Yeah there are some grid penalties for quite many drivers right now. Verstappen can't take pole position for example as he has as a 5-place grid penalty. This could be a big chance for Leclerc to start in pole position easily. Ferrari supporters already want to see such result in this very important race for them. However this wouldn't be a big obstacle for Verstappen in the race also. Because if you look at the results of FP3 he is still faster than Ferrari drivers. It wouldn't be too difficult for him to catch up with Leclerc in the race.

Leclerc won't have Sainz behind him to stall Verstappen also because Sainz also has a grid penalty and he will start from the back. I wonder how good Leclerc will do alone against Verstappen. His rivalry with Hamilton in 2019 is still unforgettable and we might see a similar one between him and Verstappen this time.

PSG have a really strong squad but they have a problem that is not cared about much for now at the same time.

I mean that they don't have very impressive players in the subs especially for the attacking line. For example Neymar doesn't even have any replacement who plays as a left-winger naturally. Sarabia can play on both wings of course but he isn't a very good backup player for a huge team like PSG. The situation is the same for Mbappe also. They have sent Icardi to Galatasaray on loan and now there is only a youngster named Hugo Ekitike as Mbappe's replacement. If even one of the Messi-Mbappe-Neymar trio gets injured then they are in big trouble in especially the Champions League. I really don't know how PSG can't think of every scenario while they are fighting for the Champions League title.

This is today's program in the ESL Pro League. I see only one match that might be competitive and that is FaZe - G2 obviously. G2 have impressed people a lot by their recent performance. HooXi and jks started to get better after some matches and the team are in a good form recently. FaZe are still a very tough team to defeat for G2 of course. But G2 can at least show some resistance even if they lose here. Winning one map and not getting embarrassing scores would still be good for them against the number one team. Outsiders and BIG should be able to win easier. BIG finally won a match after a long time. It was still not very easy against MIBR but this was very important. With the help of this win they can play more confidently against FTW.

I think FaZe @1.52 and Outsiders @1.31 are great choices for the day. BIG have only a 1.03 odd so I don't think it's worth betting on.

This is not important for PSG at all. They just want to get rid of him as you said and they are ready to do whatever it takes. Paying 6-7 million euros isn't a big deal for them. They are one of the richest teams in the world. Even after offering that enormous contract to Mbappe they are still too rich now. Galatasaray are lucky about this as a result. They might be able to extend his loan contract easily too if they like his performance. Or maybe they might want to sign him on a permanent deal later on.

Mertens and Icardi hopefully become a good duo here. They are players who played in the same league (Serie A) for long years. I think that it is easier to have a good chemistry in this kind of situations. They know each other well so Okan Buruk might build a special game plan to benefit from both of them at the same time.

Ferrari might do a very good job in free practice sessions. They can do the same in qualifying also but I'm not so sure about the race. Because we all know that Ferrari still have a problematic car compared to Red Bull. They are even slower than Mercedes these days. Unless things go their way this weekend neither Leclerc nor Sainz have much chance to win here. We saw how quickly Leclerc was far behind Verstappen after not so many laps were left behind in the previous race.

The thing I hope to see from Ferrari the most is that they don't make simple mistakes at least in this race. If they do the same in this special track for them then it would be much more embarrassing than the other races. Having clean races can still help them be on podium at least. As for Russell, he is the most consistent driver now and it wouldn't surprise me to see him on podium. But it depends on Mercedes' strategies with Hamilton also.

Darwin Nunez still needs time to adapt to Liverpool's game. Even Liverpool don't play well as a team these days so it would be unfair to blame things on Nunez. He was a wonderful striker while he was playing for Benfica. He was like a goal machine I mean. However the Premier League is a completely different environment. Teams here play with very different strategies and the tempo is always high here. Liverpool are one of the teams that love to play fast. After some time Nunez would start to adapt hopefully otherwise of course his end might be like Werner for Chelsea.

Haaland is a way more skilled player than Nunez. He was already playing for Dortmund that liked to play really fast so he didn't have any problem on adapting also. He is most probably going to have a much higher level of performance than Nunez during the whole season. But Liverpool wouldn't care about this comparison. They'd only like to see Nunez meeting the expectations after spending a huge amount of money for him. For now, Firmino seems to be better than him in the team.

I really don't understand how Trabzonspor can play this much poorly. They had a huge opportunity to win after Ferencvaros got a red card in the 16th minute already. However Ferencvaros scored two more goals after the red card. And it would have been even worse as they wasted many more chances. Trabzonspor normally have a much better squad than them but their recent form has been really bad. This must have played a big role in this 3-2 loss. If their third goal wasn't disallowed due to offside they would have got one point at least. I didn't understand what Trezeguet was doing in the last minute also. He chose to turn back instead of whipping a cross and the referee finished the match after that.

