Liverpool bounce back in Frankfurt and Chelsea’s teenagers thrash Ajax – Football Weekly

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Hello, and welcome to the Guardian Football Weekly. A 35% decrease in goals in the Champions League overnight.
Only 28. If that carries on, there'll be none in match week 10.
Is there a match week 10?

Liverpool gets back on the horse in Frankfurt, whose three games have all finished 5-1 one way or the other. Ekotike against his former club, two assists for Verts.
They needed that.

Chelsea scored 5%, three goals for the teenagers. Home to 10-man Ajax is as nice as the Champions League gets.
A goalless draw for Spurs in Monaco.

Guillermo Vicario the star for them on a pedestrian night. Elsewhere, Dude Bellingham gets off the mark, and there's another Harry Kane goal and a cracker from a German Wunderkint for Bayern.

We'll look ahead to the Premier League weekend. West Ham leads on Friday, looks big.
Also at the bottom, Sean Deich begins at Bournemouth. And could Manchester United win three in a row?

Brighton stands in their way. We'll do all that.
There's a big AirPods update. We'll answer your questions.
And that's today's Guardian Football Weekly.

On the panel today, Lars Siverton. Hello.
Hello, Max. Welcome, Nikki Bandini.
Morning.

And hello, Barry Glendenning. Hello, Max Rushton.

Let's begin in Frankfurt then I'm track one, Liverpool five. Frankfurt did take the lead.

So I guess, Barry, credit to Liverpool, given the form that they're in, that they turned it around and then, in the end, ran away with it.

When Frankfurt took the lead, I was sort of thinking, ooh, here we go. This is interesting.

Because the five defeats in a row was very much on for Liverpool. And it was a really, really good goal with which Frankfurt took the lead.
Florian Vertz losing the ball

at the far end of the pitch near the corner flag. And Frankfurt just played the way through the Liverpool press with ease.

And Erasmus Christensen cut inside, shoots through Andy Robertson's legs, and his shot went in off the post. It was a really, really good opening goal by Frankfurt.

That was it as far as they were concerned, really.

Liverpool lined up. Mo Sala was dropped.
Obviously, this was the big story ahead of kickoff. There was no Ryan Gravenberg.
He didn't travel because he was injured.

So slot set up in a 4-4-2 with Gackpole left, Wertz Central and Ekatike right. And Sabozlai and Jones were the two sitters.
Liverpool just won at a canter from that point. Two goals from set pieces.

Florian Vertz played a part in setting up two. He got his two assists.

I suppose if you wanted to be cynical and really anti-Florian Wurtz, you could say, ah, but he can only perform in Germany.

But

it was a good performance from him. Mo Sala came on and I think was trying a bit too hard.
He was a little bit selfish.

But a pretty straightforward win for Liverpool in the end and one, I'd imagine, which brought them great relief. Yeah, I mean, I could see took his goal so well, Lars.

Frankfurt's defending is odd to allow him to be clean through there, you know, when they're one-third.

But he is the real bright spot. I loved his non-celebration while running, running back to the center-circle celebration.
But he has been the bright spark of these new signings. He has.

And word was after the game that Isak came off at halftime because of a hamstring thing, that he's not 100% fit.

And that might make things a little easier for Arnest Lott over the next couple of weeks because I do think he has to start Ekitike now. Like, I don't,

it starts to become slightly silly if he was going to persist on not prioritizing Ekitike because he looks so much sharper.

I have to say, I saw the lineup and then I was, you know, my primary focus was on a different game, but I had the sort of rolling goal updates on a different screen.

So I saw the lineup and I saw that Frankfurt had scored. And I looked again at the lineup and I thought, huh.

Is it possible that our boy Arna has gone a little too Dutch here?

Because I feel like this is a thing with some Dutch coaches is that they do tend to occasionally forget that you need to win the ball back as well. That is also a thing.

So you look at it, you have Sobosly. Sobosly is a good old, yeah, got a good engine and

is all right physically, but he is more attacking than defensive, you'd say. Next to Curtis Jones, who's a good passer, but maybe not like a huge physical presence.

And then four attackers in front of that back four with

all that sort of stuff. So I thought for a second when Frankfurt had scored, I was prepared.
Oh, wow, we're going to have this sort of thing. But

the very odd Frankfurt defending, as you say, I mean, that's the best way of describing them this season.

They're scoring a lot, but also conceding a ton of goals.

Also, just extremely helpful to score these set-piece goals. I mean,

I think, listen, Slot was making these points after the game about how, yeah, we didn't play that much better or worse than we've done on the other games.

And yeah, we score a couple of goals and it helps. And there's some truth to that.

I do still wonder,

is this a sensible way of setting up the team against a little bit more physically capable teams in the Premier League who are a little bit more better organized?

I'm not entirely convinced, but against Frankfurt, certainly, as we saw it, it came off. I do think

that odd feels like one of those delightfully English phrasings of how we're going to say really, really badly, really, really badly

defending.

And it's not new, right? It's the thing. When you saw that first goal go in for Frankfurt, and it was such a nice goal.
And I thought Mario Goetz in the builder pole.

I don't think he started a game all season for Frankfurt before this one. So it felt a bit like Vintage Goetz on the turn and

just doing what he wanted in the middle of the

Trequard Direme for three quarters. The fact that Frankfurt are not good at the back is not is not news.
They've conceded 18 goals in seven Bundesliga games.

I mean, that is some going in seven games to concede 18 goals. They've also scored 19 in seven Bundesliga games.
So they have been

good going forward, but the defending is atrocious. And actually,

this game finished 5-1.

