A chaotic Istanbul classic and Arsenal’s easy night – Football Weekly Extra

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Hello and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly.

Some night in the rain in Istanbul and Manchester United let another lead slip in the Champions League.

Not a great evening for Adre Anana, jumping out of the the way of one and punching another in.

Otherwise, they'd surely have won.

And now, qualification is out of their hands.

There's an exciting penalty, non-penalty in Munich as PSG's BAR criminal is given a day off.

Arsenal fly past Lans, 5-0 halftime.

Shame on them for not going for 10 in the second.

While PSV stage a huge comeback in Seville, Jude Bellingham scores a lovely header as Rael beat Napoli and into comeback from three down at Benfica.

There's a Premier League preview and a whole hour on Cambridge United sacking one of the good guys, Mark Bonner.

All that plus your questions, and that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Barry Glendenning, welcome.

Hello, Max.

Hello, Lars Sivvertson.

Good morning, Max.

And hello, Mark Langdon from the Racing Post.

Hi, Max.

You okay?

Yeah, I'm good.

Let's start in Istanbul.

I mean, don't ask me if I'm okay.

We've already had people complaining about yesterday's pod, so I'm fine for the record.

I think you should ask us if we're okay since we had to listen to it.

No one is forced to listen.

Let's start with Galatas Ride 3, Manchester United 3.

You're on the minute by minute, Baz.

How did you keep up?

It's a tiring evening's work for you.

It was very stressful, Max.

I won't lie, there was a stage yesterday afternoon where it looked very like this game wouldn't go ahead.

And I was quite pleased because it went drag at an early finish.

And UEFA insisted it would go ahead despite the rain bucketing down in Istanbul all day.

And I was thinking, there's no possible way this game could go ahead.

I saw them doing a pitch inspection and the ball wasn't really bouncing.

And you know, when they kick it, and it just sort of travels about three feet and comes to a very abrupt standstill.

But hats off to the Galatasara ground staff and

whoever installed the drainage system because it never stopped raining, but

there were no obvious ill effects on the pitch.

There weren't players aquaplaning around the place or, you know, skittering 50 yards across the pitch into an advertising hoarding.

The game ended up being,

I would venture to say, one of the best games of football I've ever seen.

And

I really did struggle to keep up to the minute by minute because there was so much going on.

Yeah, you'd have to say Manchester United

did throw it away.

They surrendered two two goal leads.

Probably could have won it at the end.

But by the end, the game was so chaotic.

It was just like a basketball match.

It could have gone either way.

Manchester United missed

Bruno Fernandes hit the poll.

Scott McTaminay fired one inches wide of the upright.

But ultimately, I think it was the chaos of Manchester United's players who kind of lost their heads a bit and

all tactical discipline disappeared.

That's what cost them, as well as a couple of ricks from Andrea Anana.

I think Andrea Anana is being blamed for this result, and he certainly was at fault for two goals, but I would suggest there's quite a lot of blame to go around.

Much of it

at Bruno Fernandez, who scored a brilliant goal, played really well, but still gave away two stupid free kicks from which

Galatasara scored.

On Inanna, and we had many questions.

Going down some familiar routes, Matt says, who caused a bigger mess?

Inanna in goal or Max in the hotel bathroom?

Leo, is it possible Inanna was hand-feeding Mark Langdon a block of Kerry gold before saving that second free kick from Zih?

Hashtag Butterfinger's head.

If his life savings depended on it being saved, would Barry choose Inanna or Beaver to face a fairly innocuous long-range shot?

And a tweet from Paul Gibbons that Barcel Jim sent to me saying, Inanna is the first ever false one.

I really enjoyed that.

It's funny, Mark, isn't it?

Like, it does sort of dive out of the way of things frequently.

Yeah,

look,

Barry sort of pointed the finger of blame somewhat at Bruno Fernandez.

I would just doubt it was Onana's fault.

Players do give away free kicks.

And

the first one, I think, is more excusable than the second mistake because Galatasarai do use two players in the wall that then split.

And

the free kick is aimed between those two players.

And it is difficult to see.

And,

you know, Onana's gambled and obviously done the wrong thing.

The second one, I think, has you sort of just the technique's just all wrong for

what he's trying to do.

I'm not entirely sure what it was he was trying to do at that point.

He had been playing much better in the sort of recent Premier League games.

And of course, there was the game against Copenhagen where he saved the penalty with the last kick.

That had he not saved that, then Manchester United wouldn't even have been in the position they were in going into that game in Istanbul.

But overall, defensively, Manchester United have not been good enough.

I mean, they've scored three goals in every single away game in the Champions League group stage and picked up one point.

I mean, that is, you know, they're probably not going to qualify, and that's why they're not going to qualify.

And Onana was also at fault for that goal in Bayern Munich when they were playing well at that point as well.

So definitely he's been a big part of the reason why they've had such a dramatic Champions League.

But, I mean, ultimately, you just want your goalkeeper, first of all.

I mean, he's great that he can play out, but first of all, you just want to be able to rely on them.

And I don't know if United are ever going to get to the point where their fans and defenders feel comfortable with Onana being quite erratic.

And I guess the point, Lars, is

if they're never going to rely on him, at what point do you say, is this the right player?

I mean, as Mark said, he's been much better recently.

