Champions League Final | Post-Match Thread

[Plays By Sense Of Smell]

Ego. He has faced question marks over over-thinking and he wanted a personal triumph against his critics?

Very damaging for coach and club and players and fans. We all paid for this weakness. He does though have strengths so it would be stupid to hand him his P45.

One might ask Pep, look what went wrong? How can we help you not to do this stuff but it would be a very difficult conversation and would possibly lead to resignation. We just have to accept him as he is.

I think that in the inevitable 'has Pep failed if he doesn't win the CL?' inquest that tbh is a point regularly bandied around on shallow phone ins and mass media, you have to look at Khaldoon's goal.

Yes we want to win things. And we do. A lot. Yes we want to win the big one too. But these (did you win in the end?) are lag measures - they only tell you whether what you did in the past up to this point worked or not.

The key to achieving success is to consistently do the right things - lead measures. The things that you've only just recently done, that you can quickly adjust, which are the predictors of whether you will stay on track for having an overall success at a point in the future.

Still, there's no guarantee that you will succeed at the death. But you'll be repeatedly putting yourself in positions to have that genuine chance, again and again. This is what Khaldoon wants. Not to win everything (we'd like to, but even he knows it's not always possible). But to be able to compete consistently for the top prizes. And that we do.
We just need Lillo to give Pep a wake up slap the day of the next final to fix the clutch moment brainfart tendency. Everything else is functioning extremely well.

 

[Marvin]

I dare say we’d have absolutely destroyed Chelsea last night if the PSG team had played. I still can’t believe why he’d not do that.

Because Pep is has an ego and wants the stage. I will serve you up a tactical masterclass. All we had to do was put our Champions on the pitch in the set-up that has worked all season but he had to be Pep Guardiola.

I do hope that there isn't a breakdown between coach and players now. If I was a de Bruyne I wouldn't be very happy with this. They work towards these games. These are the pinnacles of a player's life and when you get to that moment, the coach loses the plot.

I hope Pep learns from this, and tries to understand what he did, and if a future opportunity occurs, he needs to think back to this game.

Will we ever see Pep and City again at a Champions League final?

 

[Tuearts right boot]

Fair play to Chelsea...we needed a goal in the first 5 minutes to set our stall out but they had other ideas, quite a few more than City tbf. The better team on the day and so far of the season. Enjoyable to watch but I think City played a part in that by playing into their hands. Going to get interesting next year....

 

[i8rags]

We gave Chelsea a massive boost with two previous line ups of tinkering, don’t worry we all thought, we have a formula set in stone that they haven’t yet seen.

then we roll out a team split in two, attack and defence, nothing to gel it together, nothing to nick the ball early and get us on the front foot, nothing to protect the back four. NOTHING.

we didn’t get battered or show a lack of energy, we simply appeared to gamble on a tactic we haven’t even attempted. Personally I’m confused as to the logic of this, pep is a genius at times but I doubt there’s anyone, who would not of stuck with the proven line up, in what for the club was a huge game.
A gamble was not the order of the day.

 

[MeatnSpudsMCFC]

Is it just me or does it hurt more being Chelsea, if it was Real Madrid would it have been a bit less hurtful

I doubt it. It’s more to do with the fact we knowingly kneecapped ourselves by not playing the same team that beat both Dortmund and PSG. That team managed to keep Haaland, Mbappe and Neymar quiet and it should’ve started last night.


When we did revert to it, the damage had been done and Chelsea put everyone behind the ball.

 

[SWP's back]

Slept on it. Still pissed off.

 

[gaudino4]

I thought maybe we'd get at Chelsea this time after the previous two games against them. Figure them out. Sadly not.
I'm very much behind Pep but the fact that it's taken us years to get to the final but Tuchel has turned Chelsea around like that inside six months is hard to take.
We know we can do better but last night was huge and even though the team wasn't right, we looked clueless.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Our 5th Title and another cup title, makes this a very memorable season regardless of yesterday's avoidable defeat

7th title.

 

[jaiguruKun]

Pep has a system that the players drill in regarding positional play. Most of that team has been drilling in that system for years. I’m sure it was slightly different but we didn’t really change shape we just used different players in one particular role. They just outplayed us

We had more control when Ferna came on but it was too late. So disappointing to lose a final in that fashion, having not really turned up.

 

[jim tolmies perm]

Get fucked.

Let me add "plastic cockney ****" for good measure