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He was never going to be away for long - Ange-ball comes to the City Ground.

Seven great matches to take you from Friday to Sunday. It’s the Sound of Football Weekend Boxset.

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All times are UK

Friday

Bundesliga: Bayer Leverkusen v Eintracht Frankfurt

19.30 on BBC iPlayer and Bundesliga YouTube
The Bundesliga seems to have transitioned from being filleted by Bayern Munich to filleted by Premier League clubs. Fewer clubs illustrate that better than Leverkusen and Eintracht. The Frankfurt club are used to losing top players, in fact seem to make a virtue of it. Since 2019 Eintracht have lost (deep breath) Ante Rebić, Luka Jović, Sébastien Haller, André Silva, Randal Kolo Muani, Omar Marmoush and Hugo Ekitiké. The money they make with these signings is spent partly on developing young talent to replace them. They lost Marmoush in the winter but Dino Toppmoller’s team still finished third in the Bundesliga. Despite losing Ekitiké, in the summer, they have started the season with two wins and should end it in the top four. Jonathan Burkhardt now leads Frankfurt’s attack; a German international who scored nineteen goals last season for local rivals, Mainz. But the next players to be sold off will probably be Can Uzan: a 19-year-old number 10 who has scored twice already this season; Jean Bahoya is a 20-year-old French winger with three goals. Alongside the experience of new arrival, Ritsu Doan, this trio will make Frankfurt one of the teams to watch in Europe this season. Unlike Leverkusen who are not coping. Centre backs, Jonathan Tah and Piero Hincapie are gone. And so is Florian Wirtz and Jeremy Frimpong. The guts have been ripped out of the team and for added chaos they sacked coach Erik ten Hag after just two league games. Former Denmark coach Kasper Hjellmand has been recruited to oversee what is going to be the mother of all transitions. I expect Frankfurt to teach them a lesson on how it’s done. TD

Saturday

Premier League: Arsenal v Nottingham Forest

12.30 on TNT Sports 1 & Ultimate
Big Ange is back. The avuncular Australian was handed the reins at Forest within hours of the unsurprising news that Nuno Espirito Santo had been sacked. As first games go there aren’t many bigger challenges in the Premier League right now but this is hardly a free hit for the former Spurs manager. The defeat to Liverpool before the international break will have soured the positive start to the season for the Gunners, not only from the result but also the loss to injury of key defender William Saliba. The French international lasted just four minutes at Anfield having turned his ankle in the warm-up, but is not expected to be out for long. Summer signing from Valencia, Spanish U21 Cristian Mosquera, played well in his place and is likely to start here. Martin Odergaard came on for the last 20 minutes of that game, recovering from a shoulder injury. He has since played and scored for Norway and looks to be back to full fitness. Noni Madueke is likely to be in the starting line up in place of Bukayo Saka, as he was successfully for England, scoring against Serbia. Arteta will certainly not be looking to be drawn into an Ange-ball contest with Arsenal’s Champions League opener away to Bilbao coming up next week. Forest have another week to prepare for their Europa League journey which starts away to Betis, but have injury worries themselves. Ola Aina came off in Nigeria’s World Cup qualifier against South Africa with a hamstring injury that looks likely to side-line the full back until December. Their deadline day loan signing Oleksandr Zinchenko from Arsenal will, of course, also be unavailable for this game. Ah, mate! GS

Premier League: West Ham United v Tottenham Hotspur

17.30 on Sky Sports Premier League, Main Event & Ultra
First, the good news from the London Stadium: half and half scarves have been banned from this match, in a victory for Against Modern Football. Sadly, that’s about the only positive to be found around West Ham, who have already suffered two heavy defeats and a vote of no confidence in the shareholders from the club’s official fan advisory board. All in all, it’s hard not to escape the feeling that this could be one of THOSE seasons for West Ham, a side that can have the occasional catastrophic slide into the second tier. There’s an ageing squad, a manager who probably doesn’t really fit the requirement for the club right now, and a general feeling of treading water in a season where the promoted clubs all look capable of staying up. Given the two clubs’ profound dislike of each other, you’d expect a tense atmosphere, although the Hammers faithful are just as likely to turn on their own team than the opposition. That said, East London hasn’t been a happy hunting ground for Spurs, with plenty of draws and narrow losses in recent seasons. Unusually for a club who seem to exist in a perpetual state of expecting all four wheels to fall off the car, Spurs seems to be a calm, contented place right now. Thomas Frank seems to have got the club into a good place, recruitment has been sensible and Daniel Levy has departed. Who knows if that will translate into a first away win at West Ham for the Lilywhites since 2019, but you sense there’s a lot more pressure on Graham Potter than his opposing number. Anything less than a win will almost certainly result in a cacophony of boos from the home fans. GA

