Champions League Focus: Matchday 3 Round-up

In his programme notes ahead of Braga's visit to Old Trafford on Tuesday evening, Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson posed his readers a question. "Now be honest," he wrote, "how many of you know where Borisov is, let alone how much about the Belarusian champions?" 

Ferguson was alluding of course to BATE's shock 3-1 win over Bayern Munich two weeks earlier. The inference was quite clear if clichéd: There are no easy games in the Champions League. Matchday 3, as UEFA would have us call it, only served to further reinforce this observation.

At one point on Tuesday night, Braga were 2-0 up at United, Shakhtar had crafted a 2-0 advantage over Chelsea, Celtic had somehow got themselves in front away to Barcelona while Nordsjælland were ahead at home to Juventus. Of course only one would hold on for a win. Shakhtar's lead, ultimately, proved unassailable as they produced arguably the performance of the round against the reigning Champions of Europe.

Surprises continued on Wednesday too when Ajax, supposedly the weakest team in the Group of Death, came back from behind to beat Manchester City 3-1, while Borussia Dortmund conquered many people's favourites for the competition, Real Madrid. Elsewhere, Arsenal meekly lost to Schalke and, whether it's a shock or not considering their current predicament, Milan suffered defeat to surprise package Malaga  

Far from being an exercise in tedium before the real entertainment begins in the spring, the Champions League group stages have, on the contrary, been unexpectedly competitive with many of the groups still finely poised at the half-way mark.

It's difficult to know what conclusion to draw from it all. On the one hand it feels like there's greater strength in depth than usual. On the other, there's a sense that the elite best of the best is no longer as good and that they can be got at. Barcelona needed a 94th minute winner to beat Celtic, United came back from two goals down for the first time since that night in Turin in 1999, while City, Real, Chelsea and Arsenal all lost. What's going on? Here's a closer look.

United Continue to Chase - Match Centre

On the surface, United appear to be in a much better place than they were this time last season. Maximum points from their opening trio of games in Group H means that they are on the verge of qualifying for the knockout stages. That may provide ample reassurance, but the concern remains that lessons from a year ago have yet to be learned. United have conceded six goals in the opening 20 minutes of matches between the Premier League and Champions League, falling behind in eight of their 12 games this season. "It has been the story of our season at home, starting badly and losing goals," Ferguson admitted afterwards. "We have had to rescue games and it is the front players doing that."

Javier Hernandez was the player to bail United out this time around with a performance equal to that of Braga striker Alan, who also got a brace. "We can't let it happen again if we're going to win things," he said. It has been well-documented that United lack a genuine holder to screen the backline, a player Ferguson claimed in pre-season to never have had "since I've been here." Whether that's true or not depends on interpretation, but the fact remains United have conceded more shots per game [an average of 11.7] than even Galatasaray, the team bottom of Group H.

Vucinic Rescues Juventus' Danish Bacon - Match Centre

After Juventus's humbling 1-1 draw away to Nordsjælland the spotlight fell on the club's unspectacular recent record in continental competition. The Old Lady has failed to win any of her last 10 matches in Europe. This season she's had to come from behind to draw in each of her three outings. There's understandable concern even if Juventus also drew their opening three Champions League back in `98-99, only winning one of six [against Rosenborg] and yet still qualified for the knockout stages. Some have called into question Juventus' 3-5-2 system and an apparent lack of flexibility when, in actual fact, their ability to shape-shift and adapt to the opposition has been one of their principal strengths under Antonio Conte.

Others have focused on their mentality. Standing in for Conte, his assistant Angelo Alessio accepted this criticism. "In the first half we didn't play with the right approach, while in the second half we had the right fighting spirit and we created plenty of chances." Indeed, they did. Juventus had 33 shots, 14 of which were off target while a further 10 were blocked. What this shows is that it wasn't the system that held them back, but an inability to finish. Juventus have acknowledged this for the last two years, seeking to bring in a so-called 'Top Player', someone capable of scoring 20 plus goals a season. That need is more evident than ever before. Interestingly Juventus have been averaging more shots in the Champions League than in Serie A [21.7 to 17.4] but fewer are finding the target [5.3 to 6.8] which means their accuracy is just 24.6% on the continent compared with 38.8% in domestic competition. Is it any wonder that reports linking them with Athletic Bilbao striker Fernando Llorente have re-emerged?