And I think you almost could still have said that their goalkeeper etc had an okay game. He made some saves.
It could easily have been more than five.

They really were completely just non-present at the back, it felt like. Yeah, it's mad that their three results have been 5-1.

Yeah. Either way.
Like just an odd quirk. It'd be great if they went through the whole thing, either winning 5-1 or losing 5-1.
I mean, they've had one game this season when they lost 3-0 to Bayern.

That was the lowest scoring game they've been involved with. Every other game has had four goals or more, which is mad.
Like, if anyone who does any kind of betting on this sort of stuff, and

it's a wild run. People at the Walstadion definitely getting the.
Is it the Walstadion? I think it is.

Getting full value

for their tickets. And that's why, like, I don't want to.
It was a much needed win for Liverpool, obviously. It was really important to snap this sort of run.

And it would be churlish to sit here and kind of

urinate on that particular parade. But it's also like, I'm not 100% sure what they did in this game will work.
But good for confidence, good for virtue to get some assists.

Everyone feels good, and yeah. Does everyone feel good? And the same as you, I don't want to take away from it because great win, right? Win 5-1 in Europe, you win 5-1 in Europe.
It's a great result.

But I suppose the thing that inevitably we're drawn to talking about because of the transfer fee and because we talk about striker too much is, well, even in that five goals, Isaac doesn't score again, right?

And Isaac doesn't score again. Does that become a little,

I don't know,

further thing that's going to get brought up, I guess, that is the question. Well, I mean, I suppose it is true if you have Barry

Isaac and Viets, and Viets did play well, you know, did get to assist, even if you can only do it in Germany, which is an issue in most of the games are in England, isn't it?

But, you know, if you've got 200 million pound players that don't work, but we've just seen it so many times.

I've said it before, but you look at the list of most expensive transfers, there's just no guarantee at all.

And I suppose what you have to do as a manager, and it must be really hard, is if you look at, and Isaac's injury, you're right, Lars, makes a difference here.

But if you look at both of them, you say, well, who's playing better at the moment? Who's better for me? I don't care if they're an academy product or they cost a billion pounds.

I have to go with who the pressure to play someone who costs that much money is huge. There's no guarantee that the Isaac transfer will work out.

And I guess there's probably no end of people on Tyneside who really hope it doesn't. And you can't blame them for that.
He is a very, very good player. I don't think he's in the same class as mbappe

harland or harry kane but he is a very good player he's probably in the class below them uh he's probably going to have a couple of weeks on the sideline now with that i don't know if it's groin or a hammy it is very difficult to leave out eketike who has hit the ground running for liverpool whereas uh isaac has done nothing of the kind I think what's interesting as well is Soberslai was superb last night and has been superb most of the season.

I think we all thought when Verst came, that would hugely reduce Sabazai's number of minutes. But he's more or less made himself undroppable.

Probably helped a little by the fact that Alexis McAllister is not playing well this season. But he's played right back a lot, hasn't he? Yeah, he has.

So he didn't last night. Frimpong played right back.

He did his hammy, and then Bradley came on. Sabazlai has more or less made

himself indispensable wherever he plays. I checked in Barry is right.
It was Groin, not a hamstring, Alan Isaac, as I said.

The thing that was interesting, if I am wrong, which has been known to happen, if I am wrong, and this sort of setup can work perfectly well in England as well, raises the question of where it leaves Mo Salah, because he wasn't in the lineup and it seemed to work quite well.

And then he came on and had that moment which Barry referred to earlier, where maybe he was trying a little too hard to get his goal and he should have squared it. And I, again,

not watching the full 90 minutes, my first sort of experience of this chance was through the internet where I saw people going off on various things on social media about, oh, it's the second game in a row.

He hasn't squared it anymore. And one of my current hobby horses is about how

things are bad on the social media. So I was immediately like, ah, I'm sure it wasn't that big a deal.

And then I actually saw it and go, ooh, yeah, that does look a little bad because that was a very clear, like, very clearly should have squared it.

Second game in a row.

Do you think maybe the pressure maybe he is feeling a little bit because they brought in these expensive strikers because he's gotten a year older maybe he is now mentally a little out of whack and is is things are not flowing for him perhaps maybe maybe he is actually trying a little hard before we move on to to stamford bridge i did like yesterday virgil van dijk is uh doing ads for expedia

And

it's the theme of the ad is Virgil's Family Holiday. So it's Virgil and two kids.
I think they might be his kids. You never actually see their faces.

They're always conveniently covered by a book or something. Virgil's not a bad actor.
Is that right? He has good acting chops. I was, because I saw, oh, this is going to be terrible.
But

the man can act. He has another string to his bow.
He could go full LeBoe.

Yeah,

he was in the Stephen Hawking biopic as a surgeon. And so, you know, it cuts to Frank LeBoef.
And half the cinema are like, it's just a French actor like Mrs. Rush.

And half of us are going, what's Frank LeBoef doing there? This is ridiculous.

So two Stanford Bridge, Chelsea 5, IAX1. The IAX had a man sent off after 17 minutes.
Sort of, you know, fair decision, perhaps unlucky. I don't think he intended it, but probably the right call.

And then it was very plain sailing, Nikki, wasn't it, for Chelsea? Yeah, I was watching this back after. And

the red card is a red card for me. Taylor studs are up.
up, they go into a shin, that's a red card. That's it's kind of as simple as that.

Um, it might be that you didn't intend to do it, but that is dangerous play, and that's that's the rule. Um, and for good reason, by the way.

So, you have that start away at Stanford Bridge, and then by the time the second goal goes in 10 minutes later, which is a big deflection, and you just see everyone's body language.

