DJ Barry Hammond

Barton would hate that!

I imagine we will sign a striker in the summer… it’ll be interesting to see the type of striker Enzo actually wants in this setup.

Tactical foul like that is always a yellow - necessary booking

Good foul be N’didi

That is such a quality move from us there… shame about the finish.

What I really like about us… we’ve clearly been coached, you can see what Enzo has been doing in terms of shape, play and movements. It’s such a far cry from Rodgers.

Full back made a poor choice to tuck into Daka in the middle. That is a common tactic, yet, I wouldn’t say that was necessary for Daka especially as the centre half was close and he had no immediate wing support to drop in. The poor choice is then made even worse by how close the full back got to Daka - and by concequence how far away he was from Mav.

In other news, Ten Hag isn’t seeing out the year as Utd manager!

But it wasn’t - fair play to the ref there too, he had to nudge N’didi out of the way to keep his eyes on it.

It looks bad, but Mav has had an age to pick a spot and the defenders lose doesn’t help. The biggest thing for me is that is was so telegraphed that the keeper should have had a better spring on it - the dive was a little flat, never got upwards.

Brilliant! For all of Ipswich’s focused setup, to give Mav that much space on the edge of the box is criminal.

Yeah, we’d do well to stay humble. I really dislike what modern fan bases have become.

Shame that for Hirst.

It was because Daka disguised the pass. The pass to N’didi was difficult to thread, but he should have gone for it.

I do hate this new goal kicks rule - wish they’d change it back!

Interesting setup by Ipswich - they’re trying to nullify Winks and Ricardo at the base.

Statement win incoming… if such a thing was needed.

Leeds have done well there to implode twice against their near and drastically under-form rivals! Indeed, one might call it quintessentially ‘Leedsy’

Tell me you don’t go to away games without telling me you don’t go to away games #standwherewewant

Not how they’ve presented it, no. There’s obvious balancing issues and areas that need completely fleshing out. For example, in their explainer they state the top teams from each group of the league stages gain promotion to the above tier… but that begs the question, what is the knockout stage for? Equally the suggestion is for 20(!) relegation spots from the lower tier, alongside 20 promotions from domestic leagues. However, they’ve given absolutely no idea on how that would work and it is a clear problem. To expand, how can you promote and relegate teams to a national domestic league into a combined nationality league? You can’t guarantee that the 20 bottom teams of the Blue League would be one from each nation that you’re promoting from, so how does the competition decide who stays, who goes and who joins in that instance? Additionally, there are more than 20 nations represented across UEFA at the moment - suggesting some domestic leagues could be left with no route to qualification whatsoever.

Thing is, I think if this is to take off, they’d need the Prem clubs, the Bayern’s, PSG’s and the top Italian sides as part of it - and if that was to happen, I couldn’t see Barca and Real dominating like they do in La Liga. Would they really be happy being also rans in an elite league?

That’s fairly equitable compared to each team arranging individual TV deals and is a vast difference to the money distribution in La Liga.

More I think of it, the more I consider this format is a non-starter as clubs realise where they might sit in the structure. There’s 16 spots for the top, top league, so who gets them? I’ve made a random selection below as an example; 1.) Real Madrid 2.) Barca 3.) PSG 4.) Bayern 5.) Man Utd 6.) Liverpool 7.) Juventus 8.) Inter Milan 9.) AC Milan 10.) Ajax 11.) Athletico Madrid 12.) Manchester City 13.) Porto 14.) Benfica 15. ) Dortmund 16.) Napoli Then consider the big teams missing that would absolutely throw their toys out the pram at not being included at the top end. Then consider I’ve been conservative in only naming 3 Premier League sides. That would probably mean at least 3 (say Chelsea, Arsenal & say Spurs) others would be included in the tier below and that in no time at all you could conceivably have 6 English sides out of 16 competing in the top tier European Super League. This format is not good for the clubs that are looking at this as a way to compete financially with the Premier League.

This won’t go away will it! But the proposed structure… I don’t think it works. The problem I can see is the two top groups of 16 are still relatively closed shop, meaning you’re going to end up with pretty much the same fixtures all the time… which would soon become quite boring. This structure also seems to play alongside existing leagues, which would then make squad management nigh on impossible. I also think, you put Barcelona and Real Madrid against Europe’s top tier clubs week in, week out they face relegation more than they face winning it! Edit to add: Calling the leagues “Star, Gold and Blue” doesn’t do much for the credibility for this set of proposal’s either!”

How good was Dembele