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Happy Halloween! What shocks has the first round of the FA Cup in store for us?

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

FA Cup first round: Luton Town v Forest Green Rovers

19.30 on TNT Sports 1 and Discovery Plus
A match that’s almost certainly been selected for the cameras because of The Narrative. In the Luton dugout sits Jack Wilshere in his first managerial role, while the Forest Green hotseat is occupied by former Welsh international and professional banter merchant Robbie Savage. Neither would have necessarily seemed like obvious management candidates during their playing days, but Wilshere was highly thought of during his time as a youth coach at Arsenal, and Savage has been making a decent job of attempting to guide Rovers back to the Football League. The Nailsworth side may have hit a bit of indifferent form but are only two points off table toppers Rochdale in what’s an incredibly tight promotion race and are not the sort of team Wilshere will be wanting to face, having only been in charge of three matches since taking over from Matt Bloomfield. The Hatters have a decent squad for League One on paper but have found life tough in the third tier and sit squarely in mid-table. Wilshere has seen a mini-revival with two wins, albeit one of them against Brighton’s Under 21s in the EFL Trophy (if anyone actually cares about that). As well as being more tactically astute than expected, Savage is also the kind of manager who seems to be able to motivate his side when required and will surely fire them up for a trip to Kenilworth Road. Given it’s not so long ago that these two sides were facing each other in non-league, it feels a bit odd to call a Rovers victory a giant killing, but with recent trajectories of both sides, it would certainly be a big upset. With only a few weeks getting to know his new squad, this will be a tough early test for Wilshere’s managerial career and it would be no surprise to see Luton’s squad having a weekend off when Round 2 comes around. GA

Saturday

Women’s Super League: Chelsea v London City Lionesses

12.00 on Sky Sports Premier League & Ultra
You suspect respective coaches Sonia Bompastor and Jocelyn Precheur would have been keeping a close eye on England’s midweek friendly against Australia. For Bompastor, there was plenty to like. Aggie Beever-Jones continues her journey to becoming one of the best strikers in England, while Kiera Walsh and Ellie Carpenter both played well for their respective teams. And while Sam Kerr is still understandably rusty after her near-two year layoff from an ACL injury, Bompastor would have been encouraged to see the Australian get plenty of minutes on the field and make one smart move that forced Hannah Hampton into an excellent save. But for Precheur, there was the depressing sight of Alanna Kennedy trudging off having been red-carded in the 19th minute after two big lapses of judgement, both losing the ball and then unnecessarily pulling back her opponent. The Matilda mainstay was a world class defender, but has underwhelmed since her move from Angel City in the summer and has largely found herself on the bench in recent matches. The Lionesses have started to acclimatise to life in the top flight, although two of their wins have been against West Ham and Liverpool, neither of whom have registered any points on the board so far. But Precheur’s team also have a habit of conceding a hatful of goals to teams at the top of the table, so even a narrow loss to Chelsea would be progress of sorts. It’s hard to see the Lionesses getting much joy from their short trip across South London as the Blues look as ominous as ever, but it’ll be a good measure of how far they’ve come since promotion. The Lionesses should be safe from relegation, unless the two bottom sides suddenly find some unlikely form, but that minus seven goal difference looks ugly compared to those around them and is unlikely to get any better after this weekend. GA

Premier League: Tottenham Hotspur v Chelsea

17.30 on Sky Sports Premier League, Main Event & Ultra
Last weekend’s 3-0 win away at Everton was a return to form for Spurs after a month of indifferent results. The transition from Ange-ball is a going to be a work in progress for some time, so to be third in the table at this stage is probably ahead of schedule for those who have reasonable expectations. It also softens the blow of their midweek defeat at Newcastle in the EFL Cup, a competition that allowed Thomas Frank to test his squad was always going to be low on his list of first season priorities. Chelsea did make it through to the next round but in the end only just. Having led Wolves 3-0 at half time, they allowed some unnecessary, and all too familiar, jeopardy to creep in. Liam Delap’s return from a hamstring injury that has kept him side-lined since August, lasted a few minutes less than planned when the striker picked up a second yellow having come on as a second half substitute. It was the fifth red to be shown to a Chelsea player in the space of just nine games. While most of these red cards haven’t had a material impact on results they are potentially an indicator of indiscipline in the squad. Add to that indiscipline, the lack of effort shown by the side for Sunderland’s late winner last weekend, and the warning signs are there for Enzo Maresca. Spurs can and should take advantage but winning at home in the league has proved difficult recently. Their only win at the Tottenham Stadium so far this season was the opener against Burnley, and that was only their fourth since the start of the year. GS

