Had a night to think about last night, thought we played excellent considering the barriers that were put in our way. Yes, Barcelona should of had a penalty and maybe Neymar's goal should of stood but it doesn't change the refs over both legs were extremely poor. Had we been able to play our game we might of stood a chance. When you play Barcelona you have to rely on getting the ball back quickly and catching them forward. Because of the referee's that gameplan was essentially completely impossible and getting the ball off Barcelona was even more difficult. We tried also to be physical last night and there were several so called 'fouls' that would never of been in the Premier League, there was also a foul just before Messi's goal outside their area which would of pushed us up the pitch, again not given. I'm not going to go into Dzeko's obvious penalty because they should of had one as well but it was obvious the ref didn't want to give that decision. In the Champions League you need a bit of luck, a bit of respite and apart from poor decisions that should of gone in Barcelona's favour, we were given nothing ourselves by the officials over either leg. Let's face it, in the first leg there was an obvious foul on Navas just before their goal which could of left the score at 0-0. Last nights game would of been so different had the first leg not gone so badly in terms of those decisions.
As a team I thought we played extremely well and you cannot fault our effort, I really thought we were going to get a goal when Dzeko came on, the game just seemed different but again a totally ridiculous sending off completely ruined any chance of us getting something. I thought Barcelona knew exactly what they were doing, they let us try and get into the match by taking advantage of their lack of physicality and that is what resulted in a third of the team getting booked before the first half had ended. I was pissed off and gutted at how we lost the game because we didn't deserve it, we didn't come here to defend and respect them, we got stuck in and put in a massive amount of effort but at 2-0 down and a ref who was actively preventing our gameplan, it was never going to happen.
That aside, the players can be proud of the effort they put in, no-one had a bad game and everyone put in a ridiculous amount of effort to try and swing the game our way. It's a shame how we went out but against a team like that I think we showed an extremely good account of ourselves and next year with a proper defence, we'll be ready to batter anyone. For me, Madrid will win the CL this year, Barcelona were alright but nothing at all special, Against a team with a good defence and some more quality going forward and they can be beaten quite easily, why they bought Neymar I'll never know because he was dogshite.
