Bigger Cup returns! Only 144 games until the knockout stage

After enduring the slog of one season of Bigger Cup with its “Swiss Model” 36-strong league table, where each team plays eight matches against different sides, Football Daily still hasn’t decided if Uefa’s experimental new format is better, worse or much the same as the fairly jeopardy-free group stage it replaced. Instead of needing what seemed like an already excessive 96 matches to whittle the 32 competing teams down to 16, as its name suggests, Bigger Cup now requires a whopping 144 matches to eliminate just 12 of the 36 teams lining up on this season’s grid. A $uper €eague in all but name, Uefa is painfully aware its flagship club competition is now an even more unwieldy, bloated mess that places unreasonable and unnecessary demands on the bodies of exhausted footballers but doesn’t appear to care. When it means it gets to pit Manchester City against Real Madrid for the 11th time in six seasons and the cash keeps rolling in, then who is Uefa to concern itself with Mikel Arteta looking increasingly forlorn at the sight of a succession of Arsenal players pulling up lame with hammy-twang as they sprint from the Duty Free checkout to the boarding gate for their flights to Bilbao, Prague or Milan?

On the face of it there are some standout fixtures between bona fide European heavyweights dotted throughout the eight separate matchdays, and quite a few of them will almost certainly be thrilling games for the TV viewers who watch them. However the almost total lack of league-phase jeopardy surrounding your PSGs, your Bayerns, both Madrids, at least four of the six English teams and other Big Name contenders who will probably require no more than 11 points from their eight games, means that this side of the knockout stage will always be a little “meh”. Of the 36 teams who contested last season’s Bigger Cup, the only one to raise eyebrows by making it into the knockout stages were the plucky little Breton outfit Brest. Theirs was a truly heroic and heartwarming effort that earned them a 10-0 aggregate shellacking at the hands of the eventual champions and prompted no end of schoolboy snickering and lewd innuendos from CBS’s b@ntertastic Bigger Cup pundits.

Arsenal are the first of the English representatives who will stand to attention for the Bigger Cup anthem when they are hosted by Athletic Club in one of two early kick-offs later. And while the first ever competitive meeting between these two storied clubs ought to be a special occasion, the near-certainty that both sides will advance to the knockout stages suggest that whatever happens this evening means it really doesn’t matter who wins. After all, an almost imperious Liverpool dropped just three points in last season’s league phase only to lose in the next round, dumped out by a PSG side who went on to win the tournament in style despite losing three and drawing one of their opening five games. Still the rights have been paid for, the games must be played and we know that come February the knockout stages will be largely great. For now, there are just 144 matches to get through in order to separate the revenue-generating wheat from Bodø/Glimt, Qarabag, Pafos and other whipping-boy chaff.

Join Barry Glendenning at 5.45pm (all times BST) for minute-by-minute updates of Athletic Club 1-3 Arsenal, while Scott Murray will be on hand at 8pm for Tottenham 2-1 Villarreal, and Rob Smyth will be on clockwatch duty for the rest of the night’s action in the Bigger and Milk Cups.

With all the offers he has received, I think it is really, really brave [to stay]. Everyone says to him, ‘you should do this, or you should do that’ and I think he is true to himself. He believes in what we are doing here and knows the grass is not always greener on the other side. [Ole Gunnar] Solskjær went to Besiktas and he’s not there anymore. He has done a hell of a job and the loyalty he has to the club, to the people and the project is extraordinary … the easy part would be to go for the money and hop on to somewhere else” – Bodø/Glimt suit Havard Sakariassen tempts fate by praising manager Kjetil Knutsen’s “extraordinary” devotion to the Norwegian minnows, who he has led to Bigger Cup despite heralding from a fishing town in the Arctic circle that Football Daily could fit into its back pocket.

Chris Wilder has the ideal opportunity to out-Ange the new Forest boss at Sheffield United (yesterday’s Football Daily) and declare the arrival of trophies on his third tenure” – Callum Taylor.

Lovely quote of the day yesterday concerning the Thuram brothers and their dad. A far cry from the last time I played a match against my brother: he executed a double-footed, over-the-ball tackle into my knee that left me unable to walk for a month, and with a scar that’s still visible 40 years later. To add literal insult to injury, the referee (who happened to be our dad) didn’t even book him, let alone send him off, claiming not to have seen the incident, despite it happening three feet in front of him. Happy days” – Paul Taverner.

