it be less of a diminishing or would it be diminishing the football story?
01:08:58.000I'm attacking the commodification of the sport in various ways and seeing if it's somehow stripping away its essence, gutting it somehow, hollowing it out.
01:09:07.000Every time you stick something on television, including yourself, you're making it a commodity for someone else's benefit.
01:09:13.000You sit here doing your broadcast because a particular platform wants to give you an opportunity so they can monetize you.
01:09:21.000Because there's such a thing It depends on what's behind it.
01:09:24.000It depends on what is the objective, what is the aim, what is the goal.
01:09:27.000If the aim is always and solely to make money, and remember we've touched upon enlightened self-interest earlier in the conversation, ideally there's a kind of synthesis of I have a purpose, I'm pursuing meaning, oh wow I'm earning a few quid out of it.
01:09:40.000That seems to me like that's not in the same domain as stripping away the meaning of something that's sort of valuable.
01:09:58.000We've just had it with Luton, haven't we?
01:09:59.000We've just had Luton, the ultimate fairy tale.
01:10:03.000Eric Morecambe, great comedian, I'm sure you appreciate, has indexed Luton many years ago, a club that was always punched above its weight.
01:10:12.000Have values like they won't attach himself to betting companies because they don't believe in the principle of betting money going into sport.
01:10:19.000And they've built a club that's now got promoted with 10,000 fans back into the Premier League.
01:10:23.000Are you worried that somewhere along the line they might change their agenda?
01:10:27.000Are you suggesting that the criteria that you just outlined, it somehow makes it a worthwhile, valuable story, that the connection to the fans, that espousing them values, makes it better than a globalist corporate entity that won't confront its charges of illegal activity?
01:10:47.000You're sort of forecasting this dystopian future where football becomes something that is simply an endgame for people with nefarious motives or alternative intentions. Everyone's got
01:10:58.000an intention and very few people have got an intention simply to do it
01:11:02.000for the love of football. Everyone wants to get something from it. So
01:11:06.000with that in mind I've just given you a case in point where Luton in our
01:11:11.000leagues have proven the point that there's still the value of football being
01:11:15.000built in a certain way for the people from the people because of the people.
01:11:20.000And we don't lose the vibrancy of football by the nature of ownership models that might have different intentions.
01:11:29.000We muddy the messages sometimes and we allow the broadcast world to Uh fulfill their outcomes when we're constantly being listened to broadcasters pumping societal messages through football.
01:11:42.000You and I have discussed this on other platforms about the nature of football being leveraged for other people's agendas and how that should be or could be or would be or shouldn't be.
01:11:53.000I think you should be really critically alert to the various ways that agendas play out, including financially, including the agenda of state ownership of these football clubs.
01:12:03.000But money makes the world go round, Russell.
01:12:06.000It's a representative and symbolic system.
01:12:07.000Don't you dare sit here and say you're doing this for charity, or the things you've done in your life have been for charity.
01:12:11.000You do them because ultimately money is the commodity that fuels the world.
01:12:14.000So we all need to grow up a little bit.
01:12:16.000The only word I would query there is the word ultimately because we are not yet at the point of fully understanding the many miraculous ways that I express my intentions.
01:12:28.000No not definitively because like probably like you I do what I do for a variety of reasons and but I began doing what I do out of love, like bloody vanity you know I mean there's a sort of a complex set of motivations but at this point in my life of course I require I'm quite idealistic.
01:13:35.000Because of the commercialisation, Simon, I suppose.
01:13:37.000I suppose that's what I'm... Yeah, but you love to watch football, dawn till dusk if you can.
01:13:43.000And watching sport through whichever medium you choose, whichever way you want to.
01:13:47.000And with that comes a commercial scenario, because you're going to watch it through a medium that's commercially motivated.
01:13:53.000So with that in mind how do you square that particular circle?
01:13:56.000Well we're arguing sort of a lot about economics and I think in a sense there's certainly there's yeah we're debating there's a great deal of validity in what you're saying and there's no question.
01:14:06.000Is there a reason why you've taken your shoes and socks off while we're debating?
01:14:25.000Simon, no, this is what I want to say, is that those currently necessary commercial opportunities that are predicated on the emotion that football in particular solicits cannot be allowed to kill the host, which is currently what I fear could potentially happen.
01:14:46.000So someone has to advocate for the idealistic side of the argument which includes things like fan ownership, investigation, interrogation of ownership models and assurances that these clubs will remain connected to the communities that built them and ultimately the value of the fans will be respected.