Learning Curve - Match Centre

Before Manchester City's trip to Ajax on Wednesday, manager Roberto Mancini elaborated on his belief that an absence of Champions League experience as a team, not as individuals, is what's behind his team's lack of progress in the competition. Following his reasoning, City have just one season's experience to draw on, but then so too do Borussia Dortmund, who, like their fellow member of Group D, only returned to play in the Champions League last year too.

Dortmund, like City, disappointingly went out in the group stages last season, but by contrast, they appear to have learned from that experience and are better for it, beating Ajax, drawing at City although they deserved to win, and then claiming victory against Real Madrid. That Jurgen Klopp has managed to take Dortmund forward with fewer resources while City appear to be taking a step back - losing to Ajax who, if we're on about experience are the youngest team in the competition with an average age of 24 years and 22 days - is an indictment of Mancini. Remarkably only Blackburn have a worse points per game average [0.67] than City [1.22] among English clubs to play in the Champions League.

El Crashico - Match Centre

While they'd never met before, Malaga and Milan had a lot in common ahead of Wednesday's encounter at the Rosaleda. Both had been forced to make painful cuts due to owners either withdrawing support or tightening the pursestrings. Malaga sold Santi Cazorla, they lost Jose Rondon, while Joris Mathijsen went to Feyenoord on a free and Ruud van Nistelrooy retired. Milan let Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva go, and bid farewell to Alessandro Nesta, Clarence Seedorf, Rino Gattuso and Pippo Inzaghi. One has coped better than the other.

Malaga have been the revelation of this season's Champions League. Their 1-0 victory at home to Milan continued their perfect start to the competition, making it three wins from three. Malaga are the only team yet to concede a goal. Goalkeeper Willy Caballero has a 100% shots-to-save ratio from eight efforts on target and the players in front of him lead the Champions League in tackles with 26 per game. Malaga have shown themselves to be very solid and often spectacular through Isco. No wonder coach Mauricio Pellegrini claims: "We're confident we can win in Milan too."

The Chelsea Paradox

Shakhtar coach Mircea Lucescu observed on Tuesday night that what "makes our victory even more important" is "this Chelsea side are stronger than the one that won the Champions League last season." Funny, isn't it? Chelsea were poor in the Premier League but good in Europe last season. Now, there's a case to be made that it's the opposite. Lucescu is right of course. This Chelsea team certainly does look a better team, at least in the Premier League, than the one that triumphed over Bayern in Munich last May, although that might only be true from an individual rather than a collective basis. Chelsea won the Champions League last season through teamwork and determination, united in an 'us against the world' mentality, they were also helped by good fortune. Yet this current Chelsea team is arguably only obtaining results in Europe through individuals.

The Blues were 2-0 up at home to Juventus because of a couple of strokes of genius from Oscar, not the power of the collective, otherwise they perhaps wouldn't have been pegged back to 2-2. The thrashing of Nordsjælland aside, Chelsea haven't been as convincing on the continent as on the domestic front this season, taking a hammering from a Falcao inspired Atletico in the European Super Cup and then seeing themselves out-played by Shakhtar. To be fair, they're a relatively new team with a new style and it remains to be seen how long it will take to translate their stunning performances in the Premier League to the Champions League.

Goalkeeping Heroics

"It was a hectic game and we didn't want that," Petr Cech said after Chelsea's 2-0 defeat to Shakhtar. While there was obvious disappointment at the loss, comfort will be taken when goalkeeping coach Christophe Lollichon shows him the DVD of his own performance. Cech made nine saves at the Donbass Arena, more than any `keeper on the night, with an outstanding stop from Olexandr Kucher. Celtic's Fraser Forster enhanced his reputation with eight saves at Barcelona, thwarting Lionel Messi on a couple of occasions. "Forster was quality - top class. He will go far in the game," insisted coach Neil Lennon. However, not for the first time in this season's Champions League, the star performer between the sticks and a member of WhoScored's Team of the Week was CFR Cluj's Mario Felgueiras.

After an epic display against Braga in September when he made more saves in a single match than anyone in the competition so far this season to help secure a 2-0 win back in his native Portugal, he was once again magnificent in Tuesday's trip to Turkey. With his side 1-0 up against Galatasaray but down to 10 men after Matias Aguirregaray's sending off, he saved a penalty from Felipe Melo and kept Cluj in the game. Burak Yilmaz equalised with a quarter of an hour to go, but the visitors held on to draw 1-1 and are second in the group. "Four points from three games is not bad," he said. "Obviously Manchester United will be first in our group but in the race for second place, we have a big game coming up with Galatasaray visiting us. If we can get the three points at home, I'm sure we'll have something to fight for until the end."