And it's it's raining, by the way, as well. It's it's raining, you're you're too nil down, you've had someone sent off, you've had a rotten deflection.

And and if anything i think it was it was sort of credit to to ix that they didn't completely give up at that moment and they did get a goal back to 2-1 and and and made something for for a brief moment feel like it could happen but then i mean the the vagor's challenge for the chelsea penalty is just terrible so

so funny isn't it

Can you say it was raining for him?

What I really liked about the Veghorse challenge for the penalty, which it was like the most blatant penalty you've ever seen. And his protests of innocence out of the ball.
I got the ball.

There was a lot of this, wasn't there? A lot of round ball motion. You're like, okay, Val.
I think you went through the player completely before.

But it was nice to see 10 minutes about Venkor scoring a penalty and then giving one away. Chelsea made lots of changes last 10.
And it's very hard to keep up with, you know, all of Chelsea's players.

Reggie Walsh has become the youngest ever Champions League player for Chelsea, 17 years and two days. Pink, so what, was number one when Reggie was born.

So I got to watch that on YouTube this morning. Second youngest Englishman behind Jack Wilshire to ever play in the Champions League.

Three teenagers scoring. So it's quite in.
Chelsea are just, they're interesting. They're very hard to work out, but they are quite interesting.

Well, that is the thing. As much as we have all made fun of the Toadbolly Blue Co.
ownership for...

with their very scattergun approach to recruitment and some of the more weird things that have gone on at that club since they took over.

The big caveat to that has always been they have actually signed a lot of really exciting young players.

And there are some questions about how would they have made more sense as a team if they had a couple of more experienced heads in there. Is the balance, yada, yada, yada.

But there's a lot of good ones. Like Estevao looks like an actual proper world star in the making to me.

You're seeing now, I mean, they paid a lot of money for them when they came and it took them a little while, but I think both Queesedo and Enzo Fernandez are starting to look like actual, it's like proper world-class midfielders.

I know Quaisedo played right back in this game, but they look outstanding. I mean, Gittens, I thought, was lively from the highlights in this one.
He's another dribbly guy.

Like, there's a lot of quality players in there. It's not always the easiest job in the world, I think, for Maresca to figure out what's the best 11 is, but I do think out of this sort of chaotic

first couple of years of Blue Coat, I would not be surprised if a genuinely brilliant football team were to grow out of that chaos.

And can somebody tell me how to pronounce Mark, not Mark Gay? Because it does sound like a computer game who don't have the rights. Mark Gu.
Mark Gew, who scored the opening goal for them.

I would say, I don't think it made the slightest difference to the results. I thought Tolson Ada Rabayo was very lucky not to get sent off.
He was on a yellow.

He fell after an aerial challenge with Wout.

And I think deliberately brought his foot down very hard with the intention of connecting, not necessarily with his face, but that's what he did.

He drew blood without being vowed, didn't make a massive issue out of it, but he didn't come out for the second half.

But I think the 5-1 actually flattered Ajax because Estevau had four very presentable chances, well, three very presentable chances and a bicycle kick towards the end of this game.

Didn't manage to score any of them. And it's just

a shame to see Ajax just seem to have fallen so far. I think they're nine points off the pace in the Premier League.
They had that collapse last season when they Devon locked it in the title race.

They've got Veghorse up front for the first half, Davy Classen up front for the second. Their goalkeeper is 41 years old.
And to be fair, he didn't do much wrong.

It was two penalties, two hideously deflected shots went past them. But Ajax look a real mess.
Yeah.

i mean i mean that was the thing i wanted to add like as much as this was a fun day at the office for the for the chelsea kids uh i ax are terrible there's four draws in the first nine which is disgraceful so like nine points behind fanor already uh only one win in the last seven now and i like i would expect johnny heite to not be in that job

quite as soon as they figure out what else they're doing because it's just absolutely not working given the ages of the people playing up front you know and them getting progressively more defensive perhaps he'll go there just just on the on the ages thing i mean this is completely stolen i think from jacob steinberg's uh match report but um yeah chelsea had mark gay as as we're just saying uh sorry baz how did i pronounce it wrong please correct me

thank you mark you

was uh chelsea's youngest scorer in the competition at 19 and 20 291 days for 28 minutes then esteval overtakes him at 18 years 181 days and then tyreek george doesn't actually overtake anyone but also would have overtaken Mark Yu.

So, a pretty extraordinary night for Chelsea. And

Jacob was invoking this idea as well: of IX were always the team whose academy was what sustained them and made them brilliant and made them the envy of Europe.

And a bit one of those nights that reflects the shifted reality because Chelsea now, partly through construction, partly through just being able to hoover up the best talents from around the world, can go out and put a team out that is younger, the youngest in the SES Champions League, and

can play with that much swagger. And yeah, I mean, I agree that IX really weren't good.

But I do think that was one of those nights I think we'll look back on and go, yeah, there was a team of kids developing there that's potentially quite special.

Tottenham's first goal of straw in 125 games

since the same result against AC Milan in March of 2023.

Lars, you had the pleasure, as I did, of watching this game in full, about 70 minutes in, the commentator for the the international broadcasters said it was a fascinating contest.

I'm not sure that's right.

I mean, it got better after that from a neutral's perspective because Monaco had something of a late sprint. Yeah, no, this was poor from Tottenham.

They created very, very little.

And the thing that's been there, been a tendency under Thomas Frank is that they've created not a lot, but they've been quite solid defensively, which they weren't really that either here.

They absolutely got, like, they had a chance late on with Brennan Johnson, who, you know, ball came into him and he finished with his weaker foot and he couldn't really get behind it.

