Guardian Football Weekly covers PL most of the time but also has European and EFL episodes. Also like dipping into the BBC Football Daily - the Monday Night Club edition is up there for me as well but good to catch up on their 5live coverage after games too.

It’s more that they have a core group of 16-18 or so players who don’t lower the quality of the XI which ever combination play + a few talented young players to supplement that group. Those core players still play a lot of football and because they’re so integral and so good they’re happy being rested for a game or two or worked hard.

For example last year 15 players played 30+ games. The senior players who didn’t were Laporte who played 24 times affected by injuries, Cancelo played 26 times before being shipped out and Phillips played 21 times because Pep hates Leeds scum. The squad has just been managed so well and when you have a great squad you can keep doing fine changes each year whereas a lot of clubs are doing massive changes year on year to try catch them.

Sterling has been good this season

He’s been alright - had good and bad performances. Let’s be honest if he hadn’t played well yesterday would you have made this claim?

Rashford hasn’t been good at all but Southgate is well known to pick a core group of players who he trusts and performs well in the England team - he rarely changes the squad massively based on form. Rashford is one of those players but he has been left out on occasions as well.

For a while Sterling was one of those players who played in a certain position whether people liked it or not but now Southgate has other options and Sterling doesn’t fit as well into the team as he did before.

A significant percentage (majority) of premier league players are not white

I don’t know how entirely relevant it is given the league is represented by nations globally. I’d say it’s more wanting it to represent the country and the whole footballing pyramid rather than a small subsection of the top league as referees have to work up the leagues.

This has been asked though and reports have been written. There’s a lot of black referees in the non league and amateur football compared to the PL and EFL but there’s been accusations of observers being racist or having unconscious biases which limits their progression as one observer marking you down can make it extremely difficult to get through.

It seems like refereeing is definitely a bit of an old boys club - it was recent made even more aware by David Elleray being appointed head of the referees committee despite being investigated for making racial comments in which he apologised and sent on a equality and diversity training course. He stepped down in 2022 after being investigated again. Apparently he had said to an FA colleague ''You look rather tanned” and “have you been down a coal mine?”.

But being a referee is fucking difficult and you need to spend years reffing for £20-£30 a game whilst being abused every weekend. There’s no wonder why the overall referee numbers are falling.

There was an article on this recently which basically said there’s a combination of things.

Apparently he hasn’t had a chance created for him in the last 160 minutes of PL football so there is an argument he hasn’t gotten great service. Rashford and Antony have been incredibly poor this season meaning it has been left to Bruno to create for him but it just hasn’t worked clicked massively yet - the whole of United has been pretty rubbish. But despite that all according to PL date he’s missed six big chances whilst only having 11 shots all season with only four of those 11 being on target.

Not sure why he’s scoring in the CL compared to the PL - maybe because teams are setting out to try get a positive result with it being a group stage so there’s more space to get in behind? But he’s still massively raw and young so you’d assume he will score in the PL at some point.

I’ve seen more people saying he was absolutely fine in the game in the Championship. His game vs Wolves the mistake was more VAR than him as well so I don’t get why he’s criticised as the call he gave probably is fine for a split second decision in his poisition.

But at the end of the day who do you think replaces him? There’s no massive pool of brilliant referees and the ones coming up are often worse.

Most mainland Europeans speak perfect English

I mean massive doubt at that. There’s plenty of course but definitely not ‘most’ and definitely not perfectly.

Secondly if they actually want to improve refereeing then invest in grassroots first or else you’re going to make even fewer people want to ref. The PL doesn’t even pay as well other top leagues so they’re not going to even come and even then there’s plenty of rubbish ones on the continent too so there’s no guarantee it’d be much better.

As if of all the absolute greats who have worn 7 for United you go for Ronaldo who complained that he was like a slave when they wouldn’t sell him to Madrid.

But the numbers are more linked to positions - whilst some clubs retire numbers most don’t because the numbers aren’t completely associated with one player.

That’s changing in the next TV agreement from 2025 - they’ll all be able to be live on TV from then.

Balon D’or isn’t worth caring this much about.

He’s the dumb mans smart man if that makes sense. The way he talks and the speed like you say makes him come across very articulate but there’s a lot of times when you take in what he says then I think a lot of his opinions are crap - but then he’s on talksport and they’re only there to keep creating controversial opinions to keep rattling listeners.

I think getting tickets for Fulham would be difficult if you’re not wanting to go via third party as you’ve said and equally the Spurs stadium pretty much sells out.

I think West Ham is the best bet in all honesty to getting tickets and the game would be decent as well.

It’s quite amusing that a few days ago you made a post about how ‘I the misuse of the term world class in today’s football bothers me.’ regarding people calling Harry Kewell world class at Leeds and now you’re posting this after obviously being absolutely rattled when people told you Martinez wasn’t world class.

We can all have opinions but at the end of the day individual awards are quite meaningless - if they meant something then he wasn’t even the highest placing keeper in the Balon D’or and then Bonou would be the best keeper in the world.