Walker red? Meh. Not unless you are giving the red for the “tackle” (frustrated foot up at knee height) on David Silva, which was far more dangerous.
What makes Walkers look bad initially is the speed of the challenge, because that kind of challenge has been outlawed everywhere in the world except Britain. However, in super slomo, it is clear that his studs are raised and he catches the player, which elevates it. On first viewing, I thought it was good, hard challenge. I’m second viewing, with the benefit of the slomo, it was a definite yellow. In the UCL, with the quality of some of the refs, it could have been worse. Then again, after the throw in incident and the lack of penalty for Sané, I’ll take the yellow!
Ref made some strange calls, but we need to stop worrying about them and beat teams in a manner that the refs can almost do nothing about it.
That performance would have come with a 3-0 scoreline at Anfield. Pep needs to fix the defense and midfield for Sunday. Far too much passing for passing sake at the back. With Stones and zlaporte in the middle, it seems like we are constantly on the front foot. With a Kompany and zeta, we fanny about waaaaay too slowly and we just give the opposition the chance to sit with 11 behind the ball, trying to find a non-existent space to exploit.
We are top of the League and our CL Group is wide open due to draws in our favor, but we appear to be (tin hat at the ready!) struggling with our movement and penetration at times, often running out of ideas and the impetus needed to breakdown the stalwart defence of even the most average of teams. We have made bad teams look good for 70 minutes, then grab a couple of late goals and the 3-0 scoreline makes it look like we strolled it. Would like to FEEL like we strolled it a bit more than we have been doing recently.
When we were pinning them back in the later stages (before the last few mins) we looked in good nick with a back 3 and Stones and Dinho in front of them. Mahrez didn’t have much impact, and is a step down from the performances Sterling has been putting in. However, Bernardo is a game changing substitute and appears a shoo in for a start at Anfield.