I made a huge mistake by reading ignored comment. You are the worst judge of football who thinks they know football that I’ve ever come across.some good performances - Rico, Rodri, Alvarez,Bernardo, Ake, Akanji, Dias.
Some not so good - Kovacic especially and Nunes - first time they have played together however but both are not upto speed at present and both need to start adding goals and creativity as they are the replacements for Gundo and we are missing his contribution in these areas. Grealish still getting up to speed due to limited appearances but again he needs to do that quickly.
Overall a comfortable win against an average side in very poor conditions (pitch and weather) - no injures which is an added bonus and a couple of key players rested.
I carefully watched the game for the 6 or 7 times during the play when a player lunged for a challenge in the box missing the ball and stomping on the tackled players foot. Glenda informed us this is how many of those types of challenges are made every game and how many penalties would have to be awarded if the Rodri challenge was a penalty.Darke and Hoddle - a pair of woodentops. Darke can't stop himself highlighting what he thinks are negatives 'Only this/Only that'. Hoddle getting depressed that we got a pen. Imagine him protesting against Utd, Newcastle, or Arsenal getting a pen? No, me neither.
More like arse splintersjust hearing only injury picked up = phillips got blisters
Great comment.well observed.Watch Doku's effort first half and then tell me the watered pitch had no affect. You really need to try it yourself. You'll realize how different it is. I thought the players handled the pitch brilliantly.
If the pitch didn’t affect the game and the way we played why shouldn’t they be allowed?The keeper and defence did lead a charmed life, I don't disagree, but I don't think the pitch is a valid excuse, I can't remember a single incident that the pitch was to blame, and so far nobody has suggested a single incident either.
I don't like, or think those pitches should be allowed in this competition, but that's a different debate for me.
Not an excuse but the pitch was a factor. I was at the game and seemed like the ball bobbled on the surface in a different way. Or as Pep said in his post match a different shape. Their team was physical and very quick into the tackle. The extra milli second it took to control the ball worked in their favour. When we got the ball down and played we created some excellent moves. City will destroy Young Boys on our grass pitch.Why ?
Why can't people say it wasn't a great performance ?
I know we have very high expectations these days, but our finishing tonight was poor, 26 shots on goal, 14 on target, and we scored 3, that's not a great tally is it ?
There were some good performances, Lewis, Grealish, and Rodri, Alvarez and Bernardo when they came on, defence were mostly OK. However we allowed a pretty shite team to give us a game, and after their equaliser, we were hanging on a bit for a while.
We shouldn't be using the pitch as an excuse, there was nothing really that I noticed that was more difficult, and it's not like we don't play in the rain much either.
At the end of the day, the result is all that matters, and we won (easily in the end), but good performance (by our standards) it wasn't.
Any away win in the CL is a good "result", but I don't see the point painting the performance for something it wasn't. In the second half, we only gained control of the game by bringing on Alvarez and Bernardo imho.