Handballs all round as Arsenal and Villa lose in Champions League: Football Weekly Extra

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly, a hand-bawly night for the English clubs in the Champions League.

Mikel Marino penalised at San Siro to give into victory.

Arsenal were okay, created a bit.

Are they a little tired, a little off it, a little reliant on set pieces as they wait for Martin Odegaard to get back?

Arteta picks one up in the second half, presumably to make Tyrone Mings feel a little better on his comeback for Villa, giving away an odd penalty in Bruges.

Their first defeat of this campaign, their third in a row in all competitions.

How very Manchester City of them.

Also, PSG might actually go out, defeated by Athleti in the last minute in Paris.

There's another win for Brest.

Barca is still flying.

And Bayern gets the job done over Benfica.

There's a Premier League preview.

Brighton, Man City, Liverpool Villa, and Chelsea Arsenal all look good.

We'll chat spectacles, answer your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Nikki Bandini, welcome.

Morning.

Hey, Baz.

Hello.

I should give your official title, Barry Glendenning, your full name.

I don't know.

I can't get too familiar in these official parts of it.

From the Racing Post, Mark Langdon.

Hello.

Hi, Max.

Let's start at San Ciro then.

Interone Arsenal nil.

Nikki, it's sort of the perfect game for you to analyse, isn't it?

Your team and and you know, Italy's best team.

What did you make of it?

And actually the the team supported by most of my Italian family, actually.

So yeah, we are a bit of bit of back and forth this week.

Um yeah, it was it was a

underwhelming game, I would say, uh, in in terms of a spectacle.

Um I thought Inter though

played very well for what they set out to achieve.

They got the goal.

Um the goal obviously comes in a slightly um circumstantial way and I know there's going to be strong opinions about the penalties.

To me it's a penalty by the rules that are in place.

It's a penalty that we've seen given before.

It's a penalty that certainly in Italy people are very used to seeing given.

The perhaps less clear one is how Sommer gets away with punching Marino at the other end.

To me that also looks like a penalty.

But I think that given that Inter did some fairly aggressive rotation for this game, not starting Barela, not starting Turam, not starting Bastoni.

To be able to exert the level of defensive control they did was really impressive because even though Arsenal yes had a lot of the ball, had a lot of

shots on goal, there really weren't a lot of those that felt like sharp, clear-cut chances were there.

On those penalty decisions, I mean I don't know what you think.

Barry, I agree with Nikki that how Sommer gets away with punching Marino in the head and that not being a penalty and no one really being that fussed about it not being a penalty seems ridiculous.

And the handball law, I mean, just somebody change it.

I wasn't surprised the Summer one wasn't given because different rules apply to goalkeepers than to outfield players.

They shouldn't, but they do.

And so that didn't surprise me.

And as Nikki said, by the letter of the law, the Mourinho is a penalty, but it shouldn't be because there is literally nothing he can do to avoid the ball hitting his hand, travelling at pace off his foot or his knee or whatever, and his arm was not in an unnatural position because he was trying to block a football.

So it was a penalty, but it shouldn't have been.

And yeah, I'm not surprised Summer got away with his punch on Mourinho.

Yeah, Philippe O'Cleb tweeted this last night saying, look, a suggestion to sort out the mess that is the current handball law.

All handballs in the box sanctioned.

Fine.

If deliberate, penalty, if not indirect free kick, which is also great fun for spectators, keep punishment commensurate with the offence.

Right now, it isn't.

Now, obviously, there would be grey areas there, Mark, in terms of deliberate or not deliberate, and if it's not deliberate and on the line, but that would be better than what we have at the moment.

Yeah, I mean, I think that would cause just as many problems, though, because then the row would be over whether

you'll have situations where everybody go, that's a penalty.

That should be,

you know, normally.

I mean, we have that now still, don't we?

We have that, but we just have fewer penalties.

Definitely, you know, a near on 80% chance of scoring just doesn't feel right for a lot of these handball offences, particularly that are given, as Nikki alluded to, in, say, Syria, say, in La Liga as well.

And in the Champions League, the Premier League have taken the

a different approach and do include proximity.

And Howard Webb has spoken about how you know what supporters expect and i think within the spirit of the game and we might get onto that with the tyro mings there is a a bit in the laws that allows some leeway um for referees in certain situations but in the champions league this is given much more often than than it's not so i wasn't surprised um when it was awarded as a spot kick i do feel sorry for arsenal um even as a spurs fan if i'm just thinking about it neutrally because i felt they deserved something out of the game.

That penalty was the only into shot on target on the night.

And while they didn't create like golden opportunities, there was definitely enough in the game for them to have got a point.

It just feels like it's just one of those spells for Arsenal at the moment where everything is going wrong.

The late return of Odegaard was probably

the Philip of the night.

And hopefully, from Arsenal's point of view, he can come back and just get creating chances from open play for them.

I don't necessarily agree that this is sort of just one of those spells for Arsenal because

while they did play quite well last night and on another night might have won, they seem heavily over-reliant on Bakayasaka.

And we saw Newcastle double up on him.

Inter were doubling and sometimes tripling up on him.

And the rest of the players

or quite a few of them just don't seem on it really.

Frossard isn't playing well.

Martinelli isn't playing well.

I know Declan Rice was out last night, but he hasn't been playing as well as he can.

And I think that is a problem for them.

