In every past champion's league you can guess the winners from their group stage not all the times though but majority season the winners has started performing exceptionally at the group stages,this season's will have such teams, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Napoli and real Madrid. Manchester City for me this season seems like the season for pep, the players are ready and have a strong competition within them to achieve this, and they have a world class striker thats breaking record upon record everytime he enters the pitch. Napoli and Bayern are doing great too, while real Madrid are always in the mixed.

it's still quite early in the competition, but we can say that it's important games this weekend in Germany. Dortmund and Germany will compete against the current numbers 1 and 2. If Bayern Munich and DOrtmund both lose this match, the points difference will start to increase considerably. Still plenty of room to recover from that, but Union Berlin will get a huge boost if they beat Dortmund this weekend. Dortmund is not yet in good shape, and the union Berlin team is also allowed to play a home game. I wouldn't be surprised if it goes 3-1 for Union Berlin.

Ajax won all matches in the CL last year, but that was a group with considerably less strong opposition. No shame they're out now. They can focus on the competition again in the coming period. They will still have to fight to be 3rd in the group. PSV has more self-confidence at the moment due to the ear washing against Zurich again (won both matches). I am curious how long AZ can keep this level and point total. They have had to let many players leave in recent years and that also applies to Feyenoord. Then you also see how good that Arne Slot is, this season with 11 new players also put together a good team that participates at the top. But the battle for the championship is between Ajax and PSV. Perhaps AZ is more than just an outsider.

With an impressive two goals to seal the victory for Brentford, Ivan Toney has helped his team Brentford move up very close to their today's opponent Brighton in the Premier League table to cover up for their previous match's poor performance against Newcastle United last week.
I thought the game would end in a draw because of how aggressive Brighton's players are, so I expected them to equalize and even score more goals until Toney needed a penalty in the 64th minute of the game. The game was interesting because Brentford is now happy because they are gradually moving up.

If Brighton wins this match they have a really good chance of going ahead with multiple spots on the table. And if they win this match they will surely go ahead of Newcastle. But other than that you know, both Chelsea and Manchester United have also played 8 matches each.

So, Brighton will have to wait to see if any of those teams lose.

Chelsea will play against Aston Villa in the next match. So, I don't think Chelsea is going to lose that match. But Manchester United is going to play against Newcastle and if Manchester United lose that match, they are going to go behind Brighton if Brighton can win this match. Let's forget about all these complications and concentrate on the match between Brighton versus Brentford.

Brighton versus Brentford match has already started. The match just started right now and Brentford is playing in a 4-3-3 formation. Brighton is going with a 3-4-2-1 formation.

Atletico Madrid are still the same. They had a huge problem on qualifying from their group last season as you know. They hardly managed to make it by the last group games. It looks like the same scenario might happen once again. But this time they might not be able to do the same. The remaining games are against Leverkusen (H) and Porto (A). They lost to Leverkusen by 2-0 before and they were able to beat Porto barely by scoring goals in the last minutes.

They are performing much worse in the Champions League compared to the La Liga. They need to win against Leverkusen next time and wait for Porto to lose points against Club Brugge in Belgium. In this case they can capture a big advantage. Otherwise they will have a more difficult task in the last games again.

Brighton is a favorite in this match obviously they are better based on ranking in the standings but their last defeat could be a reason for decreasing performance
Just like you I will not bet in this match because it is rather difficult to predict who will win, except for the two teams scoring each other there may be the potential to win.
If Brighton wins they can go up to 4th place replaces Chelsea with 17 points.

Partizan won against Koln again. Congrats to fellow Bitcointalkers who support this team After this win they have good chances not just to reach next round, but take 1st place in group. Esepcially after unexpected Nice loss against Slovacko.
Happy for first Zalgiris win which keep their chances to reach next round. Game against Pyunik ended 2:1, but Zalgiris wasted so many chances that it could ended 5:1 or 6:1. In other group game Slovan and Basel echanged goals - 3:3. Now situation in this group is very interesting - between 1st and 4th places there is just 3 points gap.
For me biggest upset today is Cluj win against Slavia. They were big underdogs, but managed to score 2 goals, Slavia failed to score, despite making 24 shots, 4 on target.

Guys don't forget that we start this week early with a Brentford vs Brighton game tonight.I think in this game it is only natural to back Brighton which has only lost two games against strong teams while Brentford has suffered really big by winning only 1 of 7 last games that they played.The odds of the game suggest for a draw but I think backing a Brighton win tonight should be generally a good idea or to be sure why not go for that golden bet in Premier League that happens at least 90% of the time which is both teams to score yes.