Mendes and Menez

Life after Eden Hazard has been far from easy for Lille. Back in 2010, at the beginning of their double-winning campaign, their trio of attacking players, Gervinho, Moussa Sow and Hazard had already scored 10 goals between them at this stage of the season. By contrast today, their successors, Dimitri Payet, Nolan Roux and Salomon Kalou have only got five. A lack of firepower and flair are among the reasons why Lille have lost all of their Champions League games up until now and currently lie 12th in Ligue 1.

However, against Bayern on Tuesday night, a glimmer of hope appeared in the form of Ryan Mendes, the 22-year-old Cape Verde international. In just 13 minutes of action he had just six fewer touches than the man he replaced [Nolan Roux], matched him for shots, successful dribbles and attempted more cross. He brought energy to his team but unfortunately his teammates were spent and no longer had the stamina to keep up with his accelerations.

From Mendes on Tuesday to Menez on Wednesday, Jeremy was the difference between Paris Saint-Germain and Dinamo Zagreb, setting up Zlatan Ibrahimovic before getting his name on the scoresheet and WhoScored's Team of the Week teamsheet after one of his best performances this season.

Stop Cazorla. Stop Arsenal?

Is it really as simple as that? People have said the same about Andrea Pirlo for years, but he still manages to find a way through. While Cazorla was quieter than usual for Arsenal against Schalke, he did still very nearly make the difference, threading a ball through for Gervinho only for him to dither in confrontation with Joel Matip - another member of WhoScored's Team of the Week - and then walk into Benedikt Höwedes. The chance went begging.

Arsenal could only muster a single shot on target in the entire game. If anyone was to blame for not making more of a fist of last night's encounter, it was the hapless Ivorian. Still, Cazorla didn't have the best of evenings. He completed just 58% of his passes. Only Gervinho did worse, as Arsenal suffered their first defeat at home to a foreign opponent in nine years. Cazorla was also out-jumped by Roman Neustädter, his nod down falling to Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, who opened the scoring in a deserved 2-0 win for Schalke. Standing at 5ft 5in, he could hardly be expected to win it, though, could he?

Goal of the Round: Andres Iniesta vs Celtic

Bend it like Mikkel Beckmann has a case, not least because it made history as Nordsjælland's first ever goal in the Champions League, while Ideye Brown's chest and volley away at Porto deserves recognition, as does Cristiano Ronaldo's lob at Dortmund and Roberto Soldado's second at BATE Borisov. However, Iniesta's goal for Barcelona, capping an exceptional performance [worthy of a 9.4 rating from WhoScored], represented everything that's great about his club side. The weight of Messi's pass, fired into Iniesta's feet, the hot potato between him and Xavi, seen in a one-two in the tightest of spaces was concluded with a precise finish.

Assist of the Round: Manuel Iturra vs AC Milan

There was yet another moment evocative of Beckham when Tom Cleverley whipped in a wonderful cross for Hernandez to head in his second goal of the game against Braga. Andriy Yarmolenko delightfully split Porto's centre-backs with a clipped pass through to Brown for Dynamo Kyiv's second. But arguably the pick of Matchday 3 was when Malaga's Joaquin played a one-two with Manuel Iturra, who chipped a pass up and over Francesco Acerbi for his teammate to score and redeem himself for an earlier penalty miss in a 1-0 win over Milan.

Man of the Round: Roberto Soldado vs BATE Borisov

Some strikers struggle to adapt to the Champions League. Others take to it like Soldado. His hat-trick against BATE Borisov perhaps should be weighted higher in significance considering Valencia's opponents had beaten Lille and Bayern this season, and were top of Group F, which is now perhaps the tightest of all with three teams on six points. Soldado had six shots on target, the most in a single Champions League game this season, alongside Ronaldo against Ajax.

He has scored 15 goals in 19 Champions League games, a remarkable and underrated strike-rate. Other honourable mentions go to Fernandinho for his goal and all-round performance for Shakhtar against Chelsea, which included a 92% pass accuracy. Meanwhile, Xavi touched the ball 198 times at home to Celtic, that's once every 27 seconds, and also completed 177 passes, a Champions League record.