London

At least Ant & Dec haven't been dragged into it

Shields Gazette reported today that he had a scan this week and it's looking positive - should be back playing shortly after the international break

Caveat - the additional games in Europe being offset by their next 3 rounds in the Carabao Cup being played at home against League One opposition.

Taking a look at this year's expanded Champions League format. 36 teams, 4 pots, 8 games group stage matches instead of 6. The top 8 teams go through the knockout round of 16. 9th to 24th go into a two-legged knockout game before progressing the the round of 16. Could potentially mean 10 matches before a team makes it to the round of 16. The Europa League is also following the same format. Hopefully this means we can play teams when they're fatigued or have a European match coming up. The 8 Champions League match weeks are: September 17-19 Newc vs City - 28th Sept October 1-2 October 22-23 Newc vs Arsenal - 2nd Nov November 5-6 November 26-27 Newc vs Liverpool - 4th Dec (worth noting that Liverpool play City on the 30th Nov and Everton on the 7th Dec) December 10-11 January 21-22 January 29

Can't work out if this is a cat based pun or he doesn't know how to spell clause.

I'm pretty sure he said on a recent TF live episode that he was told about Bowen by Danny Dyer......

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/05/15/var-league-table-clubs-premier-league-benefited-wronged/ "Aston Villa can claim to be the team that had the most VAR decisions go in their favour. Unai Emery’s side were beneficiaries of the video-assistant 11 times, ahead of Chelsea (8) and Everton (7)."

Outrageous VAR penalty decision for Everton.

Money for the EL isn’t worth the added pressure of more games this season, in my opinion. It’s mininal compared to the CL. Qualification bonus for entering the Europa League knockout stage: €500,000 Teams that then qualify for the Europa League knockout stages receive further bonuses: - Qualification for the round of 16:€1.2 million - Qualification for the quarter-finals: €1.8 million - Qualification for the semi-finals:€2.8 million - Qualification for the final: €4.6 million Winner gets €4.5 million.