Another week of FPL, another success for me!

Four of my more consistent players blanked this week including Leicester and Sheffield Utd not picking up their usual clean sheets but thankfully Vardy scored one of the two Leicester goals in their comeback vs Everton so that it wasn’t a complete waste. However, Ings or Auba as captain would’ve been much better.

Willems on the bench was a bit of a mistake but there was no way I would have subbed either Lundy or Soyuncu off and Dunk scored a goal so I suppose it doesn’t matter too much.

And here’s the early lineup all ready to go quite early this week:

The deadline might not be until Tuesday evening but I’ve got in early. (As always there will be no changes unless there is some kind of injury in training for someone tomorrow)

I’ve dropped Aubameyang, which might seem quite interesting since he’s just scored a brace and was a good chunk of my points this GW but I just have a feeling he’ll blank against Brighton. Hope I’m not wrong else I’ll look a right idiot.

Ings is not my chosen captain for this gameweek despite the screenshot saying he is, I only just noticed that so I’ll mention here that I’ve picked Vardy again, naturally. He’s taking on Watford who I can tell you from experience are absolutely shocking.

Ings would make a decent captain choice if you don’t have Vardy in my opinion as he has Norwich coming up and if Southampton can play like they did in the second half on Saturday for the full 90 this time they’ll score a few goals.

I sold McGinn for Grealish and shoved “Super Jack” right into the lineup as his goal contributions are much better at the moment and even though few would tip Villa to beat Chelsea I think he won’t blank at the very least and he might get yet another goal.

And last thing I’ll mention is that I think Henderson is more likely to get a clean sheet than Gazzaniga this week due to the nature of their oppositions.

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

We’ve won a game at home! An early christmas miracle. Maybe everyone is right when they keep telling me the holiday season starts earlier than my preffered 1st December.

3 points in the biggest game of the season so far.

It was shaky. It was lucky. But it was a win. They took the lead due to a Jack Stephens mistake through their pacy forward Sarr and the entire first half was more of the same boring crap we’ve become acustomed to this season. Sideways passing, lapses of concentration, etc… Really poor first 45 and I was honestly nearly asleep. The first half looked not too disimilar to the Championship match between Fulham and Swansea that I watched last night.

We went into the break 1-0 down and I’d prepared myself for the defeat and readied the tweets of abuse towards the likes of Stephens, Hojbjerg and Ralph, but in the second half we started turning up. Long hit the bar shortly after coming on from the bench and a bit later he missed a decent chance, and Ward Prowse flicked the ball just past the post at one point as well. But then the legend himself Moussa Djenepo took matters into his own hand, skinning the Watford left back and putting the ball into Ings’ feet for a tap in. Game on.

We were very clearly the better team in the match, with better players, and once we were playing some decent attacking football we looked like we were in a different league to Watford, who I see no alternative to relegation for. Ward Prowse worked hard all game but he was pretty poor in the game, but when he steps up to a free kick, the possibility of the ball hitting the top corner of the net enters every Southampton fan’s mind, and guess what? He scores. 2-1!

It was only after the second goal that I saw the replay for the first that showed a potential Djenepo handball. By the stupid handball laws that are new to the Premier League, the goal should probably have been disallowed but I’m delighted it wasn’t, not only because it got us going in the match but also because I fully believe that the rule is wrong and that should be considered a perfectly legit goal.

But yes, we come away with a key three points and if Norwich don’t beat Arsenal tomorrow we will remain in 18th place which is where we should be; at the very least Norwich and Watford are worse than us so I think the table should reflect that. Unfortunately, West Ham got a shock win against Chelsea earlier today which makes getting out of the bottom three a little bit more difficult but luckily we have some nice fixtures coming up. I have a feeling Norwich might cause us some problems but we also have Newcastle, West Ham and Villa coming up.

70 points last week but a terrible return from Willems and an unlucky Maddison disallowed goal did leave me wanting more. Of course I will always take the green arrow in OR and I will always take being 21 points above average.

This week, though, there were some tricky decisions to make. As a Saints fan, I’m looking at our next 4/5 fixtures with eyes wide and mouth watering, and we take on Watford on Saturday and hopefully I will not regret the decision I’ve made in regards to striker options.