I mean, Arteta, Nikki described it as their best performance in Europe for years.

And I was like, is that...

ridiculous or have they just not had that many great performances in Europe in years?

That's what I couldn't remember.

But I tend to agree that with Barry, but, you know, they did have the chances in this this game and they created more than inter.

And, you know, but for a bit of luck, Dumfries doesn't clear that one off the line or Gabrielle, I think it was, you know, or is it Saliba actually had that header that just went just wide?

But they do feel like they're not how they were.

And I know Odegaard is missing and he's so crucial.

Is it just that simple?

It's so funny when you say best performance in years.

And of course,

this particular fixture conjures up a memory for me because I was in the Arsenal Away section when I asked my 151 at sancido uh in what my head feels like not that long ago but apparently it's 21 years back so

quite a long time so it's depressing isn't it when you think about it like that oh well that was one of those uh dates that that shook me a bit but yeah

it's it's really hard to to strike the balance i i understand that feeling and and look arsenal did have some chances uh i have thinking about haverts Havertz in particular, I felt like

came on strong in the last part of this game, the ball he had in towards the back post that nearly snuck in, and then he had the injury time shot that was booked by Bistek.

He certainly was influential.

I can understand, and I probably think that on balance, a draw would not have been an unfair result.

It's also worth saying that Denzel Dumfries hit the crossbar within less than two minutes of the game starting.

So it wasn't like Inter didn't have other chances as well, even though they were playing mostly without the ball and mostly on the back foot.

It was an inter-team

set up to play in that way.

I think when you look at the team selection across the board,

the fact that you've got Darmian starting at left back instead of DiMarco, the fact that you've got Bisek, who's perhaps certainly a fresher set of legs right now than Bastoni, it was a team designed to absorb and then spring out when it needed to, rather than a team that certainly wasn't their strongest 11, because, as I said, Bastoni Barrella not in the starting team, nor Marcus Turam, who's probably been their best forward so far this season.

But it was a team calculated, I think, for the opponent and also for the fact that they have Napoli at the weekend coming up.

From Arsenal's point of view

it certainly feels like Odegaard has missed a lot and I think that him being back is going to make a big difference and I think it's one of those things where because Arsenal actually

started this season so well and were able to continue getting results initially when he went out I think that perhaps it was easy to underestimate quite how significant that was.

But I think perhaps the same as as rodri at manchester city you can cover something for a little bit but the ongoing impact of just missing someone who's so central to your identity as a football team does make it hard but look i think there's also definitely some truth in what baz is saying about moments teams go through and frustrations and and i think that there's something self-perpetuating about oh we're not getting the decisions whether you whether or not you agree with that arsenal aren't getting decisions the feeling within a team of oh we're not getting the decisions we're not getting the breaks we're not quite getting the ball in those chances when we get it.

That definitely affects footballers.

It definitely affects any athlete when they feel like things aren't breaking their way.

And there's certainly a psychological element to this, I think, as well.

Yeah, I guess, Mark, the question is:

whether it's a fug or a sort of long-term issue, is how Arsenal get out of it and

how long you think it could sort of

fester, I guess is the word.

Yeah, they've had a lot of hard away games so far, even

even down to like Newcastle.

That is a difficult away game into away.

It is, you know, it's a hard one.

They've been to City, Bournemouth are sort of better than I think most people probably expected.

They've been to Tottenham, been to Aston Villa.

So they have got a lot of those hard games out of the way, but not scoring enough away from home.

I think

one of the accusations against Arteta is that his rotation's not...

brilliant and so they're having to you know play more games as is sort of everybody involved in um europe this season And then

you want, in sort of the absence of Odegaard, you want a Jesus maybe to step up and play like he did when he first arrived.

Or, you know, Raheem Sterling was a signing that wasn't even brought on again.

So he clearly hasn't sort of won Arteta over yet.

And he was somebody that had the trust of the manager from their time at Manchester City.

So I think from that point of view, sort of the backup players maybe

are not trusted.

And and maybe that's partly due to the fact that they've not played that well when when they've been given an opportunity they've got another hard game um against chelsea so it coming up so i think that you know if they can just hang in there the season will get easier um for Arsenal, but confidence is a real thing and it does impact a team's ability and they're low on confidence at the moment.

I expect once Olegard is back to full fitness after the international break, like the chance creation will go up just naturally.

Is that important to the team?

I think that is a flaw maybe with Arsenal if they are so reliant on one player and something that they might want to address in the summer, presumably not in January.

But I do sense if they can just sort of hang, you know, just stay in contention for the title and for sort of the top eight, things will get easier for them in the second half of the season.

I just want to come back on what Mark said there at the end.

And I think there's sort sort of two threads I have in my head to it.

One of which is of course like depth is so important actually again to tell the Italian side of the story I think intest depth is such a huge part of why they are the most competitive team in Italy because they can wrestle the players already mentioned and still put out a very strong lineup.

Bringing in players like Zielinski this summer and

Teremi up front as well has given them much more of that.

But I also think there is something still needs to be said for, yes, but world-class players are world class for a reason and you can't always just replace them.

Like if Rodri goes out at city or Haaland Harland went out at city, you can't just click your fingers and have a player who's as good as that again.

And

I think this sort of idea that depth can always cover for a great footballer is perhaps a little bit unrealistic as well.

Jimmy says, Should the handball law be changed?

