**** the G14 league

[dom]

Frustration makes every decision look bad, every booking look biased, every penalty claim a stone wall denial...

but the truth is, we weren't good enough tonight.

We are a good team, we have great players, but we lack confidence, composure and tactics in CL.

CSKA did a perfect job on us. Entirely set up to counter, and we had plenty of warnings about it, but we still continued to press high up the pitch leaving an acre of space behind us. It was clear they had lightning pace, but we did nothing to counter it.

No excuses, we don't deserve to get out of the group. The table isn't lying, nobody is 'fixing' results. WE are the masters of our own downfall.

I'm no fan of UEFA, I loathe some of their actions, but watching that tonight, was very poor.
I'll admit it, I was all too eager to blame the ref too. But doing well in the CL means winning regardless of poor decisions.

For most of out PL games, we've been allowed to take things nice and easy and usually outplay teams. In the CL, we are playing quality teams. We cannot afford to be playing casual balls across midfield that are being intercepted time and time again, and priming teams for a perfect counter attack. Nor can we keep trying to thread a ball through the eye of a needle... essentially between 4 or 5 defenders. It's costing us possession time and again. In the PL, one in twenty attempts at this might result in a goal. In the CL 19 out of 20 attempts at that result in a counter attack.

Generally speaking, I can't fault the work rate of most of our players tonight. That wasn't a problem in my eyes, but we lacked intelligence and variation in our play.

A very disappointing night, but we got what we deserved. Well played CSKA.

Why does the one proposition 'logically' deny the other ?
False dichotomy

We were shyte but the ref was as also as bent as 9 bob note

 

[nowantads]

I'm out, fuck this, it's ridiculous.

Edit: Let's fuck this off and play eds teams from now on, serve UEFA their own fucking medicine

I just realized we can't even play eds/u19 because they'll be playing their own match before senior team;s match lmao. Should we dish out u16?

 

[Jacob Smith]

People saying we are to blame for our poor performances BUT the "decisions" that go against us and everything that seems to conspire against us surely has an effect on the players therefore they produce these poor performances. Tonight started with that free kick decision which maybe the majority of refs wouldn't give, that instantly gives the players a negative mindset and that's just the first minute... The board are right to stay silent over the issues UEFA seem to have with us because who'll be having the last laugh? We will when we win the thing in ten years.

 

[moomba]

Refereeing and our performances are two separate issues. Our performances haven't been good enough and the manager needs to do something about that. But all those saying that we should just ignore the refereeing because we played like shit have got it wrong IMO.

I hope (if we haven't already done so) we have a full dossier, complete with video clips of the decisions that have gone against us in this comp. Not only this year but over the last 4. It really is every match a sending off or a penalty decision at a minimum goes against us and as bad as we have been that doesn't help.

Combination of the two (our performances and the refereeing) is really making me hate this competition, and I think the club will need to start buy 1 get 4 free deals to fill the place if it carries on like this.

 

[FanchesterCity]

Frustration makes every decision look bad, every booking look biased, every penalty claim a stone wall denial...

but the truth is, we weren't good enough tonight.

We are a good team, we have great players, but we lack confidence, composure and tactics in CL.

CSKA did a perfect job on us. Entirely set up to counter, and we had plenty of warnings about it, but we still continued to press high up the pitch leaving an acre of space behind us. It was clear they had lightning pace, but we did nothing to counter it.

No excuses, we don't deserve to get out of the group. The table isn't lying, nobody is 'fixing' results. WE are the masters of our own downfall.

I'm no fan of UEFA, I loathe some of their actions, but watching that tonight, was very poor.
I'll admit it, I was all too eager to blame the ref too. But doing well in the CL means winning regardless of poor decisions.

For most of out PL games, we've been allowed to take things nice and easy and usually outplay teams. In the CL, we are playing quality teams. We cannot afford to be playing casual balls across midfield that are being intercepted time and time again, and priming teams for a perfect counter attack. Nor can we keep trying to thread a ball through the eye of a needle... essentially between 4 or 5 defenders. It's costing us possession time and again. In the PL, one in twenty attempts at this might result in a goal. In the CL 19 out of 20 attempts at that result in a counter attack.