This can't go on for Trabzonspor like this. They aren't joining this tournament for the first time. Ferencvaros have been an in-form team these days but normally they are not a team that Trabzonspor can't defeat.

Before the G2 - BIG match which is starting in an hour, I was looking into the comparison of the players of these teams. The picture below shows the statistics of past 3 months in a comparison between m0NESY and syrsoN.



Even though BIG are having really bad days syrsoN is still proving how skilled he is even under bad conditions. Except his Dust2 performance yesterday, he has been playing great as one of the biggest AWP players of the game. His statistics are very close to m0NESY despite this form. I think that m0NESY is one of the best players to compare with because I think he is already like the second most performing AWP player right after s1mple.

Anyway today we are going to see these great players fighting against each other. Both of them can make a big difference in this series. If it happens then I think m0NESY can make a bigger impact than him. His insane reflexes have like no match these days. 

It was a quite interesting day in the Champions League indeed. Most people were following Napoli - Liverpool and the result was just horrible for Liverpool fans. My pick was 2-2 for the match and I was far away from the final result. Napoli beat them in the past and Liverpool weren't doing good before this match maybe. But I also thought that the Champions League would be different. It looks like I was wrong. They were even worse I mean. Klopp's position in the team can be in danger from now on. I wouldn't be surprised if he experiences the same thing Tuchel did.

The Champions League pool didn't start very well for me. I'm going for some interesting picks sometimes also maybe it is the reason.    But we have a long season ahead. This was a pretty interesting week at the same time as I see three people getting a yellow cap. The competition might go hard for the 1st place.

Galatasaray are doing a really great job recently with the transfers. It is like they waited for the last moments of the transfer window to put on a show. 

I only doubt the Mata transfer. Because he hasn't played properly for Manchester United since the 20/21 season. He has been free agent for a few months as well. Even if he just wants to retire here I don't think he would be very useful for Galatasaray but let's see. Galatasaray need to focus on only sensible transfers at this point.



Icardi transfer is the most intriguing one among all of those players. Galatasaray needed to find a strong striker after Seferovic seemed to be horrible in a few matches. Icardi is not only strong but also can be considered as young. Gomis is very old in the end. This is a loan transfer but I don't doubt PSG that they would be okay to extend his loan contract if Galatasaray are satisfied with his performance. Yusuf Demir and Rashica are also very good transfers. Yusuf Demir has a good talent and potential. Rashica is a skilled right winger who can score really amazing goals.

I was waiting for a draw before the Napoli - Liverpool match started. Maybe Liverpool were doing bad in the EPL but I was still thinking positive about them in this arena. However things didn't go the way most of us expected. Liverpool maintained their poor performance. They were defensively terrible above all else. I haven't seen them this much weak in defense for a long time. Napoli players were able to get past the defenders easily. I don't think that Klopp has changed anything in the team. So what is dragging them down this much?

The season is long of course but Klopp needs to start getting good results if he doesn't want to be sacked. Liverpool have had a great run with him so far. This season didn't start well and it is very similar to the season Manchester City had in the past. They were also terrible at first but the second half of the season was completely different. So maybe it can be the same for Liverpool also who knows.

I don't think that the main problem was Tuchel for Chelsea. It was clearly related to not having the needed kind of a striker in the team. After Lukaku and Werner both left the team their attacking line weakened quite much. They waited too long for signing a striker and they got unpleasant results meanwhile. Finally they have signed Aubameyang to create a solution for the productivity problem of the team. But after losing one match they quickly took action to sack Tuchel.

I guess that they won't continue with an assistant manager for a long time. I remember what they achieved with Di Matteo in the past but it doesn't always happen of course.    Pochettino is the most likely candidate for the position and I guess that they would announce him very soon.

I don't want to believe that Binotto really thinks that things are under control in the team now. He can't be satisfied with his crew right now I just don't want to accept this nonsense.

I think that he is talking like this for now because he doesn't want the team to lose their focus completely before the season ends. I'm pretty confident that we will see important changes in the team. We just need to see this otherwise Ferrari had better forget about the next season too. Maybe some of you can think that I'm prejudiced but you also see what is happening these days. How can a team do this kind of simple mistakes while it is a very important season for them? If Binotto is really happy with the people working here then who's at fault?

@KTChampions  I'm really sorry for your losses. It looks like nearly all the people were waiting for Chelsea - Leipzig duo to win their matches yesterday. I also preferred a 2-1 win by Chelsea and 4-1 win by Leipzig in the pool. 