Premier League: Liverpool v Aston Villa

20.00 on TNT Sports 1 & Ultimate
A case of inverted crises for both teams ahead of this match. Liverpool started the Premier League season flying with five straight wins and a five-point gap at the top of the table. They reinforced their league form with a win over Atletico Madrid in the Champions League and another against Southampton in the EFL Cup. While the defensive frailties were there to see, it looked like they could be overcome by their bevvy of attackers. Then came along rotten old Crystal Palace with a last-minute winner to precipitate a calamitous slide of six defeats out of seven games. The exception being a 5-1 Champions League against Eintracht Frankfurt who have the second worst defensive records in the Bundesliga. Arne Slot’s latest setback came on Wednesday when he sent out an under-strength side to a Palace team that made short work of them. It is not surprising that some Reds fans accused Slot of chucking the game and his youngsters under the bus. Whether he accepts it or not, Slot is under heaps of pressure and needs Early Season Villa to show up for this match, not the current good version of Unai Emery’s side. To say Villa started the season slowly was an understatement. There was no solace in the underlying numbers. The team looked knackered and sluggish. Their nadir coming at the hands of rotten old Crystal Palace at Villa Park. Then everything suddenly clicked into place. Four straight Premier League wins followed, the last being against a resurgent Manchester City side. They travel to Anfield smelling blood. Emery will be stressing to his players that while their opponents may be rested, they will be nervous and the home support’s patience is paper thin. If they can turn the home crowd on their own players then much of the battle is won. For the Liverpool players, they will need to show tremendous character to beat this Villa side, and you have to ask if they are up for the fight. TD

Sunday

FA Cup first round: South Shields v Shrewsbury Town

12.00 on TNT Sports 1 and Discovery Plus
The FA Cup is back! Well, back in the Boxset. For the mere mortals of football, it’s been in-flight since early August. With the preliminary and qualifying rounds all done, the Football League clubs finally join the fray. Enter League Two side, Shrewsbury Town, who travel to National League North table toppers and pound-shop Geordies, South Shields. To be fair, the population of this pleasant sea-side town is known in the local parlance by the somewhat kinder moniker of “Sand-dancers”, but I’ll be sticking with “the Mariners”, which is the nick-name the club goes by. They entered the competition three rounds ago, despatching Guiseley, Chorley and Spalding United, scoring ten goals along the way. This means that the Mariners have collected £18,000 in prize money, underlining the importance of the FA Cup to the lower league clubs. They’ll collect another £15,000 whatever happens today, but could find themselves with a bumper £45,000 if they win - plus a few quid more for being on the telly. There’s also the prospect of the club getting past the first round proper for the first time in their history. They go into this one on the back of a flying start to the season, having lost just one league game which came at Macclesfield last time out. With contrasting fortunes come today’s visitors who took just four points from their opening ten games, which itself came after a relegation from League One where they finished bottom of the table. However, they remain unbeaten in October with two wins and two draws including a victory over early season relegation rivals, Crawley. This makes the meeting of these two sides all the more interesting; the history of the first round is strewn with vanquished football league sides - will Shrewsbury join them? JB

Premier League: Manchester City v Bournemouth

16.30 on Sky Sports Premier League, Main Event & Ultra
The conversation of the first quarter of this Premier League season has largely been that tactically, times are changing. Throwback football is here and the age of Pep is over. Well, it’s certainly an idea you can spin out into a long-read, if you’re so minded. And as if to emphasise the point that Pep could somehow be out of touch, all of City’s 17 league goals this season have come from open play. There’s probably another long-read in that stat. Of course the vast majority of those goals have come from Erling Haaland, which is fine all the time the Norwegian goal-machine is fit and in form. The only player other than Haaland to score more than one Premier League goal for the club this season in Maxime Esteve, Burnley’s centre-back who scored two own-goals in City’s 5-1 win in September. Bournemouth meanwhile have one of the most eye-catching young strikers in the league right now. Eli Junior Kroupi has four goals already this season from just 162 minutes of play. The 19-year-old French U21 international scored 22 goals in 30 Ligue 2 games last season for Lorient and is already being compared to Mbappe in terms of his development. All the pre-season talk was could Andoni Iraola rebuild his side after having almost his entire defensive unit ripped out over the summer. They now sit second place in the table on merit and have attacking options to spare. As the season progress, they may well fade away as they did last campaign — but in the meantime they will give any side problems. GS

Serie A: Milan v Roma

19.45 on TNT Sports 1 and DAZN
Joint top of the table, things look to be going right for Roma after a couple of seasons of uncertainty. Following the chaos surrounding the departure of Jose Mourinho, his replacement by Daniele De Rossi and a disastrous spell under Ivan Juric, the club found a calmness last season under the emergency care of Claudio Ranieri. Having been called out of retirement to help the club through a crisis of their own making, Ranieri has now moved upstairs to an advisory role, handing over the head coach duties to an even safer pair of hands, Gain Piero Gasperini, with the remit of achieving a top four finish for the first time since 2018. Gasperini comes to the club having spent the last nine seasons in charge of Atalanta where his attack-focused style of play turned the side from bottom half also-rans to regular Champions League qualifiers and winners of the 2024 Europa League. The season so far for Roma has been more about keeping things tight at the back, conceding just four in their opening nine games. Goals will surely follow, but at the moment Evan Ferguson (on loan from Brighton) and Leon Bailey (on loan from Villa) are still finding their feet in a new league, while Paulo Dybala has missed games through injury. Milan, now under Massimiliano Allegri, led the early table but have lost ground with three draws in their last four. In other news, former Roma manager Luciano Spalletti is making a return to club football, taking the reins at Juventus for the rest of the season after Igor Tudor became Serie A’s first managerial casualty of the season last week. GS


Whatever you watch, have a great weekend.

Graham, Terry, Jan and Gary