Hello and welcome to the game football podcast from The Times, just when you're lining up an intro all about a perfect week for the English sides in the Champions League.

Along come the champions of the Azerbaijan Premier League to mess it up. Curse you, Carabagag.

Other than that draw for Chelsea, it was wins for Arsenal, Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester City and Tottenham. The English sides are dominating the competition this season, but is that a good thing? We'll also discuss wonderful solo goals after Mickey Van der Vend's Barnstormer. I'm Tom Clark, and joining me to discuss all of that. We have the Chief Correspondent for the Times and Sunday Times, Martin Samuel Samuel the football correspondent for the Sunday Times Johnny Northcroft and the former

football return journalist Gregor Robertson is here as usual team we're on a tight

schedule today because you know train woe for Johnny I'm speaking at three times speed so

listeners in case you think you're on fast forward you're not I'm just speaking this

quickly so make sure that producer Neil is happy

and they're all tied in nice and neatly.

So let's get going.

Champions League's pretty boring, right?

Completely rubbish.

Everyone enjoying it.

It's all over already.

It's started, hasn't you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Someone said to me, though, they're like,

that this is all just content isn't it? And when they said I was like, yeah, they're kind of right. I mean, the games

have been really good. Well, that's the thing, it's quite good content. It's good content. That's the thing about it, yeah. But what do they mean? You know, like, I mean, you look at the big sprawling 24 team table, is it? 24 that go through. Yeah. And you notice there's like

There's teams in that 24

That have got four points out of four games

Yeah 24 that go through. They go through, yeah. And you notice there's, like, there's teams in that 24 that have got four points out of four games, but they're not really in massive jeopardy. Because there is a team, there is a tier at the bottom of the Champions League that are kind of fodder, aren't there? Well, Napoli, the Italian champions are, as you say, Johnny, 24th with four points from four games, but are still technically going through, currently into a playoff situation, loads of other big teams in that middle bracket as well. Chelsea are one of them. I mentioned them in the intro there. We don't need to dwell on it massively, but I do find it interesting Enzo Moreska's approach to this competition so far this season, making changes that aren't quite working. I mean, I made a jockey kind of slightly disparaging reference to Carabag, but Carabag were all over them in the first half. He was playing a conference league, too? Yeah, I mean... And they're not. It's simple as that. And you look at the changes he made. he made sort of change he should make if you were playing in the conference league. Yeah, I mean...

And the... that. You look at the changes he made. He made sort of changes you made if you were playing in the conference league.

...