Hail GFOP!

Rog writes: What a weekend. One in which the Premier League returned to the mean. Arsenal romping with ease, Liverpool reverting to resemble the kind of performance that made them Champions, Manchester City and Enzo Maresca completing that famed trio of Death, Taxes, and Chelsea winning at Tottenham.  

The biggest match of the weekend for me was watching my daughter Zion play her last ever football game in high school. At the final whistle, she sank to her knees and sobbed and I felt her pain. Playing high school sports – which fuses the social and the sporting – is like no other. It has been some journey for my kid. I draw solace from the knowledge she and her teammates will carry memories of that journey with them forever. When they are bored in office cubicles in years to come, that feeling they experienced, shinning in a goal in the final minute against an arch rival, will make them laugh and give them energy to carry on. To all you high school players – savor every second, and treasure the experiences you have together. 🙌

More: My wife Vanessa wrote more about this subject, in a smarter way than I am capable, here.

ii. IN THE PREMIER LEAGUE: Liverpool’s glorious 2-0 victory over City-slayers, Aston Villa, was perhaps the headline grabber. After that four-game-league loss freefall, all Arne Slot had to do was drop almost all of his new signings, bar Hugo Ekitike, to hear his name ring out across Anfield once again. With Andy Robertson and Connor Bradley in at fullback, the midfield played with vigor, and the backline with confidence. Mo Salah scored his 250th goal, but he barely celebrated at all. No imaginary arrows unsheathed, no arms outstretched, no perching on the barrier on the Anfield Road End. A man who knows the front three remains a work in progress with Real Madrid and then Manchester City to come. It remains to be seen if the crisis is over, or whether Slot still must work out how to reintegrate the new boys and start the rebuild all over again. ❤️

iii. Arsenal’s 2-0 win at Burnley was surging and resplendent, a clean-sheet producing work of art. There are so many aspects to Arsenal’s campaign I admire. The way, once again, they did not so much as allow a shot on goal, for the third time in four matches. The eight goals they have mapped out from corners in 10 games!  How hard must they have trained together for that to be come true. They even scored a flowing goal from open play this week – a stunning moment of barnstorming team play. Mikel Arteta’s team are six points clear. What impressed me was the lack of celebration at the final whistle. Burnley used to be a physical testing ground. A banana skin of a trap game. Here is was barely a speed bump on a bigger, epic journey to glory. The resilience that takes, after three seasons of being derided as bottlers, is humanly wonderful. 💪

iv. Manchester City stormed into second place after clipping plucky Bournemouth 3-1. Erling Haaland was on hungry form, netting twice and trying to throw us off the scent of him being a robot by doing the robot celly. Yes, we had the sweet, sweet sensation of Tyler Adams scoring his first ever goal in English Football, but Haaland’s numbers are insane. Pep Guardiola has coached some of the greatest collective squads in footballing history. This is his new creation: football’s most potent one man team. That rumble against Liverpool next week is going to be electric. 🩵

v. Incredible to see Vitor Pereira fired by Wolves after less than a year. It was some character arc. The Portuguese manager arrived last December with Wolves in 19th place after nine points from 16 games. He resurrected that team, harvesting 33 points from their last 22 games and they were safe by April. After selling Cunha to United and Rayan Aït-Nouri to Manchester City, this season, Pereira was suddenly winless in Wolves first 10 games. A narrative that makes you wonder whether we ever know how good a manager actually is. 🐺

vi. Performance of the weekend came under the Friday Night Lights: Wrexham clipping highflying league leaders Coventry 3-2, handing Frank Lampard’s boys their first loss of the season. The hero was 33-year-old Welsh International Kieffer Moore with a perfect hat-trick: Right foot, header, left foot. Statement win for the Town who have now taken four points off the first and second placed teams back-to-back. This Championship season is full of wide open possibility. I am just happy I did not curse them when I went on the away bus to watch them thrive at Middlesbrough. 📈

vii. I recently sat down with Leeds United and USMNT midfielder, Brenden Aaronson, to discuss his big performance at West Ham, his mental fortitude and his place in the US squad. It’s a joyful watch, which after a tough away loss at the Amex, where Leeds are yet to win and have failed to score a goal against Brighton in eight consecutive matches, may just be the perfect palate cleanser. 🇺🇸

viii. Everton do not play until this afternoon so could not soil my afternoon. Sunderland could go – will go – second if/when they win. Blues, here is the morning I spent with the great Jordan Pickford. They say never meet your heroes. I say, who are they? Jordan was magnificent and I learned so much about life and football by listening to him. Watch it all here. 💙

ix. I finally watched the Martin Scorsese documentary on Apple and am gladder than ever that I named my dog after him. I found his third movie short from 1966, “It’s Not Just You, Murray” and loved it. It is as if Marty invented the sketch form that later became TikTok. 🎥

