Richard Lewington

Benfica midfielder Augustin Binya has been banned for six UEFA matches following his red card for a high challenge on Scott Brown in a recent Champions League match against Celtic. This is the correct decision on what can truly be described using that oft-thrown around term — horror tackle. As we showed in an earlier […]

The proposed restructuring of the Champions League, which emerged from UEFA’s strategy council on Monday and will probably be approved by the executive committee later this month, has been perceived as a significant setback for Michel Platini, the man elected as UEFA president in January. Platini campaigned for the presidency on a platform of opening […]

I sincerely hope that Benfica's Augustin Binya is hit with a harsh ban for his horror tackle on Celtic's Scott Brown. Actually, to term it a tackle is an injustice. It really was nothing more than an assault and attempt to injure Brown. The closest I've seen to this is when Manchester United's Roy Keane […]

I don't want to turn this into an all-Liverpool blog but the red-half of Merseyside was the story of last night's action. The Reds romped to a record 8-0 win over Besiktas and did so with considerable style. Yossi Benayoun was clearly the man of the match and had a career game with a hat […]

The pressure is on today for Liverpool as they currently sit bottom of Group A and face a tough fixture against Besiktas, who beat them on Matchday 3. Today's match is at Anfield which should give the the Reds an edge. If they were to lose at home or even draw, the 2005 European champions […]

Following up on my prior post on coaching changes, news has emerged today that yet another change has occured. Ronald Koeman, the former Ajax and Benfica boss, has resigned his role as manager of PSV Eindhoven to take on the vacant managerial role for Spanish club Valencia. The La Liga side are thought to have […]

The past week has seen some major changes at three clubs involved in the group stage of the Champions League. Rosenborg, Valencia and Sevilla have all lost or fired their managers. Let's start in Norway, where a day after scoring a massive upset over Valencia, Knut Toerum was released from his contract as Rosenborg Trondheim's […]

Bill Turianski of billsportsmaps.com has created a map for all of the clubs involved in the UEFA Cup group stage. With that competition starting up today, I thought it was a good time to post this resource. Click the thumbnail below to view a larger version.

I had a pretty decent day with the predictions yesterday, so let's see if I can keep it going. Today's matches feature some teams that desperately need to put points on the board, including Liverpool and Werder Bremen. Let's take a quick look at the matchups. Besiktas – LiverpoolOn the back of their derby win […]

As with the Champions League competition, I've setup a league for UEFA Cup Fantasy Football. If you'd like to join, goto: http://en.ucupfantasy.uefa.com/ You will need this code to join the ChampionsLeague Talk league: 15941-1857

Here's a quick rundown of the Tuesday games. My picks to win are in bold. Stuttgart – LyonLyon's for has picked up in recent domestic outings while Stuttgart has continued to struggle. I don't see that changing in this match. Lyon will probably win by a couple of goals. Rangers – Barcelona (draw)Rangers will play […]

Matchday 3 is upon us and there are some key matchups to look at. In this first preview, we start with Group E where Barcelona travel to Glasgow for a tough road game against Rangers. The atmosphere at Ibrox should be electric after Rangers massive win in the first Old Firm derby this weekend. What […]

The international break has been an absolute godsend for me. It's allowed me some time to catch up with what's happened in football from late September until now. As I mentioned in a previous post, I had to step away from the blog for a couple of weeks for my wedding and honeymoon. Just as […]

The stakes are high for Stuttgart heading into Matchday 3. They have lost their opening two games, they sit joint-bottom (with opponents Olympique Lyonnais) of their group. Another loss for either side would make progress to the knockout rounds highly unlikely. Defender Ludovic Magnin and striker Ciprian Marica will miss the tie against Lyon on […]

The group stage starts on October 25 and Matchday 1 has a very tasty matchup. Former European champions FK Crvena Zvezda and FC Bayern München meet in Belgrade. "Red Star" will be hoping to maintain their unbeaten home record against "FC Hollywood", while the German giants are heavy favourites to win the UEFA Cup this […]