What a weekend! After World Cup qualifying gave us plenty of drama over the past two weeks, Europe’s Big Five leagues kicked back into gear with a ton of talking points.
In England, the time off clearly didn’t help Liverpool too much in terms of fixing what’s wrong, as they staggered to a 3-0 home defeat against Nottingham Forest that put the league champions in the bottom half of the table. Oh, and Arsenal put four past their north London rivals, Tottenham, to cement their position atop the Premier League.
In Serie A, we got the delight of a Milan derby and a goalkeeping masterclass from Mike Maignan as the red side of the city enjoyed a 1-0 win. In LaLiga, Real Madrid turned in a dud of a performance in a 2-2 draw with Elche that keeps the title race firmly in the balance for the chasing pack.
Elsewhere we had talking points galore from Chelsea, Bayern Munich, Juventus, AS Roma, Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona. It’s Monday morning, so what better time for some musings? Let’s get into it.
– Ogden, Lindop: Man City cap big week with Liverpool win
– Reaction: Spurs vs. Man United another rollercoaster for fans
– VAR Review: Why Van Dijk’s headed goal was disallowed
The bad news for Liverpool is that it’s bad … and it can get worse
It can get better too, of course. Saturday’s 3-0 defeat at Anfield to Nottingham Forest — who, lest we forget, are already on their third manager of the 2025-26 season — leaves Liverpool in the bottom half of the table, but second-place Chelsea are just five points away. So let’s not panic. But let’s also acknowledge just how many things are going wrong for Arne Slot.
Don’t take my word for it. Ask his captain, Virgil van Dijk, who said: “At the moment, it is a mess. That’s just a fact.”
Slot, charged with integrating eight new first-teamers — five of them with reasonable expectations of starting — has yet to find a reasonable setup. The early run of wins fueled by late, improbable goals was fool’s gold, and to his credit, he recognized this and switched things up. The problem is, he hasn’t found the right formula yet, and it feels like trial and error.
That’s the meta issue, but there are plenty of individual ones, too. Alexander Isak, Liverpool’s “other” huge summer signing, has made eight appearances between the UEFA Champions League and Premier League and has thrown up a stinker nearly every time, scoring zero goals. Milos Kerkez looks lost and like someone playing out of position, at least in this team. Jeremie Frimpong has started one league game and is injured again. Florian Wirtz looks so much like a foreign object in the hole to the point that Slot has tried shuttling him out to either flank.
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McManaman stunned by Liverpool’s ‘awful’ loss to Nottingham Forest
Steve McManaman reacts to Liverpool’s 3-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest in the Premier League.
It’s not just the newcomers, either — far from it. Mohamed Salah’s heroics from last season only appear in flashes, whereas a year ago he carried the side offensively on a regular basis. The midfield doesn’t dominate like it did. At the back, Van Dijk has been inconsistent, while Ibrahima Konaté has been even worse. (Liverpool are on course to concede 63 league goals, their highest total in more than 60 years.)
To compound matters in the latter department, the botched Marc Guéhi deal means Slot has no real options there other than Joe Gomez, who last started a league game in 2024. And that means things can get worse. Injury or further loss of form by either central defender — by the way, Konaté is a free agent in June, linked with a move to Real Madrid — would be simply disastrous, which is why Liverpool will likely be forced to make a move in January. That’s suboptimal on a team that has already undergone an overhaul.
I hesitate to get metaphysical, but it also feels like there’s a lack of physicality. They were bullied by Nottingham Forest, and while not everyone can match Forest’s intensity, it’s not the first time either. There’s also a lack of leadership: Van Dijk aside, somebody else has to be the one fronting up to the media. It can’t be him every week.
Something for the positivity corner? The league table can be turned around relatively quickly, and most of the teams ahead of them have headaches of their own. Isak can’t be this bad all year; it’s physically impossible. This squad is talented enough that even if Slot doesn’t sort them out performance-wise, there’s enough class to paper over a lot of cracks. And Slot appears to be humble enough and determined enough to keep searching for solutions.
Teams learn who they are in times of adversity. And Liverpool are getting a Ph.D. right about now.
Max Allegri and ‘Magic’ Mike Maignan get the last laugh in Milan derby
Call it voodoo, call it playing the percentages, call it knowing what buttons to push, call it reading a game in progress like few others — call it all of those things. Allegri was signed by AC Milan to play a certain way, and it was on full show in the derby on Sunday night as they beat Inter 1-0.
It looks simple. Rafael Leão and Christian Pulisic as a lightweight — but high-quality and highly mobile counterattacking — front two, a no-fuss midfield with the legs of Youssouf Fofana, the experience of Adrien Rabiot and the magic of Luka Modric. A left-field gut choice in the homegrown 19-year-old Davide Bartesaghi ahead of Pervis Estupiñán on the left flank. And the excellence of a highly motivated Maignan between the sticks. It’s not something necessarily built to last and grow, but in one-off games, it can and often does work.