Also, I’ve decided to sell VVD. Liverpool do not keep many clean sheets at all whereas other teams do, and Virgil himself very rarely gets any kind of goal contribution and I’m struggling to remember the last time I didn’t regret having him in. I’ve replaced him with someone who might not make a lot of sense to anybody due to him being injured, but I’ve bought Ben Davies. I can’t shake the feeling that Mourinho is going to allow Davies, when fit, to get more gametime and his position might cater towards assists for Kane and also the fact he’s a defender in a Jose system makes it incredibly likely to most that his clean sheets will skyrocket in future weeks. He’ll be benched this week though as he’s out.

This is the team then. Will be no more changes unless something drastic happens.

I still think Gazzaniga is a really good keeper and with him facing out of form Bournemouth I think he has more chance of a CS than Henderson who’s facing Raul Jiminez who is 95% likely to net in every single game he plays.

Back line is controversial. Soyuncu will never be taken out of my team (apart from injuries and suspensions) all season because Leicester’s defensive record is phenmomenal and Kaspar has the most clean sheets out of anybody partly due to their defensive quality. Dunk may be facing Liverpool but I’d rather him over Willems and I wasn’t willing to take another hit to sell him – I may well regret selling VVD as the timing turned out to be all wrong.

And, of course, Lord Lundy.

KDB should run rings around Newcastle’s midfield and they’re most likely going to score for fun at St James’ but that wasn’t enough for me to make him captain.

Mane is also a decent captain option but with the way Liverpool have played of late I can’t see him outscoring Jamie Vardy.

Maddison is always good to have in the midfield as he’s always up for a Free Kick goal and assists come in decent numbers to him. I almost dropped him but I do think that Leicester will smash Everton this weekend.

Djenepo is back in the starting XI for the next few games. Hopefully he can net another solo goal like the one at Bramall Lane or even a tap in – I don’t mind. Come on Moussa!

Aubameyang might well improve even more with the departure of Emery this morning but he’s someone I also could shift out with Harry Kane waiting in the wings.

Vardy is my choice of captain as I can see him scoring at least two and putting Marco Silva out of a job.

And finally, Ings. Bought him this week due to Southampton’s next five – Watford H, Norwich H, Newcastle A, West Ham H and Villa A. He could genuinely score in all five of those if he keeps this season’s form up and carries us to a couple of victories and a decent amount of points. Wishful thinking? Maybe.

• Union are 5th in the league for home form but 14th for away form. They’ve been poor on their travels in their first Bundesliga season.

• Schalke are the opposite, they’ve actually been much better away (2nd best record in division) than at home (9th best record in division)

• Despite the poor record they have been picking it up, unbeaten in five at home.

• These two sides have only ever met once before (2001 DFB-Pokal final) and this is set to be their first league encounter with one another.

• Only Bayern (9) and Leipzig (8) have scored more goals from set pieces than these two sides (7 each)

• Amine Harit has been involved in 8 goals in his last 9 Bundesliga matches (6 goals, 2 assists) and is Schalke’s top scorer in 2019/20.

• Union have won each of their last three Bundesliga matches, more than they’d managed in their first 9 (2 wins)

• A 2-0 win over Gladbach meant that Union have beaten tbe side top of the table twice this season already (Dortmund, MD3)

• Union’s distance covered this season ranks them 3rd in the league (1424km) showing their work rate and desire this campaign.

• Only Augsburg (74%) have had a lower percentage of successful passses from open play than Union (75%)

• Only Paderborn (14), Wolsburg (13) and Koln (11) have managed less goals than Union (15) in the Bundesliga this season.

This is a new series of posts I’ll be starting on this blog, it is essentially a list of as many relevant facts and statistics I can find about an upcoming fixture. The one I’m starting with is tonight’s Friday Night Football in the EFL Championship, Swansea v Fulham.

• Mitrovic is the Championship’s top scorer with 13 goals, seven more than any other Fulham player.

• Both sides could end the night in third place with a win but Swansea would need Forest to lose their two games in hand and Preston not to win this weekend to stay there.

