midweek matches

Chatter from the sidelines

Napoli v Dnipro background are we excited?

New Shirt Manufacturer A Windfall For Napoli they've signed up with Kappa?! Blast from the past

Real Madrid’s Gareth Bale and Karim Benzema to face Juventus – Ancelotti B squared are back

Juventus v Real Madrid: reporters' view these things are interesting up to a point. At the end of the day, it's football and random things can happen

Spurs midfielder is keen to sign a new contract Yes, please! 4 Serie A clubs are in the hunt for Bentaleb and he wants to stay at Spurs. Plz let it be so

Tebas: ‘I set La Liga kick-offs’ ah, so you're the one I have a bone to pick with. Bloody hell at the times, mate!

Real Madrid: Martin Odegaard in squad for first time it's rumoured that he'll be on the squad for the next match

Diego Simeone Facing First Hints of Backlash at 'Negative' Atletico Madrid Style there are many ways to play football, FFS. If you don't like the style, look at other teams. Not everyone wants to play fracking tiki taka, I think Mourinho and Simeone are more alike than not. Yeah, his negative style cost them at the end, but it's not the end of the world, it's all learning, and I'm sure next year he'll act accordingly. I'll fight you over El Cholo

Real Madrid and Atletico Madrid to be hit with transfer ban? oh?

Poldolski got his first goal in Serie A? I think there are fans here? here

Barcelona ‘are Lionel Messi’s team coached by Luis Enrique’, says Guillem Balague as long as everyone knows, right

Players Union votes in 'overwhelming' favour of allowing four substitutions
in light of everyone getting concussions, it's probably for the best. As in, if you know that you can send someone concussed off the field and still have three subs in hand instead of two, I think they'll be more likely to hook the player off as something goes wrong

Pictures
Hull 1- 0 Liverpool

Former Spurs man, now Hull's defender Dawson got a goal in the back of the net in the first quarter of the game

Congrats, Dawson!

Jordon Ibe showed his skills and inexperience, trying to dribble, doing too much instead of getting the ball across

Allen tried

Glen Johnson over Javier Manquillo? Why?

Migs tried, but got let down by his defence. The only good thing about this match is that the Brendan Rodgers defenders can't really defend him anymore, this is year three and it looks bad. The team seems to have downed tools, which makes me wonder about the tweet with Rodgers having a go at the senior players and they having a go back. It's not as if he's a new coach to the team ala Koeman of Saints and Poch of Spurs, who've had to get accustomed to new players and a new club (for Koeman, a new league on top of everything, and for Pochettino, first time in 4 different competitions, 2 cups, Europa and PL aspirations). Rodgers is in his third year, so this team should be in his image. He's had experience of Europa (twice) and CL (once). He got rid of Riena, Downing, Agger, and Gerrard is going. It's not like he's Garry Monk (Swans), either, who's had to Frankenstein his team with his best scorer leaving, then taking trades of Arsenal and Spurs and midtable french teams (but still doing well in most respects). Or even Martinez, who's had his first taste of balancing Europa and PL commitments for the FIRST time in his career. Rodgers has no excuse. He even got £220 million to spend and for all intents and purposes this is his team, and he's mumbling about strikers and quality. Bah. Whatever, as long as he's the coach of the team, I'm as apathetic as they are. If he's there next season, I'm either following my second team with greater interest, or watching motosports instead.

Bayern Munich 0-2 Dortmund (penalties)

Klopp's last match against Bayern (I really think he's leaving the Bundi - although I won't be surprised if he doesn't come to England. That being said, watch the betting, odds are dropping around certain club links)

The Cup looks like something out of a 1980s sci fi movie. Like Flash Gordon, Y/Y?

Bayern's supermen

Everybody was kung fu fighting

The game was pretty exciting, NGL. I wanted Dortmund to win.

Dortmund down to 10 men! Nooooo! Kampl got sent off

What the hell was on that field? Alonso went for a free kick and... slipped! Slipped!

At first I was like, WTF? Then the commentator said something "Just like his friend Gerrard," and NGL, I laughed. Then felt bad for being laden with the schnaden. Then laughed. It was like LOLoffensive. Has that ever happened to you? Am I the only one?

No tears for Bayern and the lot, they'll be fine. They've already won the domestic Bundli title. They are still in Champions League. Adidas are giving them £645 million for their kit bit. Also, there's the nice bit of seeing how bitter winning fans can turn after one loss in mannnnny matches. Fun times

I'm happy for Dortmund, because they had a terrible first half of the season, and they're clawing back, cm by painful cm

I'm happy that Mitchell (?) has been shinning in the Dortmund goal as a no 1

And that Klopp has a chance to leave on a good note. That he's doing it, piece by piece. That although his team came apart under him, because against Bayern (and I really need to find the source for this, because it's true), the teams against them will hold for a few years, but fall apart in the end, due to reasons, and Dortmund hasn't been immune, but Klopp is patching things up, trying to leave the team in a good position for the other coach to step in. And fair play to Klopp who always finds it in him to seek out the fans, to face the wall of supporters no matter the result.

Getafe 0- 6 Barcelona