coachpotato

We had the legend that was Djimi Traore, “He just can’t, he just can’t, he just can’t control his feet”. Always makes me smile.

We got to Istanbul and won with a worse team than this. Arguably.

Sima took his goal well and his general play looked decent. Probably not our standard but I wouldn’t mind betting someone takes a punt on him. Prague obviously saw this as their final and played as if their lives depended on winning. Defended robustly and bravely, weren’t afraid to go forward in numbers when possible, Leicester had 60% possession but Prague had the same number of attempts on goal and 3 on target as opposed to 5 by Leicester, proving, as we have been finding out, goals win you games not possession stats.

Some big lads in that Sheff Utd team, need big Nat in there to help us at corners etc., thought he was half decent yesterday, some good passing forwards from him at times. Could be a threat from corners for us as well.

April 6th 1997, v Coventry. Winning 1-0 (I think) and conceded 2 identical goals from corners late on. Fourth in a two horse race season. Grim.

Bit of a shame that there are no blooshite fans there to see this, and no pubs open for them to “celebrate” in. Asterisk win.

Hardly rocket science to say we need to score more goals given the season we’ve had. I do agree we could do with an alternative scorer to the usual suspects, because when they’re kept quiet or off form, sadly too often this season, we don’t have midfielders stepping up. It could be that we might see more scored when the team gets its balance back, but I’ve felt for a while we could find a use for an out and out striker for when things aren’t going well, when we are dominating against a team that’s sitting deep for instance. What we currently have are World class forwards, but not anyone who is a predator like Vardy, Fowler, Aguero for instance, who convert a better ratio of chances then most do. I know it sounds a bit churlish when we have been as good as we have, but it’s one of the areas we haven’t addressed to keep momentum going, like at centre back!

Two Everton centre backs looking like they’d taken root for that goal, and that’s signalled tools down for the rest, and de Bruyne has just come on. This could be very bad, or good, depending on your view. City are fucking ruthless.

Richarlison booked already. Watch him wait until the end and get himself sent off so he misses getting a kicking off Robbo on Saturday.

Juergen should make a point about how well the game was officiated in his comments after the game.

Just a thought, when Mane played the ball back in for Firmino to head in the disallowed goal during the first half, how come Upemacano wasn’t penalised for basically taking Sadio out? He didn’t even try to play the ball and shoved Mane out of the way pretty much.

Great performances all round. You could see the confidence growing in all the players as the game went on. I thought Kabak was worthy of a mention, he held his shit together well and looked a decent defender on a good few occasions, Alisson too had a very good game, that chance at the end looked as though Hwang congratulated him, presumably for getting a touch, so that was two world class saves he pulled off to keep it to zero. Thiago played better in the second half as did Wijnaldum, Jones was good throughout apart from giving the ball away a couple of times near the end when he was tiring and Hendo was immense. Good to see Mane put away his chance and Salah the same, both never looked like missing when they were through and that is a real positive going into the weekend. Both full backs played well and contributed to the clean sheet as well as getting forward when they could, so overall an encouraging performance that will, hopefully, be a boost for the game at the weekend. Onwards and upwards.

Giving the ball away a bit too much at the moment.

Fuck me that VAR review would still be going on against us now if it were a league game!!

Might’ve dodged a bullet with Upemecano methinks!

Just keep it tight now, no chances to them.

Get the fuck in!

Decent first half, still a few things not clicking properly, I’d take a clean sheet, 0-0, now just to give Alisson, Trent and Kazan a boost in confidence, Hendo and Robbo have been excellent. A bit annoying that the play still stalls a bit when Thiago or Wijnaldum get the ball sometimes, but Jones is getting better by the game and likes to put his first touch forwards to keep us moving that way. The front three still aren’t as lethal as I’d like and we’ve had a couple of chances that were tight but could have led to goals, but as long as we’re not regretting that at the end then maybe it’ll hold us in good stead for the return leg.

Trent’s marking is really poor at times, that side of his game needs improving.

I was in favour of VAR coming in, and I still think it’s a good system. However, the way it is being used and interpreted by the officials in charge of our fixtures is rendering it almost useless. It’s like giving the controls of a Rolls Royce to a chimp. It’s possible there’ll be more than a few from inside the game pushing for a complete overhaul or complete scrapping of the system. Don’t think it’ll happen though.

Where there’s money, big money particularly, there’s corruption. It’s down to that most human of instincts, greed. The basic want of more, wanting a bigger piece of the pie, whatever and business is the most likely place it happens. Football is no longer a sport at the top level, it’s a business, and we all know that. Now whether the “richest league in the world” has corruption or not we aren’t likely to be able to prove, but given the PL has a “product” that generates all this wealth and that there are those that want to see that generate more and more wealth, is it such a big jump to imagine that situations might be “managed” to bring about the circumstances that those people believe are necessary to keep the wealth rolling in and presumably their pockets filled? If so, there will be myriad ways to do that, for example, stopping one team running away with it every season before it becomes boring would maintain interest for those paying to watch. But how would you do that without raising suspicions? Well bringing in a decision making system that can manipulate hairline decisions whatever way you want for one. Especially if there’s little accountability associated with it. Influencing 50-50 decisions for a particular team go whatever way you want them to is another. That doesn’t explain how, for instance, Manchester City get to run away with things as they have done for the majority of the last five years, apart from last season, and likely this. Injuries to our team have had a massive impact of course, so that is the most likely reason why we’re currently struggling, and that is our own fault for not strengthening while we could last summer. So, is it firstly corruption or secondly incompetence that puts us where we are currently, or indeed, thirdly, subconscious bias? Well, had we not had the injuries we have suffered, and still been struggling, then it might have well been laid at the door of the first or third of those, but we can’t ignore the fact that our incompetence in trying to carry on with the squad we had, without strengthening it in the very area it needed it most, defensively, has had probably the most devastating effect on our season thus far.

Fair comment, but not many would’ve believed Jota would start the way he did, and he’s got to continue his form when he returns, Thiago has shown his pedigree elsewhere and I hope he gets to be the player we all thought we were getting when he’s properly supported in the future, but we still left the one area everyone knew we were vulnerable in vacant, and that’s what I was getting at mainly with my comment.

Before anyone jumps in, I know we bought the likes of Torres, Suarez, Alonso etc., but at the time we bought them they were more potentially big players, and we sold them all on anyway.

Pisses me off that while we were gallivanting around Europe and here in the 70’s and 80’s winning everything, United, who’d been down into the second division (look it up you youngsters) in that time, were building a commercial empire that funded them once Ferguson got them on the perch. Admittedly the Glazers took over after that, but they’ve never been afraid to splash the cash ever since, and have had the wherewithal to be able to do so. While we did next to fuck all in comparison which partially led to us not being able to stay competitive when we needed to, and it’s only been relatively recently we have gone out and bought big players. It was always said that you strengthen while at the top but for some reason we haven’t followed that advice.

Good player Calvert Lewis to be fair. Can’t stand Richarlison though, moody, snidey twat.