Chelsea even sacked Tuchel shockingly after this unexpected loss. They were going not very well maybe but I think that this was too much anyway. Leipzig were having really bad results in the Bundesliga before the CL match. They couldn't do anything against Frankfurt the last time and lost by 4-0. But still I thought that this was the CL and they would play differently. Because generally this kind of teams focus on the bigger tournament more when they are having difficulties in their domestic league matches. I didn't have a good day by collecting only 6.5 points in total as a result.

This is the most recent match history for BIG. Before these six matches they were in a really great form. But suddenly their performance started to drop down very quickly and they won only once in these matches which wasn't even against a tier 1 team.

Considering these results I think that BIG are still not very credible for the win against Outsiders today. However this is an opportunity for them to put an end to this horrible form at the same time. BIG are normally a much better team than their opponent when it comes to the variety of tactics. They are a very disciplined team I mean and they can go back to those times easily if they fight for it. Maybe it is a big risk but I'm thinking of betting on BIG @1.78. In addition to that, Outsiders haven't played any match for 8 weeks. BIG players might be able to use this as an advantage.

Galatasaray really had a very lucky match as they managed to win it 2-1 by having a quite big difficulty.

Gomis' goal was really funny. Gaziantep defense tried to prevent the ball from going to Gomis but it just came back from the head of one of the players and Gomis found an absolute goal chance suddenly.    Galatasaray had so many goal chances after bringing the score to 1-1. Oliveira had a really good performance by the way. He was so close to scoring a goal in two chances he found. Gaziantep must be grateful for the performance of their goalkeeper too despite losing the match. He made really great saves. He even saved Gomis' penalty too but Galatasaray's winning goal still came in a really unexpected way. There was another mistake of Gaziantep defense and it resulted in an own goal. Such a lucky ending for Galatasaray but they wouldn't be this lucky every time of course.

This week we are going to Monza.

This time there is no sprint race here. This is one of the weakest races for Verstappen. I mean that he has no history with a win here. The last winner of this GP was Gasly if you remember his delightful rivalry with Sainz for the win. Before that there was another awesome rivalry among Leclerc, Hamilton and Bottas which resulted in a Leclerc win. This is the home GP for Ferrari also of course. Maybe it might be finally time for a Ferrari driver (especially Leclerc) to win here. Ferrari are still dealing with durability issues but this is a really important race for the team. This might be a race that we watch a great rivalry between Leclerc and Verstappen for the win.

How interesting it is that these races are following each other in the calendar.    It's a nice coincidence to see two important races for these two great drivers this often.

It was a really dangerous day for NaVi indeed. They could have even been out of the tournament if Spirit defeated Vitality. This was quite probable normally as Vitality didn't need any win after guaranteeing their lead in the group. This is a big lesson for NaVi I hope. They have s1mple also but there is something different with their team play recently. I wonder how they weakened this much suddenly.

Group B matches are going to start in only two days. FaZe are the absolute favourite team to finish the group as the leader of course. But I won't be 100% sure of it after seeing how bad NaVi did in the group stage.    Outsiders have been dropping down in the ranking for some time. However I still see them a very dangerous opponent for every team in the group. We shouldn't forget that OG defeated FaZe in Blast Premier not much time ago. Outsiders are not much different than OG. G2 might be eliminated in this stage already by finishing it in the 4th position I assume. They need to make a big improvement after their poor performance in Blast Premier.

@FanEagle  According to the source below, Ancelotti has announced that he will retire when his Real Madrid career is over. It means that we will see him at least for two more years at Real Madrid. As he is very successful with Real Madrid at the moment the team might try their best to convince him to extend his contract too. But even a 2-year time period is pretty good for Real Madrid. He is a great choice for this team and he proved this by two big titles last season.

In case Ancelotti leaves then I think that maybe we can see Zinedine Zidane back at the team. Because Real Madrid were doing great thanks to his management in the past. They won the Champions League three times in a row for example. This is always a very difficult job to do for every team. But Ancelotti still has a long contract with the team and maybe he can achieve the same success with Zidane in this tournament until his contract runs out.

https://www.goal.com/en/news/carlo-ancelotti-confirms-retire-end-real-madrid-career/bltacaf9fabe0d7c080

I think that this betslip might win today but I didn't bet on it so let's see if I'll miss a nice chance. The total odd is 2.05.

Actually all of the picks here are credible for these matches. Maybe only the Vitality - Spirit one is a little doubtful. Because Vitality have already guaranteed to finish the group at the 1st position. Spirit might use this for their advantage if they show a solid performance. So far they have been able to beat Endpoint and NIP. They couldn't win even one map against NaVi and fnatic. But like I said this isn't an important match for Vitality at all. Otherwise Vitality's odd would be lower than 1.40 for sure.