2 hours ago
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GOAL! Monaco 1-1 Manchester City (Teze 18)
Monaco draw level after Teze bends a pearler into the top corner from 25 yards out! It had to be some shot to beat Donnarumma from there, and it was!
GOAL! Villarreal 1-0 Juventus (Mikautadze 18)
The Georgian, who was so good at Euro 2024, gives the Yellow Submarine the lead! Parejo, who is still doing bits in 2025, threads a through ball through to Mikautadze. There is an initial tackle, but Pépé is there in support and he squares the ball to Mikautadze again, who makes no mistake from eight yards.
GOAL! Monaco 0-1 Manchester City (Haaland 15)
Gvardiol steps into midfield, has time to pick a pass and floats a perfect pass into the path of Haaland. It’s an awkward bouncing ball for the striker, but no matter. The Norwegian simply lifts it over Kohn and into the net. That looked so easy, but that was an elite finish. And despite 15 minutes being played, that was Haaland’s first touch!
There’s been a goal at Arsenal, but I’ll let John Brewin tell you all about that in our dedicated liveblog.
GOAL! Norwich 0-1 West Brom (Maja 20)
After Samuel Iling-Junior made a great dash to the byline down the right, his cutback causes chaos in the box, pinballing around before Josh Maja pings a shot into the bottom corner from around the penalty spot.
Julien Laurens, a French pundit on TNT Sport, has just been asked about why the stands are so empty at Monaco’s stadium, Stade Louis II. He claims that only 4,000 people live in Monaco during winter, so that goes some way to explaining why the team struggle so much with attracting fans. Four thousand!
Bayer Leverkusen 0-0 PSV – goal disallowed for PSV!
5 min: Ivan Perisic ghosted in at the back post for PSV and nodded past Mark Flekken, but the Croatian was just adjudged to be offside. Replays show he was half a yard off.
Barcelona 0-0 PSG
3 min: Lamine Yamal, in his first start for Barcelona since August, has just doing a perfect Zidane turn/roulette to skip away from two PSG markers. Absolutely outrageous skill.
Peeeeeep peeeeeeep!
Six Champions League games and one Championship match are (also) underway!
GOAL! Portsmouth 1-0 Watford (Yang Min-hyeok 5)
In what already feels like a big match between two sides likely to fight it out at the bottom of the Championship table, Tottenham loanee Yang Min-hyeok has opened the scoring for Pompey! After a long throw was launched into the box, the ball broke loose and Yang leathered it into the far corner from around just inside the 18-yard box. Nice finish.
Three Championship games are underway!
Three of the Championship matches are 7.45pm GMT kick-offs: Millwall v Coventry, Norwich v West Brom and Portsmouth v Watford. Unhelpfully, QPR v Oxford United is a 8pm kick-off.
This is the league table, as things stand before kick-off.
Speaking of Newcastle United, they have just wrapped up a comprehensive 4-0 win over Union Saint-Gilloise.
Away victories in the Champions League are not easy over any opponent – just as Spurs and Liverpool – but that will be a massive boost for Newcastle after their opening defeat to Barcelona. And it will do wonders for their goal difference, which is very important in the league phase. Remember Manchester City, Sporting and Club Brugge only qualified for the knockout play-off on goal difference.
Very interesting that Robert Lewandowski has been left on the Barcelona bench to face PSG – particularly because he has scored twice in La Liga in the last week, including the winner over Real Sociedad on Sunday. Hansi Flick has preferred Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford preferred – the latter, of course, scored both goals for Barça in their Champions League opener at Newcastle, a 2-1 win.
If you are wondering why Paul Pogba isn’t in the Monaco squad to face City, it’s because he is still building up his fitness since his summer move. Monaco’s club’s general director, Thiago Scuro said in July that they “expect a three-month process” in terms of getting fit, and that seems to be on track. This week, prior to City’s visit, Monaco manager Adi Hütter confirmed the club were “following his plan. We expected him maybe for the game against Nice [on Sunday] in the squad, but I think we have to postpone it for the game against Angers [on 18 October] maybe.
“At the moment he’s doing more of the warming up, and also in small-sided games. Now he’s increasing a lot, he’s doing well at the moment, and I hope after the national team break he can be a part of the squad.”
Here’s a bit of background to Pogba’s move to Monaco, in case you are catching up.
Will Unwin
It is a warm night in Monaco, a place Pep Guardiola does not remember fondly from his first Champions League campaign as Manchester City head coach. It was the Ligue 1 side that ended that European tour. Monaco had a team including Kylian Mbappé, Bernardo Silva and Fabinho, to name a few. The current crop of Monaco stars are far less bright and Adi Hutter’s problems are exacerbated by an array of injury problems, which means the midfield is down to its bare bones.
After beating Napoli in their opening fixture, Guardiola will see this as the perfect chance to double their point count and make an important step towards qualifying for the knockout stages. John Stones is brought into the team at right-back as the continuous rotation in that position keeps the rest of the defence and goalkeeper interested. After a disappointing European campaign last time, Guardiola cannot afford any slip ups. Considering the gap in quality between the two starting lineups, anything other than a City win would be a huge shock.