It was a bit harsh on Arteta.

He couldn't have done much about it.

Yeah, he did pick up the ball before it went out of play and got a yellow, but

it doesn't seem like a huge.

I mean, managers probably shouldn't be doing that, but you know,

I could see it was pretty close.

Give me the benefit of the doubt.

Tyron Mings definitely shouldn't have picked up the ball, Barry.

Club Bruce's first win over an English side since 1995.

Neil says, what's the last thing you picked up by mistake?

It was hilarious, wasn't it?

I mean, I think it is a penalty, but

I mean, it obviously is a penalty, but

as Mark was alluding to that kind of, you know, the ref could sort of say spirit of the game thing.

Well, obviously there's a precedent insofar as Arsenal escaped punishment for more or less the exact same thing in a

more important game against

Bayern Munich last season.

And it's nice to see the shoe on the other foot now because, you know, it's not Arsenal fans pointing, going, Well, he got away with it, why didn't we?

But in this case, it's Villa going, well, Arsenal got away with it, why didn't we?

I don't know what, if anything, was going through Tyrone Wings's mind when he picked up the ball.

He clearly shouldn't have.

You know, it's an easy thing to avoid unless you're taking a throw in.

Don't handle the ball.

So don't pick it up.

For anyone who may not have seen it, I'd say most people probably know about it by now, but Emmy Martinez kicked the ball from inside his six-yard box to Mings, as he had been doing at various points during the game.

And Mings just picked it up and threw it back to him, or placed it on the edge of the six-yard box.

And after a short pause where no one quite knew what was going on, the ref went to his monitor just to check what he thought had happened, had happened, and

awarded Club Bruges the penalty.

I know Mark has an interesting take on this, which I agree with, but I'll let him take the floor in a second.

But while this is obviously the talking point of the game, Club Bruges fully deserved to win.

They were...

by far the better side on the evening.

So I feel a bit sorry for Mings because he's been out for so long he may have forgotten how to play football um

so and this was his champions league debut and it turned into a very inauspicious occasion for him uh marks what's your what's your hot take well yeah we're just i was at aston villa's trip to tottenham on sunday and villa were just pissing about with these goal kicks for about the first 70 minutes where emi martinez would pretend to take it sometimes and then you know pal torres might have a look at it and they'd three players almost you know like it was over a free kick and they were discussing who was going to take it and they were trying to run the clock down just you know until they were losing and I think even when it went to 2-1 at one stage Martinez forgot the score and was still sort of taking his time a goal kick and

yeah they were just doing it again

it seems to be at the moment I don't I know Martinez does like to be the villain in the piece and seems to get off on on that and frustrating supporters.

But I feel like Villa are playing playing quite slowly at the moment and trying to take the sting out of too many games.

I mean, they only have one shot on target in this entire game, which, given they were chasing it for the best part of a half,

is

I think a failing really at the moment for Aston Villa.

They've had a good start to season, particularly in the Champions League.

But I think this one was slightly different to the Arsenal goal kick against Bayern.

This one travelled quite a long way outside of the six-yard box.

The Gabrielle one was almost along the line.

I mean, Mings was, he'd taken a few steps before he picked it up.

There has been precedents in Bundesliga 2 this season where Archie was mentioning it on a previous Europod where it happened twice in one game, which was even more remarkable.

Yeah, I think this one was a penalty and you'd have to have gone some way to sort of trying to get that i think in the spirit of the game and where where do you stop the you know if a if a centre-back gets put under pressure in that situation, can they just pick it up and sort of pretend that they didn't realise the game was in play?

I think there have to be penalties.

Marcus hit the nail on the head.

The problem is,

watching this, it feels so stupid.

It feels so like silly.

Nobody thinks he was handling the ball in actual playing the game sense.

Nobody thinks it was affecting the game in any way.

The problem is...

The point at which you start saying, we're not going to apply it is the point at which there is scope later down the line for something more ambiguous to happen.

I wouldn't have hated it if the referee had done the same thing as the referee did to Gabrielle, because that would be some internal consistency with another decision in a Champions League game, and also there would be an argument that makes a lot of sense to me, which is just let's not ruin a game for no reason.

But it's a handball.

There's no way you can justify it in the rules that there isn't a hand ball.

Yeah, I do like the idea of three players over a goal kick, like a free kick, hands over their mouths, going, you know, who's going to take this?

The commentator saying, well, Paol Torres has been really good from goal kicks this season.

Who's it going to be?

Yeah, and I think we'd summed that up pretty well.

I suppose, you know, that the question for Villa is similar to the Arsenal one, Mark, which is about, you know, is this just three defeats in a row?

One was Palace in the Carabao, where they didn't put out a first team, and Palace did.

One was Spurs, where I mean, they were in the game until late on.

And this one, you know, is it just a

fog?

Maybe everyone's just in a fug right now.

I'm in a fog.

It's been a long-running fog, let me tell you,

I think Gaston Villa

are

still having a good season, and then John McGinn referenced that

after the weekend defeat.

And I just think that they're not at that kind of level where it becomes a crisis if they lose a couple of games because they're a team that I think is sort of fighting that fourth to sixth seventh in the Premier League not much between those teams Claude Bruges I've watched a weird amount of their minutes in the Champions League this season I don't quite know why but they've actually impressed a lot I thought when they went down to 10 men against Milan in the last match they created opportunities they they were all over Dortmund before losing 3-0 and the goals came in a cluster right towards the end of that game so always look to a tricky game there would be some issues I think you know apart from that Watkins early shot, there wasn't much chance creation from Villa.

