Sporting CP (A) | CL | Post Match Thread

bondsman said:
I think performance wise we’ve not been great since losing to the Rags in the FA Cup final. We feel stale, predictable and one paced.
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Disagree. We were absolutely flying after the first three games. The first international break messed up our momentum and we've been dealing with the impact of Rodri's injury ever since. This happens every season where the three international breaks between September and November disrupt our rhythm - it actually happened last year when Rodri got sent off against Forest and we had to deal with his absence (and a load of injuries) and played a patchwork midfield until about Christmas. That night we got hammered by Villa and somehow only lost 1-0 felt similar to tonight - Sporting just got the rub of the green that Villa didn't get - and that midfield was Lewis, Stones, and Alvarez, lol.

I was up in Scotland for Christmas last year and I remember watching us go 1-0 down at Goodison Park on Boxing Day (?), sitting looking out at the Hebrides as the sun went down, thinking "God are we ever going to get a proper XI together?" We won that game 3-1 and didn't really look back from there. A year earlier, things were so bad in 22/23 that Pep ripped up the entire system, slagged the players off in the press and called them a 'happy flowers' team, and started again. He'll have to do the same this season by the looks of things.

This run has just been made worse by us having a weaker squad than in previous seasons, by our injury list very quickly and suddenly expanding to extreme levels, and having four consecutive away games as well. If we'd played Sporting at home tonight, or if we'd played Brugge instead, we'd have probably won uncomfortably with a couple of nervy moments and we'd be looking ahead to Brighton with some cautious optimism. As it is, a tired team went all the way to Portugal, played a team who are flying, and got their arses handed to them. I also think that, with even 3 or 4 more players fit and available, this run wouldn't be happening. But as it is we're relying on Simpson-Pusey, a lad I'd literally never heard of a week ago, to fill in gaps in big European away games. There are problems with the system, no doubt, but they're being exacerbated.
 
RayCTID said:
The old problem of us not taking our chances hasn't gone away. With or without Rodri. I haven't a clue how we do really address that issue even with our current attackers. A new signing wouldn't fix that either.
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And we’ve combined that problem with being so easy to play through shipping goals for fun pretty much at every opportunity our opposition has going forward.
 
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