Some of the last-16 first legs across the three European competitions rendered this week’s returns extremely tiny indeed. But a lot of those first-leg results make this weekend’s returns absolutely massive. There are potentially season-defining games everywhere you care to look
Game to watch: Liverpool v PSG
The first leg will go down as one of the smashiest grabs in Champions League history but its true significance can of course only truly be measured after a second leg in which Liverpool cannot be considered the certainties one might normally expect the runaway leaders of their domestic league to be with an away lead.
It says a fair bit about just how consistent Liverpool have been this season that in the last couple of games we are currently seeing them in the closest thing yet to a truly unconvincing period, and in those last two games they’ve won at the Parc des Princes and secured a 3-1 home win that extends their Premier League lead to 15 points. It’s a funny kind of crisis.
But they are nevertheless a pair of back-to-back games in which Liverpool haven’t quite looked themselves. It was a surprise to us that Arne Slot felt unwilling or unable to rest anyone for a home game against Southampton, and the unconvincing performance that followed either proves him right or wrong depending on how you view it.
Virgil van Dijk, for one, looked extremely tired against a Southampton attack that only very few consider to be PSG’s equal. That Southampton game, perhaps inevitably, also featured an Alisson rick after the insanity of his performance in Paris, which was surely the single finest goalkeeping performance of the season.
It is to be hoped Liverpool don’t need him in quite that mood again for the home leg, but it’s less certain they’ll get away with him being in a chuck-it-in-your-own-net mood this time around.
PSG are no longer the guileless galactico tribute act of a few years ago and are far better for it, but if they are unable to turn things around at Anfield they will rue the slow start to this Champions League campaign that has left them scrambling since the midway point of the league phase.
Liverpool had no such problems in Europe or domestically. With the Premier League title in the bag – it could be mathematically confirmed barely a month from now – this is a week that will go a long way to telling us just how extraordinary a season it ends up being for Arne Slot and the lads.
Team to watch: Tottenham
Tottenham have very often been conspicuously crap this season, but never more alarmingly so than in the last couple of weeks.
Their latest scraping of the sh*ttiness barrel isn’t necessarily unexpected, because Spurs, but it is nevertheless striking simply because there are no longer any excuses for the players or the managers to hide behind.
Thanks to the near unprecedented rubbishness of the current bottom four, Spurs have – immensely fortunately – avoided being dragged into a truly embarrassing and awkward relegation scrap. The sheer ineptitude of their league season has given them a never-seen-before and never-likely-to-be-repeated chance to truly prioritise trying to win one of the trophies they actually have half a chance of winning.
It is a wondrous gift that they didn’t deserve and appear entirely incapable of accepting. The performance in Alkmaar last week was a new low in a season full of them. The injured players were nearly all back.
The bench was stronger than several starting XIs they have been forced to deploy this season – indeed, while asking Alfie Whiteman to do a job at left-back is perhaps sub-optimal the rest of that bench formed a better-balanced XI than Spurs have often been able to deploy. It had two actual centre-backs, for one thing.
And the performance was… abysmal. Truly abysmal. Abysmal to the point of actual cowardice. Spurs seemed to know the opportunity they had and instead of rising to meet it they shrunk away from it all over the pitch.
Damningly – and yet again – it was the senior players who hid. The bright lights – and that is a relative term here – were Djed Spence and Archie Gray. Again. Kevin Danso did his bit having not yet been here long enough to become fully infected with Spurs. And Lucas Bergvall, having sliced home an absurd own goal, at least had the gumption and bravery to spend the rest of the game trying to make something happen, trying to atone.
Young players, players who have somehow climbed off the scrapheap, and a player who has only been here six weeks. Those are the current closest things to leaders in a Spurs team that now has precious few injury problems to hide behind.
The only positive to emerge from last Thursday was the fact that, somehow, AZ failed to put the tie to bed when given the chance. It is only 1-0 when it really could have been so, so much worse. Now would be a fine time for Spurs to find the one-game-in-ten where they look like they know what they are doing.
And the other good news is that at least they didn’t waste that one-in-ten competence in Sunday’s Premier League game against Bournemouth. Although it’s reasonable to wonder how much good fortune remains in the tank after that game inexplicably ended up all-square.
Player to watch: Axel Disasi
Might not have been the most attention-grabbing of Aston Villa’s eye-catchingly busy and productive January transfer window but could this week very much be the most important.