• Swansea have won 5 of their last 6 league encounters with Fulham.

• No Championship side have scored more 90th minute goals than Swansea this season (3) but none of those came in home matches.

• Swansea’s Van der hoorn may be sidelined through injury which would most likely see 19 year old Ben Cabango make his Championship starting debut after he replaced Van der hoorn on Tuesday night to get his first minutes.

• Both Kamara and Bobby Reid were forced off through injury in Fulham’s Tuesday fixture so both are huge doubts to play this game.

• Fulham could win their fourth consecutive league game for the first time since April 2018 with three points at Liberty Stadium.

• Speaking of the Liberty Stadium, Swansea went fourteen games unbeaten there between December 2018 and August 2019 but have only won there once since.

• When Derby faced Fulham on Tuesday they didn not record a single shot on target in their 3-0 defeat.

• Neither side have scored any goals from set pieces this season.

We’re back after the Champions League with some more Premier League action.

In the early Saturday kick off, Newcastle United are playing Manchester City after their 2-0 defeat at Villa Park on Monday night. City’s last game, on the other hand, was a win over Chelsea. There won’t be many tipping Newcastle’s woeful forwards to get any goals and their defence may be decent but there is no way in the world that they can manage De Bruyne, Sterling etc. That’s why I think City will achieve an impressive 4-0 away win.

Liverpool are back at Anfield as they face the Brighton team that lost to Leicester last week, and the league leaders STILL haven’t lost a game and have only dropped points once. They have an eight point lead on second place Leicester City whereas Brighton sit in 12th, this can surely only go one way. 2-1 Liverpool win.

Chelsea take on out of form West Ham in another 3pm kick off and here is yet another that I can only see going one way. West Ham’s manager Pellegrini may well have a Premier League title to his name but he is struggling beyond belief at West Ham so far. Frank Lampard is the opposite; he’s absolutely flying at Stamford Bridge and he’s making the Chelsea fans love him even more than they already did. 3-1 Chelsea.

Burnley are taking on Crystal Palace on Saturday in the first close game I’ve talked about so far. Zaha did a decent job against Liverpool last week at Selhurst Park whereas I think Burnley won 3-0 and they’re doing a great job so far. Burnley are currently 7th whilst Palace are 14th; however I do actually think the away side will come away with three ponits. 2-1 victory for Crystal Palace.

Mourinho’s Spurs side made an outstanding comeback in their Tuesday night European fixture and they take on Bournemouth back in domestic football at their new stadium. Mourinho’s side have scored 7 goals in his 2 wins out of two as manager however a potential cause for concern is the fact they’ve also conceded four. I actually think they’ll concede a couple more to 11th placed Bournemouth but ultimately they’ll win in what could be quite a good game for the neutral. 4-2 Tottenham.

And the big one for me as a Saints fan. Southampton haven’t won at home all season but they take on last place Watford at St Marys in a MUST WIN game, and I fully believe that Ralph Hasenhuttl would be dismissed with a loss here. This game is a six pointer as its 19th vs 20th and it could either be a thrilling tie or a 0-0 bore. However, I back my boys to pick up a 2-0 win.

Norwich City take on Arsenal at Carrow Road on Sunday in what could be the upset of the week in my opinion. EmeryOut is a very common statment amongst Arsenal fans right now; he was really close to losing to Southampton at home and was only saved by a late goal, and his football style, identity and conduct has left all the fans questioning him and his capabilities. Norwich, meanwhile, slowed down massively following their shock win over Manchester City but they won last time out against Everton and that could lead to an increase in good results coming up to the busy December period. They just need Pukki to repeat his Finland form in the Premier League once again. I think Norwich will snatch a 2-1 victory here, and do what Southampton could not by hanging on for the three points and most likely sealing Emery’s fate.

Wolves vs Sheffield United will be taking place at the same time as Arsenal’s match, and it may actually be a much better game for a neutral viewing. Sheffield United may have bottled a 2-0 lead over Manchester United last week but the fact they even had such a lead in itself was impressive, and the result was a solid draw. Wolves beat Bournemouth last week and it remains to be seen if they’ll win tonight in the Europa League or not, but I think they’ll struggle here regardless. Europa League hasn’t had its normal impact on the Wolves squad so far but here is the first time I think it will, and we’ll see Chris Wilder walk away with a 1-0 win.