Yeah, no, I mean it's it's it's it's

it's so weird some of the mistakes he makes and i thought that i think your your close personal friend mark boznich made a really good point on stan yesterday

because it's it's it's really interesting having a goalkeeper on punditry duty because he usually does a very good job like explaining technical points and i mean why the goalkeeper was maybe stood in the wrong place or got his legs mixed up

but for the second one i believe he made the point he's never really said this before and it was like,

you look at him, what were you trying to do?

Like, what was happening here?

Like, it's just an absurd mistake.

It just doesn't make it's very, very strange behavior.

And it's so, it's frustrating because

he seems like a nice enough guy.

You know, he fronts up in the media.

He does interviews.

And he seems like a very sympathetic character.

And

no one likes to see goalkeepers fail, I guess, unless you're a Gal Tasroy fan in this case.

But just as it seemed like he was on the right track, he suddenly

got into holographic mode again, and the thing is just going past him.

Even Ziak, who scored the goals,

did the muted celebration.

It felt like he couldn't

kick a poor man when he was down here because none of those goals should have gone in.

It was very, very strange.

The one thing I would say in mitigation, slight mitigation for the second one, is that as the ball was whipped into the box, Anthony Marshall was standing near Onana and shaped to head it and then ducked out of the way.

Now I don't know if that's because he got a shout or just decided not to, but that may have put Inanna off.

Yeah, I mean that is possible.

Maybe Martial just thought,

I've run around quite a lot.

I don't want to touch the ball.

You know, it's not really for me to make any more effort.

I mean, they're a weird team, United, aren't they?

Mark, afterwards, Ten Hong said, what's enjoyable is the progress we have, the way we play football, we're dictating the game, we're scoring so many goals, being proactive and brave.

I i mean he he prefaced that with we're considering too many goals but i don't know if i see that i still don't see a plan no um you know it was four shots on target 42 possession and galatasari had eight shots on target and obviously 58 possession so i'm not sure that they did control um the game um as as ten hard said at least the attack even if it sort of people producing moments so it was obviously gonachio um against everton fernandez's goal was absolutely sensational

I thought, last night.

And they are producing moments going forward.

And there wasn't even that, I would say,

maybe six weeks ago.

You wondered where they were even sort of heading as an attacking scent.

So they found something for them

going forward.

I still, yeah, I'm not sure it's sustainable what's going on, but

they should have won this game.

And it was a difficult enough game.

I mean, Bayern Munich had a lot of trouble when they played Galatusarai away.

And I think that the way the Gala are playing, they are and kind of

force teams into getting involved into maybe matches they don't want to in terms of it just being end-to-end.

And I just think a better team, a better structured team, would have taken advantage of those gaps

in that last 20 minutes when the game just descended into just chaos and sort of under-10s style football with everybody just piling forward.

It just feels like a better team would have been able to have controlled that moment and just pick Galatasarai off.

I think I didn't see these quotes.

Did Tenhag actually say that they controlled the game?

Because that'd be a wild thing for him to say.

Like,

I was watching this game, and what it reminded me of was

during lockdown, one of the things I did to stay sane when there was no football is I watched a lot of like old football just because I just my whole system was so used to watching a certain number of football games a week that when there was no football, I almost went mad.

And it was really interesting watching old games because then you really appreciate how much the game has changed.

And one of the things that really struck me was how chaotic things used to be, like before teams started defending properly and moving as a unit.

And there was just more chaos, and there was space everywhere, and the ball was just kind of bouncing around.

This kind of game felt like a throwback because every time I looked at the TV, there was just space everywhere.

There was like no one, no one was in control of this.

The Norwegian commentators, I'm in Norway at the moment, and the Norwegian commentators at one point in the second half was like, is the pitch much bigger than usual?

There's just space everywhere, it's just chaos.

So I thought that was the main takeaway from this:

it was an amazing game to watch, just precisely because no team had any semblance of control.

Yeah,

that's what he said after the game.

Whether he was saying we are dictating games, like in general, or this one specifically, I'm not entirely sure.

Galatasaro, meanwhile, Barry, there's a sort of expendables vibe to them, isn't there?

Yes, very much so.

Really fun.

So that front four, five, six is just, you look at them and go, well, this is weird and fun.

Yeah, I mean, there are several players on that Galatasara team I've never heard of.

And then

they're probably, you know, the red jumper guys on Star Trek.

When they beam down, you know,

they're going to meet a grizzly end.

And then you've Lucas Torera, ex-Arsenal, Tongo Bella, Endem Bele, ex-Spurs, Hakam Ziek, Ziek, ex-Chelsey, Dries Mertens, we all know, Wilf Zaha we all know, and Morrow Ocardi.

So yeah, it's and

it would be unfair to describe them as has-beans because, you know, some of them still have plenty to offer.

I mean, Morrow

Cardi was very unlucky to have a brilliant goal ruled out.

He was just fractionally offside.

I can't remember at what stage of the game that was because.

He was 2-1.

I I think there were 2-1 down.

It would have been close to 200.

And yeah, it's, you know, there is this sort of run and gag that,

you know, Turkeys were the last refuge of hasbeens and football scoundrels.

But

I really enjoyed watching them last night.

And

it was just such a fun game.

I mean, if you were a Manchester United fan, you'd be tearing your hair out.

