The Champions League Begins


The Champions League Begins

The-Champions-League-Begins-At-Olympiacos
The Champions League begins at Olympiacos

Tottenham travel to Greece to start the UEFA Champions League campaign this season against Olympiacos with Red Star Belgrade and Bayern Munich also in Group B.

The side from Piraeus, Athens are in good form at the moment having put 5 past newly-promoted Volos at the weekend, although the away side did have a man sent off after 62 minutes when 3-0 down.

Olympiacos season so far, played 9, won 8, drawn 1, lost none, goals scored 20, goals conceded 1.

This is not the easy fixture that some think, the Karaiskakis stadium is a hostile place to play and you never know how individual players are going to react. Noise, firecrackers, perhaps fireworks are all sure to be a part of it.

Five of the last six English teams have lost there:
2018 Burnley L
2015 Arsenal W 
2014 Manchester United L 
2012 Arsenal L 
2011 Arsenal L 
2009 Arsenal L

They reached this stage by putting out Krasnador 6-1 on aggregate, winning the home leg 4-0 and the away leg 2-1. 

From 47% possession away they had 17 shots as opposed to the hosts 11, of those 6 were on target with both their goals coming from striker Youssef El-Arabi.

In the home leg, they had 56% possession, 20 shots with 7 on target.

Karaiskakis-stadium
An intimidating atmosphere at the Karaiskakis stadium

We have some fresh players in the shape of Dele Alli, Lucas Moura, Ben Davies, Eric Dier and Tangay Ndombélé, assuming all are 100% fit again.

Dier was an unused substitute and hasn't played a competitive minute this season after suffering a hip injury. Dele has been recovering from yet another hamstring injury while Ben Davies has been getting camoes to bring him back to fitness.

Giovani Lo Celso is out, Davinson Sanchez is a minor doubt with an ankle injury.

Kyle Walker-Peters is recovering from a hamstring injury

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Spurs XI v Olympiacos, 8 November 1972: Jennings, Evans, Knowles, Naylor, Dillon, England, Perryman, Pearce, Pratt, Chivers, Gilzean
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Juan Foyth and Ryan Sessegnon are back training but the game will be too early for them so the back-four will remain pretty stable with perhaps only Ben Davies replacing Danny Rose.

As for the rest, we'll have to wait and see how many changes Mauricio wants to make. If Ndombélé returns then it is a choice between Winks, Sissoko, Skipp or Dier to accompany him.

If Dele and Lucas play, does Son play with Eriksen and Lamela rested?

Remember the game is an early kick-off tomorrow, hope I'm back from the hospital in time to see it, got to have the ticker looked at.

Olympiacos are ranked 29th out of the 32 clubs in this year's Champions League by squad value according to transfermarkt.

29th Olympiacos - £70.70 million (€79.7m - $87.8m)
30th Dinamo Zagreb - £65.67 million (€74m - $81.52m)
31st Red Star Belgrade - £50.58 million (€57m - $62.81m)
32nd Slavia Prague - £42.24 million (€47.6m - $52.45m)

7th Bayern Munich - £768.67 million (€866m - $954.3m)
6th Tottenham Hotspur - £868.69 million (€979m - $1,079.01 billion)
5th PSG - £873.81 million (€984m - $1,084.53 billion)
4th Liverpool - £950 million (€1.07 billion - $1.18 billion)
3rd Barcelona - £1.03 billion (€1.16 billion - $1.28 billion)
2nd Real Madrid - £1.05 billion (€1.18 billion - $1.3 billion)
1st Manchester City - £1.13 billion (€1.27 billion - $1.4 billion)


Those figures suggest that Manchester City have the easiest group by far and this season we need to make the group stages easier on ourselves, allowing us to rotate later on and give players like Skipp and Parrott a taste.