Hi, European soccer noob with a quick question.

Does the overlapping Champions League and EPL schedules (as well as other leagues) ever put the top teams at a disadvantage from fatigue and playing more games than the lower teams, or is the fatigue issue negligible and/or does the talent gap between the elite teams and the rest overcome this?

City team to face Napoli:

Hart, Kompany, Zabaleta, Lescott, Kolarov, Milner, de Jong, Yaya, Dzeko, Silva, Balotelli

Subs: Pantilimon, Savic, Clichy, A. Johnson, Barry, Nasri, Aguero


Positive lineup. Prediction Napoil 2-3 MCFC

Really not sure which of the games to watch from work (can only do one at a time). Man U v Benfica seems to be closer on the stats (both have 8 points), but MCFC is away...so that's always a challenge.

3-0 Real Madrid over Dinamo Zagreb after eight minutes. This is a straight-up execution.

Wow, what a strange goal from Napoli.

Seems like a lot of comparatively early scoring for a CL day: after 18-20 minutes there have been goals in all games but one.

There you go, City! Well done!

You can stop now, Madrid. The mean Croatians are dead. They won't say bad things about your mothers anymore.

Man City looking to get eliminated. Great ending coming?

HaywoodJablonski: Man City looking to get eliminated. Great ending coming?

The ending is pretty great as far as I'm concerned.

Gosling: 3-0 Real Madrid over Dinamo Zagreb after eight minutes. This is a straight-up execution.

On the bright side, Dinamo Zagreb scored their first goals of the competition.

I f*cking love the Europa League.

In fairness, United actually played really well for the first 15 minutes of the second half. Poor finishing and shocking defending for both goals cost us dearly. Young, Berbatov and Fabio should have scored. Carrick and Berba were good. I thought Nani was poor, but he's getting a lot of praise on RedCafe. Young was awful.

I'm not entirely sure they deserve to win the group. Actually, I'm not entirely sure they deserve to finish second either. 15 good minutes in 5 games.

These threads are dead this season. What's up with that?

TonnageVT: 689908: I f*cking love the Europa League.

In fairness, United actually played really well for the first 15 minutes of the second half. Poor finishing and shocking defending for both goals cost us dearly. Young, Berbatov and Fabio should have scored. Carrick and Berba were good. I thought Nani was poor, but he's getting a lot of praise on RedCafe. Young was awful.

I'm not entirely sure they deserve to win the group. Actually, I'm not entirely sure they deserve to finish second either. 15 good minutes in 5 games.

These threads are dead this season. What's up with that?

Not much we could do about the two Benfica goals. Young was dreadful today. It's just been poor run of form from United lately. Ever since the drubbing from City, they just haven't looked confident. Not capitalizing on chances are hurting them big time.

/City are almost out of CL.

I fully believe it's that we're missing Cleverley. There's no invention in midfield. Carrick had one of his best games for us for a long time and he was still mediocre at best. He can't take people on and his default is to pass backwards. Compare with Scott Parker and you'll see what I mean. We're stodgy and dull in the middle. We definitely need a playmaker in there as the players we've got aren't up to it. Cleverley might be if he doesn't turn out to be another Hargreaves, but you can't have multi-competition campaigns with one quality midfielder in the squad.

Young seems to have gone the way of Nani and Valencia. They don't back thesmelves anymore, although last night was the most I've seen Nani take players on rather than try to trick his way past them for a while. They need to stick with the wide play at speed that made us so dangerous at the start of the season and in the past. You didn't see Giggs and Kanchelskis stopping dead and then trying to come inside, did you? Spread the defence with pace and then feed Hernandez, Rooney, Welbeck when they have some space to work in.

The Envoy:

I fully believe it's that we're missing Cleverley. There's no invention in midfield. Carrick had one of his best games for us for a long time and he was still mediocre at best. He can't take people on and his default is to pass backwards. Compare with Scott Parker and you'll see what I mean. We're stodgy and dull in the middle. We definitely need a playmaker in there as the players we've got aren't up to it. Cleverley might be if he doesn't turn out to be another Hargreaves, but you can't have multi-competition campaigns with one quality midfielder in the squad.

Young seems to have gone the way of Nani and Valencia. They don't back thesmelves anymore, although last night was the most I've seen Nani take players on rather than try to trick his way past them for a while. They need to stick with the wide play at speed that made us so dangerous at the start of the season and in the past. You didn't see Giggs and Kanchelskis stopping dead and then trying to come inside, did you? Spread the defence with pace and then feed Hernandez, Rooney, Welbeck when they have some space to work in.

Scott Parker might just be the most important transfer for the top 6 teams in EPL this year. And considering the cost, I don't understand why Utd didn't make an offer for him.

bennett311: Scott Parker might just be the most important transfer for the top 6 teams in EPL this year. And considering the cost, I don't understand why Utd didn't make an offer for him.

Totally agree. What a stunning buy he was. Watching him against Spain was a revelation. 'Arry dun good!

is this today's thread?