La Liga: Atlético Madrid v Villarreal

20.00 on Disney Plus
Early season tables are largely meaningless, but seeing Atléti sitting on the dotted relegation line three games in will be cause for concern in the Spanish capital. No wins in three is Atléti’s worst start in Diego Simeone’s 14 seasons in charge of the club, a stat made worse by the fact they’ve thrown away leads in every one of those games. Perhaps more concerning is that these games were against sides expected to finish the season in the bottom half of the table. Which makes you wonder what will happen here against a side looking to finish in the Champions League places. Villarreal started the season as well they finished the last: their draw against Celta Vigo just before the international break ended a run of eight straight league wins stretching back to April. Both sides have trips to England coming up this week in the Champions League with Atléti facing Liverpool and Villareal going up against the Europa League winners Spurs. Villarreal could give a debut to deadline day signing Georges Mikautadze. Signed from Lyon he was joint top scorer at last summer’s Euros and scored for Georgia in his country’s recent 3-0 win over Bulgaria. Atléti’s summer business including bringing in Alex Baena from Villareal but he is unavailable for this game. The 24-year-old attacking midfielder is seen as the long term replacement to Antoine Griezmann but he left the season opening defeat to Espanyol with what was suspected to be a muscle injury but later turned out to be appendicitis. He is now recovering from surgery. GS

Sunday

Championship: Southampton v Portsmouth

12.00 on ITV1, STV, ITVX, Sky Sports Football, Main Event & Ultra
Not since 2012 have Southampton and Portsmouth gone head to head at St Mary’s. They come together this Sunday with the hosts having endured the worst season in their history and Portsmouth finishing in a respectable mid-table position in their first season back in the Championship following promotion. Moved to a midday kick-off to prevent the locals getting tanked-up and fighty, this is a proper local derby with real animosity between the rival cities. Hopefully, the drama stays on the pitch as the Saints look to get back to winning ways having only taken two points from a possible nine of late. A last-gasp comeback on opening day against the celebrities of Wrexham looked like last season’s horror show could be consigned to the history books, but defeat at home to a ten-man Stoke City was sandwiched between draws on the road to Ipswich and Watford respectively. Much lauded head coach, Will Still, was brought in to bounce the Saints back into the Premier League, but can he do it on a rainy Wednesday night in Hull? Well, we’ll find out soon enough - Southampton have got them next week. Arch rivals, Pompey, are led by John Mousinho, who kept them in the Championship last term after guiding them to promotion the previous season. His side are in ninth with two wins and a draw under their belts. Reading the local rags, it feels like the visitors fancy their chances today, but derbies like this are a bit of a one-off. I’m hoping for a blood and thunder affair, but let’s keep it on the pitch, lads. JB

Premier League: Manchester City v Manchester United

16.30 on Sky Sports Premier League, Main Event & Ultra
This should be one of the less predictable Manchester derbies in recent years. United showed spirit in their opening game against Arsenal but could have lost by a greater margin. The score draw at Fulham was OK but the League Cup exit to Grimsby was a humiliation. And before the international break, they needed a VAR penalty in the final minutes to beat newly promoted Burnley at Old Trafford. Coach Ruben Anorim has openly speculated about his future and while new signings Bryan MBeumo, Matheus Cunha and to a lesser extent, Benjamin Sesko have added some character and spirit this does not look like a team that has had a good pre-season. Both clubs also left it to Deadline Day to sign new goalkeepers. Sanne Lammens is the latest custodian to fill a problematic role at United. After being frozen out at PSG, Gianluigi Donnarumma has joined City. Both ‘keepers will probably make their debuts in the derby. City started the season brightly against Wolves. New signing Tijjani Reijnders put on a display to delight Fantasy players. But defeats to Tottenham and Brighton have revived old anxieties. On the plus side Erling Haaland and Oscar Bobb were in fine form for Norway during the break. More broadly, the Premier League is experiencing a sharp tactical shift to a more direct, less ideological style of play which could be Kryptonite to Pep’s approach to football. In fact, both coaches could end up as throwbacks if they’re not careful. In any event we can be sure that chaos will reign and goals will be conceded. TD

Serie A: Milan v Bologna

19.45 on TNT Sports 1 and DAZN
Are you ready for Rabiot v Rowe round 2? In the opening weekend of the Ligue 1 season, the then Marseille pair of Adrien Rabiot and Jonathan Rowe had what head coach Roberto Di Zerbi described as a “bar fight” in the dressing room, following a 1-0 defeat against a 10-man Rennes side. Such was the ferocity of the altercation, the pair were immediately transfer-listed and sold before the deadline. The French international Rabiot headed to Milan while Rowe, the scorer of the winning goal in England U21’s Euro success this summer, went to Bologna. They could both debut for their new clubs against each other today. At 22, the former Norwich striker Rowe is young enough to be the son of many of the incoming summer signings to Serie A. Joining Milan, Luca Modric celebrated his 40th birthday on Tuesday but even he’s not the oldest player coming into the league: his former Real Madrid team-mate Raul Albiol joined Pisa and had his 40th just a few days earlier. With 38 year old Jamie Vardy at Cremonese, Nemanja Matic (37) now at Sassuolo and Edin Dzeko (39) joining Fiorentina, is Serie A in danger of becoming a retirement league? Shouldn’t these guys be relaxing their aching joints in the warmth of the A-League or MLS? Bologna too have joined the old gold rush bringing back Ciro Immobile at 35 from the Turkish league. Amongst all these guys Kevin De Bruyne (34, Napoli) looks like a pup. GS


Whatever you watch, have a great weekend.

Graham, Terry, Jan and Gary