Christian Horner stated that he hoped to see Ricciardo reaching an agreement with Alpine for next season. Because he believes that Ricciardo is still one of the best drivers on the grid now.

I can agree with this point of view definitely. I also think that Ricciardo is still a great driver despite this poor season. Maybe this season might be like this because of some in-team problem. I see Norris and Ricciardo having some problems between each other sometimes. Maybe these things are affecting Ricciardo bad mentally and we see its reflection on his performance. Concentration is the key factor in Formula 1. If you let some other problems occupying your head it would cause a significant drop in your performance. I hope Ricciardo can make a better comeback in 2023 season.

I think that this is the most important season for PSG to achieve the Champions League title.

The reason why I think like this is that they might lose Messi at the end of his contract which is lasting until June 30, 2023. I think that Messi would like to wait until the last day of his contract to hope for an offer from Barcelona. He might want to get back there before his retirement. As far as I know Laporta said before that their doors were always open for Messi. Xavi would also like to see his old friend in his team again I guess. However it depends on the financial status of the team too. They have spent too much money recently so I wonder if they will be in some trouble at the end of this season. But they really seem like they can pay whatever amount they want whenever they'd like. 

If PSG lose one player from their trio then this would affect them really deeply for their Champions League title goal. Therefore they should do everything they can to win it this season for the first time in their history.

My both teams to score bet on the Croatia - Denmark match won nicely after Eriksen scored the equalizer. Croatia seem very determined to win now. Only two minutes after the equalizer they got ahead once again. This win would carry them to the lead by only a one point gap with Denmark in the group. It would be a huge advantage before the final week matches. Croatia are really making up for the bad times they had by having a successful time period in the Nations League.

As France were in danger of relegating from League A the coach decided to start with their main players. They have dominated the match so far and they are getting close to winning comfortably by 2-0 now. Mbappe and Giroud cooperation is helping the team about this nice win. Maybe the Nations League isn't their priority but they wouldn't like to relegate from the first league also of course.

I think that Adana Demirspor are the most attracting team in the league at the moment. Because they have had a really huge form so far and they are in the lead now.

They are one of the best attacking teams recently by scoring 16 goals in 7 matches. I can't say this for their defense as they still have weak points. But they have done a good job by suppressing this weakness by improving their scoring performance so far. Belhanda and Onyekuru are the most scorers which must be frustrating to see for Galatasaray. But I don't know how much they can maintain this.

If Galatasaray-Besiktas-Fenerbahce trio have a good run Adana Demirspor's job to hold onto top 3 would be very difficult. Once this trio have the wind at their back it would be hard for any team remaining to keep up with them until the end of the season. Truthfully this time I hope to see a title race between this trio after seeing Besiktas and Galatasaray very poor last season. It would be an exciting season for us after Trabzonspor's boring dominance.

For now it is really difficult to be sure of anything about Chelsea. Graham Potter will need some time to build a strong relationship with the team. He will also be under pressure of being sacked in case he doesn't have a good run in the rest of the season. It is too difficult for them to win the Premier League or Champions League title of course. But they need to give some good signals from now on.

We might watch a quite different team from now on. I mean Graham Potter might prefer attacking focused strategies mostly like he was doing at Brighton. He can't know if this will work for Chelsea also before trying it for some time of course. I would like to see this change as I'm bored of watching Chelsea focusing on their defense more than enough after getting ahead in a match. They should be able to score multiple goals in as many matches as possible to achieve something regularly.

It was really hard to understand Eternal Fire today. I mean that they could have done much better than this for certain.

First of all, they were really bad in the second half of Nuke. After winning the first half 8-7 as T, I waited for Eternal Fire to win the map. This map's being the most played one for them was one thing and its being a CT-sided map was another. But somehow they played really poorly and got only three rounds in the other half. They didn't start well to Vertigo but they managed to recover later. They carried their hopes to the last map by winning after OT. Inferno was one of the most successful maps for Eternal Fire. I was waiting for them to be better but the opposite happened. FURIA really destroyed them by 16-5. XANTARES showed once again how important he is for the team. If it wasn't for his help today the result would have been worse. MAJ3R was incredible on Vertigo by 37 frags and finishing as top fragger. It was a quite extra effort for an IGL.

This is an unexpectedly worse performance by Eternal Fire but they must have learned their lesson from their mistakes. The next matchup is even more difficult which is against Cloud9 tomorrow.

There isn't a big strength difference between Ajax and PSV now. They have started the season in the league very similarly.