And I just thought, like, if this goes in, this will be arguably the biggest robbery committed on French soil this week.

I know what you're thinking, but I'm sticking with it. No, it's good.
It's good.

Because really, just disgraceful stuff.

Looking for positive suppress. Vicario absolutely earned his corn here.
He was fantastic in goal.

He does have maybe some weaknesses in terms of like set pieces and like he's not a perfect goalkeeper, but he is a genuinely brilliant sort of short-range instinctive shotstopper.

And that was completely on display here. And it needed to be because Spurs were

very underwhelming.

And I think big picture wise, listen, if you're Thomas Frank and you take over Tottenham, who were the worst non-relegated defense in the league last season, I think for him to just go, the only thing that matters here is that we need to be more solid.

We need to firm up defensively. We need to get more organized.
Everything to do with attacking and what we do in possession can kind of wait. Like, we'll deal with that later.
We need to stop the rot.

If that's what's happened, because it sure looks like that's what's happened when looking at them.

Like, they are more, they have a better shape off the balls and this sort of stuff, but they very often don't know what to do with it. I think that would be an understandable

way for Frank to go about it. But we are now, we're almost in November.
So I'm kind of expecting the team to occasionally know what to do when they have the ball. And that doesn't seem to be the case.

The Bentancura Paulinia midfield gives you a lot of solidity, but

they don't really progress the ball very well. Played with Lucas Bergville as a number 10 for quite a long time here.
That didn't seem to work. He couldn't get in the game at all.

Chavi Siemens came on and looked kind of frustrated and detached from the rest of the team.

Most of Tottenham's chances this season, and in this game as well, was the same to the extent that they created any come when they move the ball down the flank quite quickly and the wingers try to get something.

Even if Monaco eventually were very good, And I think Akliosh in particular was a delight to watch in this game.

Spurs are more solid at the back, but they're really not like good to watch when they have to create stuff themselves. And I think I don't think it's a problem yet.

And I think it's kind of defensible that he's gone about it this way. But I think the clock is kind of starting to tick in terms of like at some point this needs to get a little bit better.

On the BBC's Champions League show, Chapper's highlighted the fact that the Premier League teams in the competition this week won by an aggregate score of 19-2

and Stephen Warnock who was there as a pundit raised a very salient point that if it wasn't for Vicario the aggregate score would have been 19 all

I mean I don't think you're quite doing the hiding Spurs got here justice he was incredible yeah and it was an absolute robbery

All right, that'll do for part one. Part two, we'll begin at the burnabout.

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Welcome to part two of the Guardian Football Weekly Real Madrid beat. You've a 1-0.
Nikki, you were watching this.

Producer Joel's saying, if you were watching the goals show like he was, you'd be forgiven for thinking this game wasn't actually happening.

It was definitely, hmm, was it a disappointment? I had quite low expectations of Juventus in particular particular because I watched them well season, but at the weekend against Como, they were

comprehensively outplayed by Como at the weekend. So I thought there was a chance they were going to get absolutely drubbed by Madrid, which didn't happen.

I was listening to one Italian commentator who I thought put it quite well that it felt like one of those old-fashioned group games where you've gone away in Europe and you're just trying to keep it tight because you think you can do better at home.

And that's the thing is they're not going to play them at home because it's a new group stage.

It's not really on the cards.

Juventus came out

in a 5-3-2. I mean, they actually started the Quail game quite well, had a couple of half chances.

And in the second half, it became what felt more like almost this Real Madrid training exercise, where it wasn't just they were camped out

in Juventus' half, but frankly, just camped out in like the last third of the pitch. But actually, even then,

Madrid were a little bit careless at times and did get too drawn up the pitch.

And there was one really, really good chance for Dusan Vlavic, where he gets released and just has the whole pitch to run into and

could

probably should score. And we talked about goalkeepers.
Courtois did make a great save. And Guillen Vergo on that same PBC highlight showed that Baz Watch was making his case.
He thinks Courtois is

without exception the best in Europe in goal. And perhaps that's an argument we don't hear as much in England, but 300 games now for Madrid.
He certainly has deserved his spot there.

But yes, the quality on the pitch was absolutely, it felt like very much with Madrid.

And it wasn't at all a shock or undeserved when they did get their breakthrough, which was a lot down to the work of Vinicius. Yeah, so.
But then Jude Bellingham gets the finish off the...

off the rebound. How did goal aside? I mean, Vinicius was brilliant in that moment.
Gold aside, how did Bellingham play? It was interesting.

I think it feels like what we've probably thought for a bit with this Madrid team,

maybe they still haven't quite worked out their shape and how it all fits together because you're playing with a front three and then you've got Bellingham behind it.

And how do you do that and have some balance?

Because he does want to be the most advanced of that midfield three.

He was lively. He was definitely in the game.
And he was definitely the one who was occupying, again, that space between the the attack and midfield.

There wasn't that much space because it was so congested. Everything was so far forward a lot of the game.

but I think definitely what do is his confidence, the world of good, to have got that goal. And of course, they're going into Clasco this weekend as well, aren't they?

So he's had some good moments in the Clasco. So perhaps a chance for him to get a bit of his confidence up going forward.
Bayern beat Club Bruce 4-0.

A five minutes in, someone called Leonard Karl scored an absolute belter, 17 years old. His first Champions League start, just for fairness.

Kushelsong by Snuffle was number one in Germany when he was born, which is the debut single of the German animated rabbit Schnuffel,

in case you didn't know.

