I think that Marseille need to increase their scoring performance a little more. They are doing a good job for now by staying right behind PSG in the standings. But this might not go on like this for long if they don't get closer to PSG's scoring level. For example Marseille struggled quite much against Rennes in their last match. They had a really poor percentage of shots on goal. Of course even PSG have this kind of matches but Marseille don't have much luxury of doing this often. This would help PSG increase the point gap easily.

Of course there is a big difference in the attacking lines of these teams. Marseille don't have a dream trio like Messi - Neymar - Mbappe.    By the way I remember of course that Lille won the league title by scoring around 20 less goals than PSG. But it was a really hard-fought title. Lille must be grateful for especially their solid defense because they were the least conceding team at the same time. I don't know if Marseille can make the same effort they did.

It looks like we are getting very close to the end of Manchester United's incredible form in the league.  

Because their next match is going to be against Manchester City in Etihad. There is no way Manchester United stand a chance in this match. It has been a really nice run by winning four league matches in a row. There were Arsenal and Liverpool among these opponents also which was really impressive. But both of these matches were in Old Trafford. This is their first big away match. Manchester City are the most difficult team they can face in the league. Manchester United defense will have a big responsibility to defend Erling Haaland. Most probably they won't be able to defend him properly also. He has huge strength that he hasn't had much problem with any defender while using his physique so far.

BTTS no @2.00 might be given a chance in my opinion. If Manchester City drop the guard of their opponent early then I don't think Manchester United can score even one goal. They still have a vulnerable defense now and they might lose their focus easily if they concede more than one goal in a short time.

The next season might not be all about a Verstappen - Leclerc battle even if Ferrari make a huge improvement and finally start to compete with Red Bull for real.

Because Mercedes have already got much better than the beginning of the season now. They have started to work on their next season car as they won't be able to achieve anything this season. Therefore we should be ready to see Hamilton entering the title race again and maybe even Russell too. Russell is already better this season and who knows what will happen in the next one. I wonder how he would react if the team focus on Hamilton's 8th world title and ask him to be helpful about it. If Russell becomes a Rosberg-like driver then the title race would be even more interesting.  

As most of the biggest teams don't care about this tournament much they are likely to even relegate from their leagues. For example France and England are in a big danger in League A. France are most likely to relegate too by the way because they have many injured players firstly. Secondly I don't expect them to jeopardize the important players. Maybe they would enter late in the second half but players like Mbappe shouldn't be a part of the starting eleven in the remaining matches.

This is an important point for all the teams that have big names of course. They must think of the World Cup and the league fixtures above all else. The schedule of teams getting tighter in time and they need to think of every factor to keep their players away from injuries as much as possible.

Fernando Muslera is 36 years old now and he is still a really reliable goalkeeper. This is his 11th year in this team and it wouldn't be that easy for the team to sell him anytime soon. I expect him to stay at least until the end of his contract which is 2024. Rather than replacing him, Galatasaray should replace one of their useless domestic goalkeepers with a talented one. It is difficult for them to sign talented goalkeepers from their rivals of course. But they can still find qualified goalkeepers if they make a detailed research.

Until finding the right Turkish goalkeeper they had better deal with the foreign player rule by changing some other players. There are quite many foreign players in the squad after the recent transfers especially.

Ajax - Napoli is another interesting match up next.

This will be a match between teams that have similar strengths recently. It is really difficult to trust any of them fully to get a win here. They have no match history against each other. None of them is a defensive team so I think it is very likely to see at least three goals in this. Both sides should be able to score also considering how productive teams they are in the Champions League also. I know that Ajax couldn't do much against Liverpool in terms of general performance. But I don't expect them to give the control to Napoli here. They are playing way better in their matches home. Ajax lost their last two matches which might affect them mentally but they are lucky that there is a two-week time period until the Champions League matches. It should be enough for them to concentrate on the Napoli match completely.

As for my choices for the match I've already told them. Over 2.5 @1.58 and BTTS @1.50 are the choices I believe in the most.

Gasly are in a much worse condition compared to the previous season indeed. He got 110 points and finished the season in top 10 then. But now while there are a few races left he has only 22 points. I agree that he has also been out-of-form but the car has stayed weak compared to the other teams at the same time. AlphaTauri couldn't update the car as much as the expected level. Maybe he would be more effective than this when he goes to Alpine.

As for Albon's condition, the source below says that Albon is targeting to be ready for the next race completely. de Vries might not have another chance in Williams seat I'm afraid. But his talent is already well-known and he got even a chance to race in one race in F1 at least. He has a good advantage as a result.

https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article.the-goal-is-to-be-ready-by-singapore-albon-provides-update-to-fans-on.2v24alZdJ7O7RpOzb4Otsk.html


Haas have been the most surprising team of the season indeed. They finished last season without points but now they are ahead of three teams with 34 points. But let's see if they will be able to keep this up next season also. If they have money issues then they might return to the point where they started. Günther Steiner even thought of selling the team some time ago but didn't do it. He needs his drivers to cost them as small as possible in the remaining races by having clean races.