I don't like it when Watkins and Duran play together.

You know, Duran might be pushing Watkins for a start, but when they sort of are up front,

as Emre did for parts of the second half, that doesn't really work.

I think they then lose something in midfield.

They're rotating the team.

I wouldn't worry about that palace game at all.

I think they're probably better off being out of the Carabao.

And then they've lost two relatively hard away games.

So I don't feel like it's a crisis time for Aston Villa, but yeah, just one or two issues.

They're much better, I feel, when Inanna's in the midfield and he didn't play in this game.

I mean, we're halfway through this big, massive group stage, and they're in eighth place

on course at the moment to go straight into a quarterfinal.

So if you had offered any Villa fan or player that before

this kicked a ball in this competition, I would imagine they'd bite your hand off.

Last 16, isn't it?

Or last 16, yes, yeah.

Sorry.

Yeah, I know.

No, you make a good point.

All right, that'll do for part one.

Part two will begin with PSG's defeat at Home to Athletic.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So, PSG 1, Athletic 2, the journalist Phil Blundell writing, for all the perceived lack of peril, there's a chance PSG are going to go out, not playoff round, actually go out.

They're 25th, which is one point below.

Excuse me, Max.

Never mind, Phil Blundell.

I said this about two weeks ago.

Sorry, Phil.

Well, all due respect to Mr.

Blundell.

I want to say, Barry Glendenning said,

they are 25th on four points.

They've got Bayern away, Salzburg away, City at home and Stuttgart away.

This, Barry, is exciting, isn't it?

It is exciting.

It's not as exciting as old school Galactico PSG going out in, you know, whatever crazy manner they exit the competition in previous years.

But they are very much...

I think they'll probably think, ah, we'll we'll be okay, but there's a very good chance they won't be okay.

And they got mugged here right at the end.

Brilliant counter-attacking goal in which Jan Oblak had a long throw out to Anton Griezmann.

He plays a cross-field pass to

Correa,

who sort of shimmy, took out a defender.

I think it might have been Marquinos, took him out with a little shimmy, and then more or less fired through a hologram image of Donnarumma

to win with literally the last kick of the game.

Yeah, so it was a real smash and grab by Atletico Madrid, who had gone a goal down, but came back to steal the points.

And PSG,

it would be funny if they went out.

Not as funny as, I say, in previous years, but they are in danger.

Yeah, actually, the oblique throw is so brilliant because it's so flat and fast.

It's like, yeah, you know, it's sort of better than a pass.

And you're right, Griezmann's ball was brilliant.

I mean, sorry, just one other thing.

PSG,

they missed so many chances in this game.

Like, so many.

They should have comfortably won it.

Yeah, just on Correa, Brendan Boyle writing, unless you've written it already, Barry.

You know, credit other people.

Correa's last three goals for Athleti, this winner against PSG, a 95th minute equalize against Real Madrid, and a winner, a 92nd-minute winner against Athletic Club.

So scoring lots of late goals.

Mark, do you think they'll...

I mean, they'll probably squeeze into the playoffs, won't they?

But they're not simple, those games.

Like Bayern and City are definitely not gimme's.

And Stuttgart, who didn't look brilliant last night, but Stuttgart, I think, are quite a good team.

A dangerous team if you've got to beat them, which might be the situation that PSG find themselves in.

A lot of the data models are saying 9-10 points to make it into that 9 to 24.

Effectively, to finish 24th, you're going to need 9 or 10 points.

Haven't been many draws in this season's Champions League, so I think that that gives PSG maybe more hope because they're really struggling for results at the moment.

This game, if you'd have said like before the match, how will it play out?

Both teams just played to stereotype.

PSG looking good for large spells, finding ways to lose the game.

Atleti had four shots in the entire 90 minutes and two of those came in the moment where they equalized completely against the runner-play.

And then

the last one came with the last kick of the game as well and atletico

didn't play well for for most of this game really 28 possession um but found a way as they sort of so often have over the last decade i feel like for psg you know this is now a different psg and maybe shouldn't be um assessed at the same level as when they had messi neymar and bappe um or even ibrihimovich before because it's it is a young side now.

You like Buckalai is somebody that is potentially going to be the next star of the team, but you've got

Neves, Vetinia, Zaya Emery in midfield.

That's by Champions League standards, that's really inexperienced and young.

And you'd hope that they'll just grow together as a team.

But it's hard to get your head around the fact that PSG are not this superstar sort of side, but it's not who they are at the moment.

Nikia?

Yeah, I was just going to come in as well on, first of all, the qualifying, which is, yes, top 24, you still look at it and think, well, surely they'll have managed in.

But actually, it's seeded the top 20, the playoff round, right?

So if you finish 24th, you're going to be facing one of the teams who's in the top half of that bracket, which is definitely going to include some good teams.

So it matters still to finish lower down it.

I was also just thinking about like...

the entertainment factor of this of this group stage because i i get the impression with so many games it is just putting a lot of people off that people are just not tuning in and watching it but it oddly this was another of those games which just thought made me think if you are in the camp of football tragics or just people who do it for our jobs as well or hit both of those points who want to watch lots of football it is interesting seeing more of these combinations and it is interesting seeing more of these different um matchups happen Yeah, no, I don't disagree with that.