Courage,
ROG

MiB HQ Bulletin Board 📣

Liverpool’s Road to Recovery? ❤️‍🩹

By Tommy Stewart

Liverpool 2-0 Aston Villa

Aston Villa peppered Giorgi Mamardashvili’s goal early at Anfield via a resurgent Morgan Rogers, and Cafu regen, Matty Cash, but it was Hugo Ekitike who struck first until VAR rightly denied him for being a grand canyon offside. Having escaped that initial onslaught, Arne Slot’s side started to show they haven’t totally fallen off, with Mohamed Salah instinctively pouncing on the carelessness of Emi Martinez, who passed him a gift for the Egyptian King to slide it into an empty net for his 250th Liverpool goal. On his return to the side, Ryan Gravenberch added a second not long after and the Anfield atmosphere was a stark contrast from the broken home it had become midweek against Crystal Palace. “Margins are small. Maybe we are a little bit lucky,” said Slot after the match, and although the champions won’t get carried away given the chances they conceded yesterday, a win against one of the league’s in-form teams could be the fuel on which a winter surge is built.

Salah’s 250

Mohamed Salah’s not having a vintage season by his platinum gold standards, but his mechanical tap-in on Saturday against a World Cup winning goalkeeper to hit 250 goals in his ninth season for Liverpool, was a timely reminder of his enduring quality. “For him to score is not even that special, because that's what we also know he will always do,” said his manager Arne Slot after the match, which is a beautifully disguised compliment to Salah who’s simply expected to score goals every time he’s on a football pitch. Amidst hopeful speculation from opposition fans that his legs are on the wane and his appetite might be gone, he’s still his team’s top goalscorer this season; if Liverpool are to fully recover from their recent rotten form, much of that will depend on Salah himself. Where he places on the pantheon or Premier League greats is a discussion best saved for bar room debates or the MiB discord, but his status among Liverpool’s rich lineage of legends is undeniable. 

Aston Villa’s Issues

Before Saturday, Unai Emery’s Aston Villa had won their previous four Premier League matches, the last one being a 1-0 victory against Manchester City, but other than an early flurry, they were undone by many of the same issues that permeated their early season slump. Arne Slot has essentially handed the rest of the league an instruction manual on how to beat them lately, complaining in interviews about long balls and throws, which is why Villa’s insistence on playing out from the back and refusal to play over the press was so bizarre. Those exact mistakes led to Salah’s goal, when Emi Martinez, a goalkeeper who Manchester United allegedly ghosted because of his lack of ball-playing ability, passed the ball directly into the Egyptian’s path. 

📬 Enjoying The Raven? Check out our other MiB newsletters:

☀️ The Women’s Game: Everything you need to know about women’s football, sent straight to your inbox each week.

🔍 The Correspondent: Rory Smith’s thoughts on the world of soccer, culture, food, and how they all connect – every Thursday.

🇺🇸 USMNT Only: Your weekly update on the most important topics in the U.S. men’s game, all leading up to next year’s World Cup.

Manchester City's Title Fight Energy ⚡️

Man City 3-1 Bournemouth

It’s ironic that Erling Haaland’s 40-yard charge on to a helpless Đorđe Petrović’s goal to score one of his Déjà vu finishes resulted in a robot celebration, because, raw milk consumption aside, his recent YouTube content has proven the Norwegian to be more human than most footballers. It only took tenacious Tyler Adams eight minutes to capitalize on a Gianluigi Donnarumma flap from a Bournemouth corner to level things with his first Premier League goal, but then the Premier League’s loveable main character was prompted back into action minutes later. A delicate Rayan Cherki chip into Haaland’s path left only one end result possible: the league’s top scorer netting his 17th for City in all competitions this season, prompting Pep Guardiola to claim his striker is reaching “Messi levels” post-match. Local lad, Nico O’Reilly deserved his second half goal after having one cleared off the line earlier on, and with his side in second and still searching for their identity in Man City 3.0 under Pep, the Catalonian manager has boldly proclaimed his squad has the “energy" for a title fight.