But as someone who wasn't that fussed over who won or wasn't fussed at all um i i loved it um i think manchester united just needed a few couple of cool heads in there to

you know scott mctommony was all over the place he played quite well but he he was just all over the pitch do you think do you think taking amorbat off was a mistake because it sort of seemed to me that amarabat was actually doing quite a sensible job and when mainu came on who did play really well against everton that they seemed to lose any sort of semblance of control yeah that that might be a point it hadn't really occurred to me, but Mainu certainly wouldn't blame him

for

United's poor results.

But yeah,

it just was chaotic from them.

And they'd never, I think in three games at Galatasarai previously, they'd never scored.

So scored three goals there

for the first time and

not win is bad.

It was quite telling actually in his post-match interview, Bruno Fernandez

gave out about

unnamed players

being selfish towards the end, trying to score themselves instead of laying the ball off to someone who was in a better

position, better place to score, and saying, you know, you put your the team first, yourself second.

And that was quite clearly a dig Anthony Marshall, who he had absolutely bollocked out of it a couple of minutes previously when Marshall had tried to go it alone alone and ran into traffic when he should have laid the ball off for, I think it was Fernandez or Pelestri to have a shot.

Bruno Fernandez having to go at anyone for wanting to score themselves is just inherently funny.

I mean, even if he had a point in a specific case, I did notice in the sort of pre-match

in the press conference before,

he declared that everyone is happy with my leadership, he said.

So that's good.

Captain Bruno has

no complaints that he's aware of.

I'd like to praise Galat's Asserai some more, just in terms of the whole expendables vibes, but also just how attacking they were.

You know, you get both fullbacks going way the hell up the field whenever they can.

You're playing in a sort of notional 4-2-3-1 type of thing, but both the central midfielders and Dumplin and Torera were getting forwards.

So you do feel for the center halves occasionally.

You weren't the only people who were stuck.

Wonderful, great fun to watch and uh a great advert for the turkish super league i have to say watching this i felt maybe i need to get stuck into some more turkish football if this is if this is what they do every week i should i should watch more of it it's just it's ziek zaha and akadi with drees merlins just you know lighting up a fag and going just one last job guys this is it um so look mark You know, at the bottom of the group, right?

They've got to play Bayern.

They've got to win and then hope that Copenhagen, Galati Taser, I draw.

It's not impossible to qualify for the knockouts, but it seems unlikely.

But do you actually think,

in a funny kind of way, they'd be better off going into the Europa League?

They'd have a better chance of winning that.

Well, they'd have a better chance of winning the Europa League, but I don't think.

Yes,

as soon as I said that, there was a stupid question.

Really, where you want to be.

It's sort of, you know, if you drop down from, it depends what sort of team you are.

If you drop into

the Europa League and you're kind of, you know, in a smaller league, smaller ambitions, then that can still be, you know, a great competition for you.

If you're Manchester United and you're in this group with Galatassarai and Copenhagen I think you know you have to be expecting to get through to the last 16 and believing you can get through and you know who knows what happens once you do get through so I think I don't see them getting into the last 16 now and it's a big blow for United to not qualify.

Also might be a blow for United in more ways than one because obviously fifth place

is potentially a Champions League spot next season for the Premier League.

But the Premier League teams do need to get enough coefficient points from this season to make that happen.

And obviously, United being bottom of Group A doesn't help

in that regard.

No, I think

even the Europa League would be kind of a blow for United.

It's better than nothing, but

it's not what they would have expected from this season, particularly when the draw was made.

Byron drew 0-0 at home to Copenhagen.

It's a good draw for your Nordic brethren, Lars, isn't it?

Yeah, they did pretty well.

They had some chances, actually.

That was a pretty big one towards the end.

There was a bit of a sort of goal mouth scramble where,

I mean, if a goal had gone in, it would have been a good sort of crap 90s football moment because there was a lot of stuff going around in the box.

But yeah, and then, of course, there was a magnificent, there was a great, you know, it's not been a great pair, a couple of days for VAR as a concept or in execution, but it was a great VAR moment, I thought, because we nearly had a game decided by a stupid handball decision.

One of those

eerily similar to the Newcastle one, but even dumber, I thought, which was initially given by the ref.

And the VAR said, yeah, you might want to have a look at that.

And Stephanie Frappar went over to the monitor and looked at it and thought, yeah, yeah, that's a bit daft.

And it was ruled out,

which,

you know,

you rarely have people like chairing for anything to do with VAR at the moment, but I was very happy when that decision was made because it would have been very, very annoying for Bayern of all people, you know, the mighty Bayern getting a jammy penalty to win at home to Copenhagen in a game they maybe didn't deserve to win.

So good, good VARing there.

Yeah, I suppose a VAR,

you know, an anti-VAR person, of which I feel I'm becoming more and more, would say, well, before VAR, she wouldn't have even given that as a penalty because you just, you know, handball was a different thing.

And

so before VAR.

That doesn't feel like a VAR problem.

That feels like a rule problem.

Oh, yeah, no, no.

Yeah, but the rule has been adapted to cater for VAR.

That's not true.

Yeah.

I mean, because I'd agree with Barry there, Los.

I'd say

that just wouldn't have been given as a penalty five years ago because it just wouldn't because.

we didn't overthink the handball.

Well, the rule has been changed, but that's

I disagree with the assertion that the rule has been changed to suit the tiny percentage of leagues that have VAR.

Okay.

Oh, that's interesting.

Well, why is it being changed then?

Because people are obsessed with wanting consistency, so they're trying to word the rule in such a way that it's easier for referees to

give consistent penalty stuff.

Like, people don't want common sense because common sense means inconsistency, and that makes them angry.