And like the league table,

it's hard, isn't it, to digest a league table that's so big because we're just not used to seeing league tables that are so big.

But I think it is quite interesting.

And I think,

obviously,

we won't know until we get to games seven and eight.

But I think a lot of us are trying to sort of, we're sort of feeling in the dark, aren't we, as to whether this is good or not.

It's definitely starting to get interesting now because if you look at this monster table,

City, Uve, Arsenal are all lower than you'd expect.

Well, Atlático as well, if they hadn't won that game, they'd be out of the top twenty four right now.

Bayern Munich down in seventeenth, Real Madrid eighteenth, AC Milan twentieth, PSG twenty-fifth obviously.

And then, you know, you look at fourth place, Brest, who are if not the team with the w lowest budget in the league, certainly second lowest.

Slova and Bratislava are bottom of the table at the moment with no points.

I've no idea how they're fixed financially, but I mean, the breast story is just utterly remarkable.

Yeah, they won 2-1 at Sparta Prague.

Edin Milson Fernandez hit a good old volley to make it 1-0.

They are managed by Eric Roy, who once played for Sunderland.

Barry, if you knew that, I don't once played for Sunderland and then had some sort of directorial or

role at Watford, I think, for a while and was working as a T V pundit.

But breasts were only promoted to League One in 2019,

the smallest team in Brittany.

They can't play their home games at their home stadium because it's too ramshackle to be fit for UEFA purpose.

I believe all most of their staff are local people.

It's to borrow a phrase from the League of Gentlemen, it's a local club for local people and it's they're punching incredibly high above their weight.

Like this is their first time ever in Europe.

And as recently as 20 years ago, they were playing amateur football.

So it's just astonishing what they're achieving.

Yeah, yeah.

It's great, isn't it?

And you're right.

They are fourth

below Monaco Sporting in Liverpool.

Yeah, and the team's below them, Interbarca, Dortmund.

It's a nice place for them to be, isn't it?

They still have to play Real Madrid and Barcelona, which, you know, is fairy tale stuff for them.

Yeah.

And, you know, you'll beat Real Madrid.

Barca might be trickier.

Barca won 5-2 against Red Star Belgrade.

Lewandowski getting his 98th and 99th Champions League goals.

It's been such a turnaround for Barcelona, hasn't it, Mark?

I mean, it just shows sort of how quickly things can change.

But I just seem to remember, you know,

all these levers they were pulling.

They had no money.

They couldn't afford to

register players.

And now suddenly, you know, Raffini has turned into Leonel Messi and

they're just playing with this freedom.

I mean, I presume, like if you if you lift up the carpet that the floorboards might be a bit dodgy but right now it's and you know Fermin Lopez as well looks so good Jules Kunde was superb last night he was incredible

he turned into prime cafu um in in the game against red star i think hansi flick didn't go well for him as german national team manager that might be a red flag um given england have just appointed sort of a highly rated um sort of club coach.

But he's done very well previously in the club game and he's gone to Barcelona and

very quickly been able to impose his philosophy on the club.

And that was how they conceded their goal because they were defending high and were hit on the break.

And they always run the risk of that.

But I think the advantages to being so aggressive are that you win the ball high up.

You've got so many talented players.

Yamal, Rafinha, Lewandowski, Pedri was the front four sort of last night.

Just gives you so many opportunities to score.

They fresh Real Madrid.

They fresh by Munich.

They're going very well domestically and in the Champions League.

The game they lost in the Champions League.

Eric Garcia was sent off very early on in that game.

So I wouldn't even read too much into it.

Look as good as anybody, really.

I mean, you don't win the Champions League in

October, November, and whether they're in the right shape when it comes to February, March, April time.

That's usually when Real Madrid wake up and Manchester City, you know, get back to winning every single game they play in.

But it's going really well for them.

So many young players as well that are coming through.

And there's depth to the team that makes them a big danger, I think.

You know, Gavi is somebody that didn't play in the game

last night.

Just talent all over the pitch.

I really like them.

For me, Lopez didn't start.

Danny Olmo didn't start.

So, yeah, there's a lot to be hopeful for

as far as Barcelona are concerned.

Yeah, Rafini's finish was great.

The Red Star goals were brilliant, weren't they?

One little dink and then a curler in the 84th minute.

I'm not sure what happened to Paul Cubasi, but he tweeted a picture saying, I'm okay.

Like, covered in, he looked like Bruce Willis at the end of one of the diehards, like, like, he just sort of been through the ringer.

But was he wearing a vest?

Yeah, he was really,

you know, not clean-shaven at all, and just a white string vest on.

But yeah, he's some player as well.

Max, just to say, Robert Lewandowski,

I might have just thought he was finished

coming in to this season.

And he was one of those who sounded about the levers being pulled and question marks, how much have they spent on Lewandowski?

But, you know, as you said,

he's two more goals.

And he's just perfect now for this team because they're creating so many chances.

He just has to play in the penalty box and

be able to do that for a while yet, you know, if the chance creation remains as high as it is

he's on 99 champions league goals now so yeah yeah did you hear that from the broadcaster max rushton about three minutes ago

no i read it in an article written by phil blundell

fair enough um uh by bevy good one nil uh you chose this game barry i'm not sure you picked the best game seemed to me that by

all

i do what i always do max i took one for the team because I give everyone else first dibs, and then I take whatever's left over.