Nottingham Forest 2-2 Man United

Casemiro proved again why Ruben Amorim has praised him in recent interviews when he opened the scoring for Manchester United at the City ground with a first half header from a corner. United were perhaps lucky to have won it in the first place, because whether the whole ball was out of play or not was “not inconclusive,” according to Sean Dyche, and probably most people watching. His side are the antithesis of Angeball, playing with the restrictive discipline of 11 men in skinny jeans, absorbing pressure and emerging with a one-two jab straight after the break. Morgan Gibbs-White artfully headed in before Nicolò Savona was alive to a sleeping United defense, latching on to an Igor Jesus knock down to scrap one home and remind Amorim’s men that talk of a title challenge are fanciful at best. However, when Amad Diallo filed his entry for goal of the season with a sweet volley from outside the box in the 81st minute, United Strand was dreaming of scissors. A comeback could have been completed were it not for a Murillo goal line clearance at the death from another Amad strike, but based on recent form, both teams showed progress with this result.

Burnley 0-2 Arsenal

Viktor Gyökeres headed in from an early Arsenal corner against Burnley, further cementing Set Piece FC’s cheat code methodology of winning matches. This was their eighth Premier League goal from a corner this season, which is more than any team in the league’s history has achieved after 10 games, but their unshackled attacking play at Turf Moor adds a new concern to their title chasing contemporaries. Gyökeres had possibly his best game for Arsenal so far, orchestrating counter attacks, teeing up Bukayo Saka a couple of times, who could only be denied by a mountainous Martin Dúbravka. Later in the first half, Declan Rice powerfully headed in from a pinpoint Leandro Trossard present, proving that their set piece skills are terrifyingly, transferable. Knocks to Gyökeres and Martín Zubimendi will concern Mikel Arteta, but another clean sheet means his side have only conceded three goals this season and he can rest his lego hair peacefully knowing his side lead second place Manchester City by six points.

Tottenham 0-1 Chelsea

In a weekend where Declan Rice scored for Arsenal, Moisés Caicedo made his own claim for the title of the Premier League’s most complete midfielder, with his dogged contribution for João Pedro’s match-winning goal in the first half on Saturday evening. Not once, but twice did the Ecuadorian press and win the ball back from Tottenham’s nervous defense and midfield, who were stupefied by his relentless running which resulted in a tap-in for his Brazilian teammate. The 11 mile trip north for Chelsea’s travelling support was rewarded by not only a win to see their side go level on points with Spurs, but the rare treat of seeing all 11 of their players finish the match on the pitch, despite Enzo Fernández getting lucky by avoiding red for a high footed challenge on João Palhinha. This was a third defeat in four home Premier League games for Thomas Frank’s side, and it could have been more significant were it not for goalkeeper Vicario’s repeated heroics. What will concern Spurs fans more will be the post-match vision of Djed Spence and Micky van de Ven snubbing their manager’s handshake attempt in a true new stepdad moment.

Elsewhere in the Premier League: Fulham 3-0 Wolves, West Ham 3-1 Newcastle, Brighton 3-0 Leeds, Crystal Palace 2-0 Brentford

Help Us Crown America’s Best Soccer Bar 25/26 🍻

Today we are kicking off one of the most fun parts of our year: finding the best soccer bars in America. Last year you helped us crown THE BREWHOUSE CAFE in Atlanta, Ga., as America’s Best Soccer Bar, presented by Michelob ULTRA. 💙

Now, it’s time for round two. The 2025–26 search for America’s Best Soccer Bar is officially ON. We’re scouring our great nation and we want you, GFOPs, to help. Your submissions will help us find the best of the best, where fans share in winning and losing, all while making great memories through football. 🫵

The contest begins with NOMINATING YOUR FAVORITE SOCCER BAR HERE. Share with your friends, your bar-mates and your supporters' groups. Let’s do this, America. 🏆

Some Absolute Weekend Worldies, Presented by New Balance 🚀 🥅

There were a lot of great goals this weekend, but these three get top marks:

On the Continent 🇪🇺

🇪🇸 La Liga: Like the volatile creative tension between Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham, when Kylian Mbappé and Jude Bellingham work in harmony, the results can be frightening. That was proven again in Real Madrid’s 4-0 win against Valencia on Saturday, where the French captain scored a brace and Bellingham bagged one, while Alvaro Carreras had Manchester United fans worrying that another one got away with a rocket that was essentially Roberto Carlos cosplay. Barcelona’s tears will still be damp after their El Clásico loss last week, but they stayed in touch with Los Blancos with a 3-1 win against Elche where both Lamine Yamal and Marcus Rashford scored.