Leicester City sit second in the Premier League table and are still being doubted as title contenders because of the quality of Manchester City and Liverpool, however I imagine the Foxes will be looking to prove everyone wrong and mount a decent challenge. Their opponents, Everton, lost to the league’s worst side last week and Silva looks to be treading on thin ice now – in fact, a bad result here would probably see him sacked. And I think he will get a bad result, no, actually, a terrible result. 3-0 Leicester.

And Manchester United play Aston Villa in the final match left to predict. United are playing in the Europa League I believe right now as this goes out but they didn’t take any first team players at all out to Astana to play in that match, and instead the squad is completely made up of their youth products. It will be interesting to see how they get on. Villa, on the other hand, will have also had a full week’s rest (almost) as their last game was Monday night against Newcastle, where they looked superb. It will be interesting to see how United deal with the likes of Grealish and McGinn in this game. I think the result will be a 1-1 draw.

It was another fantastic couple of nights in the world’s most elite competition.

Manchester City did book their place in the knockout stages with a point against Shakhtar however they will not be over the moon with the way their qualification came about; in a home match they were expected to dominate they were only able to draw. Gundogan scored their only goal of the night but certain players in attacking positions did not turn up at all and they were quite fortunate that their opponents were also poor or they may well have suffered defeat last night.

In the other game of Group C, Atalanta picked up their first CL victory this season and have in turn made the final matches a little more interesting. Assuming Dinamo Zagreb lose to Pep Guardiola’s side on the final day of the group, the Atalanta vs Shakhtar game will decide who comes second. And that is a very likely outcome. Can the Italian side make an unlikely qualification a reality? They certainly didn’t look like they could before their win over Dinamo Zagreb but now it is a real possibility for them.

In Group A, Real Madrid looked a right side better hosting PSG than they did when they travelled to France on Matchday 1, but they ultimately let a 2-0 lead slip in the last 10 minutes against the Ligue 1 Champions. Both sides, however, go into matchday 6 with knockout football secured.

In the other game of this group, Club Brugge and Galatasaray drew making it unlikely that either will leave the competition with a win this season, and neither have any hope of making it to the knockout rounds.

My favourite player in the world right now made history in Serbia as Bayern won 6-0 away from home at Red Star; Robert Lewandowski scored 4 goals in 14 minutes in a memorable night for the Polish goal machine. That result, naturally, meant that Red Star Belgrade crashed out of the competition but I believe I’m right in saying Europa League is still a real possibility.

Tottenham made an impressive comeback from 2-0 down at their new stadium on Tuesday evening. The Greek giants took a comfortable lead within the opening 20 minutes but a controversial substitution from Jose Mourinho in his first European night at Spurs eventually proved to be a good one; Eric Dier was substituted for Eriksen around 26 minutes in. Jose would later apologise to the midfielder however I’m sure he’ll be delighted to know that Spurs are in the CL knockouts and he’ll also recieve a lot of plaudits for a comeback that essentially only happened because of a woeful start. Despite that, I will say fair play to him and the team for getting it done. The point stands, though.

A masterful free-kick from an impossible angle saw Juventus confirm 1st place in their group. Paulo Dybala scored the winner and it was a very impressive set piece from the Argentinian, but few will argue that Oblak shouldn’t have done much better there. That might lead Atletico feeling a little worried because even though they do hold all the cards in securing their qualification, anything less than a win opens the door for Leverkusen to cause an upset and steal it from them on the last day.

Speaking of Leverkusen, they won relatively easily against Lokomotiv 2-0 and, like I just said, they know that a win against the Italian champions would mean anything can happen if Atletico slip up.

Group E is still wide open for everyone but Genk going into the last games; Liverpool could only draw with Napoli thanks to a Lovren equaliser whilst RB Salzburg dealt with Genk comfortably. Many tipped Napoli to cause a lot of problems for Klopp’s Reds and that proved true and they honestly didn’t look like winning at many points of the match. A draw was probably a fair result. As this was happening, Erling Haland was becoming the first teenager to score in all 5 of his first CL appearances and he is second to only Lewandowski for goals in the competition with 8. The guy is in his teens and he is tearing things up on a European stage. Bright future for the Norweigian, that’s for sure.