Yeah, it was okay.

Very one-way traffic.

Byron went into this on the back of two straight Champions League defeats, so they were under a little bit of pressure.

Benfica had two wins from three, so the pressure was kind of off them.

And the game was basically...

In a nutshell, Harry Kane taking lots of weak shots on target or rasping shots that were just wide.

And I told you, Trubin, the Benfica keeper, was the busiest man on the pitch.

And Byron eventually got the win they deserved.

Leroy Sane came on for them and he changed, you know, he really gave them a bit of oomph.

And it was a cross from him which Kane headed across the face of goal.

And

Musiala powered home a header from close range.

I think that was about 65 minutes.

And that was enough for Bayern to win the game but they deserve to win it.

Mark you wanted to just mention the subdued atmosphere there.

Yeah so unfortunately a Bayer Munich fan passed away

sort of he was there was a medical emergency before the game.

He was transported to hospital but sadly died there

en route and the Bayern Munich fans were not singing during the match out of respect and said they would not be supporting as usual.

Life comes before sport.

We wish the family and friends lots of strength.

So yeah, a strange atmosphere during that game as well.

Also in Germany, Atalanta won 2-0 in Stuttgart.

Wonderful work from De Quetelera, who I love, always loves a footballer,

for Adamaro Luckman's goal, Nikki.

That's a really good result for them, isn't it?

Yeah, Atalanta are absolutely flying now.

The first eight games of this season, I think they only won two of them across all competitions.

They've won seven of their last eight and drawn the other one now.

So there's been a real

divergence point in the season where things have started going right for them, which makes a lot of sense when you look at how the season began.

Obviously, Scamaka getting injured just before the start of the season, then the Coop miners deal, his transfer to Juventus getting done late.

And also Adamana Luckman, who was brilliant in this game, was angling for a transfer that he didn't get.

There was a lot at the start of the season that was distracting or stopped Atlanta from preparing quite as they would have wanted to.

But now that everything's consolidated again, that lookman is back in that team they're still missing skamak and uh and scalvini at the back as well those long-term injuries are still there but it just feels like gaspedini as he always does now he's had some time to work with what he's got it it it all looks fantastic and and yeah they are absolutely flying they

thumped napali the other day uh i think they are going to be a force to be reckoned with in this competition and zero again uh Salzburg got their first points of the Champions League winning 3-1-0 at Fire Nord,

which I might be a surprise, Mark.

Didn't Fire Nord go to Athleti and smash them or Ben Fica or something?

Big surprise.

It was Ben Fica.

Yeah, this was, didn't expect it.

So, yeah, therefore, it is a surprise.

It is, yes, it's a double way of saying surprise, isn't it?

But

I

sort of written Tulksberg off.

There's been a number of teams down at the bottom.

I think it's like the bottom five have got about one point between them.

And sort of Salzburg were and another one that were struggling.

And they were gifted a goal.

Final Final goalkeeper made sort of a terrible howler right on the stroke of hard time, rolled the ball out.

Sulksberg intercepted it and Canate scored and

goals changed games and that was a good time for Sulksberg to score.

I don't know if I can fit a third cliche in

quick succession, maybe not.

But yeah, I was shocked by that result, Max.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

And you know what surprised me?

It's great.

Your understanding of the language is

unsurpassed.

The final goal was brilliant.

A little flick and volley from Anis Hajmusa, which was possibly the goal of the night, I think.

And Shaktar beat Youngboys 2-1.

Both teams getting their first goals of the tournament.

Shaktar now onto four points, just one point off PSV in 24th.

In the Europa League, Spurs go to Galatasarai, Magic United host Palk, Rangers go to Olympiakos.

In the Conference League, Chelsea host Noah.

I know not a lot about Noah.

They arc in a lot of crosses.

Yes.

I was going to say,

are they traveling to West London on a giant boat?

But I did once organise a surprise party.

You'll have hated this, Barry.

My organised fun day.

We hired out a boat

on the Thames.

And

it was a sort of day where you had to do like...

different you had to get photos of different things through the day and we met each team through the day and we told them to come as different animals and then we marched them two by two over Waterloo Bridge.

Three of us all dressed as Noah, stopping traffic, saying damn shall pass.

And we all went, Oh,

those are the days.

Noah, a fourth in the Armenian League, only founded in 2017.

Anyway,

it was good for me to get nostalgic about my youth.

That'll do for part two.

We'll do a Premier League preview in part three.

What a tragic use it was.

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here too.

Hello.

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welcome to part three of the guardian football weekly um in my book three games that look great brighton man city liverpool astonville and chelsea arsenal should we start mark with bright and man city you know four defeats in a row is unthinkable for pep but it's very possible like brighton are set up to do what others have done to city right yeah and brighton first half particularly against liverpool last week at anfield showed how dangerous they can be city clearly lacking in confidence at the back they've got issues because uh kyle walker just isn't playing to the level that he used to and they're just giving too many chances away he used to be able to sort of cover for any of those those high lines because he'd run back, but that's not so possible.

Now, you look at what Mitoma Cadiolu could do on sort of the wings for Brighton, and there's hope there.