🇮🇹 Serie A: AC Milan put in a Max Allegri masterclass against Gian Gasperini’s Roman title contenders, with a narrow 1-0 win that keeps this nostalgic looking Serie A race in the balance. Their San Siro roommates, Inter Milan, left it until injury time against Verona to stay in the Scudetto hunt with a dramatic 2-1 win, while Napoli will be disappointed to have done what most teams seem to do against Cesc Fabregas’ Como right now by drawing. Serie A’s top four is tighter than Ned Flanders’ skiing outfit with basically nothing at all dividing Napoli at the top from the chasing pack of both Milan sides and Roma, who all trail Antonio Conte’s team by a point.

🇩🇪 Bundesliga: Vincent Kompany’s rolling fortress continued their violent drive to the Meisterschale with a 3-0 win against Bayer Leverkusen, where Chelsea loanee, Nicholas Jackson headed home his first Bundesliga goal for the club. Borussia Dortmund defeated Augsburg 1-0 away from home while RB Leipzig remain in the chase, five points behind the champions in second place after a 3-1 win against Stuttgart. 

Football Manager 26 Arrives Nov. 4 🚨

If you’re like Rog, you’ll be bringing Everton to glory as the Premier League debuts in Football Manager—with fully licensed club badges, kits and official player photos. You’ll be in total control, as the game’s reimagined UI surfaces essential information exactly when you need it, empowering you to manage more instinctively and efficiently.

Pre-purchase on Steam or Epic now for 10% off and Advanced Access

Mid-Week Matches Worth Faking a Meeting for 📺

Slavia Praha vs. Arsenal (Tuesday, 3 p.m. ET, Paramount+) 🇨🇿 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Whisper it, but Arsenal kinda look invincible of late, so it would be a surprise if a trip to the Czech Republic’s top team were to perforate their indomitable progress this season. Mikel Arteta should flex his squad’s muscles with the likes of Mikel Moreno, Myles Lewis-Skelly and Ben White hoping to be rotated back in to continue Arsenal’s perfect start to their Champions League campaign against a side who are so far winless in this competition.

Liverpool vs. Real Madrid (Tuesday, 3 p.m. ET, Paramount+) 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 🇪🇸

Other than the historical narrative between two of the Champions League’s most dominant ever sides, there’s a Trent Alexander-Arnold shaped elephant in the room that will dominate discussion here. The former Liverpool right back has been missed since he left for Madrid, whose manager Xabi Alonso will also have mixed feelings about returning to his former Anfield home. Emotional baggage aside, this is a heavyweight battle where Ballon d’Or playmates Mohamed Salah and Kylian Mbappé collide under the famous Anfield lights.

PSG vs. Bayern Munich (Tuesday, 3 p.m. ET, Paramount+) 🇫🇷 🇩🇪

This is like John Cena vs. The Rock in modern footballing parlance because it really doesn’t get bigger or better, as Luis Enrique’s treble-winning PSG host arguably the most powerful team in Europe right now, Vincent Kompany’s Bayern Munich, led by Harry Kane. They’re both 100% in the Champions League and have identical goal difference while Bayern have won every game they’ve played in across all competitions this season. Whoever wins this arm wrestle instantly places down a marker that says to the rest of Europe: “I’m the captain now”.

Some Non-Football to Start the Week Off 📖

• Target hopes that "Hot Santa" can save their holiday season. Any chance Hot Santa can also save Liverpool? 

• They’ve Come to Free the ‘iPad Babies’ Someone needs to!

• The Mystery of the Modern Mullet, From Jacob Elordi to Paul Mescal. Shocking oversight of Maeve from “Task.”

• How Depop captured the heart of Gen Z. Your one-stop shop for vintage Crocs AND ironic Mario Balotelli kits. 

• The Innovation That’s Killing Restaurant Culture. It's not DiGiorno, it's Delivery!

It’s MiB Trivia Time 🤔

This week’s question: Other than Trent Alexander-Arnold, name three other players to play for both Real Madrid and Liverpool?

Email us with your answer for a chance to win a much-coveted MiB patch!

Last week’s winner: No one correctly identified that Lionel Messi is the top goalscorer in El Clásico history, but we totally understand why a few of you guessed that it was Cristiano Ronaldo. We go again this week!

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