Season 27 Week 4 processing...

Paul Hemmings wrote:

European Champions Cup

Arsenal 1 Watford 1
Napoli 0 Barcelona 3

Milan 2 Charlton 1
Ajax 2 Man City 3

Benfica 1 Inter 3
Plymouth 2 Schalke 0

Juventus 2 Real Madrid 0
Paris 0 Bayern Munich 2

Looks like Ben has worked his magic at Plymouth. Great win against Schalke. Juve beating Real the other stand out result here.

Good result for Nantes, another great result for Fluminense.

Nothing seems to work for Charlton. Once again at a loss.

European Fairs Cup

Besiktas 0 Spurs 4
Dinamo Moscow 0 Cagliari 3

Lazio 2 Villa 0
Dinamo Kiev 0 Basel 1

Spartak Moscow 0 Preston 2
Innsbruck 2 Dortmund 1

Mechelen 1 Sampdoria 0
Viking 4 Auxerre 0

European Cup Winners Cup

Hamburg 3 Ruzomberok 0
malmo 0 Bilbao 2

Anderlecht 0 Man United 2
Brondby 2 Cologne 0

Olympiakos 0 Sheffield Wednesday 2
Real Sociedad 1 Galatasaray 4

Panathanikos 0 Chelsea 2
Copenhagen 0 Dragovol 2

Intertoto Cup

Dynamo Dresden 2 Dukla Prague 2
Fiorentina 2 Standard Liege 2

Grasshoopers 3 Espanol 0
Wolves 5 Sparta Prague 1

Gothenburg 0 Wimbledon 3
Palace 1 Atletico Madrid 0

Marseille 2 Fulham 2
Leeds 3 CSKA Sofia 0

Thanks for posting these Paul.

European Cup

Red Star 0 Stuttgart 5
CSKA Moscow 3 PSV 6

Shaktar Donetsk 0 Sporting Lisbon 1
Cherry Orchard 3 AEK Athens 0

Fenerbahce 0 Carl Zeiss Jena 1
Partizan Belgrade 0 Porto 2

Gladbach 2 Dinamo Minsk 0
Steau Bucharest 0 Ferencvaros 1

Rob@Inter wrote:

Thanks for posting these Paul.

Sorry it wasn't good news for some of you, although it is far from over yet.

Rob@Inter wrote:

Paul Hemmings wrote:

European Champions Cup

Arsenal 1 Watford 1
Napoli 0 Barcelona 3

Milan 2 Charlton 1
Ajax 2 Man City 3

Benfica 1 Inter 3
Plymouth 2 Schalke 0

Juventus 2 Real Madrid 0
Paris 0 Bayern Munich 2

Looks like Ben has worked his magic at Plymouth. Great win against Schalke. Juve beating Real the other stand out result here.

Oh well, I suppose the two hardest games of the group for me are out of the way! In theory...

Very happy with Barcelona' excellent 3-0 win at Napoli. 4 points from 2 away matches so far, maybe the new players are settling in.

Flamengo still struggling, time for some new faces. Tello going on loan this week from Barcelona to add to their attacking options. Think they need a decent DY to play alongside Rafinha.

In this week's upcoming games we have some mouth watering ties to look forward to, not least of all the match between Man City, champions from two seasons ago, and Charlton, the almost perennial bridesmaids, can Charlton pull off a surprise and take themselves to the next level or will City continue to impress now that Aguero seems to be firing on all cylinders ? What have Charlton got planned to stop the diminutive argentine ? Yaya Toure comes in at dynamo and Walcott replaces the benched Sturridge for Charlton whilst Fernando Reges comes in for City to replace Paulinho in order to try and stem the threat of Coutinho no doubt. Should be a great game. The other big Premiership game is at Plymouth where the Champions Watford are the visitors where Wilshere makes a start in at target man and Fernandinho returns for Plymouth to play against an unchanged Watford side. Should be another great game.