The scary bit for Brighton is that City have still got all of those forward players and are capable of clicking into gear at any sort of time.

But at the moment, they're more vulnerable than I think I've seen them before.

It is dangerous to overstate it, though, because we possibly have had similar discussions in the past and they just kick on when it really matters but in the absence of Rodri with De Bruynen not fully fit Haaland missing a few chances they're just not sort of city at their best at the moment and that does give Brighton hope and I think sometimes you get teams that are scared of playing big teams and maybe don't show their best Brighton I would say are the opposite of that and really fancy it so yeah it's a dangerous game for city the the kyle walker thing's interesting do do you think uh mark it's just old father time catching up with him or he you know it's no secret that his private life is quite chaotic and i wonder if maybe that it's just that's preying on his mind and proving a distraction and hard to say i mean he's 34 so not the biggest surprise if he slows down slightly for somebody that relied on his pace that was always one of kyle walker's greatest assets and um you maybe have to change a game slightly.

You're not helped.

If you're a city defender, you're not helped by the way that they play

because

you're left isolated and you have to do the job on your own almost.

Whereas some teams would double up and help the fallback out.

So he's definitely not in a good moment, as Pep might say.

I mean, I don't know how chaotic his private life currently is, but he's certainly been incredibly fast and good at defending while his private life has been chaotic in the past.

So, you know, my guess would be, yeah, you got outpaced by Troyore and he just went, oh, no, I'm going to have to become a centre-back or something like that.

Chelsea Arsenal, Nikki, that is also fascinating, isn't it?

Given where Arsenal are and Chelsea are still

not quite sure how good they are.

Well, above Arsenal in the league is where they are right now, only on goal difference, but still, yeah,

it's a big game.

It feels like probably,

even though in the grand scheme of things, I think that the interior result doesn't matter that much for Arsenal.

I don't think that's a particularly significant loss for Arsenal, it still feels like that ratchets up the pressure a little bit more because, of course, everyone's going to forget about the League Cup game that happens in the middle and say, well, Arsenal haven't won any of their last three games.

And there's just this feeling that it is really crazy when you look at some of the results Arsenal have had this season.

You think they've already played away to a lot of the top teams in the league and they've got good results in a lot of those games.

But there is that sense because Liverpool are flying, because the standard is set so high at the top of the Premier League that if you really want to compete for a title, you can't have phases like this.

You have to keep picking up results.

And so, I think there is quite a bit of pressure on Arsenal if they want to stay in the title race to get a good result here.

You could flip that around and say, Well, Chelsea are on the same points, why not then?

But Chelsea didn't start with the same expectations this season that Arsenal did.

So, yeah, I do think there's pressure on Arsenal for this one.

Actually, Mark, we had this conversation on Monday.

I think

I wonder if you might win the title with 85 or even 80 points this season.

I'd say higher than 80, but lower than 90.

So 85 would be about right, Max.

City at the moment, who are the standard bearers,

I would say, a mid-80s,

the way they're going.

And that does bring Liverpool, Arsenal, sort of into it,

I would say, yeah, because once it gets to like 90 points and sort of 90-odd and even towards 100, it just feels abnormal for anybody else to be able to get to that level.

If it is kind of mid to

even high 80s, that does make it more interesting.

Yeah, yeah, Liverpool played Villa.

And

given where we sort of feel Villa are in this mini-fug, Barry, another chance for Slot to play a good team, perhaps not being at their best?

Yeah, it certainly is.

And Villa's record at Anfield is not good.

I think...

I think they've,

I'm not sure.

They certainly haven't won there in 10 years, and I think they might have lost on every visit there in that time.

They're conceding quite a lot of goals.

They're not scoring too many at the moment in their recent run of four or five games.

And

I would be surprised if they got anything from this game.

On Sunday, Mark Spurs play Ipswich,

which is not necessarily a fascinating game on paper, but it could be it'll be a good game, I imagine, given the way they both play.

But Joe says, I've been waiting for ages for Mark to be on the pod.

Did he find his glasses?

Would adding some carrots to the diet help his eyesight?

Michael, did Mark mistakenly eat any vegetables when he lost his glasses the other day?

We did talk about you losing your glasses at half-time during the city game, was it?

It was, yeah.

I was very surprised when I was listening to the pod last week.

I think we'd had just a quick text conversation Twitter conversation, Max.

I'd had one too many, I think, at that point.

So it

wasn't the most coherent sentences I was putting together.

But I lost them at half-time in the Tottenham versus Manchester City game.

And it wasn't until I went for the start of the second half, sort of reached into my jacket pocket, desperately searching.

And you know, the bit where you've lost something and you know they're not in your pocket, but you keep checking just to make sure they're not in your pocket, even though they're clearly not.

And yeah, because I can't see, maybe it is the lack of carrots, but I can't see sort of

long distance.

And I was high up in the Tottenham Stadium for the game on Wednesday against City.

I, at one stage, turned to my mate and said, he's got to take Tsar off soon.

He's already on a yellow card, to which point my mate said he went off at half-time.

So that was kind of

the view I had.

Maybe I should have sort of messaged Phil Blundell to see what he thought with the second half because I was really struggling.

Bumped into Ian Danter, the talksbook commentator, on the way home.

I had a can of desperado.

He'd been working.

So I'm not sure how that conversation went.

But thankfully, one

kind soul at Tottenham in the East Stand had managed to hand in to a security guard that the glasses.