01:15:02.000That's what they're trying to achieve by the independent regulator suggestion in this country which I think is for the birds and I think any business, any industry that's regulated in the end Isn't a particularly good industry to be in and we have now reached a point, Russell, whether we like it or we don't like it, you and I. And again, I use the expression, I don't apologize for the genies out of the bottle.
01:15:25.000We're not going to change the economic model.
01:15:26.000All we're going to be able to do is perhaps halt it.
01:15:30.000Hold it in its tracks, but even then we've now got Saudi Arabia wanting to pay footballers 200 million pounds a year to go over there and play because they want to build their leagues up.
01:15:40.000So again, I don't share your concerns.
01:15:44.000I understand why you think there's a validity in your thinking that there's a loss of the core principles of the game on what they were supposed to be.
01:15:53.000But I'm not sure that when you see the emotion when you watch Sheffield Wednesday for those North American fans that don't know who they are, they're a club in Yorkshire that's got great heritage.
01:16:02.000When you watch Sheffield Wednesday play Peterborough in the League One semi-final with 32,000 rabid fans in a stadium and the emotions that outpour as a result of a game having a ridiculous outcome, do you then still worry about the fact that sport isn't valued in the way that it should be, isn't going in the right direction?
01:16:25.000I think that they value it and my fear is that it's that emotional connection has been parasited and that football means a lot about class, it means a lot about identity, it means a lot about geography, masculinity, unity, teamwork and all of those things are very real and very beautiful and I'd actually go so far as saying there's something sacred in it.
01:16:46.000Okay, what do you mean football says a lot about class?
01:16:49.000That these clubs have a historic and real relationship with the communities that they come from.
01:16:55.000But we've got gentrification in every town now.
01:16:57.000So the fact that people... That's not great either.
01:17:00.000But that's the reality of economics, isn't it?
01:17:02.000The reality of economics is a political matter.
01:17:36.000And the next generation of football supporters aren't cut from that particular cloth.
01:17:40.000We have a different generation following behind us.
01:17:42.000I'm not entirely sure that generation doesn't send me screaming to bed at night thinking they're going to look after me in my dotage, but that's a different discussion.
01:17:49.000But the class argument, I think, is becoming less and less prevalent.
01:17:52.000Other parts of what you just said might be relevant but the fact that football is still steeped in a working class mentality is probably not rugby and other sports maybe but we're not moving from football into cricket where cricket has a certain attitude or cricket into tennis but there is a different social classification now of football fans.
01:18:10.000I suppose what I'm encircling and analysing is what is this value that football appears to herald?
01:18:17.000What is this secular ceremony that appears to be able to evoke such deep feeling and such deep connection?
01:18:31.000So with the flip side of the coin is... I bet if we change the subject, you'd still find me just as ravishing.
01:18:37.000No, I bet if we change the subject to another commodity that you would alter your perspective.
01:18:42.000Like if we start talking about, I don't know, entertainment or music or something, and I'm not going to, I want to talk about another aspect of football, but I feel that sometimes because of your personal involvement with the sport, you find peculiarities that prevent you applying your ordinary principles to this matter.
01:19:03.000The difference between you and me on the subject matter is I come from an educated point of view and you're coming from a hypothetical, idealistic one where you don't know the nuts and bolts of it.
01:19:10.000You're looking at it from an idealistic point of view.
01:19:46.000We've had him on here, he's masterful.
01:19:49.000Did you read his book called The Unfortunate Truth About Racism?
01:19:54.000I don't even read the books I write, let alone other people's.
01:19:56.000Now, Simon, when I used to write at Further Guardian, one of my mates noticed that I always ended up writing more about managers than any other aspect of the game.
01:20:08.000And I think that somehow in managers we find, obviously, leadership in some ways, father figures, and I wonder if you'd talk for a while on what is the real, observable, measurable power of a manager.
01:20:24.000Once the Athletic did this piece, right, where they said, When you take out the super exceptional, the exceptions, your Cluffs, your Guardiolas, whatever, they said that the results often aggregate out almost the same regardless if you have this manager, that manager, or no manager at all.
01:20:38.000So what are we talking about when we talk about greatness in managers?
01:20:48.000What goes on when they have it for a bit, then lose it?
01:20:51.000Well, I often have thoughts Having spent time with lots of managers and sometimes listened to these so-called Churchillian speeches that they give, and found myself deeply unaroused by the very nature of what they're saying.
01:21:02.000I don't mean sexually, I mean in terms of a response and a contour.
01:21:08.000It's a little bit like the Emperor's New Clothes.
01:21:10.000I mean, there is players that can perform of their own volition.
01:21:14.000There's a situation where you have a player that can get to this level himself, where you want to get him to here.
01:21:19.000So you're not managing from here to here, you're just managing from here to here.
