Everybody calmed down? Ok?
In the cold light of day, and beyond the raving, puking, and mewling of Klanfield: as I see it, we had a ten minute period when we were pure Keystone Kops. What was particularly shocking was that that came out of a clear blue sky. There hadn't been the slightest sign of it this season. So ok, not excusable, but that's the right perspective, it seems to me.
Other than that, we actually matched them pretty well for the entire rest of the match. Sure, they threatened us, and there were times when we looked stretched, but we also threatened them during large parts of the other eighty minutes.
So let's not get too excited. Jim will not fix it – Pep will. In him I trust.
Two disturbing things, though, one considerably more serious than the other.
a) To my eye, Raz did seem to let the crowd get to him. He just seemed to freeze. He's a lad, still, and he's had such a fantastic season that I for one thought that couldn't happen. Well, there'll come a time, soon I believe, when it won't. He'll go to that place and score two or three goals. In any case, at the end of the season, Raheem will be a Premier League medal holder, and they might – just might – have FA Cup medals (they will not win the CL, I'd stake my life on it). As for them, what a load of gobshites! I mean honestly – to be still booing a player two and a half years after he dared to leave you. It really is like a church over there. If they could, they would burn him at the stake, as in the middle ages.
b) John Stones. He's now fucked up fairly seriously in three successive matches, and the John Stones who's come back from his injury looks horribly like the JS of last season, not the impeccable centre half of this season. Even apart from the mistakes, he looks generally slow and uncertain. I sincerely hope that that isn't going to last, because we really have nothing to replace him with, and I don't honestly think we'll have a serious shot at the CL with Stones playing as he is.