Those late goals in Bruges that turned a satisfactory 1-1 draw into a 3-1 win were always welcome but suddenly even more so for a Villa team learning as it goes in Europe’s biggest competition and who felt unable to risk either Emi Martinez or Marco Asensio for Saturday’s trip to Brentford.
Unai Emery made it clear the decision not to risk such an important pair was one made with Wednesday in mind, and that 3-1 lead means it is definitely Martinez’s recovery that will be most closely watched.
Asensio is the super-sub’s super-sub in the Champions League after scoring 10 goals off the bench in the competition and would likely have that role again anyway. Martinez is rather more central to Villa’s primary needs on Wednesday night where any kind of solid defensive effort will be enough to get the job done.
But so too surely now is the on-loan Disasi. He was superb at Brentford, quite possibly Villa’s best player in a narrow win that kept alive their chances of returning to the Champions League next season without having to go to the trouble of winning it this year.
Our suspicion is that while Villa will make it through by a scoreline that looks comfortable enough in the end, there will be a scare or two along the way on Wednesday. Club Brugge haven’t made it this far through timidity and hoping for the best, and Villa’s defence will be tested.
Disasi’s form as well as the tantalising prospect of Emery having the rare luxury of Tyrone Mings, Ezri Konsa and Pau Torres all being available at the same time means it should hopefully be less fraught than might otherwise be the case.
Manager to watch: Ruben Amorim
Say what you like about Ruben Amorim, but he is very, very quotable.
“People look at this competition [the Europa League] as the only competition that can save our season. I don’t see it like that. Nothing can save our season.”
That might be his best yet. It’s beautifully crafted, nicely set-up, and the punchline hits you right in the gut.
He’s right as well, isn’t he? Manchester United and Spurs are almost comically intertwined this season, with one of them set to end the season with the crown of worst season from any Big Six team since the Big Six became a thing.
But the crucial difference lies in what winning this trophy would mean to the overall vibe. At Spurs, it would utterly transform it. Win the Europa League and Spurs have suddenly fluked their best season in 40 years while removing the world’s most banterous albatross from around their neck.
With United it’s different. United don’t need a trophy to paper over their cracks, because they’ve done that in each of the last two seasons and ultimately it hasn’t really changed things at all. One of the very funniest things about United’s Banter Era is the fact it contains more silverware than most clubs’ Golden Eras.
Still, though. Be nice, wouldn’t it? To win the Europa League? Feels like it would definitely be better than not doing that even if it can’t by itself lift United from their doom spiral.
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Football League game to watch: Burnley v West Brom
The Championship promotion battle rarely disappoints, but even by its own lofty standards this season’s is a corker. There’s not a matchday that goes by now without multiple games of grave significance, and Burnley v West Brom is just the latest.
Victory for Burnley would lift them from third to first – for at least 15 minutes, anyway, until the conclusion of Sheffield United’s later kick-off against Bristol City at Bramall Lane.
West Brom, meanwhile, need the points in what remains a hugely congested scramble for the last two play-off places.
Sunderland appear to be the only team in the top half of the table who now know their fate; they are surely too far from that top three to get involved in the automatic promotion fight but are definitely going to be in the play-offs.
Nobody else has that certainty. They will be joined in those play-offs by whichever one of Leeds, Sheffield United and Burnley miss out on automatic promotion, and then two clubs who really could come from anywhere in the current top half or even outside it with Sheffield Wednesday now 13th but still only seven points behind sixth place.
That sixth place is currently held by West Brom, looking nervously over their shoulder at that huge gaggle of clubs massed behind them.
European game to watch: Atletico Madrid v Real Madrid
Even in the post-away-goals world you can’t get a much more Perfectly Poised first-leg result than a 2-1 home win. It just still feels better poised than 1-0 even though they are now in effect identical.
Real Madrid carry that narrow advantage across the city to the Wanda Metropolitano knowing that even with their unparalleled ability to get the job done in Champions League knockout ties care must be taken.
Atleti have failed to win only five of their 19 home games across all competitions this season, losing just the once to Lille in the group stage of this one. Real, meanwhile, have already lost five away games this season, including their most recent trip to Real Betis at the start of this month.
Chuck in the fact the league game here between these two ended 1-1 earlier in the season and that they remain separated by a single point in the La Liga title race and you really do have the most delicious set-up imaginable. As long as you push from your mind the fact this is Real Madrid and they always get it done in the end. Especially against Atletico Madrid and especially in this competition.