sm

The succession plan is clear.

Joan Garcia has always been a great sweeper keeper, but his sweeping has genuinely reached new levels this season. He is single-handedly stopping attacks 40 yards away from his goal before they even form properly.

There were one or two awkward moments in the first half, but this was a largely controlled and comfortable win.

Pay attention to Lamine's movement for the entire sequence. He is developing a very Messi-esque quality of letting the play develop, allowing the space to create itself around him. He doesn't move more than 10-15 yards in any direction, and is walking for most of it.

Finally, Rodri actually playing a throughball to a winger running in behind.

Lamine Yamal. Wow.

I still don't understand why we sold Alvaro Cortes. He showed so much promise whenever got minutes. Always looked solid and assured but for whatever reason, Flick wasn't convinced. We could've really used him right now.

Big clubs need to start circling immediately. If Joane Gadou stays at Dortmund for another season, he'll cost 100m. Top CB prospect.

Joane Gadou is becoming my favourite CB prospects out there.

I get why Bayern only focused on pushing Harry Kane for the Ballon D'Or in order to avoid a similar situation to 2024 where Jude & Vini took votes away from each other, but they still did Olise dirty. He should've been top 5.

I just don't understand why we played so slow in possession last night. That was the most un-Flick like performance we've had in a very long time. We were so stale. I don't get it.

We've lost 6 out of the last 7 La Liga Clasico's in the first half of the season. We're simply cursed when it comes to the first Clasico of the season.

Our performance tonight is eerily similar to the performance from last season's October Clasico.

We were having a very empty performance for most of the first half, but those last 10 minutes were terrible.