The UEFA Champions League delivered a high-scoring Matchday 3 this week, with 74 goals across 18 games, an average of 4.1 per game. Our panel of Gab Marcotti, Sam Tighe, Mark Ogden and Beth Lindop breaks down the action.
No. 1 ranked Paris Saint-Germain beat No. 2 Barcelona, Real Madrid beat RB Leipzig, Liverpool beat Villarreal, Real Betis beat Feyenoord and Aston Villa beat Viking FK. All five teams remain a perfect 3-0-0 in the competition. Como then thumped Manchester United and put Michael Carrick’s future in doubt. Bayern Munich and Arsenal also played an entertaining 2-2 draw at the Allianz Arena, with Bukayo Saka limping off early with an injury.
Will PSG regret going this hard against Barcelona?
PSG won the proverbial battle with a 4-2 home win in the league phase, but they paid the price. Ousmane Dembélé hobbled off after 20 minutes, and Marquinhos and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia both exited with injuries on the hour mark. Kvaratskhelia has since been ruled out for the rest of the season with a torn ACL. Will Luis Enrique regret losing one of his stars this early, and will it derail PSG’s hopes of a Champions League “three-peat”?
Ogden rejects the argument. Players can be injured at any time, and Kvaratskhelia, Dembélé or Marquinhos could have suffered the same fate in Sunday’s Ligue 1 game at Lyon. He points out that Luis Enrique has rested and rotated all of his big stars throughout this season. Ogden thinks the coach was right to unleash the big guns because it was a rare chance for his best players to face a team capable of challenging them. They will get far more from playing Barcelona and Manchester City than Le Havre or Auxerre. If PSG held back their stars against sides like Barça, he says, they would have a boring, unchallenging season in France.
Lindop agrees. The new format means league phase games aren’t hugely significant, but PSG vs. Barcelona is always a marquee fixture, and there is no guarantee players wouldn’t have been injured at other points of the season. PSG can regularly rest players in domestic competition so they are at their best in the Champions League, an approach that has paid dividends over the past couple of seasons. She still calls it a real shame to see Kvaratskhelia suffer such a significant injury. When he is on form, he is one of the most enjoyable players to watch in Europe and gives PSG another dimension. Luis Enrique’s side remain favourites to retain the trophy, but losing a player of his talent is a huge blow.
Marcotti says you can get hurt at any time. What you don’t want is to get hurt because you’ve been overplayed and are fatigued, and that isn’t an issue for PSG. He also reminds readers that PSG won Ligue 1 by six points last season and didn’t move into first place until mid-January. If they lose to Lyon on Sunday night, they could slip into sixth place. Losing Kvaratskhelia makes them a worse team, but they have a wealth of attacking options in Maghnes Akliouche, Ferran Torres and Mika Godts. In his view, center back Willian Pacho and midfielder Vitinha are harder to replace.
Tighe asks whether people are underrating Kvaratskhelia. He would argue he is the best left winger in the world, assuming Kylian Mbappé is officially classed as a reluctant striker these days, and one of the top 10 players overall. Losing him for the season is a killer. PSG have more ammunition on the wings, with Désiré Doué growing into a superstar and heavy summer recruitment in the area. But Luis Enrique’s intense style requires depth, and PSG are down their best wide man. Tighe calls it terrible luck for Les Parisiens and sad for the game.
Are Liverpool’s results under Iraola for real?
Liverpool fell 2-0 behind Villarreal through their own doing on Tuesday before scoring four straight goals in a 4-3 win. They are perfect in the Champions League and have lost only once in all competitions this season, to Manchester City. Yet Bradley Barcola, Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak haven’t shown their best, Dominik Szoboszlai is carrying an injury, and right-back remains unsettled, although Ronald Araújo has played well as an “emergency loan.” Rio Ngumoha’s dynamic performances are covering up underlying issues. Is the Andoni Iraola era a false dawn?
Lindop says nobody at Liverpool is under any illusions that Iraola’s side is still a work in progress. They look a level below Europe’s top sides and were particularly poor in the first half-hour against Villarreal. She thinks they are too flawed to win the Premier League this season and probably the Champions League too, though you can never count them out in Europe. Iraola is implementing a new system with players who are still getting used to each other, so patience is required, particularly given the recent injury woes. Ngumoha, though, is a real cause for optimism. Tuesday was his most complete display in a Liverpool shirt. He is only 18, so she doesn’t expect it every week, but she sees a very bright future for him at Anfield.
