Football Highlights, News and Predictions

An entertaining weekend of action saw some surprise results from the first round of Premier League fixtures, none more so than Manchester United’s loss at home to Brighton. The new era for the Red Devils under Erik Ten Hag got off to the worst possible start. The team were simply carrying on their slow, lethargic form from last season. Much more work needs to be done at Old Trafford to get this team up to scratch. 

The team from the other side of Manchester had a much better weekend. They got their title defence off to a good start with a comfortable away win in London at West Ham, making what could have been a tricky looking fixture look comfortable. More good news for City was the fact that the team likely to be their closest rivals this season, Liverpool, could only manage a draw at Fulham in the early kick-off on Saturday. Other notable results from England this weekend saw wins for newly promoted Bournemouth over Aston Villa and Tottenham thrashing Southampton 4-1 to put down a marker at the start of the season. 

In Germany, Bayern Munich got their season off to the best possible start with a 6-1 away win over Europa League winners Eintracht Frankfurt, an ominous result for the rest of the Bundesliga teams. Dortmund, the team likely to be their closest rivals, managed a narrow win over Bayer Leverkusen. It was a similar situation in France where Paris SG started their season with a 5-0 away win over Clermont and there were wins for Lyon, Marseille and Lille. 

Action from Turkey saw wins for Besiktas, Galatasaray and Trabzonspor and in Portugal Benfica and Porto both got their seasons off to very good starts with convincing wins over Arouca and Maritimo respectively. Celtic and Rangers both won their matches in Scotland whilst in the English Championship, it’s Blackburn who are the early pace setters as the only team with two wins from two matches. 

Midweek highlights include Fenerbahce’s first match of the season tonight against Umraniyespor and further qualification matches for the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The Big match of the week takes place on Wednesday, the Super Cup between the winners of last season’s Champions League Real Madrid and the Europa League winners Eintracht Frankfurt. This season the match will take place in Helsinki, with Real Madrid understandably big favourites to add another piece of silverware to their collection.