Juventus will open up their Champions League campaign when they host Dutch champions PSV at the Allianz Stadium.

Juventus are back in the Champions League after a one year absence with a new manager and new identity. Thiago Motta takes over after an impressive season at Bologna to try and turn Juventus back into one of the elites in Europe. They struggled on the weekend against Empoli, drawing 0-0, and they will have to be much better offensively to get all three points.

This is the second consecutive season in the Champions League for PSV after making it to the round of 16 last year. They comfortably won the Eredivisie in Peter Bosz's first season in charge, but they showed in the Champions League that things are a lot more difficult that they are in the Netherlands.

Thiago Motta has taken over at Juventus, but there is one key aspect that has remained the same. They are one of the better low block defending teams in the world. So far through four Serie A matches they have not conceded a goal and have allowed a total of 1.4 expected goals.

That is not surprising given the defensive set up Motta had with Bologna. Like Allegri, Motta doesn’t really believe in pressing opponents high and instead looks to set his team up in a good defensive shape with the aim of limiting opponents to the lowest quality shots possible. His Bologna team only allowed an xG per shot of 0.08, which was third-lowest in Serie A. So the same defensive concepts and even structure hasn’t really changed from Allegri’s team that only allowed 0.73 npxG per 90 minutes.

In possession, Motta’s build up structure is quite interesting, as he is a big believer in relationism, which is essentially positionless football, trying to get as many players close to the ball to ensure you always are, overloading the opposition through each phase of build up.

There are a couple of issues with it, though. First, the pace of it is really slow. Because you are relying on a lot of short passes, there aren’t many quick direct balls being played forward to open up the defense. In addition to that, oftentimes you have too many guys in one area of the pitch, so the ball goes backwards and they have to start over. Second, it’s very hard to find space and overload defenses once you reach the final third. Juventus are already struggling to steadily create chances, as they’re averaging under one expected goal per 90 minutes, which is the same problem Bologna had.

PSV are the Dutch champions and it really all comes down to Peter Bosz’s tactics. He wants his teams to play as fast as possible with their transitions, using vertical passes to try and put pressure on the opposing back line. He encourages his fullbacks to push up and overlap, which allows PSV to overload the last line of defense.

When PSV are out of possession, they are one of the most aggressive pressing teams in Europe. He adopts the same principles of gegenpressing as Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, trying to win the ball back as fast as possible when they lose it. To think they are going to go to Turin and play that type of style is another story. We’ve seen this before when they played Arsenal out of the gates in the Champions League last year and failed to do anything offensively, creating 0.5 expected goals.

What we have seen from Bosz in the Champions League specifically is he mainly wants his teams to try to create 3 v 2 or 2 v 1 overloads out wide to try and attack the space and send in crosses. Good luck doing that against Juventus, who have a 65% defensive aerial duel win rate so far this season.

PSV are going to want to push the tempo in this match, but I don't think Juventus are going to let them do that. Even if PSV decide to consistently press high, the Juventus build up is slow and they have shown so far that they are just as inefficient in the final third as Thiago Motta's Bologna were last season.

Motta is also not a big believer in pressing teams high. He would much rather have his team in a really solid mid to low defensive block, which has been really successful to begin this season considering they have not conceded a goal yet.

While PSV put up incredible offensive numbers in the Eredivisie, they have shown in the Champions League that they are not as good. They couldn't really find a way through a poor Dortmund defense in the round of 16 last year and I think they will have similar struggles on Tuesday.

Although Juventus’ style of play has changed, they are still playing extremely low-event matches, so I don’t think the under should be at plus money.

Liverpool are back in the Champions League after a one year absence, opening up their campaign against AC Milan on Tuesday.

AC Milan have had a rough start to their season winning just one of their first four matches. Paulo Fonscea is now in charge after spending two successful seasons at Lille. AC Milan are coming off a second place finish in Serie A and making the quarterfinals of the Europa League, but given the investment made into the squad, they will be hoping for a much deeper run in Europe this season.

Liverpool suffered their first blemish of the Arne Slot era, losing to Nottingham Forest 1-0 at home this weekend. Liverpool had been brilliant before the international break, but struggled to generate chances against a really good defensive side, which may have fans worried a little bit as they begin their Champions League campaign. Liverpool got a really tough draw in the Champions League so it's important that they start things off with a good result.

AC Milan's beginning to the Paulo Fonseca era hasn't really gone very well. The reason for that is they have a little bit of a different defensive structure than they did under Stefano Pioli. Last year they were very much a man to man marking team all over the pitch, while Fonseca wants them to have a little bit more of a zonal structure.

