by stmichael » Wed Mar 07, 2007 12:26 pm
It's hard to pick holes in such a good performance, but I do sort of understand some of the criticism. We simply MUST go out and buy a top, top goalscorer. Negatives done.
That was a very good performance, especially in the first half when we essentially made Barca look like a pub team at times. How we had to hang on and how we actually lost on the night is one of those things you just have to scratch your head about and that's about it really. We really ought to have had things wrapped up after half an hour. John Arne Riise in particularly will probably still be thinking "how have I not scored at least 2 there?"
When he hit the bar he was just unlucky, when he was denied on the line by (the excellent) Puyol that was down to superb reading of the game by the opposition... I was getting worried at that point, I got nigh on hysterical when Momo hit the bar. I just began to doubt we were going to score, and we saw what happened on Saturday. To be fair last night was a carbon copy, we just had more than one goal to play with on this occasion.
We did take them to pieces but they got a foothold in the second half. In my view, this was because the strikers were ten yards too deep and the space between them and the midfield was huge. The ball kept coming back at us. We had our warning when the largely anonymous Ronaldinho hit the post after a great run. We were under a fair bit of pressure but the sensational (and MOM by a million miles) Carragher was keeping them at bay. In fact, as a unit in defence we were superb. My mind is finally made up about Agger - three high pressure games in 2 weeks and he's been class in all of them. A gem. Arbeloa looks promising as well. Josemi made a good start as well, so proceed with caution, but this guy looks class.
Did anyone else notice, by the way, what an utter bell the referee was? Booking both Arbeloa and Sissoko in quick succession for nothing tackles, letting Deco make decisions for him, warning us for time wasting after 6 minutes. Knob.
We were ultimately hanging on but that performance would beat most teams in Europe. We can be very proud of ourselves after that last night. If we play like that we'll give ourselves a very, very good chance of beating anyone and going all the way, mainly because despite all of our flaws, we're a still a million miles better than the side which won the trophy in 2005. But we MUST start scoring goals.
Last edited by
stmichael on Wed Mar 07, 2007 12:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.