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Maignan’s mind games in standing off-center in the goal may have prompted the usually dead-eye Hakan Calhanoğlu to miss his penalty. His saves vs. Marcus Thuram and Lautaro Martínez were sensational. You could look at it and say that — plus Yann Sommer’s feeble parry that led to Pulisic’s goal — was the game right there. And in some ways, it was. Few understand better than Allegri that matches are often decided by episodes.
Losing a derby means you’ll get hammered, and Cristian Chivu is no different. What I don’t like is how, after games like this, the focus shifts to the fact that it’s the club’s fourth defeat of the campaign and that maybe they needed someone more experienced for the post-Inzaghi era. His team hit the woodwork twice, won the xG battle, missed a penalty and made an individual error on the goal they gave up. He showed bravery and personality in his decisions, like replacing Martínez with Ange-Yoan Bonny or picking Petar Sucic ahead of Piotr Zieliński in midfield.
It wasn’t enough against Allegri’s voodoo, but the tools are all there.
Eberechi Eze steals the show in North London derby, but Tottenham are absurdly bad
1:12
Why Arsenal’s squad depth is a recipe for success
Ale Moreno and Steve Nicol talk about how Arsenal’s squad depth has contributed to their current success.
Eze’s backstory — released by Arsenal at 13, then Fulham, Reading and Millwall too, and he looked bound for White Hart Lane in the summer — is well-known, which means it’s impossible not to celebrate him after his hat trick in the North London Derby. Eze is not the same as Martin Odegaard, but he has shown he can fill the Norwegian’s big shoes in his own way, with the personality and intelligence to lead the back four.
But it would be remiss not to also note just how good a team performance this was, beyond Eze.
For Mikel Arteta, the derby was the first leg of a triptych that includes a Champions League date with Bayern Munich at home in midweek, and a league clash with Chelsea on Sunday. He went into it without Odegaard, Gabriel (his best defender this season), and both of his center-forwards (Viktor Gyökeres and Kai Havertz).
0:50
Nicol: Spurs were ‘not good enough’ to face Arsenal
Steve Nicol reviews Tottenham’s performance in their 4-1 loss to Arsenal in the Premier League.
With Tottenham parking the bus, his side created little — other than the early Declan Rice chance — in the first half-hour, only to make adjustments on the fly and get stronger as the game progressed without losing their shape or conceding much of anything. I’m not a Mikel Merino guy, but the intelligence and coordination he and Eze showed in tandem was something to behold.
As for Tottenham, Thomas Frank owned up to the performance, saying he “took full responsibility.” That should be a gimme since he picks the team, and on this occasion, he opted for an uber-defensive 5-4-1 that didn’t yield a single shot of any kind until Richarlison’s inspired chip 10 minutes into the second half but did yield 0.07 xG, the lowest total this season.
Playing on the counter is fine, and for a while it worked, but you have to be able to tweak things — beyond sending on Xavi Simons — when the wheels come off. Otherwise you end up with the uninspired one-dimensional dross we saw Sunday, and sooner or later, the players stop believing in you.
Xabi Alonso’s experiments backfire in Real Madrid’s 2-2 stinker at Elche
Maybe this wasn’t the time to try something different. Not away to Elche, a small-budget team who play fearless, attacking football.
Xabi Alonso’s switch to a back three (and Trent Alexander-Arnold’s first start since August) blew up badly in his face. Don’t let the expected goals (3.49 to 1.44 in Real Madrid’s favor) fool you: Elche could have scored more. So could Alonso’s side, of course, but the difference is that, again, their chances came largely from individual sparks, not patterns of play. They twice had to come from behind, and their two goals came from a tussle in the box and a freakish sequence two minutes from time when the ball could just as easily have gone out of play.
1:48
Real Madrid ‘not convincing at all’ in Elche draw
Julien Laurens was not impressed with Real Madrid’s sluggish 2-2 draw at Elche in LaLiga.
Sure, there was a string of unavailable stars — Franco Mastantuono, Aurélien Tchouaméni, Antonio Rüdiger, Dani Carvajal, Éder Militão, while Fede Valverde and Vinicius Junior started on the bench — but that doesn’t explain the lack of intensity or inability to come up with a game plan beyond absorbing pressure and trying to release Kylian Mbappé on the break.
When critics say this looks like Carlo Ancelotti’s side, they don’t mean it as a compliment. Alonso is a system coach, charged with instilling an identity and a system. It’s OK to experiment with a back three, by all means, but now that he’s done it, it’s not something we need to see again. And maybe, at least for this first campaign, we need to be at peace with the fact that if they’re going to be successful this year, it will need to be with the Ancelotti blueprint.