01:21:23.000And that's where the managers step in.
01:21:25.000And this balance between leaders lead.
01:21:30.000You know, you can create better people and you can create people that can operate at certain levels, but natural leaders have this ability to be able to communicate in such a fashion that inspires people.
01:21:41.000to do things that they wouldn't ordinarily be prepared to do and that means operating at a high level all the time even when they don't feel like it and the more you've got footballers being paid what I would consider to be F off money so they can end up telling people to F off because they're in a situation where they can control their own destiny one thing you control people through is finances the other thing you can control people through is by motivating them fear cultures of excellence But there's no one-size-fits-all for managers.
01:22:11.000Guardiola, some people would say, could Guardiola manage Scarborough and get the same outcomes?
01:22:17.000I think probably he could because I think he has the ability to be able to extract the very best from people by setting the highest standards, maintaining those standards, never deviating from those standards.
01:22:27.000Uh, and being across the subject matter, being deep in the detail, being a constant evolver, not standing still, not believing that what he knew yesterday is going to be prevalent for tomorrow.
01:22:37.000And I think people like Guardiola are real exceptions.
01:22:39.000I think a lot of the football managers around, and I use this term, and I throw it around quite regularly, and people don't particularly like it, but I think a lot of charlatans get away with murder.
01:22:47.000And we do, we reward in sport too much mediocrity.
01:22:53.000Um, but I think, Managers are they're not often you know the funny thing you will think is that these managers are the strongest people in the world and often they're not they have the same doubts and the same need for support as anyone else does and there'll be people that say who motivates the motivator and that's where people like me that own football clubs come in and support managers there's a lot more of that going on than you would believe a lot more of owners that will provide that prop because in football
01:23:20.000It is this perverse, reverse sentiment of success in life has many fathers.
01:23:27.000But in football, success is an orphan.
01:23:30.000It has one person that's responsible for it, whereas failure has many fathers.
01:23:35.000So if you're successful as a football team, it'll be the manager, no one else.
01:23:38.000It'll be the manager that created that success.
01:23:40.000But if you fail at football, it'll be bleeding everybody that did it.
01:23:43.000The manager's not me, it's the players, it's the owner, it's the lack of support from the fan base.
01:23:48.000So there's that unique phenomenon But it's just the ability to be able, like anything, if you're not doing it and someone else is doing it for you, it's that ability to be able to impart to them the desire for them to do what they need to do to be successful.
01:24:05.000It's like that, again to use a movie analogy, which I know you'll appreciate being a big movie star, it's like that scene out of The Untouchables where Sean Connery is talking to Kevin Costner about what are you prepared to do to get Capone.
01:24:20.000One of his guys brings a knife, one of your guys brings a gun, one of his guys goes to hospital, one of your guys goes to the morgue.
01:24:27.000What are you prepared to do to get Capone?
01:24:30.000And I would say what are you prepared to do to be successful and to be a top class manager whatever it takes and whatever you need to do whether that's managing up to the guy that you work for to get from him what you want Or it's managing down to the charges that are your responsible for or whether it's selecting people that work with you that are actually better than you at certain things and you have the comfort in your own space to be able to be the leader of those people even though they're better.
01:24:57.000I remember having a finance director work for me in one of these businesses that I owned and I said to him you know about doing something he said you do realize I'm a higher form of life I'm a qualified professional and I said that's wonderful.
01:25:07.000But you fucking will work for me and I'm the managing director so we'll debate about what's a higher form of life in a different discussion.
01:25:11.000But it's all about giving people a reason to want to be successful and that may well just be by the very nature of the rewards that they get or it might well be by the nature of the pride that you're invoking them or the motivations that you give them to want to improve or keep changing the circumstances or have basic disciplines that you will not Acquiesce, sorry, you will not move from, you will not change, Pep Guardiola will not change his view about how he wants a player to play.
01:25:42.000David De Gea will go in goal, make a mistake, and the next thing he'll do is no longer play out from the back, he'll be launching balls up from the front.
01:25:49.000Pep Guardiola would not accept that. He would make David de Gea perform at the level that he wanted to
01:25:54.000until such a time as he could and if he couldn't then it'd replace him. You have to be ruthless,
01:25:59.000you have to be fair, you have to be equitable, you have to be honest, you have to be authentic,
01:26:02.000you have to communicate with people, you don't duck responsibility. All of these things are the
01:26:06.000natural attributes of a leader and there's not many of them about because people don't like to
01:26:11.000deal with confrontation because that's part of it. They don't like to deal with being able to
01:26:16.000to be able to communicate in a way that sometimes means that you've got to find a balance between
01:26:22.000what you believe and what you need to say to somebody to get to where they need to get to
01:26:26.000and it's all of these things and this sort of again alchemy that out of it comes a leader
01:26:32.000and it's about leadership. When you walk in a room you go That's the leader.
