Collymore’s Column: UCL mixed bag, Liverpool must keep Salah, has Pep still got the fire? And much more…

In his exclusive column for CaughtOffside, former Aston Villa attacker Stan Collymore discusses some of football’s biggest talking points, including why Ruben Amorim should put every Man United player up for sale, does Pep Guardiola still have the fire at Man City, why Liverpool must break the bank to keep Mo Salah and a mixed back of results for English teams in the Champions League. 

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Champions League a mixed bag for English teams

The Champions League for English teams this week was a mixed bag really.

Manchester City are just in the middle of a massive rut and need to get a clean sheet and back on track otherwise they’re going to be left behind in the Premier League and, potentially, not qualify for those top eight positions in the Champions League.

After all of the newspaper chatter about Mo Salah, it’s nice that other Liverpool players were weighing in to help keep them top of the group in the Champions League by a couple of points. Cody Gakpo showed his importance in another absolutely sensational five-star performance from Liverpool.

I think it was a more pragmatic approach from Aston Villa for their game against Juventus, defending well in a low block after recent defensive aberrations, just to give themselves a little bit more stability and not get done in behind.

They were a little bit nervy and edgy first off, but in the second half they came out and they were more adventurous.

To be honest, at the end of the game, they were on the wrong end of a terrible decision. The ball was dropped by Juve’s goalkeeper and, with the last kick of the game, Morgan Rogers scores. It should have stood because it was really soft from the officials. Arguably, that gets given in the Premier League but not in the Champions League.

Villa are on 10 points and averaging two points a game in Europe and I’d take that all day long.

I don’t think anybody expected Arsenal to go to Lisbon and score as freely as they did. It was a really good overall performance, which should kick-start some life back into their Premier League campaign and add some belief that they can go on and do effectively what the…