Three groups to go and I’ll start with the most intriguing; Group H. Chelsea, Valencia and Ajax could all potentially finish top, but any one of them could also slip into the inferior Europa League with the wrong result. It would be quite shocking for Chelsea to not qualify in some form, all they’d need is a win against the bottom side Lille and they’d be through, and if Ajax lose to Valencia they’ll top the group too. They couldn’t beat Valencia today in part due to a poor penalty decision, but a worse blow to their season was Tammy Abraham being taken off through injury. It still remains to be seen how bad that was for him. They drew 2-2 and will have felt very hard done by at full time. Ajax, however, beat Lille in France but they still have a tough game against Valencia from which they need to avoid defeat to secure qualification this season.

Lionel Messi proved exactly why he is the greatest footballer to ever do it against Dortmund tonight, providing some special moments and a goal in that 3-1 win. Barca top the group and comfortably so, considering this was percieved to be the “Group of Death”. Inter, on the other hand, did struggle a little to beat Slavia away from home, but eventually they got the job done and the scoreline ended up being quite generous; they won 3-1 as well.

And in Group G, RB Lepzig were held by Benfica in Germany and were in fact 2-0 down going into the 90th minute – another superb comeback in a matchday that seemed full of them. In the other match it was Zenit who emerged winners against Lyon 2-0, meaning the final day in this group will also prove crucial for all the teams in it.

The offside ruling was introduced to the beautiful game in order to counter “goal hangers”; people who would stay up front and just receive long balls and score goals that took no skill at all. All in all, it was a good addition as it forced attackers to string together passing moves and it improved a striker’s awareness and movement, making the football more entertaining and it took a lot more skill and physicality to be a team that plays long ball football.

HOWEVER.

The offside rule was not made so that little VAR geeks could get their rulers out and measure to the nearest millimetre whether or not somebody was fractionally past the last defender. Any football fan watching a game as a neutral wants the advantage to go to the attacker – but it most certainly doesn’t. Sheffield United vs Tottenham comes to mind as an example of the ugly side of offsides – it’s debatable if he was even offside or not but I think situations like that should not be robbed of a perfectly good goal.

We’ve seen it more often than that across the Premier League and all competitions utilising VAR. For more evidence you could look at Man City vs West Ham in the first game of the season, and a situation where the attacker was given the goal was Liverpool vs Man City on the second goal; a header from Salah which divided opinions among neutrals.

Of course, not everybody will be on board with the concept of “clear daylight offside” as they probably prefer the ruling to be a little more black and white BUT it makes a lot of sense in terms of entertainment and increasing the thing we all love most – goals. I originally heard of this idea on True Geordie’s weekly football show ‘The Kick Off’ but after research it seems to have been a concept that people somewhat supported before that. I found an article where the commentator Ian Darke called for this new idea to become the rule. I think if VAR is here to stay, which it might not be after the way fans have reacted to it, we now have the technology to make “Clear Daylight” a thing, and I’m all for anything that makes attackers more likely to score legal goals.

This is something that will help fans’ views on VAR, which has received no end of abuse from Premier League fans, because this ruling is probably only possible with the technology available and ready to use.

That doesn’t mean I’m pro VAR though 😉

The most debated topic in the world of football is: Who is the best striker in the world? The forward position is the most illustrious of all the football positions and as the main man up front, you get all the glory of wins, and all the abuse from games where you fail to score. But some people never fail to score.

Before I crunch Robert Lewandowski’s numbers for you, let me list the strikers that come anywhere close to him in the list of the world’s best.

Harry Kane is a mile of Lewa but deserves a mention for his insane goal record; last night the Englishman became the quickest player to 20 goals in Champions League history, and he is tipped by many to overtake Alan Shearer as the Premier League’s all time top scorer if he stays in the division for his entire career.