But Prime Ministers, this guy looks good. Yeah, so I believe he played, he took part of a couple of pre-season friendlies earlier and was sort of has been seen by

people as one to watch. I believe Ayan Robin was in the stadium

looking down on this as it happened, which is kind of

Maybe that's a bit of a symbolic type of thing because it was very like it wasn't quite as wide in the pitch as where Robin would do his thing, but it was that sort of take the ball, control it, go past the man, accelerate into the space and then hit a hit a hit a banger.

And

yeah, very, very

exciting debut goal, our first goal for him. 12 years in a row that Harry Kane has scored 20 goals or more, Barry.
To do so by October is hilarious,

isn't it?

I don't, there's sort of talk, and I presume, I'm sure your answer will be, why can't we just enjoy them all?

About, you know, comparing him and Haaland and Mbappe and sort of the possibility of Kane getting the ballon d'Or.

And he'd obviously have to win the Champions League or the World Cup or both to have that chance. But I suppose he's in the mix, isn't he, at this stage?

Nah, I don't think so. No?

No, no.

If Bayern Munich won the Champions League, he'd be in the mix, definitely.

If England win the World Cup, he'll be in the mix, definitely. So he is in the mix.

Well, he's not because I don't think Bayern Munich will win the Champions League and I don't think England will win the World Cup.

Harry, as good as he is, he doesn't score in semi-finals and finals, Max, does he? He doesn't. Not yet.
This could be the year.

This could be the year, but

we are waiting for the year. I also just think

we put too much like...

Vallon d'Art is a popularity contest, right? It's not like an exact sort of measurement of sporting achievement.

It's a popularity contest for which we now know there's a fair bit of like lobbying that goes on behind the scenes and stuff.

It's like it's turning into like the Oscars or football or something, which I guess is what they want it to be.

But I also just think, like, if it's possible that Harry Kane needs to like bulk up his upper body and do a bit more sort of posing in his pants and stuff and do more sort of moody social media posts.

I'm serious. Like this is what people go for.

He is very unassuming. And whenever he does like social media stuff, it tends to be like him playing golf with like a golf influencer or something, which is very wholesome content.

But really, if you want to get the numbers, I definitely think if this matters to him, and I'm almost certain it doesn't, and he's all the better off for it, then I think he needs to maybe need to glow up, is what he does.

It's like a different generation of schmoozing, like being out on the golf course with all the execs. It's like a different, it's a different world.
We've moved on, but what about the influences now?

It's really more my generation than the TikTok generation, I guess. Maybe if we are to win the FSA this year, we will have to be in our pants.

You know, God, no one wants to be in the path.

Post-half marathon, Barry. Who knows? It could be shredded.
You could be absolutely buff.

Anyway, Bayern have won all three games very comfortably. Louis Diaz, lovely goal in off the bar, just hit it incredibly hard.
Nicholas Jackson scored one as well. Galatasrai 3, Bodo glimped one.

Lars, over to you. Well, I can keep it brief.
Listen, this was...

This was a little bit unfortunate, I thought, for Boda, because, okay,

you go away to Galatasarai to the Rams Park, I believe it is now for sponsorship reasons. And there's a few things you can't do, and one of them would be give away two goals.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so, okay, you can see the first one because Ossuman is left in a little bit too much space, and okay, that can happen, but they conceded the next two they conceded was just from giving the ball away, trying to play out from the back.

And it's something that Buddha didn't usually do really well, and I like that they have the bravery to keep trying to do that away to Galatasarai, but you can't.

Like, if you make those kind of mistakes, you've got absolutely no chance. And Galatasarai were the better team across the board.

I mean, Buda actually had quite a lot more possession, but I guess that's a little bit to do with the fact that Galtaserai took an early lead. But this never, yeah, it never felt particularly close.

And Galtaserai are a good team. Galatasarai, first time Galatasara have won back-to-back wins, won back-to-back games in the Champions League for the first time since 2012.
Sporting 2, Marseille won.

There was a brilliant moment in this game, Baz, when Marseille think they won a penalty when Emerson is fouled, but that is not how it turns out.

No, he went down under a challenge in Inverted Commas from Max Arahu.

The penalty was given. To be fair, I thought it was a penalty on first view.
Then the ref was called to the screen. It was quite clear Emerson had taken a dive.

So the ref overturned the decision to award Marseille a penalty and instead gave Emerson a second yellow card for his dive. And so that was him gone.

And then later in the game, Max Arahu was involved in another controversy. So he sort of vigorously chest-bumped Benjamin Prevard, who went down.

I'm not going to say he was holding his face, but he was certainly conveying the impression that he had been head-butted when he hadn't. And Arahu was promptly shown a red card.

But the ref was had to trot over to the pit side monitor again, and he had a look, uh rescinded it and showed uh arahu a yellow instead for his his mini act of aggression other than that pier emerica bamayang set up the first goal crossfield pass to igor paschau who curled a lovely shot in to to put a marseille one up and then after emerson got sent off uh sporting turned it around and won it with a horrendously deflected shot agonizing from allison Alison Santos, which completely wrongful to these goalkeepers.

Yeah, just one way he could see it going in, but absolutely nothing we could do about it. Athletic Bilbao beat Karabag 3-1, their first win in the Champions League.

A fun stat, if you want one. Leandro Andrade became the first player in major European football history to score in the first minute of three different games.
Yeah, he put Carabag up 1-0.

Two lovely goals, actually, from

Athletic Club. Robert Navarro's one in the 70th minute was really nice, as was Guruzetta's second.
A brilliant volley. And then Atalanta-nil, Slavia, Prague-nil.
A game that happened, Nikki.

Yeah, exactly that, Max. A game that happened.
Really, just a bit.