Re: yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs (full email edition). The story of Manchester City rather churlishly firing a barman for wearing a United top (and fair play to him, I’m not that brave) reminds me of a rather amusing tale from my youth. Arriving unfashionably late to an FA Cup replay circa 2008 between Liverpool and Luton, which involved sprinting across Stanley Park, we were met by a steward at the away end who greeted us with a cheerful: ‘I hope you lads win tonight, I [expletive deleted]-ing hate Liverpool.’ [Narrator: Luton did not win.] Still brings a smile to my sadly less youthful face all these years on” – Patrick Brennan.

If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our letter o’ the day is … Patrick Brennan, who wins some Football Weekly merch. Terms and conditions for our competitions are here. 

Here’s David Squires on … Nottingham Forest’s mythical quest for a new champion. Features lanyards, tattoos and lots of ancient Greece.

When it comes to trying to enhance performance, football loves a gimmick. Over the years we’ve seen nasal strips, kinesiology tape, vaporub and … erm … light bulbs waved around to try to squeeze a little extra out of players. And here comes another one. Over in Cyprus, players are apparently lining up for a shot of fiery olive oil that is bursting with anti-inflammatory goodness. Yes, you might think it’s only useful when drizzled on your pasta, but a quick hit of oil from unripened Cypriot olives can help players run harder for longer, so says Nick Schizas, who used to be a Fifa-licensed Mr 15% [come now, try not to be too cynical – Football Daily Ed] but now produces olive oil pods – a completely ordinary career change. He claims footballers who have the pods “were coming back with much more energy. They were recovering quicker between their games, between their training and without me pushing them they were coming back asking for more”. OK. He has teamed up with soil engineer (yep, that’s a thing) Nicolas Netien to market the pods and some Premier League players are already apparently giving them a whirl. “There’s a tradition in the Mediterranean, especially in Greece and Cyprus, of doing some olive oil really early in the season,” cooed Netien, making his product sound impossibly edgy. “It’s not new. It’s thousands of years old.” Before you put your order in, researchers at two universities are launching a study on Cypriot players who take the stuff to see if it really does give them a Mario-style power-up.

Thomas Partey could play for Villarreal at Tottenham on the eve of his hearing at Southwark crown court to answer rape charges.

Public servants who deliberately cover up state-related disasters will face up to two years in jail under a new, and long-fought for, Hillsborough law, the deputy prime minister David Lammy has promised.

Newcastle have cancelled more than 100 season tickets and apologised to fans for an oversight after seats sold to tour organisers in 2015-16 were “not detected until recently”. As a result, 45 tickets for the in-demand Barcelona match were bought by the High School of Dundee in the same month that 110,000 supporters had been in an online queue for the game.

Defender Rachel Dugdale has retired as a player at the age of just 28. “Representing Northern Ireland since I was 15 has been the greatest honour of my career,” she said. “While it’s scary to step away from the game I love, I am excited for the new chapter ahead.”

Serie C’s Crotone have been placed under judicial administration for a year because police found “sufficient evidence” of pervasive mafia infiltration. Yikes!

Atlético Madrid will be without forward Julián Alvarez for Wednesday’s Bigger Cup clash at Liverpool after he was ruled out with discomfort-knack.

Juan Mata has only gone and flamin’ signed for Melbourne Victory after spending a season at A-League rivals Western Sydney Wanderers.

And in a development that will make data nerds rub their legs in the Vic and Bob-style, Amazon Prime Video will give Bigger Cup viewers a version of coverage in which live data will be overlaid on to the broadcast, enabling fans to see a player’s name, their running speed, how far they just hoiked a pass into touch and even the passing options as part of the extra information.

In the latest edition of our sister email, Firdose Moonda shines a light on Gaborone United, the team breaking all records to put Botswana on the world map.

Unai Simón gets his chat on with Sid Lowe about all things Athletic Club, chess with Martín Zubimendi and their big Arsenal game.

Jonathan Wilson casts an eye back over the Manchester derby and a resurgent Phil Foden.

And one for your bookmarks: our Premier League top scorers page is live, live, live!

Fifty years ago, Leeds United descended on Paris for the European Cup final against Bayern Munich, with their fans going to the trouble of translating the nickname of Norman Hunter for both their opponents and hosts. But with Franz Beckenbauer as captain and Gerd Müller up top, Bayern won 2-0 … although many still feel Leeds were cheated amid fiery debates over disallowed goals and non-awarded penalties. The reaction from sections of the Leeds support resulted in the club being banned from European competition for two years. “You have to be honest: we were very lucky,” reflected Bayern’s Uli Hoeness earlier this year. “The English tried to score for 90 minutes; we defended with everything we had. Sepp Maier made an outstanding save, Franz Beckenbauer lost quite a few hairs because he went up for every header with everything he had.” The defeat marked the end of a golden age in Leeds’s history, with Hunter moving to Bristol City the following year, commanding an impressive £40,000 fee despite being 33.