So I contacted Tottenham, who very helpfully said, Yeah, you can get them back, but you can't pick them up on a match day.

Now, I don't really live near Tottenham, and they said, unless you get there more than three hours before the game.

Now, given I'd already had a skinful on the Wednesday, I didn't fancy sort of getting to the Villa game at about 10 a.m.

So

I made my way back to Whitehall Lane.

It's a very strange place on a non-match day.

I made my way back there on Saturday.

So thank you for

the kind messages and those that wondered if I managed to get home safely.

I did get home and I've now got the glasses again.

How did you lose them?

Four gin and tonics, three pints before half-time from me, Barry.

Well, how much are you having before?

I mean, like, is this a normal match day routine for you?

I think it was the 8.15 kickoff caught me out slightly.

That enabled an extra 45 minutes.

I wasn't working on

the day off on Wednesday, so that didn't help.

And I'd had a month off booze.

I'd had October.

I'd gone, was it Sober?

October.

Yeah, sober.

Well, nearly, nearly, I think, was that the 30th or the 31st?

So

I

ended that in style, I think.

And yeah, they must have just fallen out of of my pocket.

When I was on my midlife crisis in Thailand, I was in a tuk-tuk one day going somewhere, and the driver went over a massive pothole, and my glasses just came straight off my face into the side of the road.

So I had to like frantically get him to stop.

And then we went back, never saw them again, couldn't find them.

Harry says Neil Harris wins again.

Will Max ever forgive him?

I mean, of the two Harrises in big contests, I I wouldn't have picked Neil for the one that I necessarily wanted

to be victorious.

But a very good win for Millwall over Leeds.

Sunderland held at Preston at the top of the championship as well.

We've got time for a few more vasectomies.

Sam, you know, if they write in, you sort of feel.

I mean,

I wonder if, do you think the vasectomy ship has sailed, Barry?

Are you still in on them?

No, I'm up for it.

Sam says, hi, all.

I've listened to the podcast forever.

And last Friday, I had a vasectomy and a circumcision.

I was under general anesthetic, so I couldn't listen listen to the podcast during the procedure but I felt a weird sense of duty to let you know regardless.

Recovery's going okay.

Albeit I'd be lying if I said I didn't have significant pain

in my cock and ball as I write this.

I don't know if you need to be quite so graphic.

Christian says, greetings from Sweden.

Long time listener here, started listening back in my university years in 2016, as seems to be the custom nowadays.

I'm reaching out to you since this coming Tuesday, it's my time to get the snip snip.

And what could then be better than me starting to giggle about about you talking about this as a doctor is working on my manly bits and me being uncomfortable trying to explain the giggles.

It's not you, it's Max and Barry.

Given the numbers of people who've reached out to you on this topic, I feel we're gathering a community.

Perhaps we could start a pub team called the Eunuchs,

Ball Gang, or any other suitable name you can come up with.

Much love and appreciation from Christian.

Well, good luck to everybody who is only going to be able to do it.

I think, Max,

well, I'm not sure if this is for public consumption, but I think you did mention to me that when

your second child willie rushton is born you plan to have a vasectomy so maybe you could have your vasectomy while presenting uh an episode of the pod and then the ship will have sailed

the the aircraft carrier will have gone full circle

uh i i mean

I think it would be a difficult record, wouldn't it?

I mean, I'm just trying to think of the logistics, because

I during a vasectomy, how we never had one, you lie down.

So then I'd have to have the Zoom call sort of, I'd have to have someone holding the laptop.

I could

there is an assistant, Max.

Yeah, there is an assistant.

So that could be their job.

John Robbins presented or co-hosted a recent episode of his podcast with Ellis James while lying on his side in bed after having a procedure to remove his knobby styles.

So

uh, he was in extreme discomfort, but he soldiered on, Max.

Okay,

what are knobby styles?

Piles.

Oh, really?

I didn't know that was the uh colloquial term.

And well, best wishes to John with his piles.

Um, I don't think we want piles, doesn't have them anymore.

No, no, I don't think we want piles messages, do we?

I think we can draw the line somewhere, that's where it is.

Anyway, that'll do for today.

Um, uh, thank you, everybody.

Thanks, Barry.

Thank you.

Cheers, Mark.

Thanks, Thanks, Wax.

Thank you, Nikki.

Thanks.

Sorry, before we

go, yes,

could I just recommend that there's a terrific long read on the Guardian website by Samira Shackle, and it's called Has Poppy Mania Gone Too Far?

This is Remembrance Weekend coming up, obviously.

And it was back in 2003 when Leicester City were the first football team in the Premier League to decide to put poppies on their jerseys to try and raise some some money for British Legion in a game against Blackburn.

So Blackburn, they gave Blackburn the heads up and Blackburn wore them as well.

Then other clubs got involved.

And it just sort of charts the history of the poppy and how this weird culture wall started and the James MacLean business and Cookie Monster wearing one on the one show.

And it's a really good read, whatever your thoughts on, you know, whether people should or shouldn't or wear the poppy, yeah.

Um, and also, if you just drag up the David Squires cartoon, oh, yeah,

absolute genius.

Uh, all right, uh, yeah, noted, I will read it.

Football Weekly is produced by Silas Gray.

Our executive producer is Phil Maynard.

We'll be back on Monday.

This is The Guardian.