01:26:39.000That's the guy that we go over the trenches for.
01:26:42.000That's the guy that we want to play for.
01:26:43.000And even more, it's even more difficult in this day and age when you've got players like we've just discussed that are islands economically on their own.
01:27:00.000And when you talk about being able to identify leaders, It's exciting to me that there ain't a uniform set of immediately identifiable external characteristics, that it could be someone that's relatively conservative, that's not always someone that's mouthing off or whatever.
01:27:17.000Well, leadership isn't an immutable concept.
01:27:37.000So your skill set is no less or no more than say Neil Warnock who managed for me in previous incarnations at Crystal Palace managing further down the pyramid and achieving an outcome of relative success by getting a group of disparate sort of hobo Footballers being able to perform at a very high level and find themselves running through the pyramids.
01:27:56.000Taking a relatively recent and localized example, how do you get a situation where Roy Hodgson is able to return to Palace for the umpteenth time and get more success out of Palace than Vieira, who to all intents would look like the very model of a new emergent manager that's going to succeed?
01:28:12.000And can you fold into that answer, because God knows you talk fucking long enough, how you get a moment where you look like a... Am I getting paid by the word?
01:28:49.000How do you get Hodgson to come in and revitalise Palace in that way?
01:28:54.000I think sometimes it's nothing more simple than timing.
01:28:59.000I think there with the Vieira situation I think there was a dissatisfaction with certain coaching methods of the player to stop listening if you want to be specific and explicit about Vieira and there was a lot more of the Emperor's New Clothes in that appointment.
01:29:14.000It looked good for a period of time and when the reality of it becomes more prevalent and the players start to go Um, and Roy comes back in.
01:29:45.000Because I don't think he's had the same challenges as he had once before.
01:29:49.000When he was at Palace he was there to make sure that Crystal Palace achieved the constant pursuit of staying in the Premier League with a season in front of him.
01:29:57.000This time around he was coming in to fix someone else's mess with a group of players that needed a different voice and he just let them go, pointed them in the right direction and let them go.
01:30:07.000Um and in the situation that you use of Arteta and Nuno Espirito Santos they were just the Tottenham appointment by Daniel Levy was someone I get on quite well with.
01:30:18.000It's a surprise that we do because we had nothing but confrontation when I was involved in football because he was constantly trying to do things to my football club that I didn't appreciate.
01:30:27.000Um but over the years I've seen both sides of the argument and I can appreciate some of the things he does but his appointment with Nuno Espirito Santos was just a bad appointment.
01:31:14.000And sometimes it's got nothing to do with how good you are.
01:31:17.000It's just, you know, it's just a moment in time.
01:31:20.000I lose £50 million in a football club because a player that I bought from my academy in a playoff semifinal hits the post on a penalty.
01:31:28.000Changes the direction of travel for me.
01:31:30.000I go and do some deals that eventually cause me a lot of problems.
01:31:33.000The same player pops up two years later, Ben Watson, God love him, come out of my academy, and scores the winning goal in an FA Cup final for Wigan.
01:31:39.000And these moments in time that sport throws out, that takes you back to the sentiment we started with.
01:31:44.000That's a beautiful way to begin to wrap this up.
01:31:47.000As you know, I'm a big fan of your show with Jim White over on TalkSport.
01:32:50.000But while you're here, the door's locked, you can sit and listen.
01:32:54.000One I would like to hear on Talk Sport, and then what I would rather like, because I watch most of your stuff on YouTube, right, you know, that's when I watch your clips.
01:33:02.000Jordan and White striding forward in their trousers in this... The Coliseum of Confrontation.
01:33:08.000I don't like that, you know, that moniker that they give it, the Coliseum of Confrontation.
01:33:11.000It makes you look like a one-trick pony.
01:33:13.000I would prefer the Coliseum of Common Sense.
01:33:59.000If you've got the guts, if you've got the stomach, you can listen to Simon Jordan every weekday on TalkSport or on YouTube, you know, before he gets banned in the UK from 10am to 1pm BST.
01:34:12.000On the show next week, we've got Jack Dorsey coming on.
01:34:15.000Look, he's got a touch of the dinklage, I'd say.
01:34:19.000Join our locals community, just press the red button and you can join us for exclusive interviews, meditations, podcasts and all sorts of fantastic stuff.
01:34:28.000My stand-up special, Brandemic, is premiering this Sunday on Moment.
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