I thought I’d wait until the morning after the night before to express my views on what was effectively our Champions’ League exit. I’ve found that over the past couple of years my knee-jerk reactions have lost me a lot of friends on football forums and in real life, so I took the advice I gave to someone a few months ago, and gave myself a night’s rest and a chance to calm down.
I thought were unlucky last night, looking at the stats and the direction of the play. I can’t remember Napoli causing that much of a threat when they weren’t scoring goals, and both of their goals were slightly down to our own errors – errors that can be corrected with slightly better organisation. We had 60% of the possession away from home in the Champions’ League and we had 18 shots away from home in the Champions’ League; we just couldn’t finish our chances. I don’t think it was Balotelli’s night, and I think we could all see how frustrated he was getting with his missed chances.
We’re not totally out of the Champions’ League, but we’ll need a near miracle to progress. We’ll need to beat one of the best sides in the world (currently) in Bayern Munich, and we’ll need one of the worst teams left in the competition (Villarreal) to beat Napoli. It’s not looking likely, is it? We’re in a difficult position, though; do we just accept that we’re out and rest our players against Bayern so that they’re fresh for the Chelsea game at the weekend, or do we go out all guns blazing with nothing to lose and play a slightly weaker team against one of our biggest title challengers and potentially surrender our unbeaten domestic record for nothing?
I have to stress, though, that if Mancini leaves both Richards and Clichy on the bench together once more, I may have to throttle him. Zabaleta and Kolarov offered very little attacking threat last night, and it’s not the first time this season that they’ve failed to impress when played together. Kolarov did give us a wide option in Naples but when he did cross the ball or look to cut it back, every pass seemed to be a guess (added to that, Kolarov was even getting the basics wrong in the same way Wright-Phillips did during the 09-10 season; balls were slipping under his feet, and his confidence was shot), and none of Zabaleta’s crosses were successful. In all honesty, as much as I love him, he was very poor last night.
Which leads me on to my final point, and the biggest problem about last night’s game... Mancini hasn’t used Zabaleta properly this season. This season he’s played in less than half of our Premier League games (4), but he seems to be first choice right-back for our Champions’ League games. Is that the right thing to do? Mancini seems to be throwing Zabaleta into our biggest games without a shield or any big match practise. I guess it’s just unfortunate.
I can point the finger at specific players and blame them for our poor showing in the Champions’ League this season, but this is just the start. I have to focus on our rivals, Manchester United, to fully get my point across: United were running away with the Premier League in 1994, but they exited the Champions’ League before reaching the group stages of the competition, losing to Galatasary on aggregate. Six seasons later they won the competition.
In other words, it takes time to establish yourself in European football, no matter how good you are domestically. We may have players like Aguero, Nasri, Silva, Dzeko and Kompany but they’ve only been playing together for three months. We’re running away with the league and the team we have is one of the best in the world, but European football is an ugly beast that shows no mercy to a new group of people.
Let’s just batter Liverpool.
Hart 7; Zabaleta 5, Kompany 6, Lescott 6, Kolarov 5; de Jong 5, Yaya 7, Milner 8, Silva 6; Dzeko 6, Balotelli 7.
