That was fairly low key but that’s fine, we got the result we needed and I don’t think we had to expend too much energy to get it. It was a dominant performance over a team that hadn’t lost since September, and I don’t think we really ever had to go higher than third gear.
Seven wins from seven, top spot in the group and guaranteed to finish no lower than second. I didn’t even realise what the benefit of that is until this morning. I knew it meant that in theory we get an inferior opponent in the knockouts, but I also knew that there’s the likelihood that we could get a tougher one as that’s far from being an exact science.
What I didn’t know was that finishing first or second means you avoid each other until the final, and you also get a guaranteed home second leg in every knockout round. That’s huge and absolutely makes it worth going balls out to secure a top two spot. And we’ve done it. We’d have locked up top spot if Benfica had a spine. Soft cunts blew a 4-1 lead and lost 5-4 at home to Barca, which means we now need a draw next week at PSV to be guaranteed top spot. We can’t finish worse than second though, and there’s basically no difference, so its all good.
I’d really love to win next week though even if it isn’t important. Keeping the 100% record is something to be proud of. It might not happen again. This is the first year in this new format but winning all eight games is something not many are going to be able to do, so it would be a cool thing to be able to get that done.
I think what has been most impressive about this is that it hasn’t looked difficult at all. We’ve played full throttle in a couple of games maybe, so Leverkusen and Madrid for example, and then a lot of it feels like we’ve cruised, like in this game. Maybe I’m overstating that and Slot might have a different view of it, but it just usually looks like we have another gear or two to go to if we need it.
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