Big congrats to Partizan really. They are one of the surprising teams in this stage. I was expecting Nice and Koln to be number one and two but it looks like Koln are almost out of the tournament already now. Partizan fought really bravely against them despite not being the favourite side. Defeating Koln in Germany was a bigger success but this one was also a huge success. Because it was a crucial match for both sides. Partizan were going to relieve or Koln were going to be in the competition again.

I don't understand why Koln are playing this much badly. Maybe they just want to focus on being more successful in the Bundesliga this year. But they don't join this kind of tournaments ofter also. Therefore I would have expected them to be more ambitious than this.

It is better to be realistic I think.

I believe that Barcelona's job is done here. There is like no way Inter are losing points against Plzen in Giuseppe Meazza. They already defeated Plzen away by 2-0 before. It is much easier for them to do this again home. Plzen have no chance for the Europa League when we look at it from a sensible point of view. Hence I don't expect to see much resistance from them against Inter. I think that even Inter players weren't expecting themselves to be this much advantageous condition before starting the group stage.

Barcelona are just a big disappointment in the Champions League once again. While seeing them making a big improvement in the La Liga, it is really not understandable to see them like this in the Champions League. This tournament is very important for their finance also and I wonder how good they will be able to handle future problems.

Ajax are about to be eliminated in the Champions League. They have performed too poorly against Liverpool and Napoli in defense and offense both. Especially their conceding 10 goals from Napoli in 2 matches is just horrible. We have watched Ajax stronger than this so far in the Champions League so the management must be expectant from them. Even though it is a tough group they would at least like to see the players making a big effort to qualify from the group.

I assume Ajax would start focusing on the Eredivisie completely from now on. Because Liverpool are about to defeat Rangers 3-1 so the point gap will be 6 with them. It is nearly impossible for Ajax to make a comeback from this. Their main target will be winning the Eredivisie title again.

I don't think that Mbappe is on a road that there is no turning back. As far as I know his dream team has been Real Madrid. He had some photos related to Real Madrid in his childhood if I'm not wrong.

While there is a situation like this, I think that he would make an extra effort to adapt there. Ancelotti has a great system working like a clockwork now. I don't think that Mbappe would maintain a very big ego there also. He is young and one of the reasons of this unnecessarily high ego must be this. I think that he would start being a more disciplined player at Real Madrid in time. He must be already aware of how big Real Madrid history is. PSG are not even close to their level about that. They are just a team owned by some rich guy and they don't have big successes yet. Mbappe is this much comfortable because of that I think.

Another match I will be eyeing this week is Manchester United - Newcastle.

There is only one point between these teams in the standings. Newcastle also have made a quite good progress recently. They lost only once which was against Liverpool in Anfield. Maybe this might be a sign that they still have some weaknesses against big teams of the league and Manchester United can benefit from those. Manchester United are not much different than Liverpool in terms of defense these days. Both teams to score is blinking me to bet on it.    1.62 is a nice chance to take advantage of.

I'd really like to increase the odd by betting on Manchester United but I don't trust them that much for this one. Newcastle have the potential to be a serious trouble for them. They are stronger than the previous season now.

Liverpool must be playing more comfortably now after seeing that Ajax lost to Napoli again. Rangers got 1-0 ahead a few minutes ago. Even if Liverpool lose this match they are still going to be three points ahead of Ajax. I don't say "Rangers" also because they can't do better than Ajax in this group. However I think that Liverpool should fight for a win anyway to use this as an opportunity to be more relieved in the group. They would finish the group stage early in this way and they can focus on the Premier League more while having big struggles these days.

By the way I'm not surprised with Napoli's defeating Ajax by 4-2 at all. The match in Amsterdam was way worse for Ajax so at least they didn't lose by that much big gap.    Napoli are still one of the most impressive teams of this stage but the most important thing is to maintain this later on also.

I agree on this actually because the odds given to them are almost always the same. It is very low and it isn't worth taking any risk by betting on that.

On the other hand, they might be worth betting on this week. Because they have been given 1.75 odd for the Liverpool match in Anfield. If we take Liverpool's bad condition into account I think Manchester City have a quite big chance to win here. Liverpool have a horrible defense line now. The defenders are very qualified of course but the performances are not good at all. It is too difficult to stop a beast like Haaland with this poor level of defending.