Tighe calls Ngumoha’s performance Liverpool’s biggest positive outside of the three points. He looked great on the right flank and seems capable of solving a conundrum for Iraola. The Reds somehow entered the season with four wingers who all prefer the left side, creating an obvious imbalance. Iraola has tried Cody Gakpo, Víctor Muñoz and Ngumoha on the right, and Tighe feels Ngumoha can really make it stick.
Marcotti calls it a false dawn in the sense that Iraola isn’t a manager who makes an immediate impact on results. His football is different and takes more time to metabolize. Bournemouth earned only three points in his first nine games in charge, then improved season after season, from 11th to ninth to sixth. Marcotti says Iraola inherited a poorly assembled squad with players who don’t necessarily fit his approach. Virgil van Dijk is likely to leave, so Iraola will have to start from scratch defensively next season, though he lost three of his back four in a single summer at Bournemouth and came back stronger. He is also without first-choice center forward Hugo Ekitike until the new year. Results will ebb and flow with individuals, Marcotti says, and it is patchwork stuff, starting with Araújo at right back. He sees glimmers: Ryan Gravenberch is learning a lot even when he plays poorly, Jérémy Jacquet is growing in confidence, and Muñoz looks serviceable. He doesn’t expect to see a “real” Iraola team until a year from now at the earliest.
Ogden thinks Liverpool are going along just fine. They are in a period of transition and won’t challenge Arsenal and Manchester City for the title, but every club suffers some pain when pressing the reset button. Ngumoha is their brightest attacking talent, which doesn’t reflect well on Wirtz and Barcola, but Liverpool are exciting going forward and likely to score more than they concede in most games. Patience is required at Anfield, he says, and it could be worse: “just look at Manchester United.”
Should Man United sack Carrick now?
United lost 4-1 at tiny Como and then took shots at each other after the game, with captain Bruno Fernandes openly questioning Carrick’s tactics. Should Carrick be sacked straight away or after the international break? And was Lisandro Martínez right in his rant last week?
Tighe says it can’t all be down to Carrick, but Martínez’s interview bailed him out massively. The team is not well set up and not functioning properly, and it is hardly beyond belief that it could be much better with current personnel. United finished the summer short of a left back and a striker, but they recruited good midfielders who are performing horribly. Youri Tielemans has suddenly gone from one of the best midfielders in the Premier League to someone who looks way off it. Tighe asks whether that is his fault or the team’s set-up. By that logic, he says, Andrey Santos should get more of a pass. Carrick holds a lot of responsibility, but not all of it.
Ogden agrees but says United’s players don’t look fit. Their running stats are some of the worst in the Premier League, and that is down to the manager and his coaching staff. He calls the squad full of misfits, some dating back to Louis van Gaal’s time (2014-16), with too many players either not good enough, too old or both. Ogden says Carrick has to go because he isn’t qualified for a job of United’s stature, and it never works when an interim manager gets the job permanently. United need a coach who will get the players fit, organized and disciplined. His suggestion: Antonio Conte.
Lindop feels a little sorry for Carrick. Martínez’s comments point to a club in disarray behind the scenes, and Carrick is the latest in a long line of managers to struggle at Old Trafford. No silver bullet will fix everything while the hierarchy above him remains unchanged. She agrees his days look numbered. He did an excellent job steadying the ship last season, but she thinks he never had the pedigree to do the role long term. She says Conte would spice things up but would surely end in disaster, though it would make great content for the club’s “All or Nothing” documentary.
Marcotti answered Ogden’s challenge with examples of interim bosses who succeeded. Roberto Di Matteo won the Champions League. Zinedine Zidane won three. Hansi Flick won the Treble and is doing well at Barcelona. Tony Barton won the European Cup at Aston Villa. Edin Terzic won the German Cup and reached the Champions League final. Garry Monk led Swansea City to eighth place the following season after replacing Michael Laudrup. Chris Coleman led Fulham to ninth place the year after taking over as interim boss.
Marcotti adds that all those managers had exceptional players or a very solid club, or both, and United are neither. On Carrick, he says it was too big a jump, midweek football is hard to adjust to, and this group of players running at half-speed isn’t doing it for him. For a critical game, he notes, the only senior outfield players on the bench were Joshua Zirkzee, Amad Diallo and Carlos Baleba. On the wider club, he says Martínez was right: there are serious issues of communication and drift. It isn’t just about the transfer window and Jason Wilcox’s choices but about accountability and vision, and that won’t be fixed straight away.
Ogden concedes Zidane and Flick but notes Di Matteo was gone within months of signing a new contract, which is the fate he sees awaiting Carrick. Marcotti replied that most United fans would be happy with Carrick winning a Champions League and then getting sacked.
