Key events
City have made five changes from the team Enzo Maresca picked at the weekend, which lost 1-0 at home to Brighton. Nico O’Reilly hasn’t been a regular this season so it will be interesting to see how he fares at left-back, especially from an England perspective with the youngster still favoured in that role by Thomas Tuchel, though under pressure from Newcastle’s Lewis Hall.
Phil Foden, who comes in for Jérémy Doku, will be another player keen to impress the England boss. Three of Foden’s four goals in all competitions this season came in a single Champions League game against AEK Athens last month.
Team news from selected games
RB Leipzig v Manchester City
RB Leipzig: Vandevoordt; Baku, Orban, Lukeba, Raum; Banzuzo, El Aynaoui, Baumgartner; Gruda, Nusa, Romulo.
Man City: Donnarumma; Nunes, Khusanov, Guehi, O’Reilly; Anderson, Fernandez; Ndiaye Cherki, Foden; Haaland.
Slavia Prague v Arsenal
Slavia: Domchak; Holes, Zima, Vicek; Nowak, Moses, Sadilek, Kublak; Ayaosi, Suleiman, Sturm.
Arsenal: Raya; White, Konsa, Gabriel, Hincapie; Zubimendi, Rice, Merino; Madueke, Eze, Gyokeres.
Elsewhere, the Como team lining up at Lens looking for their third victory in the Champions League includes the superstar attacker Nico Paz, with ex-Newcastle man Florian Thauvin the man to watch for Lens. Meanwhile in-form Dortmund include Jobe Bellingham and Fabio Silva in their lineup to take on Antony’s Real Betis at the Westfalenstadion.
It’s 1-1 at half-time in Istanbul after a deflected strike apiece for Fenerbahce and Liverpool.
Preamble
For all the valid arguments against the Champions League group phase using a ‘Swiss model’ – and there are many – it has at least produced an entertaining spectacle, with the bigger teams facing each other more regularly and the games, especially this season, producing lots of goals. Last night Manchester United discovered a new brand of chaos-ball to take centre stage, and take some heat off Michael Carrick, while Barcelona and Paris Saint-Germain reminded us all why they are considered two of the favourites for the trophy, scoring nine goals between them.
Tonight, it’s the turn of Manchester City and Arsenal, who are away at RB Leipzig and Slavia Prague respectively, with both expected to win and win well. Even away from the English teams, there are some interesting ties: Borussia Dortmund v Real Betis and Porto v Napoli stand out as having the potential to thrill, and there’s also Lens v Como, PSV v Club Brugge and the titans of Viking meeting the giants of Sabah.
In the mean-time, Fenerbahce v Liverpool is ongoing – follow updates of that right here, as is AEK Athens v Real Madrid. We’ll follow those two games til their conclusion before getting stuck into the 8pm (GMT) games.
So that’s tonight’s football. Watch it – well, some of it. Or follow along on tonight’s clockwatch to keep tabs on pretty much all of it. We’ll bring you some of the team news headlines next.
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