Excellent first half, fucking battered them and should have had more.
Final 20 mins were a damp squib, but their goal knocked the stuffing out of us. The mistake by Otamendi just put a gloss on the disappointment.
Two things cost us over the tie. The first was us shitting it in the first leg after the first goal. 20minutes of fucking madness, and we never really recovered. The second was the officiating. The two offside decisions in the first leg were tight - but still inevitable that we would both times be on the wrong end of it. Add in the penalty, and the outcome last week would have been very different. The second goal tonight was an even bigger decision. If that’s given, we win, I’m sure. They were absolutely fucking shitting it in that period before half time - that let off, followed by the sending off of Pep, helped them enormously and utterly shifted the momentum. To say it wouldn’t have made a difference as we lost 5-1 is to show a real lack of understanding of the game.
Didn’t get a chance to see a replay, but was it a foul by Firminio on De Bruyne just before their first goal? Looked it on first viewing - and had it been, it should have been a second booking. But perhaps it wasn’t. One thing that really boiled my piss was him blowing up on exactly 45 mins in the first half, despite Karius taking a minimum of 60 seconds over every goalkick. Again, a massive help for them in shortening a period when we looked likely to score again at any moment.