The toughest Championship season ever? - The Sports Agents

**Jon Sopel** (0:02)
This is a Global Production.
We are at the mercy of billionaires and big business and broadcast companies, and look, we work for them as well, so again, there's a hypocrisy here. Right, just don't take the piss out of us.

**Gabby Mark** (0:18)
My reticence and my feeling that this is just taking it all too far is actually nostalgia, it's romanticism. Football has already sold out.

**Jon Sopel** (0:27)
To think that sport belongs to fans now is harder and harder to explain.

**Nedum Onuoha** (0:33)
You can't say that, I pay your wages.

**Gabby Mark** (0:36)
A fan looks different now. A fan is somebody who can be commoditized, can be sold to, can increase revenue.

**Jon Sopel** (0:42)
Fans across the world are there to be exploited.

**Nedum Onuoha** (0:45)
If it ever gets to a point, especially domestically, where the price of tickets is too high, then we'll start to see stadiums becoming more and more empty.

**Gabby Mark** (1:02)
Hello and welcome to The Sports Agents. Hello Mark. Hello Nedum. Very lovely to see your faces.

**Nedum Onuoha** (1:08)
Hi Gabby. Three of us back together. Who would have thought that was going to happen again?

**Gabby Mark** (1:12)
It hasn't been that long. I've been listening to you. I've been listening.

**Jon Sopel** (1:15)
What's it been? Two weeks?
Is it only two weeks? Hang on. I've actually opened my diary to try and work out when the World Cup final was.

**Gabby Mark** (1:25)
I think it's four sports agents. Two and a half. Yeah, because the Monday after the final, we had a final debrief, didn't we? I was on a rooftop in New York. Do you remember that one? It's not that long ago.
You see the world of sport moves at such intensity and fast-paced. I was dying to listen to the podcast the other day thinking, this will be the end of Gianni Infantina. No, it wasn't. It turns out he lives to fight another day. So, yeah, I've been an avid listener over the last couple of weeks. It's been lovely.

**Jon Sopel** (1:56)
Newcastle have a new manager since you were both last on.

**Gabby Mark** (1:59)
I know. It's exciting.
The biggest number of new managers in the Premier League ever at the start of a season.

**Jon Sopel** (2:06)
Well, do you know what?
On that last pod, the last pod that I was on my own, I was saying that my biggest challenge at the start of a new season, particularly when you do Saturday afternoons and you're doing all the goals and round the grounds and so on and so forth. My biggest challenge is trying to remember what grounds are called because they invariably will have a new sponsor. I often go back to the old grounds because I just cannot be bothered trying to learn the latest, whatever it is. But, this time, Premier League managers will be pushing ground renaming numbers. I genuinely think.

**Gabby Mark** (2:46)
Especially as quite a few are not particularly proven at the highest level. Haven't been on our radar, Nadine, would you say? There's a couple that are interlopers.

**Nedum Onuoha** (2:55)
Yeah, I would totally agree with that. It's going to be very interesting because I don't think from the top half of the table we've seen this many changes in terms of management.
You've got the long-standing ones in terms of like Arteta and Unai Emery and so on, but all these other coaches behind are relatively new. Will they do a good job? Will they not? But I've got to reveal something as well about myself to be honest. When it comes down to football and summer transfers, I do not keep track of them until the week before the season starts. I've started to look recently, I'm like, oh, when did that happen? They went there?
I'm supposed to be the expert on this. I'm like, oh, yeah, of course, that saga, yes. I remember that one very well, yeah, sure. I'm going to be black in these first few weeks. I apologize in advance.

**Jon Sopel** (3:35)
So when will you go through all the transfers then? When will you find out that Erling Harland has left City?

**Gabby Mark** (3:43)
When did he leave? He's left.

**Nedum Onuoha** (3:45)
Sorry. To be honest, I'm basically being led by, say, the major notifications that pop up on my phone. Like Tonali for 100 million is a significant one.
So Gimaraish, all that stuff, the collapse of Newcastle United.

**Gabby Mark** (3:58)
You just do top line.

**Nedum Onuoha** (3:59)
I get lots of clicks on my phone. Yeah, I do. I'm so basic. I do top line. And then essentially from there, everything else is like, oh, that's interesting.