That's interesting.

Because I would,

yeah.

No, no, but we can agree to disagree, can't we, politely?

Yeah, no, it'd be good to get someone from iFab on the line or something and say, specifically, have you?

There are about, you know, there's a handful of leagues in the world that have VAR.

There are many, many, many, many leagues that play the game of football that do not have VAR.

But the biggest ones, Lars, the biggest ones have it.

I mean,

I'm going to join Max and Barry and say that even if they don't admit to what it is, I think that one of the reasons they're trying to make it more consistent is that it becomes easier for the VAR to kind of give a consistent

ruling on it, would be my

assumption.

Yeah, while we're on that, the VAR who awarded PSG's penalty was removed from duty on Wednesday.

Dale Johnson tweeting, this is a clear indication that UEFA, ESPN's Dale Johnson, sort of the only person who really knows everything now about VAR and the laws of football, says a clear indication UEFA views this as a VAR error, which is odd, Barry, isn't it?

Because did we come to the conclusion that

it was a stupid decision, but the correct one one yesterday?

It was a stupid decision, but the correct one.

But then you're into the realms of it's a matter of opinion because apparently it was decided it was incorrect, not because the ball hit his chest and then hit his arm, but because when it hit his arm, his arm wasn't in an inverted commas unnatural position.

But interestingly, on

TNT Highlight Show, they said that he was not stood down because of the Han Wall decision.

He was stood down because he did not award a penalty for Anthony Gordon's foul on Ashrafakimi.

The plot thickens.

That would make sense.

That seemed like a more egregious mistake, really, in terms of the rules and stuff.

I thought so as well, but Mac Max disagreed with me yesterday.

I should stress, I don't like the

penalty award there either.

The stupid sounds like

sounds like you love them, Lars.

Sounds like you're the one fan.

Can I just say, I don't like the sort of dropping officials every time sort of they do make a mistake on whether it's VAR or you know, just in the game.

I mean, I mean, that because I don't think that helps, actually.

I think, you know, Inanna, for instance, probably not going to get dropped for Manchester United.

And he's made two, you know, really big mistakes

and has made other ones and not been dropped.

So I don't, and you wouldn't treat most players like that and so it does feel wrong to me and actually um unhelpful for um for referees or var um sort of officials to be dropped for for you know making potentially one error that is a judgment call um you know it's not a process thing that's maybe slightly different so um you know i think that um doesn't sit right with me no good point i'm mining to agree with you and that'll do for part one part two i'll begin with arsenal's demolition of loss

HiPod fans of America, Max here.

Barry's here, too.

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Coach, the energy out there felt different.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So Arsenal 6, Lons 0.

Callum says, why is the Arsenal attack so lacked last year?

I mean, they were so good in this game.

Lons weren't.

And it feels a lot like the analysis is simply Arsenal are better than Lons.

Which would be fair.

I mean, I thought the first half was

tremendous.

I mean, well, obviously it was tremendous because

they went a half-down at

5-0 up, but there was something about

Arsenal are top of the league.

So let's just be clear.

They've done very well so far this season, but there hasn't always been the same flow in their attack.

And I thought in this game...

They reminded me of Arsenal from the first half of last season.

There was

the way those attackers were finding each other and finding space and just just kind of

playing through the opponent as if they weren't even there.

I mean, I'm sure Lawrence will have games where they defend better, but I just thought Arsenal were absolutely brilliant and tremendous fun to watch and

really back at their best in the first half here.

And then

obviously they didn't go for 10 in the second half because that never happens.

But yeah, super, super convincing performance.

I suspect Baz, not many people...

think Arsenal will win the Champions League.

But they're good enough, aren't they?

There are certain certain teams who will go into the last 16 who you wouldn't give it hope in hell of winning the Champions League.

I would not number Arsenal among them.

I don't think they will win it, but I

wouldn't be massively shocked if they did.

I think they're good enough to win it.

But

yeah, I don't think they will.

But yeah, they're not hopeless cases by any means.

I mean,

does it feel like they've...

Does it feel like Ortetta's finding the right place for Havertz?

Another Kai Havertz, what's his best position,

Chad?

Well, he did look good yesterday.

I mean, I know it was just, it was a game where it was easy to look good if you were playing for Arsenal yesterday.

There was a lot of space.

You know, Lons played into Arsenal's hands

to a large extent, actually have more possession in the game.

But as we were saying with the Galatusari game, there was just so much space in behind that.

I was going to say easy for Arsenal, but you still got to be able to play the right balls and

make the right runs.

And I think Avert maybe early on in his Arsenal career wasn't actually making enough forward runs.

And I think that's a confidence thing, really.

He's got his goal now.

He'd been playing better just before the goal as well.

And he got that important goal against Brentford.

And that would have definitely lifted that sort of weight that was on his shoulders.

And I still do wonder exactly where he's going to fit into the Arsenal team on a a consistent basis because I think

certainly for the bigger games, Arteta has preferred to play Rice just to the left of that midfield three and have Jorginho in there to control things.

And

Odegaard, we assume, plays because he's the captain and they've got the front three that I don't think Havertz breaks into

in any of those positions.

there might still be an issue as to where Havertz

can play on

in terms of the the biggest matches, but I think in a game where Arsenal feel like they're the better team,

you can definitely find a place.

Rice can be the holder and Havertz can get involved more and make those runs.