It's quite dispiriting sometimes watching this Atalanta because they're not Gasperini's Atalanta anymore, who used to be one of the most fun teams to watch. And Ivan Jurich's Atalanta aren't.

But there you go. It was a game.
That's what happens if you get Ivan Urich, but nice of you to remind us. Yes.

Because I think I may have slipped my mind, even though we quiz each other on it every pods, Barry. Right, that'll do for part two.
We'll look ahead to the Premier League weekend in part three.

And we're back live during a flex alert. Oh, we're pre-cooling before 4 p.m., folks.
And that's the end of the third. Time to set it back to 78 from 4 to 9 p.m.
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Welcome to part three of the Guardian Football Weekly. As so, Leeds West Ham is on Friday night.
This is a massive game, Barry, isn't it? It is. And if West Ham play

even remotely like they did against Brentford, they will get beaten at Eyland Road. There's no doubt in my mind.
I just wonder, is it possible for them to play that badly again?

Leeds have been okay at home, I think.

That West Ham performance was as bad as I've ever seen, I think, in a Premier League match. They were just dreadful.
One imagines Nuno will

whip them into some sort of shape, you'd think.

But again,

it's very hard to see past the leads win in this game because they have home advantage.

They're not a bad side. They're not a brilliant, far from a brilliant side either.
But

I'd say on the evidence of what they saw on Monday, they'll be very much looking forward to this game.

I am almost, well, maybe enjoying the wrong word, but no, I am quite enjoying reading Jacob Steinberg's attempts at kind of suppressing, but not quite suppressing his disgust at the current state of West Ham.

He described their performance

against Brentford as unspeakably abysmal, which I don't think is a term that's necessarily propped up in a match report in The Guardian before. And yeah, it seems to be very, very bad.

This seems to be, surely this is a job for Nuno, though, right? He is the right man for this, I think, to get them into some kind of respectable defensive shape to get them through the season.

And then, but it is, it's very bad. And did you also think, like,

the fact that the stadium is kind of not a fun place to be at the best of times kind of makes it even more depressing when the team is bad? Oh, it definitely does. Yeah.

But when they're playing well, that tends to get forgotten about. But as soon as things start going pear-shaped, it automatically comes back to the forefront.

And the fact of the matter is, most West Sam fans never wanted to leave Upton Park in the first place. But I don't know if Nuno is the man for this job.

I thought he was nuts to take it because he could add a nice little holiday after leaving Forest.

Something better would come along. But West Ham's owners

seem to be dreadful. They have no ambition beyond not getting relegated.
And I just thought it was a really odd decision by Nuno to take this job. And it might not work out for him.

He might not whip them into shape because he can't make those players faster, and that is a big problem.

They have no speed in that team, apart from Jared Bone.

There is no speed. That's insane recruitment, isn't it? You think about the amount of analysts and performance data people there are to have a sort of one-paced squad seems completely mad.
Anyway,

Sean Deysch plays Porto tonight in his first game in the Europa League. Then he goes to Bournemouth.
Not an easy game.

At At his press conference, amongst other things, he said, I've been put in many boxes. I'm not bothered.
I've never tried to hide behind what's effective regarding his style.

It's no badge of honor for me. Five years ago, people were going, why do you rely on set pieces? Now they're in vogue.
Skinny jeans, flared jeans, skinny jeans, flared jeans.

My daughter hammers me for whatever jeans I wear. Apparently on social media, even I got some stick for my trainers walking into training on Tuesday.
I couldn't believe that.

He announced they were Tom Ford trainers. I don't like to mention it.
Anyway, Nikki, how do you think he will go? And I mean, it's a tough start. Porto and then at Bournemouth away is very tricky.

I don't know. I have a profound take view on this one, Max.
I think I agree with you.

It's a very tough place to go for your second game. Bournemouth, they're absolutely playing great this season.
So we'll see. Yes, you don't need to be profound.
Every single answer, Nikki.

That's okay. Does anyone, do you have anything profound, Lars? About Bournemouth, Nottingham Forest, not so much, except I just...
Well, about Sean, about Sean Deish, about Deish more.

Is there nothing profound to say about Sean Deich? Is this what we're discovering? That there is.

It's the kind of decision, like getting rid of Nuno, because seemingly one of the reasons is you don't like the defensive style, then appointing Ansch, sacking him like 40 days later and getting Daish.

It's easy to make fun of that sequence of events. And indeed, maybe we should.
But. I also think it's kind of sensible.
I think this is them realizing just how much trouble they're in.

I think this is Noskin Forrest, whether it's Maranakis or people around him, is that actually we're getting relegated here. That's what's happening.

And we need to do something dramatic to stop that from happening.

And any idea we had of wanting to play more attacking football or wanting to increase the potential value of the attacking assets we have, whatever big ideas was behind the Nuno thing, we need to put that in the bin.

And we need to bring in someone who will make sure we don't go down and lose 200 million quid or whatever it costs to go down these days.

So I actually think bringing in Daesh is a very, very sensible thing to do under the circumstances.

Because maybe this is me having too much faith in these sort of old school, you know, defensive mid-low block managers, because I kind of think Duno will figure West Ham out as well.

But I'm very, very confident that Daish will get these guys together and make them hard to beat and scratch out enough points to stay up. And that is all he needs to do.
And that'll give.

And then, and then the bigger question is, what happens in the summer? Because the sort of general direction of travel in Nottingham Forest is difficult to tell.

But I think it's very weirdly sensible. I think that appointment is.
I think what Lars is trying to say is it's not always a choice between skinny jeans and flair jeans.

You know, you can go for a boot cut. There is a middle ground.

You don't have to always talk in these extremes. And maybe that's

something we need to remember.