Quick hits
10. Barcelona return home with a bang: After 909 days, Barcelona came back to the Camp Nou on Saturday with a resounding 4-0 win over Athletic Club. Haters will point out that this happened more than a year after president Joan Laporta said they’d be back and the stadium itself won’t actually be finished until August 2027 (at the earliest), which is why there were only 42,000-odd present rather than the 105,000 it will host when it’s done. But it’s a start and to the Laporta camp, another step in the long and tortuous road back from the devastation of the Jose Maria Bartomeu era.
As for the game itself, Robert Lewandowski put Barça ahead and they never looked back. Gerard Martín filled in as an emergency center back, Barça added goals either side of half-time (with some help from Unai Simón) and Oihan Sancet’s sending off early in the second half closed out the game. The injury list remains long, the Champions League is coming up, so, really, Barça couldn’t have asked for a better homecoming.
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Gab & Juls react to Barcleona’s ‘perfect return’ to the Camp Nou
Gab Marcotti and Julien Laurens discuss a successful return to the Camp Nou for Barcelona after their 4-0 win over Athletic Club.
9. Bayern Munich slumber before Michael Olise takes control: With Harry Kane and Joshua Kimmich in their 30s, if you were to project forward and ask yourself who Bayern would be built around in the next three to five years, until recently you would likely have picked the 22-year-old Jamal Musiala. But with the phenom out until the new year, it’s the 23-year-old Olise who is staking his claim.
On Saturday, Bayern found themselves two goals down at home to SC Freiburg: a combination of set-pieces, post-break hangover, a trip to Arsenal in midweek and a reshuffled lineup (Tom Bischof and Lennart Karl both started). Then came Olise’s masterclass: two goals, three assists and plenty of highlight reel fodder. It’s not lost on anyone that with Serge Gnabry out, Olise deputized in a central role, the very same one Musiala will presumably occupy when he returns. Flank or middle, the prospect of these two teaming up for the next decade or so is scary.
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Moreno: No Bundesliga team can compete with Bayern at their best
Alejandro Moreno reacts to Bayern Munich’s 6-2 win over SC Freiburg in the Bundesliga.
8. Heads cleared by the break, Napoli make their tweaks and roar back: Sometimes you need a little time off. Especially after your coach rips you a new one. Against Atalanta — a side who just sacked their coach but who can trip up anyone — Antonio Conte redrew Napoli’s set-up. We saw a back three, Scott McTominay way deeper in midfield and two wingers — Noa Lang and David Neres — coming inside to support Rasmus Hojlund.
It worked a treat in the first half, with Napoli winning the ball back high and racing to a 3-0 lead. Less so in the second, but by that stage Napoli were out of sight. It’s three big points and, maybe, some psychological button-pushing in the case of Lang, who didn’t seem Conte’s cup of tea. But with many big pieces out — Romelu Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne, Frank Anguissa — he’s going to need to use his entire squad, not just his core group. Those tweaks — and the time off — did the trick. At least this time.
7. Chelsea rotate at Burnley and find themselves in second place: Sometimes it feels like Enzo Maresca has a different job than his fellow managers. Few coaches, at least in the Premier League, embrace rotation as heavily as he does. Away to Burnley, he left Moisés Caicedo, Estêvão, Alejandro Garnacho and Malo Gusto on the bench, while limiting Reece James to just 45 minutes. Given it’s the first game back from the break, his next two opponents are Barcelona and Arsenal, and Cole Palmer hurt his toe in a freak injury, prolonging his layoff, you can see Maresca’s logic.
Still, it was a big call to make, away to a prickly opponent like Burnley. Chelsea took the lead late in the first half and had to wait until two minutes from time to put it out of reach in the 2-0 win. Not all his second-stringers impressed, but the fact that Burnley only managed two shots after the break when they were chasing the game suggest he was vindicated. And defeats for Liverpool and Manchester City means the Blues are second in the table.
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Are Chelsea in the Premier League title race after Burnley win?
Shaka Hislop talks about Chelsea’s chances to challenge Arsenal in the Premier League title race.
6. Paris Saint-Germain’s (mostly) B-team bests Le Havre AC, but if could have gone differently: It was the classic game that could just as easily finished 6-2. Luis Enrique — again — continued his version of “load management.” Ousmane Dembélé, Désiré Doué and Achraf Hakimi are injured, of course, but a gaggle of other regulars were left out for the visit of Le Havre. PSG created plenty — starting with the chance Gonçalo Ramos squandered early on — but also conceded more than they would have liked against an opponent that are probably better than their place in the table. Lucas Chevalier performed a minor miracle and Le Havre’s Issa Soumaré hit the woodwork.