And

he is somebody that did score a goal in a Champions League final.

I think maybe because he's got a languid style and

I don't know if there's a misconception of what he is or what he's trying to be, but I've always felt the criticism has been on the harsh side of him, actually.

I mean, moved to a new team, trying to fit into a new system.

You have to give players a certain amount of time

to adapt to that.

And actually, Lars, it's funny where Mark just said, you know, the front three sort of take care of themselves.

And I get the feeling that we, you know, we spend little time talking about Saka Martinelli and Jesus.

And maybe they'll...

bring in Tony

in January.

But I don't know if they need to.

Maybe they do, but like, that's more about his fitness, Jay's fitness than anything else.

They're so

joy, those three.

Yeah, well, I guess we don't spend a lot of time talking about them because they're kind of settled.

Like, we tend to talk about stuff that's not working well because that's often where the more interesting conversations are.

Whereas with them, it just seems to be a really balanced front three in the sense that you've got a center forward who gets criticized for not scoring enough goals, but of course he does so much else that's positive.

And because you've got two wide players who both have got a lot of goals in them,

it's almost turning into a kind of equivalent of

the Mane Firmino Sala thing.

You have a center forward who some of his best work is enabling the wingers to come inside and be goal threats.

And it just seems very well balanced.

Arsenal seem to be producing enough goals as it is.

Maybe they'd like to bring in another option.

But as you say, that's also because Jesus does pick up the odd injury and the odd suspension and that that sort of thing but i just don't think we talk about it that much just because it just works it's it's it's fine it works it's really good connor says uh hi i wonder if you could take a moment to mention the passing of bob wilson's wife megs wilson i know i know you know the charity well and the wonderful things they've done for other 20 000 families since the passing of their daughter a massive miss for the arsenal football world yeah arsenal wore black armbands yesterday to pay tribute to megs bob wilson's wife um i knew her not amazingly well but pretty well i've done loads of work for the willow foundation she was a an amazing woman i'm heartbroken for Bob, who is one of the nicest people in the whole of football.

And like Connor said, they lost their daughter when she was 31.

And sort of out of that pain, they built the Willow Foundation, which is a charity that helps send seriously ill young adults on sort of special days, aged 16 to 40.

And, you know, 20,000 special days that they've raised money for the Willow Foundation.

It's a brilliant charity.

They do the London Football Awards.

And yeah,

we send our hearts out to Bob and family because she's a wonderful woman and she will be sorely missed.

Also in this group, Sevilla 2 PSV3, which isn't Mark, how I expected it to end at one point in this game.

No, I had Sevilla 2-0 up early in the second half, needing the victory.

The game did turn on Acampos, his red card, because Sabari scored a lovely goal.

You know, was it about two minutes later?

It's

probably one of my favourite goals this season, a cushioned left foot sort of volley into the top corner um really um great technique yeah did you see the the slow-mo angle from behind that there's a perfect angle of it just arcing in it's so good

and and then from that moment really severe

tried to hold on and went very defensive like five three one

um

believing they could could see it out but psv um kept pouring forward and eventually got the the you know an equalizer and then the winning goal from

in injury time, wasn't it?

Really?

I like,

I mean, I don't like the way Savir played football.

I think they've completely lost kind of what they're sort of about and what they're trying to be and punishment as much as anything for when they wrested their entire team away to Arsenal as if like there were more important games where they could pick up points.

I just, you know, just don't think they're good enough to kind of pick and choose where they get their Champions League points.

But PSV,

I would say the opposite of that, a very brave team under Peter Bosch got absolutely annihilated at Arsenal for trying to be attack-minded and just weren't good enough.

But in the other games, I've enjoyed watching them.

And yeah,

I don't see them going any further in the Champions League, but I'm glad they got through.

And I really like Bakioka on the right wing.

I think he's somebody that will be playing probably in the Premier League before too long.

And Lars, tell us about Ricardo Pepe.

Yeah, no, he's a young American striker from El Paso in Texas.

He's a former FC Dallas youth graduate who,

you know, people in America were quite excited about.

And he's got a decent goal record for the U.S.

men's national team.

And made his big move to Europe to Augsburg in the Bundesliga, which was kind of unexpected and didn't have a great time there, didn't score goals.

And has found his way to the Dutch league, where hopefully he will score more goals.

So it's a big moment for him to get that winning goal.

I was just,

Sevilla are so old,

to say as well.

It seems very odd because for a long time, their whole sort of modus operandi with the sporting director Monchi was to sort of sign a lot of young players and sell some of them on.

But you look at the lineup now, you got Fernando in midfield, is 36, like Rakitic is there, he's 35, you got Ramos,

what is he, 30, 37 in defense, and Jesus Navas is there?

Like, talking about the expendables, I mean, goddamn, this is like, but this seems again, as Langdon touched on, I think it seems like they've completely lost what they used to be good at.

But even so, having all this experience, you'd expect them to be able to see out a 2-0 lead.

But then, one of the

completely boneheaded red card for Campos obviously put them in a bad position, and they just couldn't get it done.

Hopefully, Seville will get their house in order because it's been a disastrous season for them so far.

To Group C then, Real Madrid have won the group.

They beat Napoli 4-2.

Quite a fun game.

I don't know, Barret, if you want to have another go at Jude Bellingham's good.

It was some finishes, goal, wasn't it?

Yeah, lovely header.

What he's doing over there is incredible.

I think we tend to forget how young he is.