Manchester United could get a third win in a row, Barry, home to Brighton, will they? It's a tough game. Brighton are decent, but they're also very flaky.
It's hard to predict how they'll do.

don't think there's any doubt in my mind that Brighton at their best are better than Manchester United at their best.

But it's never easy to predict whether Brighton will be anywhere near their best. They're capable of serving up some stinkers.
I'd

probably be inclined to think this could be a draw, but there isn't a particular outcome of the game.

A win for either side wouldn't really surprise me. But I do think Brighton have a better team than Manchester United.
Is it fair to say that Brighton are I don't know,

maybe I'm being too generous, but the Brighton Stinkers, I feel like... The Brighton Stinkers sounds like a really amazing basketball team, if you ask me.

I was just thinking in my head, is it just not that they had that same thing I bang on about the August football being a bit of a liar? And actually, just recently they've been good.

I mean, the last few results have been really good. They beat Chelsea, they beat Newcastle, obviously thumped Barnsley in the cup, which is...

is what it is, but I don't know. Yeah, maybe I'm just harking back to that 7-0 gobbing they got from Forrest last season.
Or did they beat Forrest?

They lost, didn't they? They lost 7-0. They lost Forest.
They did lose, yeah.

It would be great, though, if

the reason you were calling a team flaky was they beat someone 7-0 about six months ago.

That does seem harsh,

but there you go.

Liverpool goes to Brentford. We've obviously talked about Liverpool a lot, but I suppose the interesting thing will be about

whether they keep that shape and bring Ocella back in. Liverpool have lost five of their last eight-away games in the Premier League, and they've lost their last four away games against London sides.

So

the omens are not good for Ernest Slot's men going to the capital. They're a big London.
Oh, true. Chelsea, Sunderland, Newcastle, Fulham, Arsenal Palace,

Wolves, Burnley, Villa City, and Everton Spurs. Anything jump out to you, Lars, from those games that you're particularly interested in? I think Arsenal Palace is a really interesting game because

you break out the sort of Lars Benson's XG on the bingo card here now, but I do believe Arsenal and Palace are the two teams that have the best XG difference so far this season. So these are

in terms of like underlying numbers, the best performers in the Premier League so far this season.

So Arsenal already, or Arsenal being better by some distance and Arsenal looking like the best team in the league so far this year.

Palace are one of the teams who could trouble them, I think,

in theory.

They're very, very very impressive under Glasnar. So I think this is kind of like maybe it should be treated

as a top encounter, as a top game. And it's a real test for Arsenal.
But they've been impressive so far. Plus, it's the SA back against Palace thing as well.
There's a nice little subplot to it.

I agree with Lars. I think Palace are a dangerous team.
I think, obviously, got my Teta banging the goals in at the moment, but I just think they are

impressively so,

given selling a player like SA right at the end of the transwind when you don't want to. I feel like they've shown really strong resilience and they're a very hard team to beat.

Arsenal clearly have been extremely tight at the back recently. So, that's, I think, going to be a good test of them.
Tom says a word on the Sheffield Wednesday boycott.

Fans are really sticking with it impressively. Lots of people tonight will have missed a home game for the first time in donkeys years.

Yeah, we often criticise protests that are walking from the pub to the stadium shortly before kickoff.

But the Sheffield Wednesday fans are sticking to it. They lost 1-0 at home to Middlesbrough last night.
Wins as well for QPR Watford under Javi Grass. Yeah.
It is Javi Grassy, yeah.

And

a big win for Wrexham. I think they had 10 men as well because they haven't, I think that's their first home win in the championship this season.
Got time for some AOB, some exciting stuff as well.

A couple on this subject. Adam says, hi, everyone.

I wonder if there might be some time during any other business to mention Maine's soccer club, Hearts of Pine, broke the USL League One attendance record last night with a crowd of 6,440, going going on to win 6-1 over Spokane.

All of Maine is crazy about this club. Thank you again, Adam, in Maine.
Kevin also on the same...

A celebrity Maine fan. Didn't she live in Maine?

It was Cabot Cove in Maine. It was Cabot Cove in Maine.
It could well have been, isn't it?

I mean, the murder she wrote that I remember best, I think, is the last ever one, which is a feature film set in Ireland where they had managed to find the 20 Americans with the worst Irish accents you could possibly.

And it's sort of, it's called something like,

you know,

Jessica Fletcher and the Blarney of

Top of the Morning Tipperary Guinness Land. I mean, it's just the most amazing murder show you'll ever see.
Sorry, Barry, you seem primed.

No, but the thing about that, Max, is quite a few of those American actors hamming it up as Irish are actually Irish actors hamming it up.

That's amazing.

If memory serves, I can also confirm. Oh, right.
Cabot Cove is in Maine, but it doesn't actually exist. It's

fictional

design specifically for Murdoch She Rotten. Okay.

Kevin says,

this is about Hearts of Pine Portland as well.

Amazingly. Kevin says, I wanted to take a moment to introduce you all to the Portland Hearts of Pine, a new addition to USL League One playing in our inaugural season here in Portland in Maine.

Last night, we got the record attendance, smashing Spokane Velocity 6-1.

The team's really brought our small state together.

We've rallied around a set of players from around the world who give everything for the badge from Ollie Watkins, not that one, an Englishman who bounced around the lower leagues in Britain before finding a home as our goal machine, to JT Kamara, 5'4, 23-year-old Sierra Leonean Spitfire, who loves a trick and seems to work magic every time the ball's at his feet, to Nate Messer, a former U.S.

college star, whose play at Wingback functions as the engine of the team. It's an incredible group with incredibly organic and rabid fan base.