I always have problems with the teams that I don't know well especially in this league.
Koln isn't a bad team but I see them struggling here, although they faced Partizan that is a respectable opponent.
Alkmaar is a known team, leader of its group, yet failed against Apollon ? Praha lost too.
Istanbul won and they are 7 points away from the 3rd team in the group A and 3 points away from Fiorentina. Passing to the next stage shouldn't be difficult for them indeed.

You can't help but feel bad for Omonia at the end of the day, they were very resilient all through the game, but they got broken by a Scott McTominay's goal at the very end of the game, that put Man United on the best route to making it to the knockout stages.

Group F is about the toughest group, Lazio failed to win over Sturm Graz again and that leaves every team on the group with 5 points each and every team with equal opportunities of getting through or getting eliminated.

Playing very well this year, Istanbul Başakşehir has not yet conceded a goal in Group A. They scored 7 goals. They have a sensational win against Fiorentina. I am sure that they will go to the next round with Fiorentina in group A.  I was very surprised that they drew against Rigas. They should have easily defeated the weakest team of the group. They may very much need the 2 points they lost against them.

My picks for today's games:

- Fenerbahce win @1.75
- Feyenoord win @1.67
- Real Sociedad win @1.31

Fenerbahce shouldn't have much problem against AEK. They controlled the game until the end last. AEK can't keep them at a low performance level home also. They aren't that strong. Fenerbahce have been doing a great job in the attacking line these days. Feyenoord are the leader in their group but all the points are equal now. They had better defeat their opponent this time without leaving space for simple mistakes. Real Sociedad are also the leader of their group and these games are important to consolidate their lead. Sheriff are no match for them and Real Sociedad should be able to win in Spain comfortably.

I can't really tell how serious Bayern Munich are concerning this deal, for now they are just speculations which seem unlikely to me. Harry Kane has always been a die-hard Tottenham player it will take a mind blowing offer to convince him to switch sides and join Bayern Munich. Bayern Munich are in need of a striker but I think Tottenham also need his services and might not be open to letting him go this January.

Not against a better opponent but I think it was the perfect boasts and confident the squad needed and Salah too whose confident has been down for sometime now.


Wtf! Inter- Barcelona that was some worthy classic game tonight, I can't imagine how the Barcelona team would have been without Lewandowski, dude is the only reason they are ain't on their way to the Europa league yet.

Events in the Premier League are developing so excitingly that even being distracted by the UCL, I can't stop thinking about the next round.
From the point of view of the current state of affairs, the defeat of Liverpool looks like an obvious option, but on the other hand, City have not lost 13 games in a row. Every series has an end. City's last defeat was against Liverpool. Maybe it's time for events to "return to the starting point"? I find it hard to believe that Liverpool after 9 games will only have 2 wins.
I don’t know what prediction I will make in the pool, but I see that from the point of view of betting, the odds of Liverpool to win look very profitable.

Chelsea's victory in the previous match was surprising after seeing their performance in several matches. 3-0 is a result that is beyond the prediction that many talk about AC Milan will get points in that match. But Chelsea can break all the doubts that have been pinned on them lately. In Group E, everything is still possible, because no team really dominates the standings. Whoever will be the winner in this match, they will further widen their chances of qualifying from this preliminary round.

You are right if Lionel Messi doesn't play then the focus of Benfica's players will be reduced and he can focus on other players. But the task of these two teams seems a little easier compared to Juventus, if the same result happens again this match will not be a problem for them. Because I don't think that Juventus will get maximum points from the 3 matches they will run.
Back to the Paris Saint Germain and Benfica matches, if Benfica can repeat the same game as before then their chances of getting points are very high in this match.

Unbelievable... this goal in the last Second is fair. Both teams were strong, but 2:2 so close to the end = 2 points for Bayern given away. Normally it should have been 3:0 in the 65th minute. Modeste decided the game. He came in minute 70 and set up the goal for the 1:2 and then scored the 2:2. The red card for Coman is okay, but not really important for the game.

Juventus continued their poor performance. Juventus managed to win only 3 matches out of 9 matches. In today's match, the weakness of Juventus' attack has been well noticed by everyone. Juventus lost 2-0. And in the full 90 minutes they managed to make only 10 shots. But I haven't seen any strong attacks from Juventus players. Juventus may decide to fire Allegri soon. But before that they need a stronger attack. If the forwards are not playing well, and there are not enough talented players on their forwards, Juventus' performance will not change much even if the new coach takes over the team.