What does Bayern 2-2 Arsenal tell us?
Arsenal were virtually at full strength, minus William Saliba. Bayern were missing Joshua Kimmich, the suspended Michael Olise and Jamal Musiala, and Luis Díaz came on as a sub but went off injured. Does the draw say more about Bayern or about Arsenal’s title chances?
Lindop calls it a high-quality game between two top sides, with three brilliant goals. She thinks Arsenal will be happier, not only because they equalized late but because it was another mature away performance that showed how difficult they are to beat in Europe. Losing Saka in the first half was a blow, but Eberechi Eze did well replacing him, and if any squad can deal with injuries, it’s Arsenal’s. She can see them going deep again. Bayern are hard to assess with so many players injured. Vincent Kompany will be disappointed with how they managed the game at 2-1 up, but she thinks they’ll be a different proposition once the big guns return.
Marcotti says this would have been the game of the round had Barcelona vs. PSG not happened. Losing Saka after 10 minutes did Arsenal no favors, but they showed a ton of character. This was the Arsenal of last season: hunkering down, staying compact and playing in transition. He doesn’t think they should play this way every game, and neither does Mikel Arteta, but it was the right approach away from home. He backed the choice of Viktor Gyökeres and doubts Kai Havertz could have laid the ball off the way Gyökeres did for Declan Rice’s goal.
Marcotti says Bayern should be graded on a curve. You notice Kimmich even more when he’s absent: Tom Bischof is great but has a long way to go to reach Kimmich’s leadership. Alphonso Davies showed he can still cut it as a winger, and Olise’s absence leaves a gaping hole. Both opening goals came from outstanding passes in transition, from Martin Ødegaard and especially Harry Kane. Arsenal found a way to neuter Bayern but not the trope of Kane dropping deep and picking out streaking wingers. “There’s no answer to it,” he says.
Ogden says Bayern have a better squad with more talented individuals and a goalscorer in Kane who is exactly what Arsenal need to reach the next level. Both will go deep, but he notes that Bayern would have reached the final last season had they not met PSG in the semifinal. He calls Bayern an all-round better bet to win the competition. PSG, Bayern and Barcelona are head and shoulders above the rest, Ogden says, with Arsenal in the next group, and Arteta needs to add variety and adventure to his tactics to threaten the big three.
Tighe sees a result that suits all parties. Bayern always expect to win at home, but with their absences and the fact it is “just” a league phase fixture, a draw is palatable. Arsenal did what they needed to do, and Saka’s injury not rocking them too much is a major positive. The extent of Saka’s injury, not any dropped points, is what Arteta will be most concerned about.
What else stood out on Matchday 3?
Tighe picked Manchester City’s 5-1 win over AEK Athens, which came largely thanks to a cluster of academy graduates. Phil Foden was the star with a hat trick, showing manager Enzo Maresca he has fire in his belly. Rico Lewis assisted two of the goals, and 17-year-old Floyd Samba won the free kick that started it all. Later, 18-year-olds Ryan McAidoo and Kaden Braithwaite came on and made an impact, with McAidoo setting up Foden’s third.
Ogden countered that the sparse attendance at the Etihad was a concern. He understands football is expensive for supporters, but the empty seats point to City’s relatively small fanbase, which doesn’t tally with commercial earnings on a par with Real Madrid’s and bigger than Manchester United’s. When United played Sabah FK at Old Trafford last month, 73,685 fans paid to watch. The official attendance against AEK was 40,042. When City’s regulars can’t afford to attend, he says, the club doesn’t have enough fans to take the spare tickets. There is no shame in that, but a club claiming to be a global commercial superpower needs to fill its stadium, as Real, United, Liverpool and Bayern do.
Lindop highlighted Kane, with Monday’s Ballon d’Or ceremony approaching. He wasn’t at his sparkling best in the 2-2 draw with Arsenal, yet he still produced a goal and an assist, setting up Davies before converting from the penalty spot. His goalscoring record is phenomenal, she says, but his range of passing makes him a joy to watch. His accuracy was such that he could have finished with a hat trick of assists. She admits to some English bias in rooting for him at next week’s ceremony in London.
Marcotti chose Como. Nico Paz could walk into just about any team in the world right now, and Marcotti is glad he is showing it on the big stage. Como were missing three starters, Trevoh Chalobah, Assane Diao and Moise Kean, and United had not conceded four in a game since May 2025, away to Brentford. He calls Cesc Fabregas “the real deal.” Como have spent beyond their means and will likely pay a hefty price under Financial Fair Play, he says, but the players on the pitch are mostly youngsters or middling players reborn under Fabregas.