My dad passed away a few years ago after a decades-long battle with complications of a brain tumor in his latter years. I turned him into a diehard Spurs fan because apparently I'm cruel that way.

But he loved the game, and as we sang our songs and screamed along as the parade of worldies flew in last night, I thought of no one more than him.

It's only year one, and this team already means so much to so many of us.

As I'm confident, none of you who have a side in the USL League One, apart from perhaps Lars, I hope you'll throw your support behind the boys of Maine. Consider it done.

They are in USL League One, alongside some brilliantly named sides.

Chattanooga Red Wolves, the Richmond Kickers, Union Omaha, South Georgia Tormentor, Greenville Triumph, Forward Madison, and the Brighton Stinkers, all in there.

So that's good.

Now, if you remember, Barry, my AirPods, I left them in Perth Airport. Correct.

Left them in the plane, actually, but I could see them because David O'Doherty had showed me how you could find your AirPods by going, find my AirPods.

And they were just lolling about Terminal 4 of Perth Airport. And we had many listeners saying they could get them.
And we went for Ian, the Sunderland fan,

who is an artist who works, his studios just next to Perth Airport.

Anyway, we got in touch and he sent me a WhatsApp with a picture of Qantas baggage services saying, here we go at 1224 in the afternoon. He sends me a message three minutes later.

Can you go to settings, Bluetooth, click on device and tell me the serial number? I hit play sound. You can play a sound.
He said, we're not getting a sound. I sent him the serial number.

He showed me a box of AirPods about a mile long that are sitting in Perth airport. I said, what a haul.
Maybe say I lost 25 pairs. Then at 12.31, he says, we've got them.
Amazing.

I felt like I was on my laptop in a cafe. I felt like Simon Pegg in Mission Impossible going.

And he was there on the front line, like Tom Cruise without the Scientology.

Anyway, it turns out. We have the AirPods.
He's going to send them to me. So thank you to all the listeners who got in touch to say they would get them.
Thank you to Ian. He hasn't sent them.

They have have not arrived yet, but you know, it's only been a few hours.

And if you, and if you like, his art is great. So everyone go to his website, Ian Daniel, and it's so I-A-N, and then D-A-N-I-E-L-L dot art.
Go and buy all of his work as a way of saying thank you.

Finally, Angus says, Good morning, evening to Max Barry and co. Longtime listener, first time emailer.
I have had a tweet read out before. He says,

I'm writing as co-best man to the person who introduced me to the Guardian Football Weekly. Before that, it was his eldest brother who mentioned it around the table back in Bedfordshire in 2006.

As a 12-year-old, I don't remember getting my head around podcasts at the time. After university, he left to work in Germany, first in bins, then Adidas.

It was here that I went to visit. Do you mean first in bins, like in dustbins? Oscar is a grouch, maybe.

Listen, the way the London real estate market is going, we might all be working in bins soon enough. Well, he worked in a bin, lots of open plan.

You're saying, Lars, like we work, we'll be in a bin soon. And you know, just be there sitting next to someone else on a MacBook.
Anyway, it was here I went to visit.

He had work tickets to the Allianz Arena. We missed the train.
He had to drive.

Max had recently taken over the reins of Football Weekly after the glory years. And William put the pod on.
I've listened ever since.

As I write this Wednesday, I'll board a Eurostar to Belgium and Bruges, where he's marrying his beloved Margot, a Belgian native who he met at the Three Stripes.

I should have written earlier to ask if Barry wanted to attend, but he'd be too busy pavement pounding these days. If he has the time from his busy athletic schedule,

he would love to have a special Barry blessing.

Will would love to have a special Barry blessing. Thanks in advance.
Angus. So Will is the man getting married.
Edward is his brother who worked in the bins. So it is Will and Margot.

If you could bless them, like Will, I too like a nice Margot. I hope Edward manages to extricate himself from the bin and clean himself up a bit before the ceremony.

Doesn't come in with, you know, rats hanging out of his trousers and his hair covered in bin juice. But

yeah, I wish Will and Margot all the very best for their nuptials.

I don't really know. Do weddings in Belgium last?

Have they a better success rate? Oh, I see.

Do they have a better rate?

Forgive me.

I mean, mean lars is the numbers man what's the what's the xl expected length of a belgian wedding i presume it's not is it he's he's not belgian it's only 50 it's only 50 belgian so i don't know what the divorce rate in belgium is um you know it doesn't seem the time to look it up does it you know as we congratulate them it might as well look you know but look if you are look if you are a divorce look listen if you are a divorced belgian i'd love to know how many divorced belgians are listening to football weekly uh football weekly at theguardian.com which do we have more of Turkish listeners or divorced Belgians?

Because the internet says just over one-third of marriages in Belgium end in divorce, but that seems pretty good. No, I think that's about right, isn't it? Okay.
Across the board.

Maybe that's just me being quite sort of bleak. I just assume it's much more than that.
So look, you've got a two in three chance of making it, and I believe you will. And that'll do for today.

Thanks, everybody. I mean, look, we've never had an email going, and we've got divorced.
We've never had that. We've had so many wedding ones.
No one's ever got in touch to update us if if they have.

It must have happened.

And that'll definitely do for today. Thanks, everybody.
Thank you, Lars. Thank you, Max.
Thanks, Nikki. You're absolutely getting a lot of messives this week from people who've got a divorce.

I'm so sorry, Max. You invite shit now, but things are definitely.

Only, hey, only divorced Belgians, no one else. Thank you, Barry.
Thanks.

Fibble Weekly is produced by Joel Grove. Our executive producer is Bill Maynard.

This is The Guardian.

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