My observations:
1. The game
Fantastic entertainment. Top notch attacking from both sides, shit defending. Totally bonkers match
2. Our team
In previous champions league campaigns we've had the talent but not the desire. Tonight was the opposite for me tonight. There are big obvious flaws in our team at present (injuries, etc, playing their part) but the players showed A LOT of heart to dig that out tonight. Stones and Willy making amends for their errors was a brilliant example of this. Sterling and Sane were excellent throughout and we've got an exciting few years coming up if we can fill the obvious holes in our squad (full backs, CB, DM)
3. The media
Fucking disgrace tonight. The usual major footy twitter accounts were doing their Empthad shite but even the broadsheets were at it. The ToryGraph reported as news the fact that there were some empty seats (due to the security fuck up AGAIN!) and even used a pic of the players warming up in an empty stadium.
The pundits weren't much better - Savage banging on about empty seats on his twitter. Collymore has just posted a bizarre "187th highest attendance for a Champions League match in Manchester" tweet. The BBC, after we'd gone 5-3 up, commented on their live feed that Monaco would go through with a 2-0 win at home! Factually accurate, but WTF?!?!?
The club needs to grip this now and start banning these fuckbuckets
4. The officials
Defo pen and red card, completely missed. I'd say "Agenda" but the amount of yellow cards dished out shows that the ref tonight was totally fucking inept.
On the Otta pen, in real time that looked like 'no pen'. We're told the 5th official gave it. Footage post game has the ref looking straight at him and he appears not to give any singnal it was a pen, but the ref changed his mind.
Ref took an age to make his decision.....enough time for a replay - which showed it was a pen. Pen then given. This, like the Bournemouth disallowed goal a few weeks ago shows me that refs are being fed decisions from off the pitch using video technology. All completely clandestinely. Totally wrong, even if the "right" decisions are being made.