The weekend ahead

A full schedule is lined up ready for the weekend ahead, with Saturday being packed full of English fixtures. Both days have some tantalising fixtures, with the ones we are most looking forward to being:

Saturday

• Manchester United v Southampton 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿  12:30
• Everton v Leeds 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿  15:00
• Villarreal v Real Madrid 🇪🇸  15:15
• Napoli v Inter Milan 🇮🇹  17:00
• Lyon v Nice 🇫🇷  20:00

Sunday

• Newcastle v Aston Villa 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿  14:00
• Leicester v West Ham 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿  16:30
• Atalanta v Juventus 🇮🇹  19:45
• Espanyol v Barcelona 🇪🇸  20:00

Weekend Football Predictions

Feel free to check out our Weekend football predictions blogs, where we scope out nine early selections, that we believe hold promising value in their odds.

Visit and bookmark our Saturday predictions blog here

These are usually rewritten up mid-week to get a nice balance of accuracy on the selections and the content delivered in a time-worthy manner.

Visit and bookmark our Sunday football predictions here

A Round-up Of Last Weekend

Manchester United dumped out of Cup after gruelling shootout.

Manchester United opened up the weekend’s football on Friday night and failed to impress those who had bothered turning out for it.

Manchester United started brightly and earned a penalty, which Ronaldo struck wide.

A Jadon Sancho goal on 25 minutes had everything looking in hand, but United failed to make any further chances count.

That missed penalty started to look costly when a contentious Middlesbrough goal was given on 64 minutes to see extra time ensue. The score remained the same and after some superbly taken penalties, Anthony Elanga missed Manchester United’s eighth penalty of the shootout to send Middlesbrough through.

Kidderminster left heartbroken after FA Cup exit

Sixteen tier Kidderminster took the lead and look set to cause the weekends biggest upset, before Declan Rice popped up in injury time to cause the game to go to extra time.

To add salt in to the wounds of the Kidderminster fans, Bowen scored with the last kick of extra time to deny penalties and win the game outright.

Extra time required by Chelsea to see off Plymouth

Plymouth put in a very good account of themselves against Chelsea, but were unable to hang on to an early lead and ran out of steam in extra time to eventually submit to a 2-1 defeat.

Plymouth had the chance to take the game to penalties, when they were awarded one in the 118th minute. However, substitute Ryan Hardy’s spot kick was easily smothered by Kepa and capitulation soon followed.

Lampard up and running with emphatic win over Brentford

Everton put in a valiant performance in front of their new gaffer, securing a fifth round place with a 4-1 victory. Goals from Mina, Richarlison, Holgate and Townsend comfortably cancelled out Ivan Toney’s converted spot kick.

That should have confidence high and well spread throughout the Evertonian squad and it will be interesting to see how they kick on from here.

Man City cruise past Fulham in Cup victory

Man City did what they do best and that was to make a game of football look easy. Despite conceding an early goal and going one down, they were back up in front before fifteen minutes had been played.

After that, there looked to be only one possible winner in the match and Man City built on that lead, with two second half goals to win 4-1

Cameroon fight from three down to secure third place in AFCON.

Vincent Aboubakar added two more goals to his tally to secure the Golden Boot award and to help in a quite remarkable comeback.

Cameroon were 3-0 down with 70 minutes on the clock, but They battled on to bag themselves three goals in those last twenty minutes. That led to the match ultimately going to penalties, whereby a solitary miss from Burkina Faso’s Ibrahim Blati was enough to earn the host nation the third place spot.

Bayern Munich grind out three points after a five goal thriller against Leipzig.

Bayern Munich had to take the lead three times in the match, as they were pegged back by a much improved Leipzig outfit.

Slack play at the back opened up a game that was well balanced and Bayern were able to pounce to put the game to bed with a 3-2 score line.

10 man Swansea hold on for all three points against Blackburn.

Swansea should be feeling good about themselves right now after earning three points against a very competent Blackburn side at the moment.

Obafemi was able to break free at the back post with sixteen minutes gone to glance the ball home with his head and give Swansea a 1-0 lead.

The Welsh defence held firm and when Ryan Manning was sent off for a second bookable offence on the 53rd minute, The swans were able to park the bus with enough efficiency to grind out the result.