Under Fonseca so far, it's been a bit more of a passive approach sitting in a 5-3-2 or 5-4-1 structure and relying on triggers to know when to press their opponent. The defensive numbers have not been good, and a lot of that has to do with the change in defensive identity. They are allowing 1.26 npxG per 90 minutes through four matches, which isn't all that impressive given the opponents they've faced. With that being said, a passive defensive approach is the way to play against Arne Slot's Liverpool, as Nottingham Forest showed over the weekend.

Fonseca at Lille wanted his team to play out of the back, but they were very versatile when they were in possession. Lille did have the second-most 10+ pass sequences in Ligue 1 behind only PSG and that has not changed so far, as AC Milan have attempted the fourth-most passes in Serie A. Fonseca typically has his team build up in a 3-2-5 structure with the aim at overloading the middle of the pitch. Noah Okafor is the key to all of this working because Jonathan David at Lille was so good at knowing when to drop deep and when to make runs off the back line. Okafor is young and so far hasn't taken to role effectively yet, as he's only created 0.7 expected goals in four starts.

AC Milan will have to take more direct approach in this match, which Fonseca's Lille were pretty effective at in Ligue 1 and in the Europa Conference League last season, but doing that against Liverpool's defense is another story.

Liverpool look a lot different under Arne Slot, but Saturday against Nottingham Forest showed some of the flaws of his in possession system.

Nottingham Forest sat very passively in a low defensive block for the entire match and cut off Liverpool from play through the middle of the pitch. That meant that the Reds needed to create overloads and chances from wide areas, which they were not able to do. In the end, Liverpool were only able to create 0.9 expected goals off of 14 shots and only two of their shots had an xG rating higher than 0.10.

Arne Slot is valuing control much more than Jurgen Klopp did. He is typically having his team build up in a 3-2-5 structure with Trent Alexander-Arnold inverting into the midfield to be the main conductor of the entire build up. It's been working against teams like Ipswich Town and Manchester United, who tried to press them, but for teams that sit back they have found some difficulties in creating chances.

That is because Slot hasn't completely taken Liverpool's identity away. He still wants them to play direct and look to hit teams quickly, which is why they were one of the best offensive teams in the world under Klopp. The question is when teams don't allow them to play direct, can they continually create high quality chances?

The biggest change for Liverpool has come defensively. They aren’t counter-pressing with reckless abandon and are always making sure they don’t get overloaded in transition and have at least five guys back to stop the opposing counterattack. So far they have only conceded one goal and 2.8 expected goals through four matches, so AC Milan are likely going to struggle to create chances.

The totals in Liverpool matches still haven't adjusted to the new way they have been playing. All four of their Premier League matches have gone under the closing number and the market continues to set totals as if it's Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool.

AC Milan are without a doubt going to take the blueprint that Nottingham Forest laid out, sit deep and try to close off the middle of the pitch. If they are able to do that, I think Liverpool are going to find it just as difficult to create chances as they did over the weekend.

Liverpool should be able to keep out this AC Milan team that really doesn't have an attack that can hurt them when they play direct. In addition to that, nobody in Serie A presses any more, so when Liverpool do decide to press Milan's build up, I don't think Fonseca's side is going to have a lot of success.

For the first time since the 1982-83 season, Aston Villa will be playing a match in the Champions League. Traveling to Switzerland, the Villains will look to perform and maintain their status as a team to be reckoned with. Believe it or not, Aston Villa won the Champions League, or should I say the European Cup, back in the 1981-82 season.

Young Boys, a team we’ve probably all heard of by now, is looking to make their first ever appearance in the knockout stage of the Champions League after failing to do so in the 2018-19 and 2021-22 season.

BSC Young Boys currently sit in last place in the Swiss Super League table with no tally in the win column. They have three draws and three losses on the season. Somehow they managed to beat Galatasaray on an aggregate score of 4-2 for a spot in the Champions League. It's seemingly a tale of two teams when you compare Young Boys’ success in their domestic league against their success in European competition.

Young Boys have scored seven goals in the Super League, with two of their goals being awarded from their opponents in the form of an own goal. On top of this, Young Boys currently hold a -7 goal differential in the Super League, while averaging around 59% possession of the ball in their matches.

Aston Villa have had a strong start to the Premier League season, winning three games out of four and losing to Arsenal at the Emirates. One player who has had a less than ideal start to their season is Ollie Watkins. Watkins has only managed to score once, totaling 10 shots in those matches. Villa have had to rely elsewhere for the goal-scoring chances, and one player who has certainly been making the most of his chances is Colombian striker Jhon Duran.

