Joe Green Sports

Atalanta A debut Champions League campaign that started with three defeats and a draw has somehow evolved into a fairytale season for Atalanta, who now find themselves in the quarter-finals after beating Valencia 8-4 on aggregate in the Last 16. Free-scoring and at times defensively reckless, the Italian side have scored 16 and conceded the same number in their 8 European fixtures so far, with Josep Ilicic scoring 4 in the 2nd leg against Valencia. Frailties at the back will make Atalanta the team everyone wants to play against by the time the quarters come around, but their 70 goals in 25 league games so far this season should act as a warning to all those who believe two legs against the Nerrazurri will be a walkover. Lyon Once the dominant force in French football, Lyon have endured a disastrous season after selling most of their best players last summer. Former Manchester United flop Memphis Depay has continued the revitalisation of his career with 14 goals in 18 games, but t...

As part of the rebooting of football known as Project Restart, the 2019-20 UEFA Champions League final has been scheduled for the 29th of August, with all other remaining knockout fixtures to be played in the month prior to this date. The competition was postponed in March at an awkward moment, with some teams having only completed one half of their two-legged Last 16 tie, while others had already secured their passage to the quarter-final stage. As a result, there are still 12 sides in with a chance of lifting Europe's biggest trophy before the summer is over. So who has the best chance of being crowned champions of Europe, and which club's days are already numbered? RB Leipzig The first of four sides to secure their passage to the quarter finals after a 3-0 home win over last season's finalists Tottenham Hotspur in March, Leipzig fans will have been waiting in more anticipation than most supporters for the competition to resume given that this is the furthest ...

The Premier League announced earlier today that top-flight football in England will resume on the 17th June with Manchester City vs Arsenal and Aston Villa vs Sheffield United. Football fans across the country will likely be thrilled with the news that some form of live sport is returning to help them through lockdown, but with there being 100 days separating the restart date from the last time a ball was kicked in the Premier League, here's a reminder of what's still up for grabs in the final 9 rounds of fixtures. The Top Four Liverpool's dominance this season means that unfortunately a title race does not come included with the return of football, but the race for champions league qualification is still wide open thanks to the disintegration of the lower end of the so-called 'Big Six'. Leicester have been this season's biggest gate-crashers and are currently sitting comfortably in 3rd on 53 points, but a worrying downturn in form just before the season w...

The Favourites - New England Patriots For the first time since 2001, the most successful franchise in the history of the NFL is not the overwhelming favourite to win the AFC East, after the legendary Tom Brady decided to end his 20-year stay in Boston and instead head down to sunny Florida with the Tampa Bay Bucs. Even with Brady at the helm, the Patriots largely relied on their defense to secure the division title last season, leading the league in takeaways and giving up the least yards per game (275). The defensive unit largely remaining intact offers a foundation to improve on last season's wildcard playoff defeat to the Tennessee Titans, and a relatively weak division almost certainly ensures that the 6-time Super Bowl champions will be in the playoffs in some capacity, but uncertainty at the quarterback position for the first time in decades, with a Brady replacement yet to be identified, means that it will likely be a bumpier ride than usual to the postseason. Head coach B...

Tottenham Hotspur Expectations - Build on last season's run to the Champions League final by cementing their place as the 3rd best team in England with a view to challenging for the title next season Reality - Out of the title race before the end of August, permanent inconsistency has secured yet another trophyless season for Spurs League Form A 1-0 home defeat to Newcastle early in the season set the tone for the rest of 2019, as just 3 wins by mid-November left the club 14th in the league and Mauricio Pochettino without a job. An initial improvement under Jose Mourinho saw the Lilywhites rise as high as 5th, although a chance to move ahead of Chelsea into the top 4 was wasted in December when they were outclassed by their London rivals in a 2-0 home defeat. A woeful run of form over Christmas seeped into the new year and beyond, with just 3 wins from their last 10 outings leaving Mourinho's men in 8th, 7 points off the top 4. What About the Cups? The Carabao Cup was...

Anyone who follows football is aware of how inflated transfer prices have become in recent years, with European super-clubs paying well over the odds for up-and-coming stars. However, over the past year a new trend has developed, which has seen clubs stockpile talent for extortionate prices only to then restrict such talent to the substitutes bench for most or all of the season. Here are some examples of this worrying new development which could see some of Europe's best players regressing to such an extent that their careers cannot recover. Mariano Diaz A product of the Real Madrid academy, Diaz rejoined the Spanish giants in 2018 having been offloaded only a year previously to Lyon, where he scored 18 goals in 37 games. Arriving with a £22m price tag and the Number 7 on his back, which had only just been vacated by a Juventus-bound Ronaldo, few expected Diaz to be CR7's successor but most will have hoped for more than just 4 league goals in his 2 years back at Madrid. With...

With a youthful squad consisting of largely unknown players, AS Monaco embarked on an extraordinary giant-killing season in 2016/2017 that began with knocking Tottenham and Man City out of the Champions League and concluded with a remarkable league-and-cup double ahead of PSG and an enthralling European semi-final defeat to Juventus. In a season where Monaco seemed to be defying the odds on a weekly basis, the performance which affirmed their status as a genuine contender for Europe's biggest prize came on the 19th April 2017 via a 3-1 win over Borussia Dortmund in the 2nd leg of their quarter final tie, which saw them progress to the final four by an aggregate score of 6-3. The starting XI that day is now scattered all across Europe and worth hundreds of millions of pounds, but did the the upward curve continue for Monaco's starlets or has the bubble burst? Goalkeeper: Danijel Subasic - One of the experienced heads in a youthful team, the now-35 year old Croat was influentia...