Scored a wonderful goal and then had an excellent assist for, I think it was the fourth one.

So that's...

14 goals and 15 games since signing for Real Madrid, four assists, and

life is pretty sweet for young Jude at the moment, isn't it?

Yeah, I sort of thought because he set up Josilu, who'd missed about a million chances.

And I don't know if he patronized Josilu when like he was trying to push him towards the crowd, going, You can celebrate too.

It's okay.

These people are all right.

You can, you can, you know, they'll be nice to you like they're nice to me.

And you're sort of going, it's not really fair.

It's just different games for the two of you.

And there was another goal for this guy, Nico Paz, Mark, who I was not aware of until yesterday.

Yeah, he was somebody that I wasn't overly aware of either.

Argentinian youth international that was

whose dad actually played for Argentina at 98.

Well cut, so he was born in Tenerife,

but he's sort of Argentinian

and is somebody that is highly rated.

But when I was looking at that bench to kind of find out more about Nicopaz, I saw the name Lucas Canizares on there and clicked on his Wikipedia.

And it's the, yeah, it made me feel slightly old that

the Santiago Canizar is the the goalkeeper of Valencia he sadly is now on the bench for Real Madrid at the moment so is he a goalkeeper he is a goalkeeper he's their fourth choice goalkeeper they've got a an injury crisis um at the moment with the first two goalie's out but he is on the the bench for uh real madrid but certainly i think uh nico paz is somebody that real madrid liked the look of um and you know he's even been around sort of argentinian sort of senior squad so I think that there you know there's a lot of hope that he might turn into a first team player one one would hope if Real Madrid have a goalkeeping crisis they will keep him away from bottles of aftershave

didn't dad have to miss out on a World Cup or something because he dropped a bottle of aftershave on his foot it's not as bad as salad cream is it you know it's after shave is better than salad cream isn't it if you're a goalkeeper getting injured i thought was dave besants wasn't it well nice to have uh paz Paz and Cholito Simeone, Giovanni Simeone, score in the same game.

I imagine their parents will have played for Argentina together.

So that was quite a nice thing.

He enjoyed that, didn't he, as well?

Young Simeone, I think, scoring away to Real Madrid.

Do you think he gets like extra Christmas presents because he scored away?

Yeah,

the stocking will be even bigger and there'll be extra treats.

uh for him for Christmas.

Do you think Simeoni gives a stocking or like a trouser so you can sort of, you know, like he can sort of push out the cojones cojones and put tangerines there and be like melon

sort of aggressive yeah an aggressive Christmas from

from the simeone's just one question on Napoli Lars which is I mean they're probably through barring a sort of disaster against Braga in the last game Walter Matsari what how where did he become their manager when how did I miss this well in 2009 I guess is the answer to that he's been in charge of them before um

and did rather well when he was there before and helped them on their sort of journey towards being a competitive team again.

And

yeah, it seems, I mean, they wanted Conte.

This is sort of well known, but Conte didn't want to take over in the middle of the season.

When Matsari was announced, my first thought was that, okay, like he's a he's a 3-5-2 guy, so maybe he's come in to sort of prepare the team for Conte if Conte wants to come in next summer.

But then now there are rumors of Conte going to Juventus, so we're not quite sure what's happening there.

He's an experienced, if unspectacular, name who's come in to steady the ship, I suppose.

He's only got a contract until the end of the season.

So

he's, you know,

I think his main quality is that he's not Rudy Garcia.

Just the madness of lots of people wanting Antonio Conte given.

Just how miserable that football is.

Maybe they don't get the Premier League.

Maybe they don't have that.

That's the right situation.

Nobody watched the contest hottener.

Possible.

Braga and Union Berlin drew one apiece in Group D

Rail Society and Inter both through.

It'll go down to the final game.

See who wins the group.

Sociedad drew nilnan at home to RB Salzberg.

Ben Fica were 3-0 up on Intermark.

But

they didn't win because Inter came back.

No, I mean, Jao Mario cost into, I don't know, something stupid like 40 million or, you know, and then never lived up to it, then scored a first half hat trick against them just sort of feels very football um in sort of the way that um you know that that does tend to happen but i think really from from inter's point of view they picked um a team missing most of their best players um to start with um already through

sort of maybe treated the game um not with the respect it deserved in terms of trying to finish top maybe they're not that fussed about finishing top they've got napoli at the weekend so um that there was that but then they were able to bring on chiram martinez uh barella de marco so you know more established first team players and that um turned the tide um back in in their favor and if anything actually um in the last 10 minutes it looked like they they might go on and and and win the the game but um i in into showing maybe that the depth for squads not there because um they needed the first team players to come in to to help them

Marco and Autovich starting was one thing, but also

this summer, because I was really busy getting the book done and everything, I missed out on some transfers.

There are players that are sort of knocking around Europe who I'm not aware, like proper sort of Barry.

Was it Sergio Ramos or something?

One of these things.

I had one of those moments when Davy Classen suddenly turned up in an inter shirt.

I was like, what?

When did that happen?

Definitely a heavily rotated inter.

But such a disaster for Benfica this, because actually making the Europa League would be quite a, would be a big thing for them.

I mean, they'd fancy themselves to maybe win that if they could get in it, but it looks like they won't.

Nice time for me to learn that David Classen plays for Inter.

That'll do for part two.

We'll look ahead to the Premier League weekend in just a sec.

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Max here.

