We didn't play too badly really. Yes the tempo was slow, but they sat 11 men behind the ball. They practically played with two banks of five. I've never seen anything like it from a supposed top side. It was more Mourinho than Mourinho.
When we play with a target man, it restricts the movement of everyone around him. It doesn't suit us. This is where we differ from the elite teams in Europe. When our first choice forward isn't fit, our second choice comes in but he is a totally different kind of player. Our second choice should be similar to Aguero in my opinion. I understand the yearning for different options, but it's not as if we try and play a different way when Aguero is out. We still play the same way, but we are far more predictable and pedestrian.
Not only does that make the opponents defensive job much easier, they also grow into the game and gain confidence from it. There's never a threat of anyone running in behind them in a central position.
So we have our philosophy which is fine, but outside of our starting 11, we don't necessarily have a full compliment of players who fit into it.
Aside from that, we need to be more ruthless. It's easy to get carried away when you are winning. Football is a game of very fine margins and the higher the level, the finer the margins. We saw that last night. As brilliant as we have been this season, the warning signs have been there.
A number of teams have had the ball in the back of our net this season only for it to be disallowed. They've all been correct calls but the margin has been ridiculously tight at times. And those goals (had they stood) would all have come at very crucial points. Whilst I think we are excellent at deploying the offside trap, it does sometimes mean that we live a little bit close to the edge. An inch or two can be the difference between great and poor defending. In the Champions League, that margin is even thinner, as we found out with Mandzukic's goal last night. If you ever wanted to highlight the difference between the Champions League and the Premier League, you would only have to contrast Mandzukic's finish to that of Dwight Gayle's in the closing stages of the Palace game. Domestically we can get away with it, in Europe we can't.
We also need to be more ruthless. Other than Aguero and Toure who else is truly ruthless in front of goal for us? We have a frustrating ability to miss a lot of chances. We've suffered with this for as long as we have been in the CL. In the league, more often than not we can create enough chances for it to not matter as much. But in the CL, you get less chances so when you get them, you have to take them. Sterling and Navas are worryingly poor in front of goal. Silva has improved but I would hardly call him ruthless. De Bruyne will hopefully be better. Bony is so desperate to score that he is snatching at everything. We need more composure in those situations because they are few and far between in Europe.
I'd also suggest we have an inability to focus for 90 minutes. Even in a game where we dominate, we have a ten minute spell where everything goes to shit. We switch off. We do it in the CL fairly often. The biggest example being away at Moscow when we were 2-0 up and Moscow had seemingly called it a night. Gary Neville always talks about game management and we don't really see games out as comfortably as we should at times. I'd say last night we actually controlled the game pretty well. If you wanted to be super critical you could say that Fernandinho wasn't concentrating enough when he took too long to get to Pogba for the cross and you could argue that Kolarov wasn't concentrating on helping out Mangala, but sometimes good teams score good goals and there's little you can do other than take your chances as well as they take theirs.
Aside from all of that, we need a bit luck. We have had 3 tough draws in recent seasons, and then we have run into Barcelona in the knockout stages. Beating a side of that quality over two legs is very difficult.
Unfortunately, unless we pull our finger out, we might have to play a team of that calibre in the second knockout phase.