Duran is currently tied for second in the Premier League for most goals with three, scoring in three separate matches as a late-game substitute. Midfield production has also been a key factor in Villa’s early success this season, with new-signing Amadou Onana picking up where he left off in his previous season at Everton, finally shining for all to see with a new team with higher quality players. The balance in style with his new partner, Youri Tielemans, seems to be working better than expected for Unai Emery. Onana is the team's second highest goal-scorer behind Duran with two goals on the season.


One player on Young Boys that interests me is Congolese striker Silvere Ganvoula. Ganvoula is responsible for three of the five goals that their team actually scored in addition to one assist. In the Champions League, Ganvoula averages 3.5 shots per match, which could prove to be an issue for Aston Villa’s somewhat leaky defense. Aston Villa currently hold a +1 goal differential in the Premier League, conceding goals to below-average offenses in West Ham, Leicester City and Everton.

That being said, Aston Villa’s xG in matches against similar opponents in the past calendar year (Luton Town and Sheffield) has been as low as 1.99 goals (Luton Town) and as high as 2.49 goals (Sheffield). With these statistics in mind, I think backing the both teams to score market

Real Madrid open up their title defense at the Santiago Bernabéu when they host Stuttgart.

Things have not gone as swimmingly as they should be going for Real Madrid this season in La Liga. They have drawn two of their first five matches, which is a big disappointment. This is supposed to be the new Galaticos with Kylian Mbappe joining an already incredible squad, so they will want to get their Champions League campaign off on the right foot on Tuesday.

Stuttgart had a historic season in 2023-24, finishing in third place in the Bundesliga to get back to the Champions League for the first time in 14 years. They had to replace a lot of key players from last years team and the beginning of the Bundesliga season has not gone well for them. So, getting at type of result in this match would be a massive achievement.

Real Madrid are an incredibly dangerous team, not because they have some revolutionary tactics, but because they possess more individual quality that any team in the world. Carlo Ancelotti is the perfect manager for this type of team because he sets them up perfectly to take advantage of that individual quality.

They use a ton of different build up structures depending on the opponent they are facing. If they face a team that likes to press high like Stuttgart, they will look to play more direct with long balls up the forwards who are in 1 v 1 situations with the opposing defender with Bellingham and Valverde making late runs behind the defense to create an opportunity. If they face a team that is passive, they will often times use combination passing to open up the space and because of their individual quality they are more likely to overperfrom their underlying metrics.

Out of possession, Real Madrid are not a team that really likes to press high. Instead, Ancelotti favors a more compact defensive structure where Real Madrid try to deny opponents space through the middle of the pitch. What they have drastically improved at over the years is defending in transition. Now that they have a midfield of Tchouaméni, Bellingham and Valverde, they have three of the best ball winners in the world along with a rock solid center back pairing. So far this season in La Liga they have only conceded 3.8 expected goals in five matches and last year only allowed 0.91 npxG per 90 minutes.

So how did Sttugart have a meteoric rise up the Bundesliga table? Two words: Sebastian Hoeneß. Their manager has revolutionized the team and made them one of the more difficult teams to face in Germany. The reason for that is his variability in how he sets up his team.

Stuttgart use a ton of different build up formations depending on the opponent they are going to face. When they are building up from deep they are often using a 4-2-4 shape with the two forwards dropping deep to pull the opposing center backs with them to create an over the top ball to the wingers making inverted runs, which is very similar to Roberto De Zerbi's Brighton. In addition to that they are very aggressive with their passing in possession, always looking to open up the defense. Last season, nobody in the Bundesliga attempted more through balls than Stuttgart and they were third in the Bundesliga in progressive passes behind only Bayern Munich and Leverkusen.

Then the summer came and a lot of key players went out the door. The biggest loss was their start striker Serhou Guirassy, who scored 28 goals domestically last season. They did retain Deniz Undav, who tallied 18 goals, and bought Ermedin Demirović from Augsburg to help their attack from completely falling off.

The biggest losses came in defense as they lost both of their starting center backs, Waldemar Anton and Hiroki Ito. The loss of the two has been felt big time early on in the season, as they have already conceded six expected goals in their first three matches.

This is a bad situation for Stuttgart coming into this match. They are a team that is very aggressive with their high press and counter-pressing when they don't have the ball. They were successful with it last season because they had that elite center back pairing that cleaned up a lot balls over the top of their high defensive line. Now that they don't have them, they are going to continue to struggle and facing Real Madrid, who are comfortable playing direct with the individual quality they have, is a nightmare.

Although Real Madrid haven't really gotten off the mark in La Liga, they are largely facing teams who are going to just sit deep in a defensive block and try to limit them to low quality chances. That's not in the DNA of Stuttgart, so I think Real Madrid's offense should score multiple goals here.