The only difference is that Ajax are competing the Champions League while PSV are in the Europa League. This is an important one actually because this might cause Ajax to have some struggles in the league when they have a tight schedule. I assume that they wouldn't care less about the Champions League. But this scenario might be different for PSV. They would probably focus on the Eredivisie championship rather than the Europa League. This might help them have a wider gap with Ajax in time. But they also need to be consistent and make a difference in this period of time. They need to keep this up until facing Ajax after five more match weeks.

Croatia - Denmark is the most important match of the group as it can play a decider role for the lead.

Denmark are still in the lead by a gap of two points. Croatia have been quite successful in the recent times. Even though both of them were away matches they still defeated Denmark and France both by 1-0. We watched different halves in the Denmark - Croatia match so both of them played solid. Despite France's dominance Croatia still won that. They are a really dangerous team now and they can win this one also. But I still don't trust them as much as to bet on their win. Rather than that I'd prefer both teams to score at 1.89. Because this is a crucial match for both of them.

If porpoising problem starts for Ferrari again then it would be a nightmare for them. They are already having a problematic season due to external factors and individual mistakes. If they have porpoising again in the Singapore Grand Prix I don't know how many drivers would be more advantageous than Leclerc - Sainz duo directly. Mercedes have already been able to fight at the same level with Ferrari recently. This would make things even easier for Mercedes drivers.

There is only a gap of 35 points between Ferrari and Mercedes now. This can be easily closed by Mercedes considering the latest condition of these teams. Ferrari must drop their mistakes to minimum from now on to be in profit as much as possible. They were good at it in Monza. It's obvious they won't catch up with Red Bull but at least they can fight for keeping the 2nd spot.

I really liked this camera angle by the way. It made me feel like I was playing FIFA 23. 

It was a wonderful free-kick by Messi and Lopes made a superb save also. We are watching Messi play very close to his times at Barcelona from now on. He is meeting the expectations by scoring goals and making assists regularly. In this match, we actually watched Neymar and Messi playing like the way they used to do at Barcelona. Mbappe couldn't do much in this match as these two players preferred to play together quite often. I hope that this didn't make Mbappe frustrated. Because he is already aware of the strong bond between them and he doesn't want to be their second option to pass the ball to. Mbappe showed an example of his frustration in a match before after not getting the pass while he was making a great run into the back of the defense of their opponent.

I still can't take the fact that Everton are having a better season than West Ham now.    I wonder what might have changed for West Ham after a really good season. They've been able to collect only 4 points after 7 weeks. I thought that the Aston Villa win would be a push for them but things are still going too bad for them. Their main problem is that they aren't able to score goals easily. Even Leicester have scored 10 goals despite having only 1 point.

They can't get enough contribution from Antonio on the front. He was one of the most important factors for the success of the team last season. They need him to show a similar level of performance to be more productive. Scamacca's arrival was exciting but he hasn't found much chance in the starting eleven yet. I mean he entered the matches late and didn't have a big time period to show his skills. While Antonio is like this they should give Scamacca a chance in the starting eleven in league matches. Maybe this might be a little help for their problem.

It was a big surprise to see only one goal in the Lyon - PSG match. Both teams should have easily scored after all those goal opportunities Lyon found also.

There was a great cooperation between Messi and Neymar in this match too. They had nearly the same organization for three times in the match and one of them ended up with a goal. Lyon were very effective for some time after the 20th minute. They found many goal opportunities and Lacazette also wasted some big chances. Lyon were the victim of their clumsiness today in short. Otherwise they could have left the match with one point at least. PSG took a big risk by keeping the match at 1-0 until the end. They need to focus on dropping the guard of their opponent earlier against stronger opponents like this. Otherwise next time the result might be sad for them.

It was a really solid effort by Fenerbahce today against Alanyaspor. They won by a huge score like 5-0 which was not even close to my expectation. I thought that Alanyaspor would make some difficulties for them and score at least one goal. However they had a quite ineffective match. Fenerbahce showed their strength in offense again and demolished their opponent. The score would have been even worse for Alanyaspor if Joao Pedro didn't miss the penalty and Batshuayi was able to make use of his absolute goal chance in the last minutes.

Fenerbahce are the best offensive team in the league currently by scoring 20 goals so far. They have improved their defending by the last two league matches also because they didn't concede any goal in those ones. Actually Alanyaspor had a big chance today by finding an opening but couldn't benefit from it. Other than that Fenerbahce were successful at defending mostly.