I think Haaland will score at least one goal in this one also and Manchester City can win here. But it might be by one goal difference maybe as Liverpool are still good at scoring now. We can watch a delightful goal duel.

It can really be another Red Bull and Verstappen year on the condition teams like especially Ferrari and Mercedes don't make much improvement. I just want to be hopeful about them to get better. I can't be sure of Ferrari because they don't give confidence to me about their future now. They made so many simple mistakes throughout the season that I've lost my confidence in them a lot. If they still struggle with durability issues or doing bad pits then there would be nothing changing for them.

On the other hand, I have a bigger hope about Mercedes. They've already made a big progress by getting very close to Ferrari's level. Their next season car must be much faster than this as they have been working on it for a long time. They started this quite early as they were out of the championship race quite early.

Liverpool have a really tough task to perform against Manchester City this week. Liverpool are way behind their previous season effort in defense especially. There isn't even a little bit improvement while weeks are passing quickly. They were horrible against Arsenal and Brighton in their last matches defensively. Manchester City are even a more dangerous team in offense. Haaland is like an unstoppable striker now. It is like there is no match he doesn't contribute to his team.

Salah needs to play better in a special match like this. Since Mane left the team, he hasn't been doing well because of getting very accustomed to playing beside Mane. But he must leave these bad days behind otherwise he will also be criticised more in time. They can't defend Manchester City well in this condition. So they have no choice other than being more deadly at scoring goals. I'll just add both teams to score @1.45 into my parlay.

We can say that it is the end of the road for Juventus after this horrible loss. I don't really know what's wrong with this team now. They actually showed some improvement against Maccabi Haifa and Bologna by getting two wins. After that they lost to Milan in the Serie A but I still expected them to be way better in this critical match. But they are just terrible at defending still. Let's say they can't make their defense better then they can at least be effective in scoring. But they finished another match with 0 goal.

Allegri's time might be really running out now. Maybe Juventus president assured Allegri before with a statement but I don't think he can stay anymore if they are eliminated in the Champions League. The same thing happened between Laporta and Koeman as you might remember.  

Ronaldo can really join Chelsea side next summer. It depends on especially Manchester United's being able to qualify for the Champions League this season. Maybe this is the main factor but I can predict a side factor that can strengthen the probability of him to leave also. This side factor is that Erik ten Hag still doesn't give him any chance to be in the starting eleven of EPL matches. If Ronaldo continues not to get much chance then this can cause him to be more decisive about leaving.

Chelsea have Aubameyang now maybe but it seems like they can lose him to PSG indeed. Let's say they kept Aubameyang then there would be an interesting challenge between him and Ronaldo in the team. Because they both are playing in the same position so one of them would need to wait in the subs.

Salah was like a ghost in this match. Klopp subbed him off after 70 minutes. Something interesting has happened to Salah since he signed his new contract. He doesn't seem like he is caring about showing a solid performance just like in the old times. We aren't accustomed to see him this much ineffective in a season.

Liverpool are still struggling with serious defense issues and this continues to cost them loss of points. They conceded three goals again just as it happened against Brighton one week earlier. Liverpool were not even close to this poor level of defending last season so I wonder what's changed now. As long as crucial defenders like van Dijk don't play consistently, Liverpool have nowhere to run.

Napoli - Ajax could be the last chance for Ajax to maintain their claim for the next round in the Champions League. Because Liverpool would defeat Rangers easily again. Maybe it is too difficult but Ajax have no other choice than winning against Napoli in Italy.

However this seems a really far possibility now. Because we all watched what Napoli did to Ajax in Amsterdam (6-1). There is even no way Ajax are getting close to even stealing one point here. Napoli demolished Liverpool by 4-1 home before. They can get a similar result against Ajax as well. Their offense and defense both are way stronger than their opponent. Ajax have been struggling with serious problems for two matches in this tournament and I don't expect them to solve them completely until this match.

Marseille should have been able to win this match but even lost it by 2-1.