Generally speaking, I can't fault the work rate of most of our players tonight. That wasn't a problem in my eyes, but we lacked intelligence and variation in our play.

A very disappointing night, but we got what we deserved. Well played CSKA.

Why does the one proposition 'logically' deny the other ?
False dichotomy

We were shyte but the ref was as also as bent as 9 bob note

I don't believe it was suggested they are mutually exclusive. But regardless of what people do or do not believe about corruption, we had the capacity to beat CSKA but instead, handed them opportunity to beat us instead, and they took it well.

 

[Balti]

Frustration makes every decision look bad, every booking look biased, every penalty claim a stone wall denial...

but the truth is, we weren't good enough tonight.

We are a good team, we have great players, but we lack confidence, composure and tactics in CL.

CSKA did a perfect job on us. Entirely set up to counter, and we had plenty of warnings about it, but we still continued to press high up the pitch leaving an acre of space behind us. It was clear they had lightning pace, but we did nothing to counter it.

No excuses, we don't deserve to get out of the group. The table isn't lying, nobody is 'fixing' results. WE are the masters of our own downfall.

I'm no fan of UEFA, I loathe some of their actions, but watching that tonight, was very poor.
I'll admit it, I was all too eager to blame the ref too. But doing well in the CL means winning regardless of poor decisions.

For most of out PL games, we've been allowed to take things nice and easy and usually outplay teams. In the CL, we are playing quality teams. We cannot afford to be playing casual balls across midfield that are being intercepted time and time again, and priming teams for a perfect counter attack. Nor can we keep trying to thread a ball through the eye of a needle... essentially between 4 or 5 defenders. It's costing us possession time and again. In the PL, one in twenty attempts at this might result in a goal. In the CL 19 out of 20 attempts at that result in a counter attack.

Generally speaking, I can't fault the work rate of most of our players tonight. That wasn't a problem in my eyes, but we lacked intelligence and variation in our play.

A very disappointing night, but we got what we deserved. Well played CSKA.

Why does the one proposition 'logically' deny the other ?
False dichotomy

We were shyte but the ref was as also as bent as 9 bob note

true

but we were not good enough to overcome the dodgy ref

1 goal not good enough to make the dodgy ref irrelevent sadly

conceding for fun again

must do better

 

[chris85mcfc]

I'm not buying it lads

We need to start looking at the management and the players for the answers

We've been bang average all season, bits of brilliance have gotten us out of sticky situations, as sunday proved

We can't keep going on blaming UEFA, or CSKA fans or whatever the flavour of the month is

We're starting to sound like fuckin martyrs and dare I say it, a bit small time

 

[MJB]

Not using this an excuse for yet another very poor performance, but fuck me this is almost blatant cheating even the black and whites and mackems I watched the game with were shocked at the decisions made tonight. its corrupt as Fuck

 

[CrownPointBlue]

Masters of our own downfall. Poor performances,tactics,game management & discipline.

A mental block seems to exist & we loose all cohesion ,control,& shape.

Can't explain the contrast with our league performances over the last 4 years but we deserved nothing else tonight & for the first time I got a sense that there is something fundamentally wrong this season. Ah....there it is, it's out!!

 

[Jimfv1]

We were very poor, the discipline was missing and we got what we deserved from the game, ....NOTHING !!

The players should have learnt by now that we have to be at our very best to win matches in this competition, in fact we should do this in all games we play, if we are that far ahead of other teams and don't give a reason for the ref to book our players and disallow penalties/goals etc., then eventually there can't be any dodgy decisions.

If Clichy had kept his hand in then the ball wouldn't have hit it.
If a defender had marked their main striker then his chance for the first goal may have been defended properly.
If we had had another defensive midfielder on the pitch then Clichy wouldn't have needed to run back and gift the ball straight back to the opposition for their second goal.

If we played better football we may have scored a goal from open play, which is the main reason we lost.