Barry's here too.

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Capes optional.

Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly.

So, let's look at some of the games of the Premier League.

Saturday night, 8 p.m., Newcastle, Manchester United.

I mean, absolutely no idea what's going to happen here.

Every time I write Newcastle off, Barry, for being knackered and broken, then they prove me wrong.

And I think they would

expect them to beat Man United this weekend.

I don't know.

I'm the same as you.

I wonder how long they can keep going

because their last two games were seriously intense physically and mentally.

That has to take a toll, you would think, at some point, but again, they keep

seem to be full of vim and vigor.

I can see this goal game going either way.

I don't I haven't checked.

I don't know if Newcastle are they welcoming any players back from injury or suspension?

Not suspension anyway, because Tenale is out for long term, but

they could really, I'd say, do with some fresh legs.

But I wouldn't be surprised if either team won this or it was a terrible draw with two knackered sides.

Asleep eventually.

I mean, I would have said much the same, Barry, but I love that.

I wouldn't be surprised if either team won this or if it was a draw.

It's a very strong.

It's just.

I just couldn't call it I couldn't call it at all.

I have no idea how it'll go.

It is exactly what I would have said, so I shouldn't have a go, really.

I completely agree.

Newcastle are very formidable at home.

One thing that struck me is

in the Premier League, you have a few grounds where it's you know quite hostile, the atmosphere and febrile.

Newcastle will be one of the better ones.

And then you have that awful game between Liverpool and City last Saturday where it was played out in almost funereal silence.

And then you go to

Galatasara.

Like, just the contrast.

It's like it's a different sport altogether, isn't it?

In terms of crowd atmosphere.

And I suppose it's interesting how that evolves, I guess.

You know, if you're a kid who goes to Galatasarai, that is just what you have, right?

You see it and you repeat it.

Like, we're all sort of creatures of habit like that i i mean i much prefer kind of the british way where um the kind of noise builds as the excitement grows over a chance um because you kind of get that kind of constant noise at galatus all right it's the same in say germany or wherever there's kind of i suppose an ultra tradition where um there's this rhythm of chanting that just goes on and on but I do prefer the the British way where like the kind of noise levels just goes up and up and up as as a chance develops into that roar when there's a goal but but um

that yeah that's my preferred one i actually find sometimes when if you're at a european game um and you're sitting next to the kind of away european fans it gets on your nerves after a while that kind of just constant jumping around i think the idea is that you're meant to like support the team whether they're playing well or not i mean you're not meant to just make noise when they're doing well you're meant to kind of occasionally support the team you support i guess is the thinking no mark's not having it no Mike's just shaking his head.

He's got no reply to that.

I haven't got, I've not got the energy for 90 minutes' worth of support.

I'm intrigued by this, though, because United are in a decent spot in the league, but they haven't really beaten anyone good.

I mean, they've beaten Brentford and Wolves, who are decent, but like, aside from those two, they've beaten Fulham, Knocking Forest, Luton, Sheffield United, Everton and Burnley, right?

Those are the games they've won in the league.

They've yet to do well against anyone of some kind of stature this season.

And Newcastle

were, you know, they struggled a bit against PSG, obviously, but they were really, really good against Chelsea.

So

having joined Barry on the fence earlier, I'm going to get off the fence and say I think Newcastle will win comfortably, actually.

Super Sunday, Man City versus Spurs.

I mean,

I just wonder what might happen here.

An incredible game.

if if

yeah spurs at their high line and oh christ what could

so many things are horribly wrong for them yeah and they've had three defeats in a row and you know

city although you know

they're not one in two city is that uh you know i think they've only kept like three clean sheets in like 17 games in in all competitions so i mean pet was furious at that first half performance you know kanji making mistakes diaz

as well.

They're not defending very well.

The four goals they conceded against Chelsea,

the balance of the team doesn't feel particularly right, although

it might not matter in this game, given that Herling Arland will be up probably against two fullbacks at the centre-back, which will encourage City to go forward.

This feels like a 5-2 or something like that to City, I think.

A good 1960s scoreline.

Leaders Arsenal play Wolves, Brentford Luton, Burnie Sheffield United.

Forest Everton's a pretty big game near the bottom, especially given how we've all decided that Everton were going to be fine last week, and now we watch them capitulate to May Night and not sure they'll be fine.

They're going to appeal that 10-point deduction, and that appeal will be heard and concluded before the end of the season.

West Ham Palace, Liverpool versus Fulham.

I think I've remembered all of them.

If I've missed one, Chelsea Brighton, you left out.

That's an interesting game.

Oh, yeah.

That is interesting.

And Bournemouth Villa,

the Villa fans won't be happy glossing over them.

Yeah of course.

Anyway, Chelsea Brighton is interesting, isn't it, Bas?

Yeah.

Chelsea got thumped last time out.

Brighton are patchy enough this season.

They play tonight, obviously, Thursday.

So, I mean, if Chelsea were to lose this at home, and there's every chance they will, you could envisage a lot of anger being directed towards...

Well, I'm curious to know where it would be directed towards would it be directed towards pochettino towards todd bowley bit of both i'm not sure but they they had turned the corner but they definitely haven't now well if if you keep if you keep turning corners you just end up back at the same place you started

maybe that's the thing because the newcastle game i've watched quite a bit of chelsea this season And I think the Newcastle game is possibly the first or a rare game of them just being really bad.