Yeah, you aren't mistaken. The last time PSV defeated Feyenoord was on February 25, 2018 which was a 3-1 win.

This was one of the most delightful matches I've seen in the recent times. The final score would have been even more interesting than this as both teams wasted some big chances too. However it's a well-deserved victory for PSV as they were much more dangerous than their opponent during the whole match. The man of the match was definitely Gakpo with 1 goal and 3 assists. He was one of the speculated players to leave last summer and PSV must be grateful to him for not doing so.

Ajax's loss against AZ helped PSV to capture the lead thanks to having one more goal difference in total. It feels like this season will be even more fun. I don't know how much AZ and Feyenoord can hold on but they are also in the title race for now. We might be likely to watch a fight between Ajax and PSV after a point and this time might be even tougher.

It was a really dramatic ending for Astralis indeed. Losing on Inferno and Nuke both was really unexpected for us. Because both of them were one of the maps they were the best on. Even though they were likely to be eliminated they still couldn't react to it well and lost by 2-1. Complexity were playing against ENCE which had no goal left in the group. They took advantage of it very nicely and got a 2-0 win. Even though their round difference in total was lower than Astralis they advanced to next round thanks to Astralis' losing in a critical match.

I don't know what is going on with Astralis these days. They aren't playing like they deserve their place in top 10. I think this failure will cost them a few places in the ranking. Because they have been eliminated in the groups of one of the most important tournaments in this game. They will need to perform much better than this in RMR.

About this match, I think that Inter will have a really big struggle against Barcelona no matter the match is in Giuseppe Meazza.

Their match history against each other isn't much bright for Inter first of all. Barcelona defeated them many times in the recent years. Considering the current condition of these two teams Barcelona are already one step ahead. Inter are in a really troubling condition not only here but also in the Serie A. I mean that they are having big difficulties in winning matches lately. They were defeated by Udinese 3-1 today also. They will have around two weeks to think of what they can do to fix their bad form. But I don't expect them to make a big improvement so soon.

Barcelona are in a pretty good condition these days. Maybe they lost to Bayern Munich but their performance was still promising there. I expect the same performance from them like Bayern Munich had against Inter in this stadium. 1.81 is an attracting odd for Barcelona win and I'm going for it.

Mert Günok would be a better choice for Besiktas surely. But Besiktas still aren't as lucky as Fenerbahce or Trabzonspor as they have very talented domestic goalkeepers like Altay and Uğurcan. They don't have a strong foreign goalkeeper like Muslera either. Mert Günok might be a temporary solution for Besiktas but I think they should look for a really credible goalkeeper in January transfer window. They focused on bringing attackers mostly in the previous transfer window and didn't care about the defense so much. Otherwise this season might be wasted by defensive problems when they have a potential for winning the league title.

My betting choices for two matches in the league today are:

Trabzonspor - Gaziantep: Trabzonspor win @1.62
Fenerbahce - Alanyaspor: Fenerbahce win @1.57

Trabzonspor boosted their morale by winning against Crvena zvezda in the Europa League. They are going to play a tough match today maybe but I think they will put an end to their losing streak in the league by this one. The final score might be 2-1 in my opinion. Fenerbahce should also be able to win against Alanyaspor. Because Alanyaspor haven't been in form these days. They hardly won a match after many weeks. Fenerbahce should be careful especially in their defense. Because it wasn't good against Rennes which caused them to concede 2 goals in 2 minutes. It would have been worse too. Both teams might score in this one too.

My bet on both teams to score for Estoril - Porto won but I made a big mistake by believing in Sporting to win this match.  

Actually this match would have been in Sporting's control. They had some important goal chances while it was 0-0 but couldn't benefit from them. Boavista's first goal was really amazing and I've added a link for it below. It was a great volley by Lourenco. Sporting answered in the same way. Nuno Santos made a superb assist by a rabona. But Ricardo Esgaio made a really big mistake only ten minutes after he entered the match and caused a penalty. He was responsible for this 2-1 loss. Benfica and Braga have a chance to get away more from the others today and both of them should be able to win against Maritimo and Vizela comfortably.

Boavista's first goal: https://youtu.be/arJyJ5iz08E?t=96

Manchester City are of course relying on Erling Haaland mostly now.

It is actually the same as Real Madrid's situation in the previous season. As you can remember easily, Real Madrid were relying on Benzema to score mostly. But they still won even the Champions League at the end. Relying on one player is always risky for a team of course. Real Madrid actually had a plan B which was Vinicius Jr. Coming back to Manchester City, I don't know if they have a similar plan now. Haaland is a little injury-prone player as he had some important injuries at Dortmund. There is no player who has scored near the amount Haaland has at Manchester City so far.

I think that they would prefer Julian Alvarez or Foden in his place in case of an injury situation for Haaland. Maybe they would be more ineffective but we are still talking about Manchester City. They are playing under Guardiola's great system so I believe in them to do a good job still. But there is a fact that they need Haaland to win the Champions League title.

There are new rumours regarding Nyck de Vries and Pierre Gasly.

