Opinion

Chelsea simply had to win Saturday night's Premier League clash with Manchester United. But they didn't. They lost. Again. And without scoring a goal. Again. It's now four blanks in a row in four defeats in a row for the Blues - their worst goal-less run of results since November 1912. As a result, Liam Rosenior's struggling side remain sixth in the Premier League standings, four points behind fifth-placed Liverpool, who have a game in hand.

The Premier League has never been more popular and yet this season there has been a noticeable rise in people, from everyday fans to respected pundits to even elite coaches, insisting they are losing interest. When Arne Slot said the English top flight was "not a joy to watch" many agreed with the Liverpool manager and the data backed up his argument.

Chelsea's season is on a knife edge - not that you'd know it given the meek nature of their recent performances. Out of Europe and without a league win in more than six weeks, their campaign is drifting into mediocrity at the worst possible moment, and defeat to a revitalised Manchester United on Saturday night could send the Blues into complete freefall.

Real Madrid’s defeat to Bayern Munich has laid bare the club’s less appealing side. The Merengues have reacted like spoilt children, venting frustration at every turn. Their insistence that they were “robbed” in Munich only confirms their status as football’s most unsympathetic outfit, even though it was the record champions who had genuine cause for complaint for long periods of the contest.

What a game! What a tie, in fact! Bayern Munich's Champions League quarter-final clash with Real Madrid had a bit of everything: great goals, goalkeeping gaffes and incredibly controversial calls. The net result was the kind of engrossing encounter that makes a mockery of Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis' claim that we need to change the game to make it more appealing to young people.

Is this really the best you can do, Florentino Perez? When Real Madrid sacked Xabi Alonso after less than five months on the job, there figured to be, at least, some sort of succession plan. If Alonso, who was so hyped, so early, was to walk away, then it only made sense that Los Blancos, power that they are, would have someone tailor-made to walk into the role.

Paris Saint-Germain knocked Liverpool out of the Champions League for the second consecutive season at Anfield on Tuesday evening. Unsurprisingly, Ousmane Dembele proved decisive once again. Just over a year after scoring the only goal of the second leg of the two teams' last-16 tie, which eventually led to PSG progressing on penalties, the winger returned to Merseyside to score twice in a 2-0 win that earned the defending champions a comprehensive 4-0 win on aggregate.

It's that time of year for Arsenal again. When the calendar rolls into April, the world sees what their team is really made of. Unfortunately for the Gunners, a familiar pattern is appearing before our eyes. Saturday's defeat at home to Bournemouth was eerily reminiscent of other losses at this stage of previous seasons.

From an individual perspective, Kylian Mbappe's free transfer to Real Madrid in 2024 has been a roaring success. The insatiable French forward has hit a staggering 83 goals across his first 97 appearances for Los Blancos, including 39 across all competitions in the current campaign - a total bettered only by Bayern Munich's Harry Kane among all the players in Europe's top five leagues.

Liverpool are still alive in this season's Champions League. Nobody quite knows how, of course. Arne Slot's side were played off the pitch by Paris Saint-Germain last week but managed to escape from the Parc des Princes with a 2-0 defeat that Jamie Carragher acknowledged actually felt like a "great result" for the visitors, given the chasm in cohesion and confidence between the two teams.

Barcelona's frustration during and after Wednesday night's Champions League loss to Atletico Madrid was perfectly understandable. The Blaugrana had been the better side in the first leg of the quarter-final tie at Camp Nou - and that was in spite of the fact that they had played more than half the game with 10 men following Pau Cubarsi's straight red card just before the break.

Why does Barcelona dominate domestically yet fade when the Champions League anthem plays?

Arne Slot admitted on the eve of Liverpool's Champions League quarter-final first leg against Paris Saint-Germain that his side had suffered so many setbacks this season that he there wouldn't have been time to reference them all in the one press conference. In that sense, Wednesday's 2-0 loss at Parc des Princes could be passed off as just another disappointing defeat to add to an already lengthy list.

When Barcelona travelled to take on Atletico Madrid on Saturday, they did so in the knowledge that securing victory would be a giant step towards defending their title in La Liga. Real Madrid had lost at Mallorca earlier in the day, meaning a seven-point gap could potentially be opened up on Los Blancos at the summit.

There were just a few minutes to go in the first half of Brazil's friendly with France last week when Raphinha began to experience what Carlo Ancelotti called "mild discomfort" in his right thigh. However, the mere fact that he failed to re-emerge for the second period at Gillette Stadium immediately put Barcelona's medical team on red alert and they promptly reached out to the winger, desperately hoping to receive reassurance that he hadn't aggravated an issue that had already sidelined him twice this season.

Gianluigi Donnarumma was one of just a number of Italy players reduced to tears by Tuesday's World Cup playoff loss to Bosnia and Herzegovina - but the penalty shootout defeat in Zenica hit the goalkeeper harder than most. This wasn't the first time he'd been involved in a failed attempt to qualify - it was the third. Despite his devastation, though, Donnarumma remained defiant.

There was always a chance that Liverpool would announce a high-profile departure during the international break and, just three days after their latest Premier League setback at Brighton, the Reds confirmed that Mohamed Salah would be leaving at the end of the current campaign. The timing of the announcement surprised some, but Salah had successfully pushed for the news to be made public more than two months before the end of the season in what felt like an obvious attempt to control the narrative surrounding his painful and unexpectedly early exit.