It’s interesting that amid the wholesale change up front and at the back, the Portuguese duo of João Neves and Vitinha remain fixtures in the middle of the park. The latter is the guy who keeps this team ticking in possession, the former is on a veritable scoring spree (six in his last five for club and country) and is quickly becoming one of the better two-way midfielders out there.
5. Newcastle United rattle Manchester City, who slump to four league defeats: If it weren’t for the existence of Liverpool maybe more would be made of Manchester City’s league losses this season. After the 2-1 setback away to Newcastle on Saturday (more comprehensive than the score suggests) they already have four, and it’s still November. That’s the earliest they’ve hit the four-loss mark in Pep Guardiola’s 10 seasons in charge.
Watch the highlights and, sure, they could have avoided defeat. Phil Foden could have been awarded a penalty. Maybe Newcastle’s second goal shouldn’t have stood. Fine. But then you need to recognize that Harvey Barnes missed a first-half sitter and Gianluigi Donnarumma pulled off a stunning save to deny Nick Woltemade.
Guardiola didn’t blame his players, saying “they have everything.” Maybe it was his way of saying Newcastle were simply better and that he was outcoached on the night. Hindsight is 20/20, but the Man City boss waited far too long (his first change was with 13 minutes to go) to adjust a midfield that was being bossed by the opposition.
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Will Newcastle challenge for a UCL spot this season?
Shaka Hislop reacts to Newcastle’s 2-1 win over Manchester City in the Premier League.
4. Roma top Serie A as the Gian Piero Gasperini bandwagon rolls on: Once again, he’s proving the doubters wrong, just as he did at Atalanta. And he’s doing it — for now, at least — without the sort of football he played in Bergamo, which presumably got him the job. But Roma are getting results — as they did in the 3-1 win at Cremonese on Sunday — as they learn the Gasperini way, however slowly.
Gasperini gets credit for getting the best out of Matìas Soulè, who is having a breakout season, for helping Manu Koné regain his mo-jo (and a spot in the French national team), for regenerating the old guard (Bryan Cristante, Lorenzo Pellegrini, Gianluca Mancini) and pushing kids (Wesley, Tommaso Baldanzi, Evan Ferguson, Jan Ziólkowski) to improve. Of course, his personality remains an issue — you can’t collect two yellows in the space of a minute and get sent off when you’re 1-0 up — but at his age, he’s not going to change that.
3. Atletico are back to winning ugly: It’s a cliché that when you play Getafe you often sink to their level (which isn’t necessarily poor, just distinctly unattractive) but there’s more than a grain of truth to it. Without Giuliano Simeone, Jan Oblak, Robin Le Normand and, inside of 15 minutes, Marcos Llorente, Atleti looked uninspired and devoid of quality.
The break-through came late with substitute Jack Raspadori, whose excellent cross forced Domingos Duarte’s own goal. You can embrace the “find a way to win” narrative if you like or celebrate the fact they have enough individuals who can step up at any time like Raspadori did), but they’ll have to kick it up a notch, starting with Inter in midweek.
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2. Borussia Dortmund get “Undav-ed” in wild 3-3 draw with VfB Stuttgart: As in Deniz Undav, who bagged a hat trick, including a hugely improbable blind flick and an injury-time equalizer. Credit Stuttgart who continue to stay competitive (they’re one point off second place) despite losing big pieces every summer (most recently Woltemade and Enzo Millot; Serhou Guirassy, Hiroki Ito and Waldemar Anton the year before). But when you see Dortmund fritter away a 2-0 lead and then concede in injury time you can’t help but ask yourself: are their true, fickle selves coming back?
The answer, I think, is “no.” Giving up three at home — and dropping two points — hurts, but the defending was nowhere near as poor as the numbers suggest. Nico Kovac remains on the right track in terms of stabilising the club, which was his brief. Let’s not forget, this is a transition season.
1. Juventus still don’t click away to Fiorentina, but Luciano Spalletti takes (some) responsibility: That’s now three games without a win for Juventus, which means the sky is falling. Part of the issue here is that when placing results ahead of performance is part of your DNA, the fact that their three consecutive draws could just as easily been three wins (they bossed the xG in each of them) doesn’t register in Juve-land. But maybe that’s a good thing. Because if it had, they might think everything is fine, which it most certainly isn’t.
Spalletti made that very point, while also admitting that waiting until two minutes from time to send on Jonathan David and Loïs Openda was “too late.” He again put his faith in Dusan Vlahovic (who was the victim of discriminatory abuse that forced the game to be interrupted on two occasions) and the big man missed a sitter, but otherwise showed plenty of fight.
Juve’s issue though is a distinct lack of rhythm and creativity and that’s not something you fix overnight. Can he fix it? In time, possibly. But it’s not lost on anyone that his deal is only through the end of the season … unless he gets them in the Champions League.
