Considering how depleted we are, we’ve done well. Such a shame, that once again, we’ve been the makers of our down downfall. Some really sloppy play and awful decision making from one experienced player in particular massively let us down tonight. You just don’t get away with that against a side like Barca.
Without Eriksen / Alli / Jan, I could live with that. But Hugo has cost us the 1st half, and having no outfield leader to rally the troops is an ongoing concern.
Winks showed something 2nd half. Need that consistently. Decent 2nd half generally, but Lloris is a liability.
Played well once he had settled...vital experience against world class opposition. If only Levy would do his bit and back the ****ing team...it's a travesty if he doesn't give Poch serious money..we are worlds apart but we are not worlds apart from the elite..if you think about it
Before the game tonight, I was concerned we’d get battered with such a depleated squad. No Dele, Eriksen or Jan. Three big misses. All things considered we did ok yet ironically I wish our captain hadn’t come back from injury quite so soon. The players can be proud they kept up the fight, especially in the second half. We had Barca worried for a period there but our defending or more accurately, our calamitous GK made sure we’d lose all confidence at the back and inevitably concede.
Someone on here previously compared him to Wilshere. Didn’t Wilshere look good against Barcelona once when Arsenal lost against them?
The main positives are the players' heads didn't drop in spite of going out of their way to give Barca a two-goal cushion or in the face of a ref who was determined to give Barca every advantage he could (even though we were trying just as hard to do the same) - the latter in particular's important considering in the past there's been times where a ref giving us nothing and the opponents everything has caused the team to go into meltdown (the FA Cup semi against Atkinson & the Chavs, the Europa League match against Gent/Genk/whichever), but the team getting stronger psychologically isn't worth much if individual players are going to derp all that out the window. The negatives? Some utterly reckless play from Lloris, costly derps from Sanchez and Sissoko, Wanyama clearly being some way off his form of two seasons ago, Son being pretty anonymous, and Wembley's pitch looking worse than ours did at the weekend
Question... how many times has Hugo given a post match interview in recent years? I’m struggling to think of many times. Odd for a captain to avoid the cameras.
I know you guys might be frustrated by your defending, Lloris and Sanchez in particular didn't have good games. However, when Messi plays like he did tonight, there's just not much you can do. That's one of the best Champions League performances I've seen from an individual player. His presence of mind, guile, ball control, movement and vision was absolutely world-class. To think he could have scored another two goals as well wouldn't have flattered him. And even though he's visibly lost a yard of pace, he was still gliding through your midfield/defence like it was nothing at times. You showed a lot of fighting spirit to get back into the game, but Messi was on another level tonight. You just have to take your hats off to him. He was too brilliant for words to express.
Lloris set the tone with a howler which he will have had on his mind for the entire game. But **** me, Sissoko was determined to out do him in his short spell. Some awful passing, terrible control, woeful shooting, and atrocious shielding of the ball which led to a goal. I know we keep saying it, but how on earth did we not address even the fringe players in the summer, even if we felt we couldn’t get anyone for sensible money to replace our first teamers? The difference in ability across our squad is staggering. We should have looked to reduce that gap, at the very least.