Balerdi's own goal was really unlucky Marseille found two important goal chances while we were getting close to the end but they wasted them both. Bamba Dieng wasted an unbelievable chance. If he was able to become a little more patient then they could have at least scored the equalizer in the last moments of stoppage time. They should consider themselves lucky because PSG also lost points this week. The red card was effective in that point loss. However Marseille have lost their place to Lorient already. But I don't think only this loss would affect them very badly about their form.

FIA were a huge fiasco today. I really wonder what kind of people are in race control now. This was an important race for Verstappen to announce his second title. I don't know how FIA can't get more prepared for a special race like this. They made really unbelievable mistakes. Some of them were like:

- We saw a tractor coming in before the drivers entered pit lane.
- They finished the race one lap early.
- Gasly got unbelievable penalties like 20-sec time penalty and 2 penalty points for speeding under red flag (But as for FIA's huge mistake about the tractor, there is no problem according to them  ).
- They shouldn't have given full points for this race because it wasn't even a full race.
- They weren't even sure of Verstappen's championship for a while.  

I think Leclerc's penalty was fair because he pushed Perez outside while Perez was trying to overtake him. We see 5-sec penalty being given in this kind of situations actually.

I believed in Eternal Fire with my bet but they showed another poor performance and lost. Rather than disbanding I think that they need some more changes. First they should replace imoRR immediately as he has literally no game sense. I don't have any bad words for his aim because it is really impressive. But aim isn't adequate by itself if you are playing for a team. You need to improve your vision and you should be able to think sophisticatedly. If you just focus on peeking everyone at any time then you don't deserve your position in that team.

As we are getting interesting results in the RMR I really wonder what kind of Major we will have this time. There are already some big teams that have been eliminated before reaching that stage. It is good to see some different results to make things more competitive but it's still interesting to see these big teams losing to much lower teams by big scores.

I'm really mad at Barcelona as my betslip lost only because of their not being able to defeat Inter. But I really appreciate Inter's resistance against them because there was totally a different team there. It was like there was no sign of the Inter that played against Roma and lost by 2-1 home. Now they have a nice advantage of being three points ahead of Barcelona in the group.

However in the match in Camp Nou, I expect none other than a Barcelona win. I've checked the odds and Barcelona have a 1.46 odd for the win. This is a convincing odd for me to add to my new betslip for the CL. They must have learned their lesson from their mistakes in the previous match. I expect Xavi to prepare his players much better for next time. I can't stand watching Barcelona in the Europa League once again so they must win this one of the important matches.

Inter are considering of extending with Hakan Calhanoglu after hearing about some interest in him. Everton seem to be among the teams interested. However I don't see any reason for Calhanoglu to choose to play for them instead of continuing his career at Inter in a much better way.

When he left Milan to join their biggest rival like Inter, Milan fans were really disappointed and angry at him. He played great there and he continues to show a good level of performance at Inter as well. He scored a really nice goal against Barcelona also and it was important for the win. As a result I think Inter would reach an agreement with him for extending his contract for at least two more years. Everton had better focus on their game first because there is nothing attracting in them to convince him to come.

Lyon have started to the match very fast by getting 1-0 ahead in the 2nd minute already. It's like Toulouse haven't been winning against Lyon for so many years. It's since 2014 I mean. Lyon would benefit from this psychological predominance very well also. Maybe their current conditions in the league table aren't too different from each other. But Lyon still have a dominance in this matchup considering the qualities of these teams.

I know that Lyon have been terrible lately as they lost their last 4 league matches. But this can't always go on like this in the end and this seems to be the match they rise again. By the way it was pretty interesting to see Lyon starting to screw things up very quickly after a good start. I wonder if they will be able to maintain a good form after winning this.

Most people were expecting Atletico Madrid and Porto to qualify from the group but now things have got really interesting. Now these teams are both having a worrying run in the group matches. Porto have newly got their win against Leverkusen. On the other hand, Atletico Madrid lost their last two matches by not scoring a single goal. There are still three weeks in the group stage of course. There is an equality in points among Leverkusen and those two teams in the end.

But one thing is pretty clear indeed that Club Brugge would finish the stage at the first position. Depending on their opponent in last 16 round they might even qualify for quarter finals. Because they are very consistent in the Champions League just as they are in the Jupiler League.