I mean, they've had a lot of games this season where they've actually played quite well and just not gotten a result because of poor finishing or whatever.

But they were not good against Newcastle.

And I think it's also the first time Pochettino has really lost his rag with the team in the press afterwards and really sort of talked about them being so soft and this and that.

And with Chelsea,

you know, I don't know if this matters, but like on the XG, they're doing quite well.

Like there's a lot of what they're doing that's not terrible.

But adversity breeds adversity, I think, in football.

You know, there's a psychological component to this.

If you keep not getting results, players start getting annoyed, lose trust in themselves, lose trust in the manager.

It's a huge test, I think, of Pochatino's man management skills, the situation they're in.

Because if they keep doing roughly what they're doing, I think they'll be fine.

But when the results aren't there, players start getting annoyed.

And that performance against Newcastle was not good at all.

But I mean, I would say, I mean, Brighton...

you know, playing in Greece on Thursday, Dunk suspended.

Lamptey's out long-term now.

Ansu fatty um also out long term i mean they are absolutely decimated at the moment in terms of like what they can put out on the pitch so i mean chelsea i mean ordinarily you'd say it's a difficult game but i mean you know brighton are not um anywhere near full strength so um i don't know if that increases the pressure on chelsea to some extent well and chelsea do seem to generally speaking i'm not sure what happened at newcastle but generally speaking seem to favor games that are a little bit open when they have space to run into because they do struggle to unpick a a lower block, but when they have space to run, then like guys like Sterling and Jackson can do that.

Mudrick, if he plays, so you'd think against the pretty sort of front-foot Brighton team that that should suit them, especially with Brighton, as you know, as you said, missing a lot of people.

I think Rhys James is suspended as well, isn't he?

Who'll come in for him?

I'm trying to think because they will presumably be Malaugusta up against Cara Matoma if he's fit.

I noticed he started on a bench for Brighton last week.

I don't know.

I'm not sure why, but

if he's fit, he'll be a massive threat.

It is worth mentioning, as we glossed over Villa, that if results go their way this weekend, they could finish the weekend top of the Premier League.

It's quite some sign of how well Unai Emery is doing.

Jack Swindlehurst from the Excellent Under the Abbey stand pod writes, will we ever see a man, let alone a manager like Mark Bonner in the Cambridge area again?

Yes.

Cambridge United sacked their manager yesterday morning, which came as some shock to me.

We weren't playing very well.

I watched us get hammered 3-0 at home to Lincoln City on Tuesday night, and we were absolutely appalling.

Like, we made them look incredible.

And I don't think Lincoln City are incredible.

Not that I watch them a lot.

And we've won one in 13.

So, like, our form is bad.

And actually, in the last two seasons, we just turn off as soon as the clocks change.

So we barely got a point between October and April last year.

But he has been so great for that.

Chloe is there four years.

And that's actually quite a long time in management terms, especially in the EFL.

And he's a really nice bloke.

I was a season ticket holder at Cambridge United.

And I'm sad that it hasn't worked out.

I was sort of, I was sort of slightly, I felt slightly sort of

bereft about it, you know, and until Gareth Ainsworth turns up or Gary Rowatt, I will continue to be bereft.

But

if another club will do very well to hire him as a manager, because he did some great things for us.

Well, he nearly took a job higher up, didn't he, Max?

And sort of, I think that goes to show that for managers, like when you're hot, you probably should move because it doesn't take long for that to really get up to then go on a bad run.

And you know, his next job now might be sort of league two,

whereas it could have been a championship.

It's uh, um, you know, I know there's you there's loyalty, and he kind of clearly had a bond to Cambridge, but um, for sort of job progression, I think when you're doing well, um, that's the time to jump shit, really.

Yeah,

Bear says, Do I get a medal?

Yes, this is in relation to everyone who's messaged us to show to tell us how much they've listened to us on Spotify.

And Bear Richardson has listened this year to 16,251 minutes of Football Weekly, which feels like more than we deliver.

Do we do that much of this?

He must do a lot of driving or a lot of walking.

Yeah, 0.0, a top top 0.05%

fan.

So, you know, those of you who are in the top 1% or 10%,

not good enough.

Santiago, top 6% fan from Mexico.

You haven't missed an episode in four or five years.

Well, that means that Bear's listening to them three times over.

Up your game.

Kev says, hi there, long time listener, first time email.

I feel compelled after Max's finale on the program today.

I currently work in Sydney running a cafe.

Before work starts, I usually have a ritual of having some eggs, enjoy my coffee, and of course, switch on and tune into the latest football weekly podcast upon Max's graphic description of his business this routine will have to wait another day as I couldn't continue with my eggs and the chocolate collecting on top of my half drunk cappuccino was starting to resemble something else as I leave work today walking through Sydney's busy CBD I will be haunted by its many hotels pondering could it have been here

thanks for the memories as always Kev Ben says with the news have you seen this that the uh that Sony has gained exclusive first rights to adapt guardian journalism into film TV and documentaries Ben says, when can we expect the adaptation of Barry's Munich train incident?

I think we need to give it all.

Now I've been there, Barry.

I think we need to give it a rest.

It's my conclusion of all of this.

And that'll do for today's podcast.

Thank you, Mark.

Thank you, Max.

Thanks, Lars.

Thank you, Max.

Thanks, Barry.

Thank you.

Football Weekly is produced by Joel Grove.

Our executive producer is Max Sarnerson.

This is The Guardian.