After being in talks with a couple of teams it looks like Nyck de Vries is close to sign for AlphaTauri now. He is expected to replace Gasly in this case which is even more interesting. Because I wasn't expecting Gasly to be out of Red Bull programme completely. I thought that he would fight for a seat at Red Bull again. In addition, Gasly is the biggest candidate to have the available seat at Alpine in case AlphaTauri announce Nyck de Vries officially. Honestly I would rather replace Tsunoda instead of Gasly. Because I don't think that he has a bigger talent than Gasly. Gasly has been more successful than him in this season also.

I'm going to pick two matches from the Liga Portugal for betting and my choices are:

Estoril - Porto: Both teams to score @2.02
Boavista - Sporting: Sporting win @1.40

I have looked into all of the head-to-head matches between Estoril and Porto in the Liga Portugal. There is a really interesting statistics I've found there. There isn't even a single match that one of these teams finished by not scoring. Both teams scored in all of them. Therefore I think that it's pretty sensible to bet on BTTS by a nice odd like this.

Sporting have finally started to improve their performance in the recent times. They won all of their last four official matches. Especially after defeating Tottenham the last time they should be in a wonderful mental condition. Boavista don't have much chance while Sporting are in an impressive form.

I've checked it and seen this.    This time Real Madrid's odd is very low which is not worth adding to a betslip. Real Madrid over 1.5 goals doesn't have any odd yet so maybe it might be more logical to bet on. Because Real Madrid don't have much problem on scoring multiple goals now.

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Ajax are indeed not a team that should be underestimated in the Champions League. Ajax have a couple of titles won in this tournament in the distant past. When we come back to the near history of the tournament we can see a season that they reached the semi final too. They have been a much more successful team than Napoli here as a result. I'm aware of how strong Napoli are playing now. But the most important part of this group will be the matches between Napoli and Ajax. They are going to face each other two times in a row now. We will see for real which side is better this season.

It looks like Vettel isn't going to be in Alpine's test but he is still rumoured to be in talks with Alpine for the seat. However maybe the media might really be exaggerating the current situation. Maybe Nyck de Vries might have a chance for the seat after his first Formula 1 experience. Or he might find a chance at Williams. I'm pretty sure that any driver to replace Latifi would be much better than him.  

I'm curious about Ricciardo's future more. Because he was shown as one of the most skilled drivers on the grid in the past. But now his performance is far away from that definition. Actually McLaren have a better car now. Norris has collected 88 points so far but Ricciardo has only 19. Maybe Ricciardo doesn't feel like he belongs with McLaren. He was much better at Red Bull and Renault. Maybe changing his team will help him perform better than this. But the biggest team that he can go to is Alpine now as it seems.

Galatasaray are going to have one of their most difficult matches of the season. Konyaspor are still the leader in the standings now and they haven't lost any match since the beginning of the season. They defeated Fenerbahce also some weeks ago. This is going to be a solid test for the new Galatasaray squad after the transfers. However we don't know how many of them will be in the starting eleven today yet. We might see Gomis starting from the beginning again but this time we should see Icardi in the subs. Maybe Yusuf Demir or Rashica might start instead of Yunus Akgün. I think Okan Buruk should give a chance to the new defender who is Mathias Ross. They are still having some defensive issues so maybe he can perform better than Emin Bayram and Abdülkerim both.

I have two betting options for this match:

Galatasaray win @1.75 and BTTS @1.83. I feel like Galatasaray will win by a score like 2-1 or 3-2 maybe. Over 2.5 goals @1.83 also can be a good option of course in this case.

I missed the Astralis - HEET match for making a bet however Astralis have an odd like 1.15 so I didn't miss so much. 

My choices for the other two matches of the group are like this:

Heroic - Complexity: Heroic win @1.25
ENCE - MOUZ: MOUZ win @1.93

Heroic are going to play against a team which is in a good form. Complexity beat even Astralis which must have increased their confidence a lot. But I don't see them as strong as repeating this multiple times against bigger teams like this. Heroic can make them taste their first loss by a solid game. As for the other match I think MOUZ are one step ahead even though ENCE are favoured by bookmakers. I don't even understand why ENCE are favoured. Maybe they considered their latest head-to-head in Roobet Cup which was a big loss for MOUZ. But there is a big difference between the quality of these tournaments. ESL Pro League is much more important of course and I expect to see MOUZ showing this by a decent win. ENCE are still in a poor condition.

Actually there was a season that Tottenham were really incredible in the Champions League. In the 2018/19 season they reached the finale but Liverpool beat them 2-0 I'm afraid. They eliminated Dortmund, Manchester City and Ajax respectively after the group stage. It would be really lovely to see them more competitive now even if they don't become as successful as that season.



But for now, they are even struggling against Sporting which started the season in their league badly in fact. Tottenham even had a serious difficulty against Marseille despite their opponent got a red card very earlier in the match. They have a really good lineup now but they can't reflect their EPL performance on the CL for now. This is a group that they should be able to finish at top. Hopefully Conte creates a solution for the rest of the matches to play a more reliable game. The expectation from the team must be to qualify for 1/8-finals at least.