With something like 10 goals in his last three games, Aguero cannot be stopped. It is a case of damage limitation this week, City will go the whole season unbeaten I predict, 100% at home for sure. Fair play to Geoff, the squad he has put together knits together perfectly, no issues at all within the camp. 
 As unlikely as they are, 3 points a must today to stay in the title race. It may be early in the season but following Pauls revelation last week, there are very very few teams that win the league having lost twice and as the quality is only getting stronger this year it certainly won't happen.

Hopefully my other teams can continue their great start to the season and give me something to cheer about this week.

Important games too for Leicester who take on Arsenal, Dembele comes in for the midlanders, whilst the Gunners revamped formation still includes Schneiderlin in a more advanced position than he is use to, and so far this hasn't worked out as well, with recent results being disappointing for the Gunners. Birmingham will be hoping the switch to long ball and a revamped lineup will change their fortunes at home to Liverpool, we shall see. Fulham came close last season but the absense of their manager has been blamed in the media for their failure to land the title and now the boss is firmly back in the saddle he will be hoping to grab another three points against struggling Westham. High flying Villa have a home game against Chelsea in the final Premiership match of the week, with both teams unchanged, will either side remain unbeaten ? we shall see.

Those are huge games. If Ben's European result is anything to go by then Plymouth could be moving up the table soon.  And if anyone can grab points at City it'll be the Addicks. It's the 4 best teams in the division going head to head at any rate.

Villa continue the battle to the magic 20 points with Chelsea visiting.  Chelsea look very strong through the middle including Vlaar and Ivanovic at CB and Nigel De Jong just in front.

Even a point would do ......... come on boys.

Away from the Premiership we have some huge games, the biggest probably is the age old rivalry between Inter and Juventus, Inter are at home this week and make three changes in their defence whilst Juve are unchanged. This could go a long way to deciding the title this season. Away from the top game we also have Napoli at Parma and Ancona at Milan to look forward to, with three of those sides likely to be there or thereabouts come season's end, and if Parma continue to improve they will have a big say on where the title ends up.

In Spain the big game sees Valencia play hosts to Real Betis in what is traditionally a very unpredictable fixture, usually with plenty of goals, but the home side are looking strong following a good start which included last week's draw at Real Madrid, whilst the visitors were humbled last week at home to Barcelona, who themselves play with wingers, their previous two games must have been very encouraging for their fans, having scored nine goals in their first two games playing the new Wave tactical system.

In a post match interview following last week's defeat at the hands of Barca the Betis boss had this to say, "We are trying to play a very versatile system that requires a lot of work from the anchormen to cover for the fact we do not play with fullbacks, and even though my two covering anchormen did very well, the quality of Barca's wingers was just too much for them to handle, and we have learnt from that and will employ something to combat that in future games, thankyou, no more comments".

The players are out warming up and kickoff is fast approaching, good luck to everybody...

the ref blows his whistle and we are underway...

Parma 0 Napoli 1 Hamsik freekick on 4 minutes.

Bratislava 0 Ruzomberok 1 Benzia penalty on 5 minutes.

Rangers 1 Dundee 0 Hahn on 7 minutes.

Paul Hemmings wrote:

Away from the Premiership we have some huge games, the biggest probably is the age old rivalry between Inter and Juventus, Inter are at home this week and make three changes in their defence whilst Juve are unchanged. This could go a long way to deciding the title this season. Away from the top game we also have Napoli at Parma and Ancona at Milan to look forward to, with three of those sides likely to be there or thereabouts come season's end, and if Parma continue to improve they will have a big say on where the title ends up.

A chronic lack of depth at Inter looks like proving to be my undoing this season.  It's only 2 players out but because I have no reserve RB I needed to move a CB to RB and bring in a replacement.  If anyone has a reserve RB for sale ..........................

Uerdingen 0 Schalke 1 Hector on 8 minutes.

Palace 1 Ipswich 0 Valero freekick on 10 minutes.

Preston 1 Bolton 0 Eriksen freekick on 11 minutes.

Gladbach 1 Stuttgart 0 Kroos on 13 minutes.