Before the last group matches today the current condition of Group C is like in the picture above.

ENCE and HEET are both out before the last matches. Complexity still have a chance mathematically for the third place now. Astralis need to be very careful about this situation. They are playing against Heroic and it is another match they can win actually. They have been successful against MOUZ and ENCE so far. Heroic are a tough team just as MOUZ. Heroic defeated Astralis in their last 4 head-to-heads. I don't know if this would help Heroic have a psychological advantage. But I expect Astralis to find a way to defeat them.

I think that I'll give Astralis @1.98 and Complexity @2.50 a try in my parlay. Both need to win today so I find these choices meaningful.  

Until they scored the first goal I can't say that they were in a very good condition. They even struggled to find the target for a long time. There was 0 shots on target in the first half and this didn't change for some time in the second half as well. Of course they had the most ball possession and it was very normal. There is no way for nearly any team to have the most ball possession against a team like Manchester City in an away match especially. But ball possession doesn't mean everything in football.

The most important thing is to have as many effective attacks as possible. We don't usually see Manchester City having this much difficulty in even finding the target. They still managed to find these amazing goals in the last ten minutes. But this must have been a warning for them to be more careful from now on.

Actually there was a system like this until the Eurobasket 2013. There were placement matches for the 5th and 7th places as well. But they have restricted this system to the 3rd place the least since the Eurobasket 2015. Maybe the reason might be that there wasn't much interest for the 5th and 7th placement matches. In the end people are more curious about the places close to the 1st.

After watching Poland this much weak against France it made me also think like Germany could tear them apart as well. Germany have great sharp-shooters that can cause Poland to give up on their hopes earlier in the match. But their odd is 1.10 so it's not worth placing a bet on. I'd rather try my luck by betting on Poland @7.00. 

These are the results of the matches so far.

Complexity did their best against MOUZ but they were able to win only one map. xertioN was really bad on the first map by only 7 kills but he made up for it on the other ones. MOUZ are the most consistent team of the group at the moment. HEET were on duty to defeat another big team and they started very well by winning the first map. But Heroic still pulled themselves together and made a comeback by solid wins on Overpass and Nuke.

Astralis are facing ENCE now and they are close to winning on Mirage and making it 1-0. I don't think Astralis will lose the series. They need an improvement in their morale after losing to HEET. Maybe this is a tougher match but they are strong enough to deal with their current condition.

Galatasaray - Konyaspor match would have ended much more different than this. After Endri Cekici's amazing equalizer Konyaspor found three crucial opportunities. Two of these shots bounced off the goal post and the last one was saved by Muslera really nicely. Galatasaray still need to improve their defense too. They were nearly conceding a goal because of Emin Bayram's mistake. By the way Boey is still playing great. He had a huge role in the first goal as his dribbling created the goal chance from nothing. Icardi was so close to scoring his first goal in his first match but it concluded with an own goal for Konyaspor.

There is a really significant improvement in Galatasaray's performance from now on. They defeated the leader also which would boost their morale very much. If they get stronger about defending also and comfort Muslera at his goal a little more then they can stay in the title rivalry until the end.

Yeah I tried to have safer picks. I thought of betting on both teams to score at a low odd like this twice actually. But it feels like picking both teams to score - no is very risky for a match like this. I don't doubt PSG to score even a bit. Lyon are also not having any difficulty in scoring these days. Maybe there is still no guarantee but I won't change my first picks as a principle. 

By the way your tactic is nice of course. Almost everyone was expecting both teams to score in the Bayern Munich - Barcelona match. But Barcelona couldn't score despite having many important goal chances. It is really all about luck sometimes. I just hope not to come across these times. It would be really disappointing if my bet for the Marseille match wins but the one for the PSG match loses.

All of the title contenders can have some struggles in the Champions League of course. The difficulty Manchester City had against Dortmund was exactly like that. Manchester City didn't have an impressive performance most of the time in this match. But they are such a powerful team that they still found a way to turn the match around. These two spectacular goals are still discussed among many people now. Haaland is still a goal machine and no team are able to stop him in any tournament.

The goal record in the Champions League is still secured by Ronaldo (17 goals in the 2013/14 season at Real Madrid). I wonder if Haaland might manage to break this record in this season. He has only 3 goals after leaving 2 matches behind maybe. But there are still many matches ahead of him. If they reach the finale then he will have a huge opportunity to go for it. It isn't impossible for him to break this record for a beast like Haaland. He's already reached 10 goals after 6 matches in the Premier League for example.