Naive.

[sam-caddick]

Watching Arsenal until they went down to ten men showed me we should have gone with our natural attacking game yesterday, maybe we couldn't have been too all guns blazing, but we were far too conservative in our approach and showed far too much respect yesterday.

Wenger is trusted his usual style of play, played at PL intensity and it caused Bayern all sorts of issues.

Yes, we defended well and as a unit we were solid, but Pellegrini for me didn't trust his usual way of playing which I think could have caused Barcelona more problems.

Pellegrini did what Mancini would have done yesterday in my opinion and set up to not get beat, but at this level you have to risk and reward your way to glory.

Kolarov over Nasri was a shocking move looking back, Samir playing from the start could have enabled us to still play a cautious game but offer much more going forward, Sergio running at opposition and being able to make quick elusive runs behind the defence was massively missed as well.

 

[johnmc]

Yet against Bayern people said we should never have played with 2 up front.

 

[Rascal]

Watching Arsenal until they went down to ten men showed me we should have gone with our natural attacking game yesterday, maybe we couldn't have been too all guns blazing, but we were far too conservative in our approach and showed far too much respect yesterday.

Wenger is trusted his usual style of play, played at PL intensity and it caused Bayern all sorts of issues.

Yes, we defended well and as a unit we were solid, but Pellegrini for me didn't trust his usual way of playing which I think could have caused Barcelona more problems.

Pellegrini did what Mancini would have done yesterday in my opinion and set up to not get beat, but at this level you have to risk and reward your way to glory.

Kolarov over Nasri was a shocking move looking back, Samir playing from the start could have enabled us to still play a cautious game but offer much more going forward, Sergio running at opposition and being able to make quick elusive runs behind the defence was massively missed as well.

Could Samir have lasted 90 if needed?

I thought straight away seeing the team Samir has only 30 mins fitness in him, use for the last 30

 

[Chris in London]

Yet against Bayern people said we should never have played with 2 up front.

Yup. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

The benefits of 20/20 hindsight :)

 

[CitizenTID]

Good point there I was wondering why we don't seem to make these big European teams struggle considering the prem is meant to be a step up from La Liga especially and the other 3 english teams seem to fair better than us yet are not as good as us. Maybe that is our inexperience in the competition still showing.

 

[johnmc]

Yet against Bayern people said we should never have played with 2 up front.

Yup. Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't.

The benefits of 20/20 hindsight :)

Also, he may well have gone with two up if Aguero was fit. Dzeko and Negrado isn't a mobile enough pair.

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

Two problems - we couldn't get enough ball for our normal game, and when we had the ball we weren't allowed to move it quickly or develop any passing momentum. We are happy to play teams who don't know whether to stick or twist. Barca knew what they were doing and executed with technical perfection. How many balls bounced of a Barca player. Every pass no matter how fiercely hit was killed stone dead! We need a lot more practice at playing this kind of passing and possession football!

 

[Subbed Tskhadadze with Allsopp]

As others have said, we played our natural attacking game against Bayern, got overrun in midfield and taken to pieces, and Pellegrini got dog's abuse for not changing the formation and tightening things up.

 

[MillisleBlue]

There's a guile about Barca, Real, Bayern and, at the moment, we don't have it. Whether it's putting Officials under pressure, buying repeated free-kicks, feigning serious injury to produce cards etc etc, that's where the difference is. We just need to learn how to play smarter against these top teams cos 11 v 11 I don't believe there's much in it. Of course, the top teams have some immensely talented players but we do to...

 

[Skip Donoghue]

Good point there I was wondering why we don't seem to make these big European teams struggle considering the prem is meant to be a step up from La Liga especially and the other 3 english teams seem to fair better than us yet are not as good as us. Maybe that is our inexperience in the competition still showing.

The Premier League is more diverse and physical than La Liga and the Bundeslege...but is far from a step up from a technical point of view