Roberto Firmino, for me, cannot be considered due to his lack of goals, but the way he plays and creates is near perfect. To be fair, I may criticise his goal record but he does have 52 goals in 150 Premier League appearances, but what I mean is he isn’t the striker that Kane or Lewa is in that he doesn’t grab 20/30 goals a season and drag you through tough games by grabbing crucial goals very often (Ironically that’s exactly what he did on the weekend, but its still rare.)

And for me there is only 1 out and out striker who comes close to Bayern’s talisman in Europe, and that’s Sergio Aguero. Sure, if Mbappe continues the way he’s going he’ll probably be winning ballon d’ors in 3 years time but for me I’d prefer him to not be playing in the French league in order to be in with a shout of the world’s best. Aguero may be perceived to have an “easy” job in such a creative City team, but once he’s gone in 2021, English football fans will rate him amongst the likes of Henry and Shearer as the division’s best ever.

Okay, onto the magician himself, Robert Lewandowski. In the weekend’s Bundesliga action he unfortunately lost his 100% scoring record, and for the first time this season in any league or European game he wasn’t on the scoresheet, which is a shame but its ridiculous that I’m even able to say he had that record in the first place. Losing this streak seems to have fired him up to insane levels because he went and scored 4 times last night in 14 minutes against Red Star Belgrade. The quickest quadruple in Champions League history, naturally.

The Polish striker is the quickest ever non-German to reach 100 goals in the Bundesliga and he’s the all time highest foreign goalscorer in that League. In 2015, he scored 5 goals in nine minutes in a famous match against Wolfsburg. In the reverse fixture against Red Star Belgrade, Lewandowski netted his 200th Bayern goal. In the 2018/19 season, Robert picked up his fourth Bundesliga Golden Boot. This season, Robert Lewandowski broke Aubameyang’s record of scoring in the first eight Bundesliga games by and then broke his own record and he now holds the record having scored in all of the first 11.

My research suggests that Lewandowski has got 3x as many international goals as anybody else in Poland history. He’s scored 61 goals in 112 matches which is absolutely insane considering Poland’s squad isn’t of the highest quality, even though you would argue this is the best selection in their history and they aren’t the worst team in the world it’s still true. Robert also broke the record for most goals in a world cup qualifier for 2018.

The man is a machine. And he could have come to the Prem two years ago but the move never materialised. What I wouldn’t give for somebody in England to sign him.

The time has come once again.

I’ve tried and failed in my early time writing this blog to predict both the Premier League and the Championship, but as the midweek action is about to begin its time I try out the European stage and try to predict the Tuesday and Wednesday CL matches.

Lokomotiv Moscow host Leverkusen and those with good memories will recall that Lokomotiv actually beat Leverkusen 2-1 in Germany. Leverkusen are actually down in 9th in the Bundesliga and they’ll be hoping to make sure they at minimum reach the round of 32 in the Europa League and they can secure that with three points tonight. However, I don’t see it happening. I think tonight will be a second 2-1 win for Lokomotiv in this match up and the three points will go their way.

Galatasaray are playing Club Brugge in Turkey in Group A, and the Belgian side have to win in order to stand any chance of qualification, whilst the Turkish side know that they have no chance at all of making up the goal difference gap to finish above Real Madrid. Even if Galatasaray won both games and Real Madrid lost both they would need miraculous scorelines to finish second. PSG have naturally already qualified with their 100% win record thus far and the French superpower could slip up against Real Madrid if they aren’t up for it, but Brugge will be hoping that isn’t the case as they need Real Madrid to fail to pick up any more points if they want to remain in the UCL. I think Brugge will win despite the away disadvantage and it will be 2-1.

Speaking of PSG, they face Real Madrid, who they beat 3-0 the last time they met, and they’ll be chilling in the knowledge they’ve already qualified for the knockout rounds. Madrid might feel quite comfortable too, because even though they aren’t mathematically through to the knockouts, they are 5 points clear of 3rd and should not be slipping up from this point. Despite that, I do think PSG will prove too strong even for the Spanish superpower and it will be a 3-1 victory for the French team.