Imagine being Rasmus Højlund right now. Rather than warming the Manchester United bench, reeling from another defeat at Brentford and wincing at the thought of facing Sunderland this weekend, he is living in Naples, starting in the Champions League with Kevin De Bruyne on hand to provide assists. Oh, and he’s still earning that Premier League coin. Oooof.
Champions League team news
Monaco v Manchester City
Monaco: Kohn, Kehrer, Dier, Salisu, Vanderson, Teze, Coulibaly, Diatta, Akliouche, Fati, Balogun.
Subs: Ouattara, Cabral, Ilenikhena, Minamino, Idumbo-Muzambo, Biereth, Henrique, Lienard, Hradecky.
Man City: Donnarumma, Stones, Dias, Gvardiol, O’Reilly, Rodri, Foden, Silva, Reijnders, Doku, Haaland. Subs: Lewis, Mukasa, Bobb, Matheus Luiz, Savio, Gonzalez, Kovacic, Ake, Trafford, Bettinelli.
Barcelona v PSG
Barcelona: Szczesny, Kounde, Eric Garcia, Cubarsi, Gerard, De Jong, Gonzalez, Yamal, Olmo, Rashford, Torres.
Subs: Kochen, Aller, Balde, Araujo, Lewandowski, Christensen, Casado, Bernal, Torrents, Dro Fernandez, Bardghji, Toni Fernandez.
PSG: Chevalier, Hakimi, Zabarnyi, Pacho, Nuno Mendes, Fabian,
Vitinha, Neves, Mbaye, Mayulu, Barcola.
Subs: Safonov, Marin, Lucas Beraldo, Goncalo Ramos, Lee, Hernandez, Zaire Emery, Jangeal, Ndjantou.
Bayer Leverkusen v PSV
Bayer Leverkusen: Flekken, Quansah, Bade, Tapsoba, Tape, Garcia, Fernandez, Grimaldo, Tillman, Poku, Kofane.
Subs: Blaswich, Lomb, Echeverri, Arthur, Ben Seghir, Maza, Belocian,
Izekor.
PSV: Kovar, Junior, Obispo, Gasiorowski, Saleh-Eddine, Saibari, Schouten, Veerman, Man, Til, Perisic.
Subs: Olij, Schiks, Flamingo, Wanner, Driouech, Bajraktarevic, Fernandez, Nagalo, Van Duiven.
Borussia Dortmund v Athletic Bilbao
Borussia Dortmund: Kobel, Sule, Anton, Bensebaini, Ryerson, Sabitzer, Chukwuemeka, Svensson, Adeyemi, Bellingham, Guirassy.
Subs: Meyer, Yan Couto, Schlotterbeck, Nmecha, Brandt, Gross, Beier, Silva.
Athletic Bilbao: Simon, Gorosabel, Paredes, Vivian, Lekue,
Jauregizar, Rego, Inaki Williams, Navarro, Gomez, Sannadi.
Subs: Santos, Padilla, Sancet, Guruzeta, Areso, Laporte, Ruiz de Galarreta, Yuri, Boiro, Serrano, Perez, Sanchez.
Villarreal v Juventus
Villarreal: Tenas, Mourino, Marin, Veiga, Pedraza, Comesana, Parejo, Gueye, Pepe, Mikautadze, Buchanan. Subs: Junior, Conde, Altimira, Akhomach, Partey, Moleiro, Oluwaseyi, Cardona.
Juventus: Perin, Kalulu Kyatengwa, Gatti, Kelly, Cambiaso, McKennie, Locatelli, Cabal, Koopmeiners, Yildiz, David.
Subs: Di Gregorio, Pinsoglio, Francisco Conceicao, Vlahovic, Zhegrova, Adzic, Kostic, Openda, Rugani, Joao Mario.
Napoli v Sporting
Napoli: Milinkovic-Savic, Spinazzola, Juan Jesus, Beukema, Gutierrez, Lobotka, Politano, Anguissa, De Bruyne, McTominay, Hojlund.
Subs: Meret, Ferrante, Gilmour, Neres, Olivera, Elmas, Vergara, Lucca, Ambrosino, Lang.
Sporting: Rui Silva, Fresneda, Quaresma, Inacio, Araujo, Hjulmand, Simoes, Catamo, Trincao, Quenda, Ioannidis.
Subs: Virginia, Matheus Reis, Morita, Debast, Goncalves, Vagiannidis, Kochorashvili, Diomande, Alisson Santos, Ribeiro, Ricardo Mangas, Suarez.
Preamble
Hello world!
Who says you can’t have a clockwatch that straddles both Europe’s finest club competition … and the Champions League. Boom, boom! We’ll be here all night (or around 11pm BST) with that sort of hollow humour. Come on in, the water is lukewarm.
That’s right, as well as four Championship fixtures, there is the small matter of Barcelona v PSG, Monaco v Manchester City and much, much more. Here is the full list of games we will be attempting to cover, although it should probably be flagged not equally. Not all matches are created as such.
We’ll have the team news shortly. But while you wait, please get stuck into these other liveblogs. Newcastle, playing in the earlier kick-off, are winning in Belgium.
And we have a dedicated liveblog to Arsenal v Olympiakos (8pm BST kick-off), which you can see right here.