Celtic & Rangers continue to battle it out at the top after comfortable victories.

Celtic keep hold of their newly found position at the top of the Scottish Premier League after beating Rangers midweek and then following it up with a comprehensive 0-4 win away at Motherwell.

Rangers bounced back quite nicely from that 3-0 defeat at Celtic last Wednesday, by doing over Third place hearts 5-0 at home.

Morelos got the ball rolling with goals inside 20 minutes of each half and two goals with three mins midway through the second half put the writing on the wall. An 84th minute goal from substitute Fashion Sakala placed the cherry on the cake.

Nottingham Forest plough forward in the Cup after embarrassing Leicester.

Nottingham Forest played their hearts out and looked to have a lot of passion for the FA Cup. They played in a fashion that made them look like they were a Premier League side playing a Championship side, when in fact the reverse is reality.

Forest controlled the game from start to finish and were deservedly 3-0 after 32 minutes. A goalkeeping error led to Leicester receiving a glimmer of hope of a comeback before the end of the first half.

However, a 61st minute goal from Djed Spence brought back Forest’s three goal advantage and they were able to ride out the last half an hour to maintain it.

Forest should be firing on all cylinders in the Championship after that performance, whereas Leicester are left to ask some serious questions about themselves.

Liverpool do enough to get the job done against Cardiff.

Liverpool had to be patient to get the job done against Cardiff. It took 53 minutes before they were able to break Cardiff down, with Jota heading home.

Once the seal had been broken the floodgates opened and Minamino and Elliott were able to follow up to put Liverpool in a 3-0 lead.

A consolation goal was by Colwill in the 80th minute, but Liverpool had enough control in the game for everybody to know at that point who would be going through to the next round.

Boreham Wood perform a giant killing on the Cherries.

Boreham Wood have set themselves up with a trip to Everton away in the FA Cup 5th round, after beating Bournemouth 0-1.

The fifth tier club took a surprising lead in the 38th minute when 37 year old cutely side footed the ball in off the post in to the back of the net from outside the area.

After that Boreham Wood had only one thing in mind – defending it. Bournemouth piled on the pressure, but a combination of goalkeeping heroics, squandered chances and stern defending saw the Cherries unable to legally get the ball in to the back of the net.

Barcelona beat Atletico with thanks to a Jordi Alba wonder-strike.

Adama Traore made his return-debut in this fixture that saw Barcelona go behind with just 8 minutes gone. However, a volley right out of the top drawer from Jordi Alba, from a Dani Alves cross-field ball two minutes later got Barcelona back on level pegging.

Traore then assisted Gavi for a 2-1 lead and a goal from Araujo in the 43rd minute saw Barcelona go in half time with a 3-1 lead.

That lead was built open when Dani Alves found the back of the net early in the second half and although Suarez got Atletico back in at 4-2 on 58 minutes and Alves being sent off in the 69th, the damage had already been done.

Jordi Alba with an absolute BEAUTY of a volley! 😍

Barca come up with an immediate response after Carrasco gave Atleti an early lead 🔥 pic.twitter.com/jVozTS9956

— Viaplay Sports UK (@ViaplaySportsUK) February 6, 2022

Messi and Mbappe goals aid PSG to a 1-5 victory away at Lille

PSG extended their unbeaten run to 14 with a comfortable 1-5 win against an in-form Lille. The Parisian side sent a big statement to the defending champions here and to the rest of the league.

That statement may have already been heard as PSG sit 13 points clear at the top of Ligue 1, after 23 games.

Lille were able to cancel out a ten minute goal from Pereira on 28 minutes, but offered very little from that point on. PSG dominated the possession and players were queuing up to get on to the score sheet.

Dortmund shown up by Leverkusen after conceding five goals at home.

Dortmund failed to turn up when hosting Leverkusen and were punished for not doing so. A very despondent performance from the home side saw them fall victim to a 2-5 defeat in front of their own fans.

A defeat that has pretty much eliminated all hope of a title challenge. They now sit nine points shy of Bayern Munich.

Two own goals inside the first twenty minutes set the tone for a seven goal game. Leverkusen looked the hungrier and the more competent, and Haaland’s absence certainly didn’t help things for Dortmund up top.