Group B is not very competitive either, with Spurs expected to secure second either tonight or on matchday 6, but Olympiacos will be keen to spoil the party and surprise us by allowing Red Star to leap above last year’s finalist to condemn them to Thursday night football. However, this outcome would rely on the Serbian side beating Bayern tomorrow and then beating Olympiacos too. I think Spurs will enjoy Jose’s first match in Europe in charge and win 3-0. Hopefully that’s not proven to be way too generous come full time.

Man City are going to beat Shakhtar 3-1 as well. Next game.

In what is potentially the best game of the fixture list this week, Atletico Madrid travel to Italy as Ronaldo faces his old club’s rivals. Juventus look like they’re being pushed all the way by Conte’s Inter in the Serie A this season but they’re having a much better time in Europe having already qualified, and the Madrid side will also secure a knockout spot by winning here. I think this will be the first game where already qualifying will lead to a lack of focus and that’s why Atletico will win 1-0.

In the other game of Group B, Red Star Belgrade take on Bayern in Serbia. They need all three points here for any chance of qualification whereas their opponents have walked the group and are already through. Bayern infamously won 7-2 in this group stage against Tottenham and despite Red Star’s great home record, this will end the same way as it did when Spurs went there; 4-0.

Atalanta may have been quite impressive in Italy, but in the Champions League they haven’t picked up a single win yet. Despite this, they still can qualify however they do need three points tonight against Dinamo Zagreb in order to stand a chance. Zagreb will want the win here tonight because if City win too that’s pretty much them through, as their goal difference is pretty decent and Shakhtar’s isn’t. Atalanta have only scored 3 goals this competition so far and, whilst I think they’ll add one more, I think they will lose 2-1.

Moving into Wednesday, qualification could be secured by Lyon against Zenit and if RB Leipzig don’t get a positive result they’ll move into first. Zenit need a point at minimum to keep hopes alive of knockout CL football this season. And I think they’ll get one. 1-1 draw.

Chelsea’s group is arguably the best in the competition. Three top teams all sit on 7 points and the London side will be in Spain tomorrow night taking on Valencia away from home, and a win puts them in pole position to qualify since Valencia still have Ajax to play. Chelsea come into this game having made a good account of themselves at the Etihad and they might be quite confident. I can’t look past Frank Lampard to get three points here and that might be biased because I picked Chelsea to follow and support this CL since my team obviously aren’t in it. I think the away side take a 3-1 win. Hopefully Michy grabs a goal.

Another good shout for game of the week is Dortmund vs Barcelona in Spain, however Dortmund have lost it in recent weeks; 4-0 loss to Bayern and they were 3-0 down to Bundesliga’s whipping boys at home on Friday night. Luckily they scraped a draw. Barcelona on the other hand are neck and neck with Real Madrid domestically but need a win to make sure they’re in the knockout stages and I think they’ll use their home advantage to win 2-0.

Slavia Praha have done really well to get 2 points from the group of death so far. They face Inter tomorrow night in a really tough game for them. Inter need three points to catch up to Dortmund, and I think we’ll finally see their form translate to Europe and it will be 4-0.

Ajax are part of that tough group with Chelsea and Valencia and they face Lille who are definitely the weakest side in that group, and they should win comfortably. 2-0.

Genk face Red Bull Salzburg in Group E. The Austrian side probably need 3 points to qualify ahead of Napoli as many expect the Italian side to get a positive result against the champions of Europe. Genk are out of the UCL already with 2 games left as they’re still sitting on 1 point but I believe Europa is still a possibility, however there are a lot of teams that would rather avoid that competition and it remains to be seen whether or not they’re one of them. Regardless, I think the RB side will emerge 2-1 winners.

Liverpool host Napoli at the mighty Anfield tomorrow. Napoli are the only team in the world to beat Liverpool in the 19/20 season unless you count the Community Shield (Which nobody does) so they must be more confident than most going into the match. Liverpool top the Premier League by an entire 8 points and look like they’ve already won it to some, whereas Napoli probably aren’t in the Serie A title race at all. I think this game has 2-2 draw written all over it.

And lastly, RB Leipzig take on Benfica in Germany and its another one that I can only see going one way, and that’s a Leipzig win. Orban and Kampl may well be out until the turn of the year but I think if Timo Werner plays he’ll bag a hat-trick in a 4-1 win.